daggerfall feels more or less like a 3d-roguelike that only has half of it's features working.

random quests are possible in morriwind, but not too feasible. i'm not sure about oblivion as i'm just not that interested in oblivion. (although i liked SI).

the problem with random quests in morrowind is that it would involve a lot of global variables and scripts, although some of the external script programs may help, it's a chore with morrowind's current scripting, and very resource intensive.

I'm mentioning Space Rangers 2 because it's a good example of what I'm talking about. in SR2, all of the "quests" you can get are static, I think. I believe you get them in a sort of random order, but they don't repeat. What's interesting, though, is that you can fail them anyway, and that you can also choose a difficulty level, which affects the time you have till you fail, and how much money you get.

In addition to this, though, you also have a lot of dynamic stuff, such as the entire war with the denominators, and whatever minor wars you get yourself into with the other factions. The economy is also dynamic, and there's just a lot of side stuff you can do outside of quests.

What I mean is that gameplay activities shouldn't be limitted to quests that are rigidly defined as quests. For instance, in the TES games, enchanting and alchemy are two examples of non-quest related gameplay activies that you can still spend a lot of time on. And in Morrowind, thieving is a lot more interesting just because of how objects and NPCs are more or less persistent.

Space Rangers 2 really is a good game! has the right balance of random quests and mission duties (I didn't like the realtime stategy missions, but I think you can opt-out) I would replay the game, but I am trying to keep Starforce off of my computer...

kind of like how the GTA series has evolved. a game that really isn't much of a roleplaying game surpasses a huge majority of rpgs, and is more free form than most games on the market. 'san andreas' is amazing for how much content there is outside the missions.

TES has a lot of potential, perhaps the devs will realize their visions better now that gamesas is better known. but it seems they now rather spend most time on graphics and physics, rather than immersion & continuity.

JimC: If you buy Space Rangers 2 as a download from TotalGaming's online store (TotalGaming is related to Stardock, who make a bunch of desktop utilities and Galciv) it doesn't have starcrap.

"but it seems they now rather spend most time on graphics and physics, rather than immersion & continuity."

Specifically"

"spend most time on graphics"

1) The vast, vast majority of DF's dev time was spend on the engine.
2) http://img.hexus.net/v2/gaming/screenshots/x360/elder_scrolls_large_2.jpg <- Oblivion is only nice looking till you step back and realize that the anatomy in it doesn't make sense.

Well, naturally that's one of the most important parts of any video game. The engine is your medium...and it has to be very complex to handle all of that delicious lore you've been writing up. One of the better, albeit more work intensive, parts of building your own engine from scratch is that the developers can do whatever they want with it. Daggerfall had everything and then some, tons of skills and abilities, and a massive landscape. It had both procedural and hand-created. All out of that engine they spent so much time making. The graphics were groundbreaking then too, real 3d games were something new...and they used this medium to flesh out a world built on the universe they created with story and lore.

With Morrowind, a game that many Daggerfall veterans didn't like, they used an already existing engine. That brings with it limitations...you can do some of the things you want to, and can't do others. You can also probably do some new things as well. It's all at cost. Oblivion did the same thing; again, using Gamebryo. Sure, we got really good graphics...but at the cost of cutting down many of the things we were able to do in Daggerfall...a little in Morrowind, and a lot in Oblivion. Eventually it got to the economical, business logic point of shifting from using graphics to tell a story...to using a story to give some kind of purpose to the graphics.

We're seeing more games coming out that are essentially display platforms for some new physics engine, or a new level of graphical intensity...it's almost like that commercial for bathrooms. A family walks into a design firm and asks them to design an entire house around a sink faucet. That's what's happening all over.

We're seeing more games coming out that are essentially display platforms for some new physics engine, or a new level of graphical intensity...it's almost like that commercial for bathrooms. A family walks into a design firm and asks them to design an entire house around a sink faucet. That's what's happening all over.

I would be interested to read any links you had to articles where someone in the game industry said essentially this. I respect your opinion as it makes sense, but I'd also like to know if insiders feel the same...insiders that are still on the inside, that is, and not former insiders who are now jealously looking in...I see plenty of those types of articles already, as there's no shortage of folks willing to pitch a b*tch.

