Perhaps, of course, they weren't expecting people to try installing and playing the game on Windows XP, since, y'know, it wouldn't exist for 5 years after the game came out? :poke:

The greatest thing about Daggerfall was, in many ways, it's technical limitations. Bugs and nostalgia aside, the game left enough to the players imagination to actually 'role-play' much like pen and paper games do. I must have played it for around 700 hours in the first 3 years of it's release. And i'm still playing it now. The problem with so many modern crpgs is that they hand everything to you on a plate and it feels as if your role playing someone elses character creation, wherease in Daggerfall you had a very strong sense of a character entirely your own. My only modern experience that comes anywhere close is Mount & Blade; it is so sandboxified that you pretty much make up your own story as you go, and it's also technically limited (although the combat system is miles beyond anything). So you can understand that, for older players like myself, with each new iteration of the Elder Scrolls games (although thoroughly fun and enjoyable) feel more like exercises in hand holding adventure than true role-playing games.

The way it seemed to me in Daggerfall was that they strived to make this world of the Elder Scrolls as real as they could manage, from the leather ladies in the bars, to friendly people, to people that rejected you for your tone of voice, to nobles who saw you as pond scum or a useful idiot. The world wasn't willing to give you an inch, and you had to fight tooth and nail for whatever you got. My goodness it was a beautiful game. And through the main quest you weren't acting as someone who had glory coming to them, you were the spit upon tool of the noble families who tried to kill you every time it came to their benefit.

I've spent more time playing Daggerfall than any other game. I can't seem to get bored with it.

Also, a newer game, with its advanced graphics and sound effects, can never give you an immersion as effective as a text that reads "...the smell of the incense..."

By the way, is it only me that finds the lighting effects of Daggerfall more successful at creating dungeon atmosphere than the recent games' hardware rendered effects?

The lightning system in Daggerfall was indeed very well done, for a game that old. Daggerfall dungeons musics were also very atmospheric. I put them once in Oblivion to replace all standard dungeons mp3 and the ambiance was far better.

Want a parachute so the next time you jump to a conclusion you'll land safely?

Where did I mention that I installed it on XP?

I installed it on Y'know Windows 95 or Windows 98.

Y'know, not everything I talk about on the forums happened yesterday y'know?

You get similar problems. It doesn't happen as often as with winxp but windows interferes with Daggerfall and can cause problems. The only safe way to play is to use Dosbox to install the game and then patch it with the 213 patch.

Using climbing a lot will make you fall into the void more often than you would like. Those stairs you have to jump also have a big chance to make you fall into the void. The only solution is to save before doing this.


"By the way, is it only me that finds the lighting effects of Daggerfall more successful at creating dungeon atmosphere than the recent games' hardware rendered effects?"

At night in cities, the lights cast a circular halo which flickers on the closest houses and on the ground showing their color shades. Outside the light halo there are no colors, only gray shades as it is normal for low light areas. This wasn't expensive but the effect is very well done. I'm sure the same thing could be done with Oblivion with the right shaders.

Obviously I should've been clear when saying Windows 95, 98

They both had the option to boot to DOS, so yes, I used Daggerfall under DOS

Wait, you ditched a game after a single bug?
I mean, most games glitch at some point, even console games. You played Morrowind, right? That's a pretty buggy game, too.

This is very well said. In MW and OB I always felt like I had to censor my play style to keep the game from getting way too easy. It took forever to get a good reputation in Daggerfall, and you had to do a lot of quests to fix a bad reputation once you got it. In MW, it takes about three quests and a quick bribe of gold to move from being greeted as a hated outsider to "I don't even know where to begin, it is such an honor." One of the reasons I keep coming back to Daggerfall is that you really do need every trick available to you to survive--I NEVER felt like the game was making things easy for me.



Yeah, I miss those little descriptions before you went into shops or dungeons. "A wolf howls in the distance" and such did a great job of setting the mood. I'm worried reading in games will soon be completely a thing of the past, which is a shame.

It depends on the bug, after I found Daggerfall in a bargain bin I was stoked, but have only played so much of the game since then because of the "You fall to the ground exhausted..." bug/crash. No matter what I do with FIXSAVE it keeps coming back. Thus so, I've barely played the game.

Like i said the only safe bet is to use Dosbox and it might be even more stable than using an old computer. If you boot with the DOS that comes with Win95 or Win98 you might get into trouble for several reasons.

go back to bed, kid.

There's only so many dragon breaks Tamriel can stomach, after all...

This is where competent writing comes in, if needed. It does pain me often, how these games were written...the words "trained chimp" flit often through my mind. I still like playing, though. The later games play quite well once you get used to what you have to do (and ignore Lynda Carter's utterly clueless voice acting...how does she get that job? Oh, wait, I know).

