Triumphs and Failures of Daggerfall's Design

[kingOfWyrms]

I was wondering what the community thinks of the various systems implemented in / conceived for Daggerfall. Things like the progression, weapons, skills, anything about the game that you think is particularly good or could use improvement. I want to know what the Daggerfall vets' honest opinions are about the game and its systems. Even if an idea was perfect for the technology of the time, I'd like to discuss how it could be improved for today.

For me, one of the standout issues in Daggerfall is the melee combat. When I was first introduced to the system in Arena, I loved it. It's one of the most immersive ways to swing a weapon in a game I've seen, but when I started playing Daggerfall, I noticed it was distinctly less suited for modern control schemes, specifically mouselook, because of the inability to both attack and turn at the same time using solely the mouse; a problem compounded by DFU's lack of the non-mouselook control scheme. (Not that anyone would use that anyway, nowadays.) It also feels a bit unresponsive, which leads to a lot of mouse-flailing on my part. Bethesda beat Nintendo to the punch! (Well, waggle, that is.)

I'm curious what you guys think of the combat, and anything else you found particularly noteworthy about your time in the Iliac Bay

[Jay_H]

Confession: I am an ardent Daggerfall fan. Bear that in mind as you read.

I'll try to think of as many things as I can. This is one of those subjects that you can keep coming back to for a long time.

1. Combat: I actually really liked Daggerfall's combat. I've never played Arena, Oblivion, or Skyrim, so I can't compare their combat systems in-depth, but I've watched them all thoroughly. I still consider Daggerfall the best of them. It achieves what ESO set as a goal: real-time combat where the player's skills are the determining factor. If the player is good enough, the character need never get hit in physical combat. Enemies telegraph their attacks clearly, each in an individual way and with sufficient time to dodge manually (some, such as orcs, have a lightning-fast reaction time but it can still be predicted). To become a master of the combat system takes time and practice, but any player can become physically invincible if they work hard at it. I haven't felt the attack mechanism to be clunky, though I recognize that's just my experience -- one who's played Daggerfall for two decades can't be called an average user in this regard. One major flaw is the massive spell resistance enemies possess, which really dampens a purely magical approach. Likewise, many spell effects really are useless when compared to direct or continuous damage, leaving a streamlined and eventually repetitive combat system.

2. Setting and characterization: This has always been something Daggerfall excelled at. I've noticed some of the greatest stories told in video games are through a medium of absolute seriousness. Super Metroid had some of the most powerful story-telling in 90s video gaming, and it only used two paragraphs; the rest was shown graphically, in a completely visceral way -- everything about Super Metroid was dead serious. The same seriousness and dedication was present in Megaman Starforce 1 (in contrast to MMSF2), Starcraft 1 (in contrast to Warcraft 3), Deus Ex (in contrast to DX2), Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past (as compared to Wind Waker), and so on. When the game takes itself completely seriously all the time and does it well, the immersion experience is fantastic. This is also true of Daggerfall. While Morrowind and Oblivion insisted on making themselves a goofy experience to lighten the mood, Daggerfall didn't bother, and instead focused on making its world as internally consistent as possible. Without denigrating the other two too much, it's easy to say they provide a more shallow immersive experience. Sooner or later, it just becomes obvious that these worlds they've created really don't match up to reality as much as you'd expect, and immersion breaks. Designers can either make the entire game silly or make it entirely serious with the potential to do well, but mixing the two together tends to result in a lot of amateurish attempts that only make people roll their eyes and groan. This doesn't mean the game can't throw in a laugh, if it's witty and universe-appropriate -- Deus Ex has some of the best comedy I know of in video games, but it's also dead serious. It's worth mentioning that this is something one/a few modders lost sight of in Daggerfall quests; one person decided to add a Mages Guild quest that tells the character to steal an object of worship from a local temple, and once complete, the questgiver gives thanks and then mentions that he has to attend to a bit of a "locust plague" on his property. That raises a lot of questions that don't need to be asked if we're trying not to think about some writer on a keyboard, rather than the centralized world of Daggerfall.

3. Writing: I still think Daggerfall's prose is some of the best I've read, at least in video games (only beaten by the Exile series). It's perfectly world-appropriate and sort of Shakespearean, like the rest of the game. I mean, just look at the effort put into a random Mages Guild quest:

Actually, we have had a bit of excitement in this dull old place lately. In a rather routine atronachy class, one of the subjects managed to ... well, the details are not important. What is, is that there's an atronach on the loose in (region) that can easily be traced back to this Guild and our maladministration. You're the type who could end this affair with the minimum of embarassment, yes?

Or this one from the Dark Brotherhood:

Here's a rather amusing accounting that may appeal to your morbid sense of humor. Seems there's this untalented bard with a penchant for rude limericks about former patrons. As it turns out, (his/her) knowledge of genealogy was lacking, and (he/she) sang a song about an incestuous duke to (his/her) new patroness, the duke's daughter. Interested in accounting this uncouth artiste for (random gold) gold pieces?