The thing to remember is that MW and OB sold huge numbers of units, numbers that DF couldn't even begin to touch. The masses have spoken. Yes, tech advances have made complicated software available to the masses...but for all of the positive qualities DF exhibits to those of us willing to put up with the problems, those problems meant it simply wasn't a very good finished product. It wouldn't have sold well under any conditions.

And quite frankly, games will never approach the scope of literature (or even cinema), no matter what Clive Barker thinks. There will always be compromises, and there will not be the pleasing of everyone.

"With Morrowind, a game that many Daggerfall veterans didn't like, they used an already existing engine. That brings with it limitations..."

Not really. Oblivion and Civ IV use the same graphics engine, and Morrowind used an older version of that. Keep in mind that Civ IV and Oblivion don't really play similarly at all. There's nothing linking a particular game's gameplay to the Gamebryo engine. In the case of Morrowind and Oblivion, it was used as a 3D engine and nothing more (although Oblivion had some other middleware). All of the engine stuff riding on top of the 3D render, for instance, in Morrowind, the scripting engine and toolkit and whatever, were all developed by Bethesda. I don't see this is really limitting at all. If you can do two entirely different styles of games with entirely different structuring, scripting methods, gameplay, whatever, then the engine CAN'T be that limiting.

First I would like you excuse me for my English, but I also wanted to express my opinion here.

I played Daggerfall, then Morrowind with its two expansions, and then Oblivion (but not Shivering Isles yet). The one which I liked the most was, by far, Daggerfall. Yes, Morrowind granted some new stuff and corrected some bad Daggerfall aspects, but even with that, Morrowind was more flat than Daggerfall was. The main reason is the world, the huge gameworld greatly improves the immersion experience. Yes, Daggerfall was randomly generated and yes, its architectural styles were not varied, but it had a realistic landscape, I mean, a realistically-sized one. Indeed what I hated in Morrowind was that big cities were nothing more than small villages. And small villages were a bunch of 3 or 4 houses... And there was, what, 10 cities and 10 villages? It was completely ridiculous, and totally broke the immersion from my point of view. This, added to the fact that some interesting features from Daggerfall were missing, like schedules, weather-dependant music, weighted gold, banks, buyable houses and ships, horses, a complex and far better main quest, a global epic feeling completely absent from Morrowind, a random quests system (quests which were not more boring than Morrowind non-random quests are contrary to what many people say), some advlt content (prostitution and gore in dungeons for example), huge and dangerous dungeons (even if they were all very similar), a complex political system, some great skills like 'climbing' and 'backstabbing', a very strong and complex faction system (compare it to the ridiculous relations between Morrowind factions and the even more ridiculous ones in Oblivion), interesting quests for vampire clans, a great and realistic fast travel system, and finally, a sense of freedom that you can't have in Morrowind or Oblivion.

As for Oblivion, it was even more designed for children, with for example its stupid persuasion and lockpicking games, its stupid Mage-Warrior-Thief orientation already introduced in Morrowind, its so poooooor faction system with 4 joinable factions and only one really interesting (the Dark Bortherhood in fact), its UI made for console gamers, and even more, it brings back some bad Daggerfall features such as levelled items and creatures (and only a few good ones such as buyable houses, fast travel and horse)... And if it was only that, but the main quest was absolutely boring in every of its aspects, even more boring than the already very boring 'kill the bad guy whose name is Dagoth Ur (brrrrr)' main quest from Morrowind. However, there are some features I like in Oblivion, but not a lot. This features include reasonably-sized dungeons (but too empty and too similar, another bad aspect from Daggerfall), and the spell casting feature, a greatly needed feature since the beginning of the Elder Scrolls. But in general, Oblivion is in my opinion by FAR the worst title in the Elder Scrolls series. As of now, I played only one character in it, and recently I thought that with the big mods like OOO it would change my opinion. I was wrong, all of it does is to add new stuff that doesn't change the flaws from which Oblivion suffers in its main essence. I know that today Bethesda devs don't care about all of that, because it is evident that Oblivion is made to make money, not to content true RPG aficionados. So now I'm gone with future Elder Scrolls games, they don't and will not have at all the great ambition that LeFay and Peterson, the true Elder Scrolls fathers, put into Daggerfall.

