...and I've realized why. It's the lead designer who calls the shots (at least it used to be, maybe these days its the suits) but Daggerfall was led by a completely different and more innovative, stylish team than Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. The latter 3 seem so compromised, while Daggerfall was raw and fearless. I played Daggerfall as a kid, so maybe its the nostalgia talking, but that game intrigued me, and 3-5 IMHO do not deserve the title of Elder Scrolls. They're all the same sterilized console PG-rated drivel that does not live up to LeFay's vision.

The only reason Daggerfall could be raw and fearless, was that 90% of it was randomly generated content.

Nice mathematical logic there, but...

Daggerfall had prosttutes in upper inn floors, and topless girls dancing in temples. Aside from shallow gratification, this made the game world more realistic.
Daggerfall had beautifully composed music, that changed to fit different cities, regions, and dungeons. It would even change to fit the weather. This was all done in MIDI but it sounds better than the later 3 games' music, which have a a general track that plays EVERYWHERE YOU GO, and a track that plays during battles. That's it, and it gets boring and nauseating to listen to. I'm appalled at how the designers completely ignore the importance of music and how it effects the mood of the player, and in turn the gameplay.
Sure the randomness got old after awhile, and trumped the "massive world" claim because it was the same thing over and over again. However, it was the sheer unpredictability, and more importantly, the R-rated "wicked sick" style and artistic integrity that made Daggerfall better than the other games. I wish they had taken what was good about Daggerfall and refined the generic gameplay. Instead, they took the generic gameplay and made it more user-friendly, while abandoning the style and artistic merit that made Elder Scrolls great in the first place. The cheap imitations and ripoff lore is very bland in comparison.

Hey, I love naked women as much as the next guy, but if you really think it makes or breaks a game, then well... you might need to find yourself a girlfriend.

And music's completely subjective, so you can't really argue for or against it (although games after Daggerfall have more of it in a format with a superior sound quality, although anything's better than MIDI).

He made contact with the developer of DaggerXL about a year ago. The old forum from DaggerXL is gone now, but this was one of his posts there,



According to Lucius(DaggerXL's creator), the two are in contact with each other.

Pre-randomly generated, like how Oblivion was with its trees and dungeons.

Daggerfall was largely worked on by Julian LeFay, Ted Peterson, Bruce Nesmith, and Todd Howard (not to belittle anyone else's contributions to the game, but those are the main names I can think of). Todd Howard and Bruce Nesmith still work on TES as lead director and lead designer respectively, and Ted Peterson was consulted and made contributions up to Oblivion (I don't think he made any direct contributions to Skyrim, but some of his books and ideas are in the game).

Also, Julian preferred the direction Battlespire went. Battlespire was an RPG more in the style of Dark Messiah (ie, linear and action-heavy) than the main TES games.

And FWIW, the lead designer is essentially the think-tank. They come up with the ideas to work off of, but the other designers and implementers also weigh in and can change or get rid of those ideas. The lead director calls the shots, resolving disputes in, and contributing to, all facets of the project, from world building, to sound design, to programming, to visual style, etc.

I am intrigued by Julian's post. This is a perfect example of a true talent who could have pushed the envelope forward and perpetuated Elder Scrolls to be a respectable series. I know Oblivion and Skyrim garnered 9-10 scores, but those scores are wrong, because the majority is usually wrong.
But his post also shows a meek humbleness, and he faded away into obscurity. I am saddened to read that he saw Daggerfall as a "great missed opportunity in life" and I totally understand the sentiment, because Daggerfall really DID display phenomenal potential.
Instead it looks like Todd Howard/whoever else took control and butchered Elder Scrolls to become a vanilla, marginalized mass-marketing tool with little substance. I guess people like Julian aren't greedy enough to take the reins of big companies and while they have the true ability to make the greatest, most innovative games, they are pushed aside in favor of marketing geniuses... is this not utterly pervasive in modern gaming?
It seems that these days game design is driven my fear of not making enough money, rather than risk-taking and innovation to make even more money as a byproduct of an amazing, perfectly-crafted game with the focus on quality over profit. I think Blizzard has this concept down to a science and that's why they're the most profitable and innovative company there is (although they have also inevitably succumbed to the suits' pressure).
When was the last time you played a game that really floored you, and didn't seem so compromised by marketing concerns? I think the only one carrying the torch right now is Kevin Levine, and my hopes for a game that is actually worth playing, i.e. having 100 percent creative integrity, is Bioshock Infinite.

