4. Skyrim
The late Mike Singleton, a programmer with insanely forward-thinking game design coded The Lords Of Midnight in 1984. Clearly Tolkien inspired, it allowed the player to form strategies to fight the antagonist via unique pseudo 3D graphics and cunning RPG gameplay. After a few similar sequels, he wrote the truly innovative game Midwinter which, whilst set in a post-apocalyptic future, looked very much like an early Skyrim. True it had futuristic elements and vehicles and sniping and so on but playing it then and playing Skyrim now it is actually spooky how the two feel so alike. The world of Midwinter was a mountainous snow-covered one with the occasional rolling fields where many variables had to be taken into account in order to be able to explore it and find the many cabins and buildings dotted on the landscape. Rendered entirely in 3D it offered a totally new first person experience of free roam and RPG and, although it's fair to say it looks very basic now, at the time it was worlds ahead of others. Given Singleton's history into making role playing games, Midwinter was a paradoxical future version of Skyrim's Nordic past coded in the long lost days of 1989.