Well, a month ago, I finally got my hands on the full version of Daggerfall.

The game is unique, I'll give it that. The gameplay is well-concieved, the character generation is simply the best I've ever seen, the world is massive and realistic, and the amount of features in here speaks to the increadable ambition and vision that the designers had.

There's just one problem: it may as well still be in the friggin' alpha-testing stage! Many of the spells simply don't do anything, most of the world is empty, and it's buggier than the Everglades in July. Wikipedia tells me that before the first patch, it was impossible to finish due to bugs. What kind of businessman publishes that sort of product? Even fully patched, I'm seeing monsters get stuck in walls constantly and my character falling through floors occasionally.

This game isn't even finished!

For me, Daggerfall is a symbol of What-Could-Have-Been. It could have been the best sandbox video game of all time. However, it fails (in my opinion) because of the one greatest weakness of sandbox RPGs: they take a really, really long time to make. From my perspective, it looks like Bethesda bit off more than they could chew, and had to spit quite a lot of it back out.

You folks can complain all you like about how Morrowind and Oblivion are small, lacking in features, and lacking in replay value compared to Daggerfall. And you'd be right. However, at least MW and OB are functional, complete products that the developers actually managed to finish before their deadline.

Apparently, you'd gotten the short end of the stick when it came to bugs in Daggerfall versus Morrowind and Oblivion. To be honest, DF is far more stable for me than either MW and OB. They both are pretty crash-happy without warning, doing so far more often than DF.

And pretty much, I notice the ONLY complaint you're lodging is against its instability and bugginess. Note two things:

• In Daggerfall's time, there was a lot of bugginess due to variances in system hardware, that existed in the DOS era, before Windows and DirectX came along and unified practically everything. Hence, technically, DF is incompatible with most modern hardware, especially since a lot of it is based upon standards that didn't exist then, and they had nothing like DirectX to ensure forward-compatability.
  
• A lot of modern RPGs are infamous for bugs as well. Do you remember the "doors freeze and stutter" bug that occured if you played Oblivion for longer than 200 hours? Or Morrowind's habit of dropping NPCs through the floor, never to be seen again? Or the plentiful graphics glitches, such as how Oblivion's self-shadowing more or less never worked on 99% or so of computers.

I agree with Nottheking here.
Variable experiences are found amongst all games, and Daggerfall is one such games where it varies a lot. I don't know how you play it, but if you are using Dosbox I recommend that you try out one of the http://builds.tharos-online.de/, which can improve some things. Starting a new game might also help.

Personally I've only experienced the Void as as problem on a single occasion, but I've also exploited it a bit at times, thereby finding a use for it, but you should be able to foresee where you might fall through the ground. A few staircases, and generally edges can make you fall outside. If you should fall outside you can just use a levitation spell to get back in, just remember to cast slow fall first, or else you might take a lot of damage.

While Daggerfall is undeniably a groundbreaking and interesting game, think its popularity has a LOT to do with the nostalgia of that generation of gamers. The vast majority of people I know have such an intense fondness for it because it corresponds with a certain time in their life, when they were just getting into gaming and Daggerfall was a symbol of magical wide-eyed youthful wonder.

But that's not to say it's overrated. There are so many innovative things in Daggerfall, things that simply hadn't been done before - a dynamic weather system, DF's particular skill and advancement level, your actions actually mattering by having automatic effects on the different factions, the magic and stealth options... the plot, too, made no concessions for impatient gamers. Sure, it's full of bugs and is a nightmare to get running smoothly on most modern computers. But as Nottheking said, Morrowind and Oblivion were full of them too. Didn't they have to release an urgent patch for Shivering Isles because immediately from the time you installed the expansion, your game had a limited number of hours before random object everywhere would irreparably start to disappear? That's worse than anything I remember in Daggerfall.

While it is a good standalone game, though, I still think the majority of (justified) gushing is a product of the time DF came out in. Younger gamers will probably not feel the same magic as people did when it first came out, purely because they have been brought up on a different standard of games (graphics seems to be the main complaint from naysayers).

This game isn't even finished!

Agree. Bugs are one thing; hardly anything is without something the programmer should've done differently. But the huge quantity of bugs and other unplayable things (e.g., languages) you find in DF are quite another matter altogether.

But DF is still a very good game...you can play around the bugs, which makes all the difference.

Yeah, I think the frustrating about DF was the amount of abandoned potential. Language skills, wars between provinces, certain factions that didn't make it to the playable stage... it was a shame they were so rushed. It could have been so much better.