You can practically hear the deep, resonant voice he's speaking with. To compare, I just looked up the first quest I could think of in Oblivion:

You seem the trusting type. Perhaps you can assist me? It seems someone has taken away an heirloom that is quite dear to me. I want you to help me recover a stolen painting. The painting was of my lost love, the Count Valga, and it has been stolen from my bedchamber. If you find the painting, and bring the culprit to justice, you shall be justly rewarded. What say you?

Daggerfall has a rare quality where I actually feel smarter for having read it. Even the quest journal makes the same extensive efforts. A quest for the Thieves Guild talks about how you're being sent to "a dive" to go pick up some contraband; quests for the Mages Guild are written in a way a mage would write them; and so on, appropriate to each faction. It isn't one lifeless voice narrating everything out. It's a bit conflicted to see the character write in the mage's style and then in the thief's style in the next entry, but at least the effort was there.

4. Dungeon layout: For the most part, a player can continue exploring dungeons until the cows come home and never actually run out of things to do. In the most literal sense, a player will eventually recognize all the blocks in a dungeon and feel that there's nothing left, but this will occur long after Vvardenfell's dungeons run out. (Thankfully, modding became a part of TES with Morrowind, so we didn't have to worry about running out of content that fast. I can only imagine how far Morrowind would have persisted if it didn't have mods). Some of the essentials in Daggerfall are actually quite obtuse; 13 years after Daggerfall came out, I finally understood how to move a bookshelf away from a brick wall portal that I needed to enter. When I was younger I just assumed some quests were broken, so I used the teleport keys to grab the quest object before leaving. That sort of failure to communicate is a huge drawback, and I believe that really does count. The further insistence on using levitation to traverse normal sections of dungeon is also a very large oversight, and the same could be said for the swimming mechanics. I could sidestep this by talking about what Daggerfall would have been rather than what it is, but that isn't the subject.

5. Character progression: This is a mixed bag. One of Morrowind's greatest strengths is the protagonist's transformation from a mudcrab-hunted outlander to an all-powerful avatar of the past, where even the player is thrilled with how much power you gain -- I still remember after Tel Fyr, I had super-powerful magic, Daedric weapons, and the skills to use them, and I just remembered how far I had come. In Daggerfall there are absolute gains in progression and relative gains, and they depend a lot on character planning. You have to know the game beforehand to progress properly. If someone sank all their attribute gains into Willpower and Agility, they may never grow more powerful at all. Part of the greater thrill in Daggerfall -- absent in other games -- is the appearance of ultra-powerful, really terrifying enemies who you find it a great challenge to beat. Think of the first Vampire Ancient you met, who shocked you 14 times before finally permitting you to crumble into a hopeless heap. That Vampire Ancient is sort of like a new goal; you want to be so strong that even that kind of nightmare falls before you. If Daggerfall had had a more extended course, say to level 20, this could've been a recurring and thrilling experience, but it stops too soon; once you're level 10, most of the game is below you anyway. More monsters could've made this extension quite ably. While the monetary system was hopelessly broken in several ways, the ability to buy an equally exorbitant house sort of made up for it. In a sense, growing more powerful than every enemy and buying a house were the two "end-game" objectives in my Daggerfall characters, and that didn't require any scenario-building from the writers. It just put itself together, somewhat as an extension of the core elements listed above. Nevertheless, I have to mention that the power to abuse the fiscal system of Daggerfall was always in the nearest bank, but I just resisted that temptation. Other people used it and broke the game completely, and I have to allow that as a valid point.

6. Guilds: Guild ranks sound cooler than they really are, so at first they're good for roleplaying, but eventually you realize that being the Archmage of the local Mages Guild isn't really different at all from being a mid-rank. Guilds were excellent for their work as role-playing vehicles. When Daggerfall is treated more in the style of Mount and Blade, where there is no main quest and you are free to just make your home and impact in any region of the vast world you want, it really delivers the most. Guilds provide an identity that nothing else does, so they're really essential to the mix. Besides the empty upper ranks, I found they each delivered on their purposes quite well. The Thieves Guild is really quite dry, but I think that's the only one that fell short in absolute terms.

7. World impact: The player never really feels like the world has changed because of the character's actions. This is taken to the opposite extreme in future TES, where everything revolves around the player. Again, a Mount and Blade approach would have been more appropriate, where regions and cities begin to acclimate to you as you gain notoriety, and their reactions to you begin to warm or cool depending on your actions there. Leave for awhile, and they'll forget you.

8. Graphics: I feel like Daggerfall was overly criticized for its graphics. Some games age better than others, and there's still some debate to this, but remember what other games came out in 1996: Civilization 2, the Warcraft 2 expansion, Tomb Raider 1, Diablo, and Shadows of the Empire. I think only Shadows of the Empire could be said to have aged well, along with Diablo, maybe. The enormous world full of real 3D, unlike the 2.5D that had been the rule for most of my experience until then, just blew my mind.

