One thing that really completes the package for me with games is the art direction. It's usually the thing to appreciate most after you figure out whether a game is good as a game or not. I once thought my current favorite game, Half-Life 2, was nothing but a lame-looking FPS that was popular somehow. Then, after playing it, all the subtle nuances struck me in the face like ignorance was being swatted away. The Elder Scrolls series has a very simple style with some great creature design, I have realized, but has it been consistent? This isn't a nit-picky thing, as I'm looking at the art direction as a whole and how its evolved... Or has it?

The first thing that's clear from Arena and Daggerfall was the reuse of faces, and this also went into Morrowind but merely bumping up one dimension. One things that has ingrained in me though, all too well I feel, is how similar the rats look in the first three games. Not just the fact that they are rats, but they way they are proportioned as well as their menace. This seemed to change a bit in Oblivion, though not by much. Obviously Oblivion gave a gigantic upgrade to the previous games graphical fidelity, but did the art direction as a whole change? Even ignore the compromises made in Oblivion and simply look at the intent of character design. Have they changed, or is it just the leap in technology?