the only skill i miss from daggerfall is climbing, which should be included in athletics. climbing did add a lot to navigation, even if in daggerfall it was implemented poorly. i believe it was originally suppose to involve a grapple and rope along with straight climbing. i suppose until there's cliffs to climb, rather than just city walls and the occasional dungeon passage, it won't be added with any enthuiasm.

the rest of the skills i like how they are being utilized better, by grouping common themes rather than seperating every action. there's a lot of room for improvement, but less is more for the most part. i'd rather see trade skills be implemented, even though they aren't a part of the 'adventuring' skill sets that the devs want to focus, the whole warrior/thief/mage templates that existed since arena. they wouldn't even need to be skills per se, they could be actions you can do that require a little effort on the player's part, think back to ultima 6 (or ultima online) where you could partake in every step to bake bread. or even ultima underworld, which is the granddaddy of the TES genre (and it had physics in 1992?!?!?! and was true 3d?!?!?! origin was boss in their heyday).

character development was huge in daggerfall. a lot of it was very D&D inspired, and really doesn't apply too well in the later titles (armor and weapon restrictions?! material restrictions? that should be the player's choice, not hard-coded), but some really did add to one's character, like adrenaline rush, acute hearing, popularity with different castes, etc. the developing story was extremely novel, and should've never been dropped in favor of birthsign, not that i'm opposed to birthsigns, they have their place, but it should have been alongside the story, not in place of.

the town people & noble quests are the only interesting ones, the dark brotherhood was disappointing, and the thieves guild was a huge let down. mages, fighters, temple, & knight quests were bland but got the job done. morrowind's quests, while better quality, were static, and loses their novelty after a couple playthroughs. morrowind's legion quests were horrible, the thieves guild & morag tongs were great. of the great houses, hlaalu weren't planned out well progressively, redoran made the most sense as a house, and telvanni seemed rushed and tacky.

much of the rest of daggerfall isn't that notewhile. it's more or less arena just a slightly improved arena. basically what you can do in daggerfall you can do in arena (sometimes even better). daggerfall's size doesn't hold that much weight as compared to arena's, which by all means was procedurally infinate.

the transition from daggerfall to morrowind wasn't that bad as most make it. heck, morrowind modded can essentially be daggerfall in everything but physical size (which even then could be 'emulated' for the dungeons & smaller exteriors). oblivion was a letdown, but SI makes up a little. i do think that now gamesas is better known, they may invest more into deeper gameplay as they don't have to budget so closely.

i've read articles that the morrowind the devs had planned out was a lot different than what we got, much changed to appeal more to broader audiences, some changed to appeal to past players, etc...

And even taking into account that video gaming in general was not nearly as widespread in '96 as it is now... you're probably still correct. Thing is, the masses back then were very little like the masses now. Video games have branched out and brought in a lot bigger crowd than they used to.


Oh yes. The Blight was supposed to wipe out cities, etc. But that didn't pan out. And originally, Argonians and Khajiit weren't playable races (being slaves and all); that changed almost purely due to fan outrage.

yep, argonians, khajiit, and orcs weren't meant to be playable. in fact, the devs mentioned that with how they had morrowind set up, playing as either of these races wouldn't be possible, as these particular races were heavily oppressed, the dunmer & imperials were even more racist, and there were very few that were 'free' (for khajiit or argonian), or civilized (for orcs outside the deathhead legion). outraged fans made morrowind a lot tamer, even though the devs said that it was merely a checkmark in the construction set for those that really wanted to play them.

I never really felt Daggerfall had amazing freedom. You were doing fetch quests the entire game and there was nothing to do but fetch quests. Yes, the location of said fetch quests always changed, and you could do them for different factions, but you're still basically doing long chains of fetch quests and nothing else.