It is interesting reading people talk about Daggerfall like it was some end all be all for gaming, or that if they didn't rush it to the market it would have been.

The game was great at the time and I loved playing it, but it doesn't stand up at all to other TES games. The only reason to install it now is for a nostalgia kick (maybe that's what you people are falsely attributing to Daggerfall). The illusion of it being this massive sandbox world wears off once you realize it's all just cookie cutter filler.

I mean what exactly do you people think the game would have been had they not rushed it to the market? A few more quests where you read a pop up that says kill person X here, or take this to person X? It isn't like they were going to overhaul the basic mechanics of the games. What amazing feature got cut?

No matter what it still would have been the main quest, and bunch of randomly generated side quests. All of which would mostly be tedious repetitive dungeon crawls or take quest item from point A to point B. I mean yeah you could boil any game down to that, but I don't see how Daggerfall's combat system, dialogue system, quest system or general immersion into the world is superior to any of the new TES games.

It is the little things, like randomly running into a werewolf (which still scares the CRAP out of me) in big cities at night, the holidays that occur, the extremely diverse weather, the random and often brilliant little side quests that could be given to you by almost anyone.

Hell the fact that they bothered to draw the two different types of Lycanthropes gives it big points. There is also the spellmaker which was better than the one in Morrowind and Oblivion, you could alter the icons of the spells, choose its primary element. There was also the cast method of "Area around the caster" which I sorely missed until Skyrim.

Enchanting was also better IMO as souls weren't required, they just made weapons better and came with their own effects. Like a Daedra Lord bound to a sword made it extremely strong, however it would be an extremely heavy sword and hurt the wielder in holy places.

That's not correct; it was procedurally generated, or, as Mystia Lorelei Qawsed Asap phrased it:

Pre-randomly generated,

If you create an infinite number of new characters, the world map will be the same: nominally pointless towns will ALWAYS be in the exact same places, with the exact same names, and the exact same layout every time anyone plays the game. The same goes for all the dungeons: once you keep in mind the level scaling, the contents are always the same excepting the loot. In the outside world, the only things that are randomly-generated as you play are the townsfolk NPCs, and the placement of trees and other objects in the wilderness. Given that the latter group doesn't have any impact on gameplay (as you don't collide with trees) that makes them just like the grass in Oblivion, which randomly re-generates even if you just save and reload.

Just remember that the majority of books in each TES game after Daggerfall (the first to have such a library of in-game books) are recycled. I don't recall the exact counts, but as I recall 70% of Morrowind's books were from Daggerfall, and in Oblivion a minority were original, with the plurality from Morrowind, and a sizeable chunk from Daggerfall.

The interpretation that I've had is that the Lead Designer is the author of the game's design document, while the Project Lead/Director/Producer is the editor.

The problem, I suppose, is that for TES games to return to being a more adventurous, daring, and risk-taking series, (even to the extent that Morrowind had) it'll need BOTH a compatible director AND lead designer; the director needs to be willing to allow such risk-taking decisions without putting their foot down, and there needs to be a designer that's actually courageous enough to make said decisions personally.

Blizzard wasn't quite so experimental, but they did make a lot of success from "pushing the envelope," design-wise; their games (pre-World of WarCraft) were all marked by taking an otherwise-familiar type of game, but then applying enough new changes and twists that they literally did expand the genres they went to. But yes, since 2004, they've decidedly changed to be more "mainstream;" World of WarCraft didn't dare do anything that Everquest or Ultima Online hadn't already done, and didn't even dare try all that the latter had done. However, the game boasted vastly more polish than anything else, which won it the day in the end.