Daggerfall was hardly my first RPG or gaming experience; I first played it in 1999 or 2000, I'll admit, after I'd been seriously gaming for around 8 years. (I'd also already played some of the D&D Gold Box games) It was, however, my first Elder Scrolls game, and up to that point, yes, most of my gaming was VGA; the classic 320x200, 256-color style. Then again, I *HAD* also gotten a taste of some popular 3D games of the time, like Jedi Knight and Unreal Tournament, as well as the stuff on the Nintendo64.

To me, it was just the sheer AUDACITY of the game, and even just how much they DID succeed at, that really blew me away. I'd had dreams of what I wanted and thought of in an RPG, and Daggerfall turned out to have more of what I'd dreamed of than any other game, and has remained that way. And I hadn't been playing it for all that long when I learned about the then-upcoming Morrowind, which made me incredibly excited as well... Only to personally be disappointed that it just didn't have quite the same "vision" that Daggerfall had. The story was dumbed-down, relying on the "alien dark elf" theme as a gimmick, which tore like paper as soon as I realized that dunmer culture was just a mish-mash of late-1800s Deep South and British India. And the plotline was far more degraded; just another take on the "Monomyth" which is the basis of every fantasy hero's tale clich?, again dressed up with that same thematic gimmick. I was only made distraught that while I saw through it all, that millions of others did not.

I am using DOSbox.

Perhaps it's just my save is messed up somehow. Can that happen?

well could be, but i have been gaming RPG's far longer then Daggerfall has even existed, so the nostalgia thing dont work for me. it is simply a very good, replayable game.

@Moonmover: use fixsave.

Funny you should say that, because the first time I saw moving footage of it, I wondered how the hell they managed that quality at the time. Compared to what I was playing in 1996, it seemed positively advanced. I guess I just have a better sense of relative graphical prowess rather than the "everything is either cutting edge or stone age" attitude of a lot of people my age. When some peopel look back and think "that's outdated", I look back and think "I didn't think we had that by then..."

Like many have mentioned, Morrowind and Oblivion are also filled with bugs. When I play the game on my Win98 Computer, I rarely experience crashes. The other bugs I can think of are the few times that, yes, monsters get stucked somewhere or the funny audio techno-song bug. I may experience other bugs, but I don't remember them. The game took less time to make than Morrowind and Oblivion, but delivered more material.



When hacking the main data file for the game, you'll indeed notice that many features had been implemented but cut out. Most likely because they were getting close to their deadline. http://www.svatopluk.com/daggerfall/museum/ lists many features that are in the game code but not in the game itself. Still, I'm amazed that Bethesda managed to release the game after (I suppose) 2 years of development. Arena was released in 1994 and Daggerfall in 1996. In two years, they've managed to create the lore of Tamriel (It was near non-existent in Arena), write about 20-25 books, develop the game, shoot the introduction video with the actor, etc. with a team much smaller than Oblivion and slightly smaller than Morrowind.



Daggerfall was too ambitious indeed. I fully agree on that. But back then, Bethesda was not "on the map" for RPG as was Origin Systems for the Ultima series. Thus, being an independant developper, they were allowed to take risks. And it turned out to be a GREAT and positive risk to take. Today, Bethesda is well established in the RPG market. They could never take such a risk again. They are already digging the gold mine that is console gaming and they are making their games more mainstream. They are no longer an independant company.



Yet I personally think that Morrowind and especially Oblivion lack the depth that Daggerfall has. Morrowind is still an excellent game that I still play today because of the mods. Daggerfall doesn't have mods and I've been playing it since its release.

My final word : My opinion is biased on nostalgia. Daggerfall's the first cRPG I've played.

Good to see I'm not the only one with these sentiments, though I think you might be being a little hard on Morrowind for borrowing from real world history and cultures. I thought the environment was one of the real successes of Morrowind, though I absolutely agree that a bit too much is made of its "alien" and "unique" gameworld.

The main plot, however, was a big disappointment for me, and to finally come around to the original topic, this is where I think Daggerfall might actually be underrated. (As if such a thing is possible on the past games forum!) I actually thought that Daggerfall's atmosphere had it all over Morrowind. The Illiac Bay seemed genuinely dangerous, and the politicians, though they were just 2D sprites, felt like real people that I needed to be wary of. I miss getting letters from people, being attacked by random thugs during quests, and generally being trusted to make sense of a convoluted and politically driven plot on my own. I've done the "You're the chosen hero" plotline in RPGs a million times before, but Daggerfall is so far my first experience with the "You're the pawn of a powerless emperor forced to determine which squabbling vassal to trust in a world of people who would think nothing of killing you. Your only choice is who's pawn you'll ultimately end up, and then there's a giant Dwarven robot" plotline. Yet it seems to have become an almost accepted fact that Morrowind had a "brilliant" storyline.