But I digress. Note that the events that took place in Morrowind had no effect on the events (a.k.a. gameplay) that took place subsequent to the Emperor's murder, so they could've done pretty much whatever they wanted in the MW game. Really, they needed only to keep the Emperor and Mehrunes Dagon in play. Heck, they didn't even use Caius Cosades again, and they certainly should've; would've been a neat tie-in to the other game. Instead we get Jauffre, who's he and anyway so what. Gah.

It took forever to get a good reputation in Daggerfall, and you had to do a lot of quests to fix a bad reputation once you got it. In MW, it takes about three quests and a quick bribe of gold to move from being greeted as a hated outsider to "I don't even know where to begin, it is such an honor."

In Daggerfall, if you lose rep in any of the provinces outside the main three, you experience no negative repercussions of any kind just by leaving the province. The point being, you can pick and choose your weaknesses in any game.

Shall I go on, or have I made my point?

If the point is that DF is richer than Arena, I would never disagree. I just don't think DF is all that and a bag of chips when it comes to the MQ; in fact, I believe the MQ is DF's most glaring weakness (next to the bugs) due to its mostly having to deal with trivialities like letters and confusing palace intrigues and non-dimensional characters.

I was probably too dismissive of the DF MQ's potential variability, but in reality, the game plays out linearly in that you can't get certain MQ quests until you're at certain levels, so you end up doing them as they come. You have to be pretty determined to not to play it in the intended order.

Morrowind's plot is infinitely more linear,

The great houses and Ashlands tribes pieces of the MQ are separate, distinct, i.e., non-linear, and within those separate pieces, there is no linearity. Heck, there's even a back-door way to get through the game via Yagrum Bagarn. There is a lot of non-linearity in MW. (OB, not so much.)

reputation was only hard in daggerfall since there was only one or two quests in the whole game that would raise your legal reputation. guild reputation was extremely easy to gain however, it just felt long since you only gained rank once a month (though you could rise to the top rank in that month, depending on the quests). npcs were mostly worthless except for marking your map, though it was a novelty that you could only ask them one thing before they just start talking giberish "hold my foot while i get a drink of air". every npc was truely boring with no interesting conversation, even helseth, king of worms, and gortwog.

the commoner/noble quests were the more interesting of quests in-game, i hated guild quests for the most part, since they were just mindless dungeon crawls for the hell of it, almost all of the with no alternate paths. even the dark brotherhood was a huge disappointment.

I was 100%, like actually would have bet money on it, sure that Caius would be in Oblivion. I mean, he leaves halfway through the main quest, he has all this unexplained history and the hints about his addiction - and then nothing! I mean we get the "Caius visits Uriel's grave" book, but honestly, I was so surprised when he wasn't an actual NPC. You're right, it would have been a great tie-in and a nod to all the Morrowind players.

In fact, I was taken aback by the fact that no characters at all were familliar in Oblivion. Since they took the Wayrest Royal Family to Mournhold in Morrowind, I thought they might do something similar in Oblivion. I just think it's good to link the gaming generations together like that.

that was disappointing, caius should've been in oblivion. at the very least to dispel the moonsugar addict guise.

daggerfall had a lot of novelty things, and a lot of promises. i do think that morrowind's consolidation of skills was quite good, though oblivion overdid it.

Lame and completely wrong assumption.

Grow up, I didn't insult you, why do you attempt to insult me by calling me a kid?

I have to say that you DO have an Apropos username however, it definitely suits you

Is Daggerfall available for legitimate sale anywhere?

hohohohohoh

Uh, EBay. And things like that. It's been out-of-production for over 10 years, I think, with only perhaps some 200,000 copies ever made. Some speculated that gamesas lost the original source code and other materials that might be necessary for a re-release in any form, so used copies are the ONLY way to get it.

Played Daggerfall again yesterday after so many years and all i can say is that the control svck monkey balls! The story was great, atmosphere is excellent but the "tank" controls destroyed my experience. It was pretty amazing during its time of but age hasn't been too kind to it. Is there a fan-remake for the game somewhere with better controls and maybe not-so-blocky graphics?(Apologies if i unintentionally offended any Daggerfall fans)

gamesas sold more than 700,000 copies of Daggerfall.

Really? I never managed to get a figure for that; mine was largely a guess judging by the saturation of players I saw, compared to other games with similar figures.

I've never played Daggerfall, but I'd have to say it's not overrated. For one, it simply doesn't receive the press that Morrowind and Oblivion do. Even Morrowind is much more recent, and as a console game saw many new players to the ES series (including me) so even though there are a core of dedicated enthusiasts, it's not blown out of proportion.

Secondly, the stats are incredible. Twice the size of Great Britain? Cities of 500 buildings? However many hundred thousand NPCs? Probably twice the number of skill choices of Oblivion? And even so, it doesn't seem at boring or repetitive. Cities of different regions have different architechture, the dungeons are huge and complex, so many weapons and armor.