I also think this is a super interesting blog post on how someone failed to make “the game of their dreams”: https://scribe.bus-hit.me/@indigogaming/how-i-almost-made-the-game-of-my-dreams-da8b327e50f3

The lead dev was someone very passionate and managed to get ahold of the lead devs from The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, and wanted to make something similar (an open world ambitious RPG with a small dev team and no game plan, what could go wrong?)