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Do you remember the first time you played a particular Elder Scrolls game, and everything seemed so new and fresh? You stepped off the boat in Seyda Neen and were like, "Whoa, what is this place?" You finally made it out of the Imperial sewers, looked around at everything, and were like, "Okay, now what?" Visiting a new location in the game was like stumbling across a mysterious and exotic place where you didn't know anything. Even learning the game's controls could be an adventure in itself.

Then you get to the point where you've been everywhere several times and have grown reasonably familiar with everything-- you might not know your way around the winding streets and alleys, or the mountain trails and mine tunnels, like the back of your hand, but that aura of newness, of strangeness, has dissipated.

Sometimes I really miss that aura. How does one recapture it? Starting the game over with a new character build doesn't help, because the new character is like, "Hey, I've heard so much about this place from other people, and have seen so many pictures of it, that it feels like I've been here before!" Putting the game away for a few years before you play it again can help somewhat, but once you start to play you're still like, "Oh, yeah, now I remember this place!" I suppose playing with mods and a lot of new DLC can help, too.

Playing with mods absolutely helps. Not playing for a year or so helps too.

Skyrim and Oblivion have a plethora of new experience mods; Moonpath to Elsewyr is a personal favorite. Lots of dungeon mods are out there that add new, unfamiliar locales to the games.

The best is roleplaying though. Instead of visiting new locales, interacting with the locales in different ways adds a lot of freshness to the games. Instead of operating as a Nord mercenary taking whatever job comes across his way, perhaps try an righteous Breton crusader with a sense of morals and justice. That kinda thing.

Thanks for the role-playing idea. I tend to play with the same general character build for a given game, in accordance with the game's main storyline and location-- Dunmer for Morrowind, Imperial for Oblivion, and Nord for Skyrim-- so playing a totally different character build would definitely be a change. I even tend to frequent the same merchants in the cities, so going to different merchants might help, too.

It's sort of hard to describe what I was trying to say. To give an example, there's a location in Skyrim somewhere in the general vicinity of Dawnstar, either east of it, or west. The first time I had to go there for a quest it made a certain impression on my mind as far as how the snow-covered ridges are laid out, how the Stormcloak or Imperial Legion camp is laid out (I forget which side was camped there and which side was attacking), etc. Some months later I had started playing Skyrim again (with a new-yet-the-same character) and I was trying to find that spot, but I couldn't figure out where it was. Then I happened to be passing through the area and came across one of the camps and I realized that it must be the spot I'd been searching for, although it seemed... different somehow. It was like my original experience of that location was all wrong in some odd way, like I'd been looking at everything from the wrong angle, and now that I knew the correct angle it seemed more mundane somehow.

I don't know if this will make sense to you, but it's like picking up a fork before you've learned what a fork is, and you think, "What is this weird implement with these things sticking out like fingers on one end?" And then you learn all about forks, after which you can't imagine how you ever thought that forks were strange. When I'm playing an Elder Scrolls game for the first time, everything in the game seems new and exotic and unknown.

A few decades and a smattering of games from other genres between replays helps even more. Santa brought the kids a SNES Classic, and while I was maybe a bit overzealous for them to experience Mario Kart in all its 16-bit glory, I deliberately tried to avoid spending too much time with it myself. That is, until I played Metroid again for the first time in over 20 years - so familiar, yet at the same time so alien, I was instantly hooked all over again. But oh my, how much I had forgotten.

Anyway, an idea I've been kicking around for TES is not unlike a "dead is dead" run, only, with four titles at my disposal I want it to be more like a "dead is reincarnated" deal. I would kick off in Daggerfall, build my character, and save once I escape the starter dungeon. From there, only save after completing a quest. When I inevitably die, I would quit that game and start Morrowind with a character that is as identical as possible to my Daggerfall build, and similarly only save at certain times. When I die, quit and start Oblivion. By the time I die in Skyrim, I have four "lives" of the same character, who, by either the jest of Sheo or twists of the Wheel, is doomed to constantly jump from one death to the continuation of another life until the fates deem their tasks complete (or I get bored or too aggravated). Quantum Scrolls? Ick. Bakula...