I can't think of anything else for now, so I'll either reply or edit, depending on how this topic goes.

[kingOfWyrms]

Wow, that's a lot, and this is exactly what I'm looking for! I have trouble noticing these sorts of things due to my relatively low playtime in Daggerfall. On to the points!

Spoiler!

1. Combat: I actually really liked Daggerfall's combat. I've never played Arena, Oblivion, or Skyrim, so I can't compare their combat systems in-depth, but I've watched them all thoroughly. I still consider Daggerfall the best of them. It achieves what ESO set as a goal: real-time combat where the player's skills are the determining factor. If the player is good enough, the character need never get hit in physical combat. Enemies telegraph their attacks clearly, each in an individual way and with sufficient time to dodge manually (some, such as orcs, have a lightning-fast reaction time but it can still be predicted). To become a master of the combat system takes time and practice, but any player can become physically invincible if they work hard at it. I haven't felt the attack mechanism to be clunky, though I recognize that's just my experience -- one who's played Daggerfall for two decades can't be called an average user in this regard. One major flaw is the massive spell resistance enemies possess, which really dampens a purely magical approach. Likewise, many spell effects really are useless when compared to direct or continuous damage, leaving a streamlined and eventually repetitive combat system.

I noticed in another thread you talking about having a ton of fun with your "Berzerker" character, and thought about trying it out, but haven't gotten around to it. From the way I understand Daggerfall it seems to me like you'd have to run backwards every time an enemy attacks, and I have experienced that before in an Oblivion mod; Nehrim. They tried to make the combat of Oblivion more skill oriented by shortening the weapon reach, and it worked, but it still didn't feel fun to me. I'm not sure if it was because of the run-dodge though, it might have just been the bullet-sponginess of Oblivion's enemies. Forward, slash, slash, back, forward, slash, slash...

On a side note, I did make an edit to my copy of DFTFU a year ago that "fixed" my problem with the unresponsive attacks AND inability to turn while attacking, but I haven't tried it in a while, and DFU is still lacking some essential parts of the Daggerfall combat system, like knockback and multi-target attacks, so I wouldn't be able to judge what the combat would really be like with my fix.

Spoiler!

2. Setting and characterization: This has always been something Daggerfall excelled at. I've noticed some of the greatest stories told in video games are through a medium of absolute seriousness. Super Metroid had some of the most powerful story-telling in 90s video gaming, and it only used two paragraphs; the rest was shown graphically, in a completely visceral way -- everything about Super Metroid was dead serious. The same seriousness and dedication was present in Megaman Starforce 1 (in contrast to MMSF2), Starcraft 1 (in contrast to Warcraft 3), Deus Ex (in contrast to DX2), Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past (as compared to Wind Waker), and so on. When the game takes itself completely seriously all the time and does it well, the immersion experience is fantastic. This is also true of Daggerfall. While Morrowind and Oblivion insisted on making themselves a goofy experience to lighten the mood, Daggerfall didn't bother, and instead focused on making its world as internally consistent as possible. Without denigrating the other two too much, it's easy to say they provide a more shallow immersive experience. Sooner or later, it just becomes obvious that these worlds they've created really don't match up to reality as much as you'd expect, and immersion breaks. Designers can either make the entire game silly or make it entirely serious with the potential to do well, but mixing the two together tends to result in a lot of amateurish attempts that only make people roll their eyes and groan. This doesn't mean the game can't throw in a laugh, if it's witty and universe-appropriate -- Deus Ex has some of the best comedy I know of in video games, but it's also dead serious. It's worth mentioning that this is something one/a few modders lost sight of in Daggerfall quests; one person decided to add a Mages Guild quest that tells the character to steal an object of worship from a local temple, and once complete, the questgiver gives thanks and then mentions that he has to attend to a bit of a "locust plague" on his property. That raises a lot of questions that don't need to be asked if we're trying not to think about some writer on a keyboard, rather than the centralized world of Daggerfall.

I'm not sure Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past were entirely serious, but I don't remember any specific moments in them that would prove otherwise. As for the other games, I haven't played them much ((Super Metroid) which I absolutely believe you on) or haven't played at all. But even if some of those games do have less serious scenes, I understand your point. I can see how a less serious scene would break immersion, and I definitely see the difference between what I've seen of Daggerfall and Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim. You sound quite a bit more hardcore in your lore-immersion needs than most people, and I can understand that too. ("The voice acting sounds fine, king-" No it bloody doesn't.) Let's not argue about the politics of this topic, but I had my immersion broken in ESO by the sheer amount of same-sex couples present in it. From what I had experienced of the Elder Scrolls at that point, I couldn't imagine that the same serious medieval world as Daggerfall would be accepting of same-sex couples.(Due to my pre-conceived notions that a medieval world must be homophobic, and not from knowledge of any proof that the world portrayed in Daggerfall had that belief.)

