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Um, no. Skyrim isn't copying Far Cry 2; it's copying Morrowind, which came out in 2002. Like, come on, I know Arena and Daggerfall are pretty obscure (and don't fit that description), but Morrowind is pretty well-known and Skyrim's literally a sequel to it.
This.
Some open-world-ish 1st and (close) 3rd person games:
(Also, there were only four fricking years between Morrowind and Oblivion? Damn, video game progress was fast back then.)
Yeah video game development has slowed to a crawl. It's genuinely bad; I would much much rather have games that look 50% as good (still very good!) and take only a year or two to develop instead of the status quo where they take a decade.
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