I think I'll keep a d4 handy to randomize which life I pop into each time, since player choice might prevent me from ever getting very far in the search for Lysandus' killer.

I don't know how refreshing this approach might be in practice, but I'm serious about trying it as soon as Mother Brain is dead. Again.

One of the things I did that really reinvigorated my love for Morrowind in a way I haven't felt since I first played it as a kid is that I played it differently than I have before. What I mean by that is that I've always been the kind of player who really tries to stick to main quests, without too much faffing around. In Arena and Daggerfall that's kind if how it's meant to be played, but after I played Skyrim I went back to Morrowind and made a concerted effort to really play the game in a different way even though I was playing the same basic character. The first real payoff for this was that I went pearl-diving and found a dungeon that isn't a quest, isn't some kind of huge monster encounter, it exists purely for the sake of pearl diving. That really brought me back to why the game i spired so much fancy in me when I was young.

Do you mean the grotto near Seyda Neen, over by where the tax collector's body was dumped?

Generally speaking, my first time playing an Elder Scrolls game is spent running around like a madman, trying to see and map everything, talk to everyone, do every quest, etc. Then, after I've either completed the main quest or decided for some reason that my current character stinks, I go back and start over but take a much more leisurely approach, such as sticking close to Seyda Need and trying to master hand-to-hand and unarmored fighting against mudcrabs, rats, nix-hounds, and cliff racers before finally wending my way over to Balmora.

But I've yet to join a different House-- so far I've always gone with House Hlaalu, just as I always play as a male Dunmer (in Morrowind). One time I started playing Morrowind as an Argonian, but I didn't stick it out. One of these days I need to play as a Khajiit and join House Telvanni. Or I guess I could focus on a particular guild rather than joining all of them.

I suppose it depends if you really want to see how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Because you're really just describing things that aren't unique to video games - people do this stuff in real life all the time. So technically one solution to your problem could be to un-learn these habits in real life, and to re-learn how to keep looking at objects and things even when your brain is telling you that you're wasting your time because it "already knows" what that object "really is." ... to re-discover how to see something new on a street you've walked every day for the last 10 years, or to try to discern what makes a specific flower unique and different to any others... and so on.

Blue pill or red pill, it's up to you...

I suggest playing a drastically different character, perhaps with some heavy limitations to make you think about the game in a new light. Especially if it means cutting out a gameplay element that you tend toward. These are more like challenges rather than roleplaying, but I find them just as compelling. I mean, you know the game very well, it's hard to forget things like that; so keep your knowledge but force yourself to play a different way or avoid a certain crutch you've been relying on.

Some examples:
1. Magic only comes from Spells, never enchanted items. (Items are for peasants that can't do the real stuff anyways, right?)
2. Or the reverse: magic only from enchanted items, never spells.
3. Like #2 but further limit to items that made yourself OR only items that were found/purchased (so no custom spells or items!)

Or these which are some of my favorite ways to play:
4. Never leave a town with more than 200 gold or some other ridiculously low number (donate or stash the remainder somewhere). So you should also be carrying items that can be traded for cash like gems and ingredients and stuff. Play the traveling merchant! Hard to imagine someone would leave on an adventure with their entire fortune in pocket, right?
5. Play without referring to the map ever. Or play by only using these sick topographical maps that BigJoBag made.
6. Don't keep a home or stash for your stuff, play the nomad! Feel the freedom of just, you know, not bothering to even pick up that mega sword you'll never use or be able to sell. Resist the urge to collect trophies!

I strongly recommend doing an 'Ironman' or Dead-is-Dead run. You will feel super attached to your characters this way, it's nuts how much of a difference this makes.