Spoiler!

3. Writing: I still think Daggerfall's prose is some of the best I've read, at least in video games (only beaten by the Exile series). It's perfectly world-appropriate and sort of Shakespearean, like the rest of the game. I mean, just look at the effort put into a random Mages Guild quest:

Actually, we have had a bit of excitement in this dull old place lately. In a rather routine atronachy class, one of the subjects managed to ... well, the details are not important. What is, is that there's an atronach on the loose in (region) that can easily be traced back to this Guild and our maladministration. You're the type who could end this affair with the minimum of embarassment, yes?

Or this one from the Dark Brotherhood:

Here's a rather amusing accounting that may appeal to your morbid sense of humor. Seems there's this untalented bard with a penchant for rude limericks about former patrons. As it turns out, (his/her) knowledge of genealogy was lacking, and (he/she) sang a song about an incestuous duke to (his/her) new patroness, the duke's daughter. Interested in accounting this uncouth artiste for (random gold) gold pieces?

You can practically hear the deep, resonant voice he's speaking with. To compare, I just looked up the first quest I could think of in Oblivion:

You seem the trusting type. Perhaps you can assist me? It seems someone has taken away an heirloom that is quite dear to me. I want you to help me recover a stolen painting. The painting was of my lost love, the Count Valga, and it has been stolen from my bedchamber. If you find the painting, and bring the culprit to justice, you shall be justly rewarded. What say you?

Daggerfall has a rare quality where I actually feel smarter for having read it. Even the quest journal makes the same extensive efforts. A quest for the Thieves Guild talks about how you're being sent to "a dive" to go pick up some contraband; quests for the Mages Guild are written in a way a mage would write them; and so on, appropriate to each faction. It isn't one lifeless voice narrating everything out. It's a bit conflicted to see the character write in the mage's style and then in the thief's style in the next entry, but at least the effort was there.

This is something I never noticed with Daggerfall's writing, but those are absolutely shining examples. I used to enjoy reading books in Oblivion and Morrowind, but that was around when I was ten. I've tried reading some of them recently, and I don't think they have as much texture as those examples from Daggerfall. Certainly the quest log in Oblivion was horribly written, but I haven't paid attention to the writing much in these games, which I should probably do.

Spoiler!

4. Dungeon layout: For the most part, a player can continue exploring dungeons until the cows come home and never actually run out of things to do. In the most literal sense, a player will eventually recognize all the blocks in a dungeon and feel that there's nothing left, but this will occur long after Vvardenfell's dungeons run out. (Thankfully, modding became a part of TES with Morrowind, so we didn't have to worry about running out of content that fast. I can only imagine how far Morrowind would have persisted if it didn't have mods). Some of the essentials in Daggerfall are actually quite obtuse; 13 years after Daggerfall came out, I finally understood how to move a bookshelf away from a brick wall portal that I needed to enter. When I was younger I just assumed some quests were broken, so I used the teleport keys to grab the quest object before leaving. That sort of failure to communicate is a huge drawback, and I believe that really does count. The further insistence on using levitation to traverse normal sections of dungeon is also a very large oversight, and the same could be said for the swimming mechanics. I could sidestep this by talking about what Daggerfall would have been rather than what it is, but that isn't the subject.

I would have argued that the dungeon blocks in Daggerfall were boring not half a day ago, but I booted it up a few hours ago and got a quest for Daggerfall: Mastersly Tower. Up until then I had only ever seen ruins and caves, and in fact, before I discovered DFTFU I had thought dungeons were procedurally generated room by room, not in predesigned blocks, which shows how interesting I found the dungeons. Mastersly Tower starts off with a hallway and a few rooms leading nowhere, so I checked my map to see if it really was a broken dungeon, and noticed I had missed a secret door in one of the rooms. I opened the door and headed through the corridor to find myself in a massive room with three-story towers and floating lever-manipulated platforms. That's when I realised just how good the block system CAN be, which brings me to the levitation and swimming requirements of some blocks. Obviously, those are bad design choices, but I don't actually fault them too much for it, seeing as older games tend towards giving the player unwinnable scenarios they have no way of anticipating. The design philosophy hadn't fully changed to where a player should always be able to recover from anything but a Game-Over.

Also, I would love to hear about what Daggerfall would have been, as that's actually what I meant when I said "implemented in / conceived for Daggerfall." Sorry, should have been clearer.

Spoiler!

