Most of us all have 'those' memories of Daggerfall. The first time I was in Daggerfall City at night -- I was eleven years old and playing with my best friend. My mom woke up and called 911 because she heard us screaming downstairs and thought we were dying lol. There's also the ancient vampires (*shudder*), wraiths, endless chasm dungeons, disturbingly graphic torture rooms...among other things.

Morrowind, my absolute favorite TES game and probably #3 or #2 game of all time doesn't have anything remotely close to that. Nothing scares me at all in that game. My blood never really gets pumping. Even the werewolves during the excellent Bloodmoon storyline looked comparatively tame compared to their Daggerfall counterparts. And Daggerfall was six years prior! Morrowind's otherwise fantastic soundtrack also didn't have any of the eerie ambience.

Oblivion and especially Skyrim also never really scared me. The only real scares I had in those games came from the thrill of a tough fight and the anxiety over whether or not I'd die. I am combing my memories and trying to remember any scary parts. The bugged serial killer story in Skyrim was more humorous than scary....I'm coming up blank.

Horror fantasy is something I feel this series has lost -- and it's something I think would be incredible to have back, especially if the next installment is in the Black Marshes, although it could conceivably work in any location except maybe Valenwood.

Oblivion, riding a horse for miles and getting off to get something and realise a wolf has been following you for ages and it jumps at you as soon as you get off your horse. That used to [censored] me up.

Yeah, I agree that TES toned down the scariness of their creatures and dungeons as the series got more popular and moved forward, away from the arguably more darker D&D-inspired Arena and Daggerfall.

Both the starting games tended to favour a gritty style, where enemies were tough, attacks were luck based and the decision of whether you lived or died rested in the hands of the Gods (well, the Random Number God anyway). Dungeons were dark, complex and filled with torture rooms, tormented souls and skeletons, and a great amount of wailing.

With a 3D engine and a massive new world, Morrowind seemed to go for immersion rather than scares. A couple of real-life libraries worth of backstory and history, but not quite so scary. Cliff Racers are annoying, but hardly something out of Stephen King's novels. About the scariest thing I remember is confronting a ghost without a silver sword.

Oblivion went for high-medieval ages, and the only time I was truly scared was when I took the darkness level of the game down via mods -- I can't be scared if I can see the zombie shuffling towards me.

However I will admit that I was absolutely scared senseless the first time I went into the Shivering Isles. That place is just wrong...in all regards. The buildings are old, dark (even without mods) and filled with strange objects...and the Flesh Atronachs, Skinned Hounds and the Gatekeeper really freaked me out -- and still do.

I can't vouch for Skyrim as I haven't played that, but overall, Oblivion:SI is probably the closest you will get to being scared in TES series, in my own opinion.

I've only played Daggerfall once but I got scared by the sounds in the first dungeons. Never really been scared by Oblivion. In Morrowind I get unnverved going through the wilderness and my heart rate goes up when something threatening attacks me. The reason these 2 games scared me more than Oblivion was because the enemies really are a threat. Especially at low levels. In Morrowind, if you get attacked by something larger than a scrib at the first few levels, you are in fact highly likely to die. In Daggerfall you die incredibly easily. In Oblivion, there's rarely much you can't kill easily, and when there is, you almost always have plenty of time to run away, because it takes so long for you to die. The exceptions would be mountain lions and ogres, who do a pretty good job of at least frustrating you.

Those... corprus beasts... I certainly found them very, very disturbing, and plenty frightening if I came across one suddenly, especially when I was first playing the game.

The Sixth House Strongholds like Kogoruhn, with the red light and the ghostly whispering, still scare me. Same goes for some ancestral tombs. In Oblivion, i found the Ayleid ruins with undead to be quite scary. In Skyrim there really isn't anything scary; I hope they implement some sort of zombie or proper ghosts in future expansions.

The Draugr in Skyrim are not scary because they seem too human: they occasionaly say things in Dragon Language, they wear armour and they use weapons. The zombies in Oblivion and even the Draugr in Bloodmoon were scarier because they were deformed, naked things that would attack you with their claws..