The irony is that Oblivion, and to a lesser extent Skyrim, both rely very heavily on this so-called "cookie-cutter filler" that you describe as removing all merit from Daggerfall. And even when we look at what's "cookie-cutter," we notice that DF STILL had a staggering amount of content. After all, it boasts 248 quests, and that assumes that of each "category" of repeatable quest is only ever done once. This makes the count second only to Morrowind; holding Skyrim to the same standard yields you only about 180 quests for it, the fewest of the four "modern" games of the series. Similarly, once you factor in the level scaling of the two most recent games, they suddenly start looking a lot more cookie-cutter: every dungeon's bandits in Oblivion are essentially the same, and will almost always be decked out in glass armor when you're level 20.

Daggerfall's real strengths came from the daring gameplay elements it had: it borrowed a number of pages from Rogue-like RPGs, which I'd hazard a guess you've never played. (or possibly even heard of) The game offers a degree of flexibility in character creation that's unrivaled to this day, and puts the incredibly dumbed-down system of Skyrim to shame. Even if you removed the 6 languages skills (which, by the way, DID still have an impact) that still leaves the game with 29, more than any other. Then there were all the various special effects, which for a newer player could be best described as "create your own birthsign." The flexibility and freedom extended well beyond just character creation; the spellmaker and enchanting system were vastly superior to anything that came after, it housing system was much more broad, and oh, it allowed for ship ownership too. And then the game didn't hold your hand or railroad you; vampirism and lycanthropy, along with other diseases (which would actually have an effect on something other than NPC dialogue) could hit you silently, or you could randomly find a very powerful magic item at low level.

Again, as far as "filler" goes, that largely describes the content of the two more recent games; one could make a decent argument that Morrowind's mapping was better because it was 100% hand-crafted, but you're not making that specific argument. Plus, Morrowind had its own detractions due to the degree of brevity its dungeons had, as well as an overall shortage of content in many regards. It doesn't matter that the bulk of DF's content was procedurally generated when you can still go an impressive distance before you start noticing repetition.

Polish is king. Bethesda could learn a lot about polish, Oblivion is still riddled with bugs. Blizzard would have stamped them out long ago.

Polish is very important as well, but it, too, isn't everything; even the most perfect of polish can't make a bland game really any better. We HAVE been seeing a sort of trade-off trend here, with the continual dumbing-down of the series being accompanied by slight improvements to the polish; Skyrim added a larger improvement than previous games, but still... I don't think everyone thinks it was a worthwhile trade-off.

I really have no idea what people mean by the games being 'dumbed-down'. I'm having no problem with the old games, I don't find them easier or harder than Oblivion. They're all great games, they all have that magic 'TES feel' to them. If people want to get their panties in a knot over a game not having bare briasts, fine. Have fun. But don't bother coming here to whine about how awful it is that a company is making money.

It's not about bare briasts. When I admire the mature content of Daggerfall I don't mean the sixual content. I mean the advlt content. Wait, that doesn't mean six either. What I mean is, Daggerfall is a game for mature players -- players are treated more like advlts. The characters in Daggerfall have interesting and realistic motivations and relationships. It's not just kill the evil wizard/dragon.

Daggerfall's storyline is one of my favorite video game storyline's out there... I loved all the court politics and whatnot that went on. It was very "Game of Thrones" style. Morrowind had a lot of that going on too, with the different houses and whatnot, though the main quest itself was a bit cliche. Oblivion and Skyrim's main quests might as well have been taken from a children's fantasy story.

You want to complain about plot or character creation in future games that's one thing. Those are the only things I would enjoy if I played DF again.

But don't tell me about the gameplay mechanics of Daggerfall. They're awful in comparison to future games.