That said, Daggerfall is now an old game, and I have no doubt my picture of it is at least a little bit colored with nostalgia. At the time there was literally no other game like it. I wouldn't expect someone picking it up in 2009 to have the same love for it I did in 1996. Yes, there are definite bugs, and the general presentation is archaic. But as others have pointed out, there are a great deal of gameplay strengths that the other ES games don't have, and a sense of atmosphere and story that I think the later games have lost as well. Yes, it might be a little overrrated around here; it's probably not the "greatest game ever", but it's certainly my favorite, and I'd say it's a good candidate for "greatest game ever attempted".

Then again, this is all coming from someone who's been a bit disappointed with the entire direction of the ES series since Redguard, so take this with an appropriate grain of salt.

I agree. DF was too ambitious for its time IMO. Its a shame that loads of content had to be left out, but then again you can only do so much in "two years" with a small team and time constraints. I applaud them for what they managed to achieve, even though it can be buggy at times.

Which is really pretty sad, that gamesas thinks that because they are established, they are not allowed to take risks. Origin themselves, at about the same time Daggerfall was under development, decided to take the biggest risk anyone had ever made for RPGs, and attempt an extremely expensive-to-develop game for a genre that didn't even exist yet. There was lots of speculation that it'd flop, and could possibly even force Origin out of existence. That game was Ultima Online, the world's first MMORPG. And, well, we saw how that turned out; their subscribers grew at a rate some 4 times as fast as their rosiest estimates, and it wound up being a huge success, birthing the most profitable genre of games out there.


I'll admit a bit of a bias: I was originally born in the Deep South, and I've come to hate it. So when the Dunmer act just like them, just calling the Imperials "outlanders" rather than "carpetbaggers," it irritates me to no end.


Indeed, this is what gets to me, and how I feel exactly. If one simply went to the UESP Wiki, and looked at the main quest lines for the two games, one realizes that Morrowind's is just, in the end, a straight line, with a couple points where you get 3-4 quests you may do in whatever order you wish, but you must all complete them consecutively without touching any other main quests. Meanwhile, Daggerfall, in gamesas's attempt to be as unlike Arena's clich?, linear plot, wound up with a deliciously complex and tanlged questline, with a plot convoluted enough to make Metal Gear Solid 2 seem almost straightforward. In DF, I loved how you wound up with a bunch of leads in front of you, but with your choice to which, if any, you followed up on. And plus, the whole basis of political intrigue rather than Morrowind's cheap reliance on a more or less unambigously bad guy who happens to have lots of superpowers, was a major attraction to Daggerfall. As a result, the game's main plot characters didn't feel utterly flat like Morrowind's did.

Meanwhile, Daggerfall, in gamesas's attempt to be as unlike Arena's clich?, linear plot, wound up with a deliciously complex and tanlged questline, with a plot convoluted enough to make Metal Gear Solid 2 seem almost straightforward.

For the life of me I don't see how DF's play wasn't basically linear. If you don't believe me, Google the Beginner's Guide to Daggerfall; it's all laid out there for you. You had to make a unique choice in the end, but that didn't affect anything, really.

It was definitely more varied than Arena's now-go-and-get-the-next-item, though.

Where the chance was really missed was in MW. Early on in the plot they made it seem like you were going to have to choose whether to help the Tribunal or Daqoth Ur. Didn't happen, of course, but how cool would that have been? And it wouldn't have been that hard.

Yes, overall DF ends up being a linear series of steps, if the only goal is to complete the Main Quest. But the permutations allowed achieving that goal, combined with all of the other quests and goals that one can take on is what gives the non-linearity existence.

Consider for a moment what would be involved in trying to see how fast in game-time one could do all of the quests needed to complete the main quest. I think that the best way to achieve that would be to get enough rank in the Mage guild to use their teleporter, and also get character level to 15th level or so. I would say a fair amount of magical skill would be needed (the guild only teleports one way after all), but a "pure mage" style character would be the wrong way to go. Physical and weapon skills would still be needed.

Already there is a new paradigm in play.

Or you don't want to concentrate on the MQ at all. You want to max-out ranks in as many guilds as possible....

Another paradigm.

