maybe they couldn't get the game to run?



that shouldn't have really mattered since the classes in arena were the same standard affair found in daggerfall. attributes, levels, and restrictions/bonuses were the same, and i'm sure they could've came up with some easy formula to adjust skill % from the class level. i bet it was more to promote the new character generation, perhaps the largest new feature of daggerfall. it would've been mostly just a novelty.

They were originally supposed to be much more similar but as development went on more and more things were added or changed, and eventually they were simply too different from one another for it to work properly. I mean, there isn't much in common between the two at all when it comes to skills, character generation etc.

All that, and anyway what's the point of starting a new game with a character that's all-powerful? My Arena dude could've gone directly from shipwreck to the Mantellan Crux without batting an eye..."Unknown Champion" my patoot, Eadwyre would've been crapping his royal silken breeches if he knew a guy with a twenty-five-hundred-HP Shield and the Ebony Blade was standing in front of him.

daggerfall is levelled to your character, and because arena only had stock classes, even at higher levels the game would've been more challenging than with a custom class. remember that the stock characters were extremely limited to what they could branch out and do, and nobody played them.

moot point, the devs liked the custom class generator, the background choices, and the shipwreck beginning. it's one of the best redeeming features of daggerfall.

heh i remember being so hyped up by those preview pics that i almost crapped my pants everyday until Daggerfall launchday, and then i was kinda dissapointed when i discovered that they took out a great deal of cool hyped things, like political questing, large battles between counties and sieges, but i loved the game anyway since it was a sequel to Arena and i was "horny " for more



my strongest moment was coming out of Privateers Den, looking around and had absolutely no idea were i should go, it was all so big and open!
didnt read the manual first so i never knew which button was for the fast traveling

yeah, Daggerfall towns and cities had more life to them then any later modern game have had since then, dunno why this is so hard to redo in modern RPGs?



first thing i did when i discovered that i could do it "End of All Hope"
and as battle music i have the good Nightwish songs. nothing tho get the feel for a hard-pitched sword battle the with the hymn of "The End of All hope"



im pretty sure the "dumbing down" effect occurred at the same time consoles began getting the same games as PC, so i blame consoles.

i have never played daggerfall but would love to.
Thats one of the best videogame songs ive herd

Something very similar for me, was very cold and nasty outside, but I was hellbent on getting to the store and getting it. So i dressed warm, grabbed some friends, and we friggin hiked our way for a couple miles up to the mall and grabbed us some copies. Was a hellish experience, but we got back to my place and we all had our pc's waiting, I think we were all like 11 or 12 at the time

I wish I had been more into the RPG genre back then to be able to enjoy Daggerfall, Baldur's Gate and Fallout, but sadly back then around '95 my gaming tastes were more along the lines of adventure games, RTS games (first one I played was C&C DOS), and FPS games (first one I played was Dark Forces). I was a lot younger then (like in my early teens) and my tastes were a lot less broad than than they are now.

Now I'm trying to play catch-up, lol.

I can't remember why I asked for Daggerfall for my 14th birthday back in late 1996. I hadn't played Arena, although I liked RPGs and spent a bit of time on online RPGs in those days (I had just discovered the Internet). Probably one of my online RPG buddies recommended it, or perhaps I read a review in a magazine.

I didn't fall in love immediately. It took me a couple of days to get out of the first dungeon, and even when I did, I didn't know how to fast travel at first and spent a couple of days caught in the wilderness. The game overwhelmed me.

However, gradually, I developed an obsession. I too remember the first time I visited Daggerfall at night and heard the chilling shouts of Lysandus' Ghost. "What is he saying?" I asked my sister, who was as gripped as I was. "Dungeons, I think", she replied. Then the cry came again, more unmistakable this time: "Vengeance!", and a Wraith had crept up on my Dark Elf from behind. I was fascinated by the magic system, the guilds, the temples, the world, everything was so life-like. The fact that you could scale city walls and discover witch's covens and risk attack by pickpocketing. At first, I ignored the books, the culture and history and the backstory, but the more I played, the more time I made for them. I got svcked in.