I really don't see how some people still get so pumped about "oh I bought that useless house in Daggerfall" or "I bought a useless non-moving boat", or "I can make any spell even I don't even know the effect from the moment I leave the first dungeon"

Gotta love doing endless dungeon crawls through computer generated labyrinths that are supposedly the ruins of an old farmhouse. Right?

I don't like all the new features in every TES game either, but I don't think the root cause was they went off the DF formula....

Just a quick note, Bruce Nesmith left Bethesda after Daggerfall and was rehired for Oblivion's development. He had no part in designing Morrowind.

Hmm.. houses were pretty much pointless, yes. It was really just a way to say "look at me, I'm rich and have nothing else to spend my money on."

Boats didn't move but were super handy since you could teleport to them from anywhere outside. Great place to stash your loot. I used my boat ALL the time.

The endless dungeon crawls were just how things were back then. RPGs were built around dungeon crawls in the past. Everything outside of dungeon crawling was just filler. Daggerfall tried to keep the game fresh with all of the randomized dungeons. Personally, I loved them. I've spent more time in Daggerfall's dungeons alone than I spent in the entire game of Oblivion. As far as the names.. I always just looked at it like "well the dungeon was hidden beneath the old farmhouse".

And I'm not sure how you can dog on the spell maker. It was easily one of the best things about Daggerfall's gameplay. I LOVED the spellmaker. The potionmaker? Not so much. Perhaps that's what you were thinking of? The potion maker gave you potions that were always labeled "Potion of Unknown Effect" or something like that. It made me a sad panda.

Nice job splitting those hairs, buddy.

And you're implying that the houses in later games are somehow magically more useful? And the boats were hardly useless: just because you didn't have any shiny graphics of you sailing along a la WindWaker didn't make them useless from a GAMEPLAY perspective: they still granted you the fast-travel options, (making them already equal Morrowind's likewise non-graphically-moving boats) as well as giving you instant access to your mass storage, which is something Oblivion and Skyrim could've used, given, y'know, they don't even have Mark&Recall.

You REALLY going to say that Daggerfall's spellmaker was worse simply because it let you make spells with effects you didn't "own" yet? That's just downright silly.

It's not like any of the dungeons in later games fit with their exteriors either. In fact, we even moved to where not even the HOUSES fit their outsides; at least in Daggerfall, they had all the non-dungeon houses actually fit the interior with the exterior. This is likewise grasping at straws yet again: dungeons in RPGs have NEVER been 100% realistic. Why is it that every single mine in Oblivion is a hostile dungeon? What happened to the mining industry? How the heck do such large, monolithic stone objects get in a cave where the doors aren't big enough to fit them through?

And hey, a computer-generated labyrinth is better than you make it sound. At least there's actual branching in the dungeons, unlike Oblivion's linear treks that almost invariably have a drop-off point so you don't even have to backtrack to get back to the entrance. And to be honest, there's actually LESS monotony, given that Oblivion's dungeons consist of a tiny handful of architectural styles that otherwise all mimic the same pattern of linear corridors. Daggerfall at least had things like huge rooms were the draw distance wouldn't let you see all the way across them, that consisted of something other than "an elevated pathway above a pit area you could slip and fall into, and just have to climb back out of.". (and before you mention anything about view distance, Oblivion's dungeon draw distance was comparable to Daggerfall's)

Actually, it's 100% because of that. You're just failing to see the forest for the trees here... Which is a common problem that plagues the gaming industry today, really: people look at games for their gimmicks, not for the base ideas. And Daggerfall's formula, like all of the 90s' best RPGs, didn't rely on gimmicks at all, but rather the underlying philosophy of being bold, and taking risks to try and make something bigger than what'd come before. It's the opposite of what's been distilled to perfection in, say, Activision's annual Call of Duty games.