5. Character progression: This is a mixed bag. One of Morrowind's greatest strengths is the protagonist's transformation from a mudcrab-hunted outlander to an all-powerful avatar of the past, where even the player is thrilled with how much power you gain -- I still remember after Tel Fyr, I had super-powerful magic, Daedric weapons, and the skills to use them, and I just remembered how far I had come. In Daggerfall there are absolute gains in progression and relative gains, and they depend a lot on character planning. You have to know the game beforehand to progress properly. If someone sank all their attribute gains into Willpower and Agility, they may never grow more powerful at all. Part of the greater thrill in Daggerfall -- absent in other games -- is the appearance of ultra-powerful, really terrifying enemies who you find it a great challenge to beat. Think of the first Vampire Ancient you met, who shocked you 14 times before finally permitting you to crumble into a hopeless heap. That Vampire Ancient is sort of like a new goal; you want to be so strong that even that kind of nightmare falls before you. If Daggerfall had had a more extended course, say to level 20, this could've been a recurring and thrilling experience, but it stops too soon; once you're level 10, most of the game is below you anyway. More monsters could've made this extension quite ably. While the monetary system was hopelessly broken in several ways, the ability to buy an equally exorbitant house sort of made up for it. In a sense, growing more powerful than every enemy and buying a house were the two "end-game" objectives in my Daggerfall characters, and that didn't require any scenario-building from the writers. It just put itself together, somewhat as an extension of the core elements listed above. Nevertheless, I have to mention that the power to abuse the fiscal system of Daggerfall was always in the nearest bank, but I just resisted that temptation. Other people used it and broke the game completely, and I have to allow that as a valid point.

I don't have much to say on the subject of needing foresight to play Daggerfall, other than that it is absolutely a problem, and is likely a product of the design philosophy of the time. As for the ultra-powerful enemies, I can understand the satisfaction of defeating one, but that reminds me of a change they made in Skyrim that I'm a bit torn about. Up until Skyrim, certain enemies had weapon material requirements to be harmed, as you well know, but they removed that with Skyrim. On the one hand, it removed a facet of lore from the game, but on the other, it did make encounters with ethereal creatures more user-friendly. It's all about removing unwinnable scenarios or preventing breaking the flow of the game. I personally dislike having to leave a dungeon in the middle of a quest because I don't have a sword that can hurt ghosts, but I can absolutely understand if someone likes that scenario because it adds something to the game; you end up in a scenario where you have to either improvise a way to kill it, or escape it. It's absolutely something people of my generation are going to dislike, having known only games that always present you with a way to complete your objective, but my guess is the more hardcore/older audience is a lot more welcoming to the weapon material mechanic.

I haven't gotten past level 7 in Daggerfall, so I can't speak to the end-game, but if it only takes ten levels to beat everything, then yeah, it needs more stuff to do at that point. As for the banks? Yep, they're borked.

Spoiler!

6. Guilds: Guild ranks sound cooler than they really are, so at first they're good for roleplaying, but eventually you realize that being the Archmage of the local Mages Guild isn't really different at all from being a mid-rank. Guilds were excellent for their work as role-playing vehicles. When Daggerfall is treated more in the style of Mount and Blade, where there is no main quest and you are free to just make your home and impact in any region of the vast world you want, it really delivers the most. Guilds provide an identity that nothing else does, so they're really essential to the mix. Besides the empty upper ranks, I found they each delivered on their purposes quite well. The Thieves Guild is really quite dry, but I think that's the only one that fell short in absolute terms.

The higher guild ranks have always been lacking in anything to make you feel like you're a high-ranking official. Obviously, some sort of command or management system might be in order to fix that, but that's far beyond the scope of any of Beth's games.

Spoiler!

7. World impact: The player never really feels like the world has changed because of the character's actions. This is taken to the opposite extreme in future TES, where everything revolves around the player. Again, a Mount and Blade approach would have been more appropriate, where regions and cities begin to acclimate to you as you gain notoriety, and their reactions to you begin to warm or cool depending on your actions there. Leave for awhile, and they'll forget you.

This sort of improvement is the reason I'm here. I want to see Daggerfall transformed into a world that reacts to you; that isn't static and delivers on the original promise of the Elder Scrolls series. So yes, definitely something that could be improved, though not something I'd say necessarily NEEDS improvement.

Spoiler!

8. Graphics: I feel like Daggerfall was overly criticized for its graphics. Some games age better than others, and there's still some debate to this, but remember what other games came out in 1996: Civilization 2, the Warcraft 2 expansion, Tomb Raider 1, Diablo, and Shadows of the Empire. I think only Shadows of the Empire could be said to have aged well, along with Diablo, maybe. The enormous world full of real 3D, unlike the 2.5D that had been the rule for most of my experience until then, just blew my mind.

Obviously, due to my age I can't speak to how Daggerfall's graphics held up at the time, or how they were recieved, but I find them adequate to my tastes. Could do with a bit more 3D furniture, though I'm not sure how that'd affect the system requirements. When it comes to the enormous 3D world, it's impressive, but tends to just be a lot of empty space in Daggerfall. Even Arena had more interesting wilderness, with random mini-dungeons and small villages. And really crappy floating bridges.

