Command and Conquer perhaps? CC Tiberium Wars came out around 2007. Starcraft is also a similar RTS; Starcraft 2 came out in 2010

These come to mind where you can kill enemies, be a girl, and are or are similar to an rpg:

Middle Earth: Shadow of War: main character is a guy but in one of the expansions you can play the story as Galadriel. Killing monsters and game mechanics are peak

Skyrim Mods: ik you mentioned Skyrim, but The Wheels of Lull, The Tools of Kagrenac, and The Forgotten City are game sized mods in of themselves and are very good

Elder Scrolls III Morrowind and IV Oblivion: both as good as Skyrim, but in different ways. Go in with an open mind and you will be amazed

Star Wars KOTOR I & II: my favorite games of all time, very much games where you can choose how your character acts and who they become. Great story too, as a fan of star wars or not

I tend to agree, open world is becoming just a box to tick off for AAA developers, which means it just gets put in as filler basically. Halo Infinite is the worst example I can think of. However I do think there are 2 ways open world can be justified: if the world is just packed so full of interesting stuff that the game just gets huge, or if the way of traversing that world is fun.

Category 1 would be games like Morrowind, Skyrim , Fallout 4, or even Mass Effect on a smaller scale. There’s just so much to do that it becomes an open world on its own. Category 2 would be games like the Arkham series , Assassins Creed, or Forza Horizon, where getting from point A to point B is fun on its own.

Open world is great when it’s done right, but since when has Ubisoft or EA made a good game in the past 10 years?

One area of The Talos Principle is set in Greco-Roman ruins. It captues a very specific tone. The puzzles are fun too

It’s unofficial, but you can play it via browser at shin.itch.io/elden-ring-gb, or download it and play via emulator

Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for GBA is my all time favorite from the series. It was made late in the gameboy development cycle, and feels miles ahead of other gba titles. Imo it’s the pinnacle of 2d Zelda.

Another great title is Fire Emblem. It’s not the first one, but a lot of them can be played out of order, and it’s tons of fun if you like turn based strategy.

Other mentions: Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen, Pokemon Yellow/Blue, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons/Ages, Link’s Awakening, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, Final Fight One, and the Elden Ring demake

My favorite console has got to be the original Xbox. I would play it all day when I was younger and to this day I still use it because emulation is iffy for a lot of titles. Games from that era from like 1999 to 2006 hit home for me and I love replaying the greats like Knights of the Old Republic, Halo 2, and 007 Nightfire.

For everything else I do a lot of steam gaming and emulating on my linux pc, steam deck, and mobile. I use mobile for casual, quick, or pauseable games, steam deck for games that “feel” right like racing games and old adventure games, and pc for longer gaming sessions, or mouse and keyboard games like Starcraft and Age of Empires.

It’s hard to beat pc because it can litterally do everything better (except maybe portability) and you can customize it into anything, so it’s definitely the objective winner, but og Xbox is still my biased favorite.

I switched my daily driver to Linux Mint Debian Edition recently and it definitely does combine the best of both. It’s easy to use and coming from plain debian has everything that I’m used to. Been loving it so far.