That's not the way game development used to be, back before gaming became a business all about quick returns on investment to please the shareholders. It was then we got bold RPGs, not just Daggerfall, but perhaps the one game that emphasized the idea more than any other game: Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

It's not hair-splitting: it's a fundamental difference. To not clarify would be to accept an incredibly broad, baseless, and uneducated claim that one could easily construe to mean that you despise all the flagship TES games except for Morrowind, as that was the ONLY TES game that didn't heavily rely on computer generation for the majority of its content. Do things like "Soil Erosion" and "SpeedTree/SpeedForest" ring any bells there?

Dude, for starters, chill out with the unnecessary pedantry.

We don't need a laughably verbose essay clarifying your exact opinion about every single word someone posts, nor do we need to be endlessly condescended to for not using exactly the right terminology in passing. We also don't need a lecture about we "probably never" played a roguelike, or how we just like "shiny" graphics, or any of the other ridiculous things you've implied just because we have a different opinion about a freaking TES game. It's really tedious.

Wow, seriously?
What you see as "laughably verbose" to me is poignant and insightful. Afraid of detail and complex language, are you? Too "tedious" for you? You sound like you're trying too hard to defend Oblivion and Skyrim. I for one appreciate his "lecture" because its exactly what I've been trying to say, the utter decline of videogame design and how badly pervasive it is. It's the same problem that's afflicted movies and MTV for example. The masses love Oblivion. The masses love Jersey Shore. Get what I'm saying?
It seems like its simplistic minds like yourself who eat it all up and perpetuate this poor quality media.
You have deserved every bit of "condescending" in my reply because you have displayed how limited your intelligence is through such a disdainful and ignorant post.

Unless you reply with something to change my opinion of you, you represent the reason Elder Scrolls took such a nosedive.

In my opinion, Nottheking and Legion bring up valid points here. Yes, a great part of a discussion like this is bound to be opinion vs. opinion, but looking ojectively at the TES series, it has deifinitely undergone changes. For better or for worse lies in the eye of the beholder.

I for one also prefer the more "mature" style of Daggerfall even though I have spent many hours with the more recent titles as well. I do think it would be "fair" to give the old style a chance in another TES release. The problem with this, as has already been stated, is how to please the masses with a game like Daggerfall today, even with beefed up graphics and physics. It might just be too demanding for the broad audience.

Also, the "mature" style of Daggerfall extended WELL beyond just "it had bare briasts." (their absence in the series really DOES have more to do with Todd Howard anyway... Or specifically his lack of ability to hold his mouth shut when he sees 'em )

Rather, the game, in spite of being "computer generated" had something that the later games largely lacked: choice and consequence. And it was much, much more than just "here's the obvious good solution, but here's also a blatantly evil solution that grants you no benefit other than being able to say you're evil." (which is the extent of choices you get in RPGs these days...) Rather, the game gave you HARD decisions: that is, NONE of the choices were 100% "ideal." Hence, you had some compelling reason to take almost every single choice. A few classic examples from the game's quests:

• When escorting an NPC who tells you their life is in danger, you find that the guards are after them. You could duck the guards to be able to get them to safety and collect your reward, or hand them over to their death for no reward.
  
• On a quest to rescue a kidnapped child, you COULD try to take revenge upon the kidnappers from the Dark Brotherhood; this would also let you keep the ransom, but it does still give you a risk that the child would be killed by the time you rescue them. If you simply hand over the ransom there's no opportunity to get it back or find/kill the Brotherhood assassins.
  
• The best-known is from the lycanthropy questline: the classical cure eventually involves killing a hereditary lycanthrope in remission. You follow a lengthy quest to get to the point, with everything else ready to finish, to find that the only available candidate is a child. You CAN go ahead and complete the quest anyway, ensuring the child's death at your hands, or you could refuse the quest, nullifying the entirety of the prior questline.

In the end, apparently the executives who rule game design consider this sort of depth to be too "controversial" or "complex" for the average, mainstream gamer... Apparently their impression is that the average gamer is a 15-year-old console kiddie; hence why we still see lots of crude language without any mature ideas, since these 15-year-olds are also the bulk of those constantly swearing into their headset on Xbox Live...