Also, for the record, Daggerfall did not have prostitution, the political system barely worked, if at all, the game didn't have schedules, but rather locked every door at a certain time and disabled external NPCs, and I don't actually remember a single instance in Daggerfall where climbing was actually good for something. Daggerfall's landscape isn't realistic, either. Yes, it's huge. Fine. But realistic landscapes tend to *have stuff in them*. I guess they might look realistic if you've maybe seen pictures of forests and fields and things without actually visiting them, but DF's wilderness doesn't give the impression of being on a natural, earth-like environment at all. Also, what, Daggerfall takes plae in a fairly well developed Europe-anologue. How come farms are so sparse? You hardly see any, and they're tiny. Given all the NPCs you see in cities, I really have to wonder how they don't all starve to death.

Also, calling DF's cities realistically large is a joke. They're big, sure. Actually city sized? No. I live in a small town in Ohio called Bowling Green, that's roughly ten square miles in size, with dimensions that are... eh, roughly 3 miles by 3 miles. To cover a distance of three miles, walking, takes about an hour and a half. How do I know this? Because I do it regularly. How long does it take to go from one wall to another in the largest city in DF? Five minutes, maybe? How is *that* realistically large? Not to mention that the buildings are entirely out of scale, too.

And I don't see how Daggerfall's random quests don't lose their novelty. You get a "Go to house X and kill creature Y." Different and different creature each time? Sure. Do the houses tend to ever look different? Not really. Does the quest ever play differently? No. The quests do repeat. They're not that random. I've loaded them up in the quest editor and actually looked at them.

You do the quests to go up in your faction rank so that you can get greater rewards and start talking with royalty. It's basically just a massive grindfest and I don't like it for the same reason I don't like WoW.

Yep, but even if those quests were similar, the immersion was present because of the huge land. You could never do the same exact quest. And after all, that game was made in 1996, it was never finished for financial reasons, and even buggy and unfinished, it was still great. Because the character development, wich is the main purpose of a RPG, was far better than it is in Morrowind, and far away from was it has become in the action game Oblivion. What made Daggerfall so far better is that it greatly relied upon the player imagination more than any other Elder Scrolls game.


There were prosttutes in some houses. Actually, the devs intended to make prosttutes a real guild rather that the simple faction it is in the game. As for schedules, I didn't say they were very detailed. Still, keep in mind that we were in 1996, so shops that close at night and external NPCs that disappear is better than nothing for a 12 years old game. And it's simply better than Morrowind which has no schedules at all. As for climbing, I'm wondering if you played Daggerfall a lot. First, climbing was useful to get past city walls at night. But as it isn't really realistic to have an horse before climbing and still have it after, I didn't do it a lot with my characters. However, climbing was still useful in many dungeons, especially in some circumstances when you had no other options than to climb some wall, because of enemies at your back, no magicka to cast some Levitation spell, and no potion of levitation in your inventory.


Good point, the landscape was not well made, but was still better than most games of that time.


Actually, trying to compare the size of a modern city built in the USA to a medieval town is crazy. Towns in the Middle Ages were far smaller than they are now. What made Daggerfall towns unrealistic was not their size, it was their streets, which were too large. Indeed, medieval towns featured very small streets. I know this living in a French town, Rennes, which has kept some of its medieval parts. And for your culture, Daggerfall towns sizes where more or less correct compared to that of old medieval cities in Europe.


For the quest system, I've already discussed it above. And personally, I hate WoW, which is too simple and children-oriented. Like, for example, Oblivion.

Oh believe it, climbing was very very useful in Daggerfall, in fact so useful you almost had to use it in the first dungeon you start in. And in some cases essential. Ever arrived at a town at night? get climbing. Especially if you were a non-magic class.



There are too many elements in this game that require you to use a keyboard and mouse since it was designed for PC, making is almost impossible to port in to XBLA. Plus, getting it to run on Windows XP is a pain for most people, imagine how hard it will be to run it on the Xbox 360!

"the immersion was present because of the huge land."

How are huge, empty, featureless, and completely boring and lifeless tracts of land immersive? I do not find that immersive. I do not find walking around in vast spaces of nothingness to be particularly immersive or entertaining or fun. I don't really see how anyone can enjoy immersing themselves in... absolutely nothing.

When I buy a game, I'm generally looking at content. While it's true that Daggerfall's wilderness is large, there's no content there. There's no point being in there, nothing gameplay related to do there, nothing ever happens there. Just miles upon miles of empty, badly generated terrain.