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

Morrowind's plot is infinitely more linear, in that there is only actually one line at all, while Daggerfall's quest, if you want to boil it down as much as possible, is still in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Main_Quest_Walkthrough#Quest_Map. Of course your progression is going to be linear, as you can only do one thing at once. However, the lines there start in multiple places, and split and then recombine. As http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Main_Quest, it is truly linear; the Hortator/Neravarine quests are all just sub-quests that don't exactly split off, it's just a stage where you must complete all seven before you may advance, kinda like dungeons in the original Legend of Zelda. And the optional quests are purely one-shot side-quests. So yeah, for a game quest-line, Daggerfall's is very complicated.

The steps and the outcome are always the same but at least we have a good branching main-quest and we can intermix side-quests with main quest branches which is more interesting. There's at least 2-3 alternatives at any moment. I always did one or two side quests followed by one main-quest. Given that we can abandon side-quests when we are bored with it (the side-quest plays in one of those mating octopus dungeons) this gives a great sense of freedom when playing the game. Another cool feature is quest invitations. It skips the boring part of running around asking nobles for another quest. They will give you the quest when they are ready, which makes sense. It's small details like this that make Daggerfall cool.

I am the exception I guess. of course, it dosen't work on my computer at all but whenever I do get to play it on someone else's comuter I love it. I came in Morrowind.

That's something I thought of, too. I think that would have been awesome. However, though it wouldn't be hard to do in-game, the repercussions would be more difficult to deal with. Since Daggerfall, Beth have had to find ways to get around the open-ended quests without spoiling the next game installment... my guess is that it's getting harder and harder for them to do that, which is why they've finally settled on not giving the PC a choice. It's a shame, but I see why it's necessary if they want to keep all the different games closely involved with eachother.

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

Seems to me, that all three of them were too ambitious. Daggerfall had tons of features cut, the dynamic blight failed to materialise for Morrowind, Oblivion had its entire AI system and half of the main quest plot cut.

I don't think it's overrated at all. Yes, I used to think that I loved it mostly out of nostalgia, and what my imagination could do with it, and those are still reasons, but playing it again I've realized that it's a great game in its own right. The character customization is way better than the newer games. The story is infinitesimally better than the newer games, and amazingly gives a sense of intrigue despite the fact that all the characters are practically cardboard cutouts. The combat is about as good (or not good) as ever, and the magic system is far more useful. The biggest thing, though is that dungeon crawling is fun in this game. Yes, I avoided it as much as possible when I was a kid, but now I enjoy the challenge and the overall feeling of absolute peril. I don't think I've ever had much fun with Morrowind and Oblivion's comparatively puny dungeons. I was certainly never frightened I wouldn't be able to find my way out because I retraced my steps only to find the revolving wall I went through was suddenly solid.

And bugs - I'm used to bugs. It seems all my favorite game franchises are bug-riddled. I remember Bethesda's huge promise for Morrowind was "no bugs, seriously guys." Hahaha.

yep daggerfall is overrated, but look at where you're preaching...you're in a forum that's almost completely dedicated to daggerfall fanatics.

daggerfall was mostly pointless without the daggerfall chronicles to provide the lore for daggerfall, since there was very little included in the actual game.

"The biggest thing, though is that dungeon crawling is fun in this game. Yes, I avoided it as much as possible when I was a kid, but now I enjoy the challenge and the overall feeling of absolute peril. I don't think I've ever had much fun with Morrowind and Oblivion's comparatively puny dungeons. I was certainly never frightened I wouldn't be able to find my way out because I retraced my steps only to find the revolving wall I went through was suddenly solid."

Some dungeons are very bad and people have some reason to complain about it, but these are only a few of them. I usually save before entering a dungeon for several reasons. One is that sometimes a bug prevents from finding a quest npc or item and this location is determined before entering the dungeon. Another reason is that i like to play DF dungeons like a roguelike. I never save when inside a dungeon and only save after leaving. It makes the dungeon crawling experience so fun i still play Daggerfall today just for a quick dungeon crawl, which sometimes may take a few hours. To make it even more interesting i never use magic spells or magic items and explore the dungeon using my climbing and swimming skills. I also try to follow the time limit imposed by quests and manage my resting times to avoid exceeding the limit (it takes 8 hours per rest). This implies that sometimes is more important to flee than to fight everything. It's as fun as playing a roguelike and i still didn't find two equal dungeons. Once your character becomes high-level the game starts generating more ancient lichs, ancient vampires, humanoids and higher level daedra and the game becomes more interesting.

My sister let me borrow her copy of Daggerfall, I installed it.

Went into my first Dungeon and was climbing back up a ladder and got stuck and slowly rotated and then fell through the world.

I went "LOL!"

then uninstalled it thinking "Who the hell would pay for this game, you can't even do anything without completely bugging out"