Whew, took me at least an hour and a half to write this response. Now to post and hope no one's posted anything else since I started typing this.

[Jay_H]

From the way I understand Daggerfall it seems to me like you'd have to run backwards every time an enemy attacks, and I have experienced that before in an Oblivion mod; Nehrim. They tried to make the combat of Oblivion more skill oriented by shortening the weapon reach, and it worked, but it still didn't feel fun to me. I'm not sure if it was because of the run-dodge though, it might have just been the bullet-sponginess of Oblivion's enemies. Forward, slash, slash, back, forward, slash, slash...

I've seen a little of Nehrim but not enough to give me a good background on what you've explained. Part of Daggerfall's combat capability comes from the instantaneous movement of the character; with fairly high speed, you can dart back and forth nearly instantly (which is why I consider a game like Doom II to have a far, far greater skill potential than Halo, and why Super Smash Brothers Melee is still considered the competitive champion of the series after SSB4 released). This and the mouse-attacking interface would be quite unwieldy to a person who's expecting a normal FPS movement scheme, and moreso for people who are unused to the way you stick to Daggerfall walls unexpectedly. In this I have a clear bias of ease and preference, so I willingly recognize that not many people will find it as enjoyable as myself. Still, if a newbie-friendly "click to attack" method were implemented, and the removal of sticky walls complete, I believe there'd be more compatibility with the modern gamer. As for Oblivion, you can dodge enemy attacks to only a limited sense; you can duck under attacks, yes, but when there's another attack coming in immediately afterwards, you just have to take it. You don't have full control over your movement, which only makes it somewhat based on player skill. It reminds me of the hated concept of "railroading" a player into a decision they didn't want to make; games drastically reduce in fun value as you lose control over what you can choose.

I'm not sure Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past were entirely serious, but I don't remember any specific moments in them that would prove otherwise. As for the other games, I haven't played them much ((Super Metroid) which I absolutely believe you on) or haven't played at all. But even if some of those games do have less serious scenes, I understand your point. I can see how a less serious scene would break immersion, and I definitely see the difference between what I've seen of Daggerfall and Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim. You sound quite a bit more hardcore in your lore-immersion needs than most people, and I can understand that too. ("The voice acting sounds fine, king-" No it bloody doesn't.) Let's not argue about the politics of this topic, but I had my immersion broken in ESO by the sheer amount of same-sex couples present in it. From what I had experienced of the Elder Scrolls at that point, I couldn't imagine that the same serious medieval world as Daggerfall would be accepting of same-sex couples.(Due to my pre-conceived notions that a medieval world must be homophobic, and not from knowledge of any proof that the world portrayed in Daggerfall had that belief.)

Yeah, seriousness isn't a perfect descriptor for the underlying concept; it's the closest word I can think of, but still not good enough. Another angle to describe it from would be "perfectly immersive," where the game and the player sort of become one living thing. I remember spending hours and hours with Super Metroid and feeling like I wasn't in the living room anymore, but I was literally under the surface of Zebes, looking for collectibles and trying to find one more hidden thing. This owes to a great combination of music, graphical style, and gameplay that all have to join together very well to never break the illusion. No wonder it's achieved so rarely, and the games that do it are so memorable. And your point about homosexuality is accurate; we correlate TES to medieval Europe in our minds, to a period when homosexuality was almost universally considered a mental illness. While every writer can create the universe they may, we can expect some degree of cognitive dissonance by basing the author's setting on an inconsistent real-world analogue, which is certainly adverse to perfect immersion.

This is something I never noticed with Daggerfall's writing, but those are absolutely shining examples. I used to enjoy reading books in Oblivion and Morrowind, but that was around when I was ten. I've tried reading some of them recently, and I don't think they have as much texture as those examples from Daggerfall. Certainly the quest log in Oblivion was horribly written, but I haven't paid attention to the writing much in these games, which I should probably do.

I feel as though expert writing in video games is either going extinct or just undervalued. At the risk of going off-topic, some of the best writing I've ever seen is in Exile 3. Take the description written for your party once you leave a system of underground caves, where you've had to live your entire lives. The entire game is written more or less in this entirely sensory "Red Badge of Courage" style, making up constantly for the lackluster graphics. In spite of being a two-dimensional strategy RPG with virtually personality-free protagonists, I rarely find a game that has as much narrative power as it. If every developer made that serious of an effort to draw you in through meaningful story telling, I feel as though video games could be taken far more seriously as a fictional medium. Just look at things like Xenogears to see how impacting a serious and well-told story can be.