Anyway, I think you were making the point that games today apparently just exist to show off a company's graphics and physic engines and whatever. Could you please, tell me, how Daggerfall's large, emtpy fields of empty and vast nothingness actually contribute to gameplay? And don't say immersion. Immersion is not gameplay. Immersion is in the same area as graphics and music and storyline -- aesthetics. How is Daggerfall not just an opportunity for Bethesda to just show off their massive terrain generator, because I'm honestly at a loss as to how all of this immersion crap actually matters from a gameplay perspective.

Much as I'd love to see an updated Daggerfall I don't think it will ever happen. If for no other reason than because most companies don't believe in that type of expansive game anymore and looking at how Oblivion is blatantly designed for console play as well it won't change in future. Purdy purdy graphics and button mashing warrior-centric games are the future!

MeshGearfox, I'm going to go ahead and discount everything you say from now on, it's apparent you're only here to troll on the DF lovers, you're not going to change their minds so just cut it out already. Alot of us really don't give a flying flip what you think about Daggerfall and will continue to play it as we see fit, end of discussion.

Not really, no. It's just my opinion and allusion. Perhaps there are insiders who feel the same, perhaps there are some who would call me crazy...but I'm no expert in the matter. :shrug:

Sure Morrowind and Oblivion sold more than Daggerfall did. But you really can't cite that as being proportional...back then video games just weren't as popular as they are now. The industry grows practically exponentially, and just about any modern game will likely outsell older counterparts...with the exception of milestone titles such as Mario Bros. that sold millions back in the day.

Pleasing of everyone is the problem. People like spout out "mainstream" like it's a terrible thing, but in all honesty it's well intentioned and business-smart. You try to get your game to the most people, that's noble...you try to make money, who doesn't? We're just fans that felt somewhat slighted when the focus moved away from a small base to a larger demographic...so a some amount of bitterness remains that wears off on our perceptions of the newer generation chapters like Oblivion. ^_^

When I spoke of immersion due to the huge land, it was because of the land scale, not because of the landscape design. I find it far less boring in Daggerfall to go into towns that resemble each other because it lets my imagination act so let me feel there were actually real different towns, and the huge land helped a lot in that. In Morrowind and Oblivion, the big cities that are Mournhold and the Imperial City seemed so small and empty compared to the repetitive but reasonably sized Daggerfall ones. Not to speak about the other Morrowind and Oblivion towns and villages. I will quote zinger baltus, who agrees with me on this point:

By the way comparing graphics is a very misleading way to put one game down. You have to remember Daggerfall was in 1996 over 10 years ago! We're talking about DOS and Windows 3.1 here. Technological limitations meant building block approaches had to be used back then. Today that is not really a limitation so there's no excuse for it. The fact is though the latest installment of TES is literally generations (10 years, of course it is!) ahead there are quite a lot of things to do with gameplay which have been disappearing, gone or dumbed down. If you go back in time it's almost progression as more things seem to get added! Minus the graphics engine of course.

Well the graphics thing it really is true. Developers these days seem to be obsessed about visuals which need stupidly unrealistic computers to run. I'm talking about the average gamer, not the enthusiasts who have money to burn on hundreds of dollars worth of PC just to get the same old game with purdy graphics. That obsession then results in self imposed limits which could have otherwise been avoided if they didn't most of their time on it. Sometimes I wonder if a magazine review or few minutes game show coverage is more important to devs today than in depth games. Don't forget most game reviewers typically don't have weeks or months to play a game so even worse they get swayed by purdy graphics. Well it's shallow but true. The difference is not that one game has primitive graphics or another has astounding graphics, but the difference is in reality how much emphasis seems to be placed on the looks of the thing and at a detriment to the heart of the thing!

A realistic land or city scale is immersive. I don't think anyone doubts that. Apparent little things like this can often contribute greatly to immersion. Just consider how much more immersive a game gets when you switch to a first person camera view and you are watching the world from the eyes of your own character.

The difference in scenario between Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion and Morrowind is latest two games are filled with junk you can put into your inventory even if you don't need it. Npcs are much more detailed and we also use different cloths. Oblivion added a face generator to randomize faces while looking realistic, however slightly beaten with the hugly stick.

