Similar effect with the Fallout series. A whole lot of the fanbase has never played any of the three 2D games (Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics). The series started, for them, with Fallout 3.
I’m kinda that way with Elder Scrolls. My first one was III (Morrowind) and I’ve still never played the first two.
Daggerfall is a must!!! You'll get to see how it shaped Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls games that came after (including Morrowind)
Yeah, Daggerfall really holds up well today. The game can be downloaded completely for free (truly gratis; no DLC, no ads) on Steam. Then using the official data files you'll get the best experience playing with Daggerfall Unity [2] which is a fanmade rewrite of the game engine on Unity. DFU fixes/avoids a lot of longstanding bugs in the base game, runs in high resolution, and has a long draw distance (which is a big deal since the in-game distances are VAST).
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812390/The_Elder_Scrolls...
[2] https://www.dfworkshop.net/daggerfall-unity-1-0-release/
Yeah, it’s on the list for when I can put 20+ hours a week into video games again without constant interruptions (kids, man, hahaha, I appreciate pick-up-and-put-down sorts of games so much more than I used to)
They recently remastered it for modern systems, it will be there when the kids ask “What’s that?” And you get to open Pandora’s box for them. “Oh this? This… is Elder Scrolls”.
I had a similar moment in my life when my daughter asked me about D&D late 2010s. They’re grown now but boy did I bombard them with nerddom.