I would have argued that the dungeon blocks in Daggerfall were boring not half a day ago, but I booted it up a few hours ago and got a quest for Daggerfall: Mastersly Tower. Up until then I had only ever seen ruins and caves, and in fact, before I discovered DFTFU I had thought dungeons were procedurally generated room by room, not in predesigned blocks, which shows how interesting I found the dungeons. Mastersly Tower starts off with a hallway and a few rooms leading nowhere, so I checked my map to see if it really was a broken dungeon, and noticed I had missed a secret door in one of the rooms. I opened the door and headed through the corridor to find myself in a massive room with three-story towers and floating lever-manipulated platforms. That's when I realised just how good the block system CAN be, which brings me to the levitation and swimming requirements of some blocks. Obviously, those are bad design choices, but I don't actually fault them too much for it, seeing as older games tend towards giving the player unwinnable scenarios they have no way of anticipating. The design philosophy hadn't fully changed to where a player should always be able to recover from anything but a Game-Over.

I can honestly say that after all the time I have with Daggerfall, I still feel as if the game is an entire world that I haven't even barely started conquering. Had they created about 60 more blocks for dungeons and wrapped them together in more varied ways, I wouldn't even feel like it ever gets old. The limited number of dungeon blocks in Daggerfall makes me feel like I already have a sense for their layouts once I can tell which one I'm in, but it's the combinations of the things that keeps me guessing and never makes me feel like it's already been done. In fact, the dungeons are so large that if I'm sent twice to Ruins of Old Ysolda's Shack twice in the same month, I likely don't remember anything about it, and even if I do there are enough branches that it's not just revisiting the same quest location again. If they attempted this with Skyrim, for example, you'd literally be entering the same path once and again to pick up something at the end of the path. The reduction in complexity and difficulty has brought far greater popularity to role-playing games, so that can be considered a net gain, but I wish game developers would always include an ultra-difficult mode, one that will always be absurdly hard for even the greatest player. I feel like the Kingdom Hearts series does that well; since KH2FM, they've begun including a "Critical Mode" difficulty in every game that generally crushes you to dust. The same game can cater to casual and expert gamers if they branch it out sufficiently. Before leaving the subject, I would also say that difficulty can be a powerful draw for a game, if implemented in an intuitive way; just look at Jeopardy and Dark Souls.

Also, I would love to hear about what Daggerfall would have been, as that's actually what I meant when I said "implemented in / conceived for Daggerfall." Sorry, should have been clearer.

That'll take time, as there are lots of little bits scattered everywhere about what the developers really wanted to do with Daggerfall. I'll take some time eventually and bring together what I remember.

I don't have much to say on the subject of needing foresight to play Daggerfall, other than that it is absolutely a problem, and is likely a product of the design philosophy of the time. As for the ultra-powerful enemies, I can understand the satisfaction of defeating one, but that reminds me of a change they made in Skyrim that I'm a bit torn about. Up until Skyrim, certain enemies had weapon material requirements to be harmed, as you well know, but they removed that with Skyrim. On the one hand, it removed a facet of lore from the game, but on the other, it did make encounters with ethereal creatures more user-friendly. It's all about removing unwinnable scenarios or preventing breaking the flow of the game. I personally dislike having to leave a dungeon in the middle of a quest because I don't have a sword that can hurt ghosts, but I can absolutely understand if someone likes that scenario because it adds something to the game; you end up in a scenario where you have to either improvise a way to kill it, or escape it. It's absolutely something people of my generation are going to dislike, having known only games that always present you with a way to complete your objective, but my guess is the more hardcore/older audience is a lot more welcoming to the weapon material mechanic.

One of the things I've thought of for Daggerfall Unity is what I call the Tutorial Dream. While on the boat towards Daggerfall, the character could have a dream that puts him/her in some interior location. This could begin with a prompt after the Emperor's message, "While on the boat to Daggerfall, you suddenly feel your eyes getting heavy, as if a deep sleep were about to overtake you. Do you wish to sleep? [Yes] [No]" One main chamber could contain NPCs who explain how Daggerfall itself works, helping completely new players. They could have objects that show in-game mechanics (a torch that moves a bookshelf away from a door, a hanging chain that casts Slowfall near a staircase, etc). Weapon swinging could be explained and tested on a paralyzed enemy with infinite health. Some NPCs in the main hall would also provide meaningful counsel, the kind every Daggerfall player should know: "Some people go into dungeons without some means of levitation available. Those are the ones we never hear from again." "How good are your weapon skills? They will determine your lifespan. Learn them quickly, learn them well." "Ever tried hitting an Imp with an iron weapon? The laughing sound they make is terrible. And don't even talk about werewolves unless you're bearing silver or better."

The idea is that it's possible to include complex mechanics in a game if the player is forewarned. Daggerfall offers no warning whatsoever to its many intricacies, which is why so many players try to play it like an ordinary CRPG and fail terribly.

The higher guild ranks have always been lacking in anything to make you feel like you're a high-ranking official. Obviously, some sort of command or management system might be in order to fix that, but that's far beyond the scope of any of Beth's games.

