My introduction to the elder scrolls series was Daggerfall. Love that game. Now just imagine if they could make the world of skyrim as large as highrock was depicted in Daggerfall.

never have gone back to daggerfall after the first time through.
however i did go back and play arena again before the launch of skyrim.
makes about 4 replays over the years now for arena.

What are the old-school games like? I've only played Morrowind and up.

Like doom. With RPG stats.

You know how Oblivion and Skyrim kind of held your hand in comparison to Morrowind?

Daggerfall makes Morrowind look like Oblivion and Skyrim... on novice.

Pretty much this.
Oh dear God, arriving to DF city for the first time. :c :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :sadvaultboy: :cryvaultboy:
Oh lawdy why?
OT: I'm too busy playing Skyrim. :v

haha so true! daggerfall was also the first where you could buy a horse/house/boat.. yes boat!

arena was a lot more liner, and more "do this, thank you, repeat" and very generic dungeons, but also had good story, and great music.

I went back a few times and played in the past, though not recently.
I first played Daggerfall when I was 11 and it had a lasting impression on me. Perhaps its nostalgia, but I see it as the best game in the series.

It was made by a completely different team than the one who made 3-5, and they had a different vision. Think about the sterilized, console-ized nature of the later games. Think about the awkward characters, annoying voice acting, unrealistically small towns, weak lore, and the sense of frustrating pointlessness when there is no loot to be found anywhere. None of that existed in Daggerfall.

In Daggerfall, you weren't concerned with "getting ahead" in an RPG as much as you were concerned with escaping the terrifying, labyrinthine dungeon you're in. While the later games are painstakingly hand-crafted and user-friendly, daggerfall's content was randomly generated which made the game unpredictable and endlessly foreboding. There is nothing to save you if you contracted a fatal disease from some rat in a dungeon, and can't make it to a temple for a cure in time. Didn't have a save game prior to contracting the disease? Too bad.

I remember being totally taken by surprise at the weird boost in my stats, only to suddenly realize I've become a wereboar!

Gameplay aside, what I liked about Daggerfall was the gritty, dark style of the game. 3-5 are cheese, 2 was wicked sick. Although the graphics are archaic, I still like the art design a lot more than the later games. There were prosttutes, scantily-clad girls dancing in temples, creepy sprites of enemies scarier than anything found in the later games. And the MUSIC was so moody, atmospheric, melodic and well-composed compared to 3-5's boring ambient drivel. Its amazing how modern day sound effects don't have the same power as DOS technology driven by a simply more creative, original vision.

The music is what I liked most about Daggerfall. That, and the true feeling of accomplishment after navigating a treacherous dungeon for 5 hours and actually finding your way back to the entrance.

Daggerfall was simply a more raw, genuine and risky game world which could send your head spinning with its randomly generated code. It was like man-vs-machine, I can't say enough... and its so sad everything that made Daggerfall so awesome and badass is totally gone from the later PG rated games.

Man, Daggerfall was so massive. You could literally spend hours lost or searching for something in a dungeon. Daggerfall is the only TES game that really made you relieved seeing daylight after spending hours inside the bowels of a dungeon.

I played Daggerfall yesterday, after a few hours i went back to Skyrim.

lol.

I liked the game but I think the long random dungeons were fiendish

:D

I was actually thinking about playing Daggerfall again after finding this;
http://www.tesguides.com/tes2/

I didn't much care for the random dungeons though, only because of their wildly and gratuitously 3D nature. I don't mind sprawling as long as it's 2D with a map that is actually useful.

Yes i still play DAGGERFALL. I started with ARENA and still remember the first encounter with a huge big belly giant in a dark cave. Boy that was scary. I was also shocked at seeing one of the first friendly and buetiful looking characters in the game end up dead before i even stepped out of the first dungeon. When i ran into my first hoker on a dreary rainy day thats when i knew i made the right decision buying my first pc and putting my Amiga 500 Commodore away.

When DAGGERFALL came out i was amazed at how it kept pushing the realism and how it was the sum of its parts that mattered not just the graphics or sound etc. Seeing the topless women in hotel rooms and the dancing ones in the Temple Of Dibella was a excellent life filled contrast to the death and despair in the gigantic huge dungeons i loved exploring and getting lost in. Those Mark and Recall spells came in real handy for finding my way back to the exit. Thank goodness in SKYRIM theres the Clarivoyence spell.

The zombies in DAGGERFALL were the best. All rotty looking and putrid with two hit killing power. Just about everything in DAGGERFALL was real life dangerous.

Still enjoy DAGGERFALL immensely and its great to see so many things like the Couriers and the tavern music along with Witches showing up in SKYRIM.

I played through Daggerfall just last year and then, right before Skyrim's release. loaded it up again to get a feel for the area. Big mistake. I really liked having an assortment of homes to buy in each city, the size and feel of all the populated areas, and the variety of merchants, banks, temples, and so on. The Skyrim cities with one (and only one) of each feel like one of Bethesda's Fallout settlements.

How did you get it to run on a modern operating system and computer?

DOSBox.


I tried to play Arena earlier today, however my craptop couldn't run it without lagging. I doubt Daggerfall would be any better.

You can get Daggerfall running on DOSBox and it's free. I don't know if you meant Arena though....yes, I still play it (not Arena).

Edit: Hang on, Momaw? He's still around?! Wow...(loved the Geomancy mod btw)

Dosbox.

edit; bah, multi-ninja'd. I was off making sure it actually still worked in latest dosbox version.



I think that guy is still around, yeah. And he would be all warm and fuzzy at the idea that anybody ever used one of his mods.

I think Arena's the only free one. Last I checked, Daggerfall wasn't.

Does Archie post here, perhaps under a guise? I should visit the irc chat assuming it still exists...

*ahem*

http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2009/07/09/daggerfall-now-available-for-free/

Profile page.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/user/401-archeopterix/

"Last active" shows she is still around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2u9F7z6Nzk

Lol, nice.