I found a couple of "scary" parts to Morrowind, such as my first entry into a 6th House base (creepy red candle-light, shallow water, with disturbingly distorted figures and profane artifacts, etc.), and my first foray inside the Ghostfence (trudging forward in a Blight storm, with a Corprus Stalker in the distance, writhing in pain and holding its head, while Blighted cliffracers circled overhead). Most of the rest of the situations were more "tense" than scary, or a "startle reaction" when you suddenly came upon something nasty while turning a corner or opening a door.

Well Daggerfall dungeons are mostly scary due to its gloomy atmosphere, music, sounds in the distance (creature sounds, opening doors) there where much gore decorations, tortured people, o yea and our ol pal Lysandrus. But it all boils down to the suprise encounters

In Morrowind it was mostly suprise encounters (encounters are easly to predict since the music shifts to battle one, but sometimes it doesent), i bet many has been scared of by suprise loud sound of cracking bones hitsound out of nowhere. But the read deal was the Six House, Ash monster who looked and sound disturbing, speaking wierd sentences, Ash Zombies who bugged you in the middle of the sleep

In Oblivion its mostly sunshine and bunnies, with occasionaly suprise encounters, only zombies looked unpleasant,

Skyrim, despite being more darker than Oblivion was not scary at all (yea suprise encounters here too), compass shown all enemies, and rising undead where easy to predict

Ah yes, the atmosphere of Daggerfall's dungeons are unparalleled. Mostly because of the aforementioned sounds...doors opening in the distance, strange noises, skeletal screams, scuttling....terrifying stuff!

I forgot about the Morrowind 6th House locations. Definitely creepy and foreboding. I seem to remember a place where there was a message written for you in the gold (or was it blood) of other dead heroes in that location. Anyone else remember something like that or am I misremembering?

One time when I was playing Oblivion with the sound down on the T.V. I was just wondering around in the woods, and I happened to turn around just as a brown bear was swiping at my face in first person mode lol. That did make me jump.

One time a random giant in Skyrim managed to get a jump in on me too. not sure what I did to make it mad but it whacked me with it's bone club for some reason haha.

Morrowind had scary vampires. Dremora were quite fearsome at times too

(morrowind's vampires sounded like dremora)

Those guys actually never bothered me too much.

The zombies from Oblivion really gave me the creeps, though. Their moans are horrible and they're disturbingly fast.

Never found DF creepy. 6th House bases I was always on tenterhooks going through them. Only bit of TES I ever found to have a creepy atmosphere. There have been things in all the games that have made me jump but thats usually due to a sudden appearance rather than building up tension (I usually play w/o music).

Daggerfall isn't scary as much as disturbing. I wasn't sweating so much while I was in the dungeons, but I STILL have dreams about them.

Well it depends on what scares you. Gore and things popping out at you make me jump, but I'm much more scared by creepy, deep, disturbing, eldritch type things. Think Silent Hill 2 as opposed to Dead Space, though I like both games. So people getting tortuted may gross me out but not scare me. Things in Oblivion......some of that stuff scared me to death as a little kid, mostly because of my crazy imagination. Going into Oblivion and seeing all the charred corpses, assuming that since they're basically in hell they cant really die so their souls are trapped in those rotting husks. Dont get me started on my theories on what "The Punished" were....the still leavong hearts of a Kynreeves' prisoners who misbehaved....horribly bloated with magic and alchemy and split open, the tortured soul still within, and usdd as containers. Going into Arkved's tower and seeing reality forsake itself entirely. Doors leading me into endless voids of hanging, mutilated corpses, odd noises heard nowhere else in the game, rooms that lead you to other dimensions. That game had horrifying moments in my opinion.

This.

Wait! Let me think of something!

Huh. You know, never been creeped out at all during an Elder Scrolls game, but that's because I usually get pissed off rather than actually scared.

"Zombies! Don't! Run! RAAAAAGE."

Bethesda should take some cues from the Amnesia series