This reminds me of a Morrowind mod by Fliggerty I believe. When you were a higher rank than an NPC in the same guild, you could command them to follow you and help you in combat, or you could train them for money. Not entirely consistent with vanilla Daggerfall, but the thought is there.

This sort of improvement is the reason I'm here. I want to see Daggerfall transformed into a world that reacts to you; that isn't static and delivers on the original promise of the Elder Scrolls series. So yes, definitely something that could be improved, though not something I'd say necessarily NEEDS improvement.

I've thought of several things for that to happen which I think could be simple to implement (I say this not being a programmer).

Residency: Some manner of residence could be established, where the character becomes a citizen of one region. Shops within that region could give a small advantage to the character for buying and selling prices. Regions favorable to that region may also alter their selling prices. Regions where the residence region is unpopular could raise their prices and make it more difficult to begin conversation. Within the ruler's palace there could be some NPC who grants this. Falling too low in legal reputation could perhaps sever the residency.

Local recognition: As the character does work for merchants and perhaps nobles, word could start to spread about his/her local fame. Within that city, peasants may begin conversation with such statements as, "Hey, if it isn't [name]! I've heard of you! What can I do for you?" or "Hey, it's [name]! You've been making a name for yourself around here. How are you?" Peasants could perhaps provide slightly more favorable conversation odds in that city. This begins to establish a "home" feeling in cities the character spends more time in.

Others would require far broader alterations, so I'll save them for another time.

[Jay_H]

All right, I looked back through what I have, and I'll say what I remember about Daggerfall's original scope. This won't be comprehensive.

Originally, they had thought of making the regions interactive, to the extent they could engage in war with each other. If Tulune and Daenia entered into war, you might fast travel to one of their towns and find it surrounded by soldiers. Rarely near dungeons you'll find a blocky-looking catapult object, which is a leftover from that concept. In current Daggerfall, I believe the signposts in front of walled cities can occasionally mention that some alliance or other is broken with different regions, but it has no impact on the game.

Some demos of Daggerfall included references to climate effects, where presumably temperatures would affect the character if not properly prepared.

Daggerfall Chronicles, the major resource written for Daggerfall players, mentions that spell shields originally could have elemental properties, which would be effective against opposite-element foes such as atronachs. Spell shields currently can't use elements.

Several kinds of spells were removed during Daggerfall's development and early versions. One was telekinesis, which presumably would have worked as Morrowind did.

Furniture stores presumably would have allowed the character to decorate their own houses by hand. In current Daggerfall, houses are prefabricated with furniture inside.

Elvish and Faerie languages were planned for Daggerfall, and then dropped. There are no Elvish or Faerie entities in current Daggerfall.

Spells that made it into later TES, such as Detect Enemy, were planned but scrapped. Some spells, such as Harbour Air (surrounds the caster with a damaging aura) have no analogue at all.

Jousting was originally thought to be a possibility, but they gave no implementation for it.

High Treason is a crime that exists in Daggerfall's programming but there's no way to commit it. That suggests there was some way to more fully interact with nobility planned which we currently don't have.

Region names suggesting individual areas also exist, suggesting the game could've been broken down into individual villages and other smaller regions.

Conversation would have been far more involved than currently implemented.

Guards and other enemies on horseback were also intended for the final game.

Those are most of the main ones I can think of, but that only really scratches the surface of what they were really thinking of doing with the game. I'm not mentioning a lot of the things I think they planned because I don't want to give speculation without a good source, but I can say they were planning on making an entire world that was profoundly interactive with the player and itself, as insinuated by developer comments I can't remember for now. Only a little is hinted by Julian Lefay, the central programmer behind Arena and Daggerfall.

EDIT: Here's more.

[kingOfWyrms]

A bit off topic, but I always wondered what happened between Daggerfall and Morrowind, and why Daggerfall delivered on so little. I find it all kinda depressing looking back at old games and seeing where the people involved are now, with Heberling and Lefay practically fallen off the map. Heck, I just checked Heberling's website, he's not even making music for slot machines anymore. I hope they're both doing well.

[Jay_H]

Definitely, you'd think someone like Lefay would've become a superstar in the industry. In spite of my comparisons to Daggerfall with it, I do love Morrowind and I like Oblivion and Skyrim, but there's just this empty wondering in the back of my mind about what the series and the industry could've been like. Badly rushed games are always damaging to the company once we see the effects in retrospect. One of my favorite series, Mega Man Battle Network, had a smash hit with its third installment. The devs made an unexpected rush sequel to capitalize on 3's popularity, and within like two weeks of 4's release, the sales figures took an enormous nosedive since it was a badly made game. Fans lost confidence in the series so much that even 5 and 6, far superior games to 4, couldn't reach the same levels of sales. I can't think of any examples that are more obvious of companies losing out from rushing, but I'm sure there are plenty out there beyond my experience.