The dungeons were endless, baggy and buggy, sometimes finding a quest object involved a bit of pixel hunting, and one always had a slight suspicion that maybe the quest object couldn't be reached because of a bug in the game. One could spend a good six or seven hours in a single dungeon. That said, the sense of satisfaction that one got when emerging from the dungeons was amazing. I could almost feel the relief of my character on seeing daylight again, and he would get on his horse and ride back triumphantly through the gates of Wayrest to bring Barenziah home the object that she had sent for.

Daggerfall had wonderful strengths, but I wonder if I'm getting a bit sentimental and nostalgic. The bugs and crashes were terrible at times: I was lucky to have the Internet in those days because I could send versions of my saved game to be 'fixed': the quest could be reset, I could get my character out of the void, I could be brought directly to the item. That said, I was always willing to persevere despite the bugs.

The game was astoundingly ambitious, and that counts for a lot. Morrowind and Oblivion run more smoothly, but somehow they are less 'real'. It's difficult to describe why: the photographic realism of Oblivion and the voice control should make it a richer gaming experience, but, sometimes, less personalization leaves more to the imagination.

I've just started playing Oblivion this week: it was my 26th birthday present (I haven't really grown up, you see!). It is a wonderful game and I'm sure it will give me many hours of happiness. But somehow, after a few days of playing, I think I know already that I wouldn't become absorbed in the world of Cyrodiil in the same way as the Iliac Bay. It's partly just that I'm older and my teenage enthusiasm has been partly numbed by advlt concerns, but it's also the fact that I don't feel the same sense of freedom in the Oblivion world. The anonymity and the contingency of the Daggerfall world had their faults, but they also offered something very special. Bethesda has managed to hang on to some of that spirit, but I'd urge them to try and bottle it and pour a generous dose into Elder Scrolls V.

Oh wow... this brings back so many memories. I remember me and my brother getting our copy when I was 11 years old, and being so excited we could barely keep still. We'd both played Arena together and loved it. Then arriving in Daggerfall, and seeing the houses stretching away into the distance, and running around and finding little cats in alleys and hidden gardens behind houses... I think Freddo is right. There was something so real and alive about it, possibly because I was all young and innocent and wide-eyed n stuff.

Those promo shots look so much better than the released game, though

Great posts, guys!

Continuing that off-topic thread, I'd like to say, comparing to the later TES games: I have a little interest to continue playing Oblivion, have no interest to play Morrowind again from the beginning, but I would like to play Daggerfall again, that's for sure.

You've managed to articulate this far better than I could. Your post really nailed, for me, everything that makes Daggerfall so special. It's a really interesting comment about leaving more to the imagination giving a better rpg experience, too. I feel the same way.

i wish i had as much interest in daggerfall like the rest of you, i just never developed a nostalgia for the game. maybe because i played the game alot for about a year and a half, and after that, there wasn't much else to immerse me in the game, for as large as it is.

Looking at the video again, I just noticed on the character's sheet at 1:48 that the leveling was XP based. That was in 1995.. so that means they completely overhauled their leveling system in a year? That was fast work!

And looking at the UI, there's an ear icon. I suppose you could hear creatures from afar in a dungeon with this tool. Too bad it was taken out. (The old UI is shown in the Daggerfall manual though. And it shows the "ear" icon)

Finally, I like how the towns looked like at 2:46. They look more like Arena's where there would be static NPCs as well as moving NPCs. That's a feature I liked about Arena. It gave more life seeing an Alchemist preparing potions in front of a temple than just seeing peasants walking around aimlessly.

I *think* I still have the PC Gamer issue reviewing Daggerfall somewhere in my house. I'm just sure I have it. (And I still have the PC Gamer Demo of Daggerfall too. )

Actually, I believe it was intended for eavesdropping in on NPC conversations. Could be wrong.

nope, its intended use was just that, eavesdropping.