The wilderness is much better in Morrowind than in all other games. Oblivion has shown that we can have procedural realistic terrain and if Beth bothered to buy extra modules for swamp, semi-desertic landscape and tropical jungle then we could have had cyrodill climate well represented according to the lore. The problem in Oblivion was scale.

In terms of architecture Oblivion worked with Daggerfall architecture (notice i'm talking of architecture not the fine details) and expanded it. Daggerfall dungeons may have been repetitive but they were fan and challenging for people who enjoy dungeon crawling. Oblivion would have benefited of a mixture of procedural generated cities and dungeons and hand-made content.

The gameplay problems that people point out with this is that it's hard to explore a huge landscape. That's hard only if you think in terms of games like Baldurs Gate. Daggerfall solved the problem of exploring a huge land with a world map and by having npcs who give you quests and info mark the location of places in your map. It's much more interesting to explore by doing an investigation and talk to people than to scanline every bit of a map, knock every door and try talking to every npc. We know that some people like the nobles and some places like guilds, temples and taverns will grant the player jobs and quests and the nobles will send letters of invitation once the player reaches a certain status and reputation. It's much more comfortable to play this way.

The purpose of the wilderness is to provide the player with random and special encounters which may be a chance to find an old ruin, to hunt for meat, to find a traveling caravan or something else. While in Daggerfall this was very simplified (Arena wilderness was much better) this can be easily expanded.

The problem with huge dungeons is a real problem. The solution would be better dungeon generators. Daggerfall generators were a bit too much chaotic. Stuff like Privateers Hold was cool enough for a small to average dungeon and 2x PH was cool for a big dungeon, maybe 3x if they are intermixed with a cave section or an underwater river. In Daggerfall big dungeons can be 5x PH which was insane and some were so labyrintic people called these a mating octopus.

Maybe the procedural stuff was only a test for Daggerfall but the way it contributed to immersion and freedom (including the repeatable quests) was for me what matters most in the ES series, together with the developed lore and the books these series have. This set of characteristics is something that is unique to Daggerfall and in part to the Elderscrolls.

The only thing I don't get is the selective "realism" knocks. There is very little "real" about Tamriel. It's got humans, swords, armor...and trolls, elves, soul gems, tangible astrological effects, dungeons all over the place (even in Daggerfall), water breathing, feathered pteranodons, talking lizards with boobs...if you're willing to suspend your disbelief for those things, what's a little scale? Quite frankly, right here on Earth right now, I would be less surprised to see a cave network under the Sahara than I would be to see a giant sentient iguana nursing its young.

Your comparison is strange. Every fantasy world is somewhat based on a medieval Earth, and adds to it magic, monsters, gods and these others sort of things. That's not because it adds these that big cities should be nothing more than villages and that the big Imperial province should be the size of Luxembourg (and I'm generous).

"The difference in scenario between Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion and Morrowind is latest two games are filled with junk you can put into your inventory even if you don't need it. "

daggerfall had just as much useless junk for bartering (just visit a general store), you just couldn't decorate with it, which is surprisingly a huge hit in morrowind, and utterly frustrating in oblivion. you'd be surprised how much 'clutter' adds to immersion, however picking up a bottle off the ground shouldn't incite a bar brawl...


morrowind city-size really didn't come into play for me, as i assumed it was scaleda little, but also that vvardenfell is more or less newly inhabited, it's a hostile environment with the blight and all, and the houses are walking a thin line on the verge of war. it's cities & towns aren't going to have much of a population regardless. if it's cities were huge, it'd make little sense given the circumstances. it's disappointing that some daggerfall fans couldn't relate to that, afterall it sets the mood of the game.

morrowind had a definitely different setting which turned off a lot of fans expecting more or less the same daggerfall-like setting (that came with bloodmoon though). morrowind has a meso-american/sumerian feel, and also incorporates the setting of colonization of a native wilderness.


gamesas should consider re-making Arena, and retro-fit lore & guilds into it. I bet it would make a great game to acquaint the TES series with current fans, and can give a great glance at all of the providences more true to our current lore.