Is there another game to where it's setting/universe/environment that can top Elder scrolls?
Only games that can come close are Fallout and Rapture in BioShock but they just can't compare.
GTA
GTA comes to mind but it barrows heavy from the reap world. Very little change n the game between them and us. Fallout adleast destroys everything.
Jade Empire was better for me. The standard medieval fantasy setting is kind of played out. Yeah Elder Scrolls adds their own special flare to it, but there's only so much I can take of archery, swords, and fireballs. Mass Effect was also good, but there are plenty of games that aren't RPGs that have a far more intense atmosphere, especially horror games. Soma and dead space come to mind.
I prefer fallout. 
I played morrowind years ago, then played the every loving shit out of oblivion for a while, and now I'm playing skyrim; I think I have to agree. The politics, the different nations, and the changes in the game world that have taken place from one game to the next as a result of your actions are all really gratifying. It gives it a feeling of the really grand scale everything is happening over.
And I didn't realize at first that the events of the earliest two games (dagger fall and the other one, can't remember the name) are references in all the other games as well.
All the books in the game that go in to everything really add a lot, IMO, the thing that sealed it for me with skyrim was the dragon born extension where you visit ravens rock, a town you founded in an expansion pack of morrowind, and see the exiled remnants of all the people from vvardenfel (where morrowind took place) and learned how some of the changes in that society based on the religious/political implications of your actions inadvertently led to much of morrowind getting burned and looted by the lizard people that were always getting kept as slaves in the game.
It was really Intricate and fascinating to see.