Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

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jayhova
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

Post by jayhova »

Vorzak wrote: Thu Oct 06, 2022 3:26 am Dark and gritty has always been good for advertising, they knew what they were doing with this cover. Regardless, to me the cover represents Daggerfall just fine. Daggerfall is probably the darkest tone and most visually violent game of the franchise, the second is Skyrim. There’s a fair amount of dark-fantasy, reminiscent of some old horror games, combined with the high-fantasy in this game. DF has gory dead enemy flats, many dungeon flats are grotesque and disgusting, zombies, skeletons, lamias, etc. are actually scary compared enemies in later games, creepy random sounds in dungeons and outside at night, eerie music themes for dungeons and night, vampire faces albeit cliché are a bit disturbing, vampire/werewolf cutscenes are a bit morbid but still tame in comparison to the rest of the game, daedra princes you summon appear dark, sinister and intimidating, etc. This stuff used to frighten me as a kid, we’ve become used to it over the years and many hours of gameplay we barely give it a thought. Sure, Arena has some dark tones to it, but not to this extent. In my opinion, the Daggerfall cover art fits pretty well with the main quest and overall dark tones of the game.
Arena is really very dark and spooky. Much more so than I think they really intended. The theme was dungeons, liches, and evil battle-mages. The sound effects made it super creepy. The view distance did not help. The cover art did not really reflect this, however. But again the cover art from Arena was for a game that was never made.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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Werewolf
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

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Arena’s dungeons are dark and spooky. Going through a town or the countryside while it’s bright and sunny is very adventurous, though nighttime is spooky. Arena is a game that at times feels very heroic and at other times spooky. But overall the cover art nails the daytime atmosphere. Daggerfall’s dungeons, while intimidatingly large, actually don’t feel as sinister as many of Arena’s dungeons possibly because they are more open and they are a lot brighter. Arena’s dungeons are pitch black much of the time, to the point where there’s a spell to increase the view distance in them (though still far harder to see in then Daggerfall’s dungeons) Arena’s dungeons also feel much more cramped and claustrophobic, compared to Daggerfall dungeons which can have massive rooms and wider hallways

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Werewolf
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

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It’s weird how Arena markets itself as supposedly being 12 million square kilometers yet each town is its own instance. I just find it weird that the manual gives a somewhat specific size of the world yet that’s not actually the case. Someone should ask Julian if he remembers if Arena was ever intended to actually be 12 million square kilometers and allow you to walk to different towns

From Arena’s manual:

“The Automap works differently in the wilderness. Instead of showing you only the places you have been, it shows you the entire region. Because of the vast size of the open land, you cannot add or edit notes onto the wilderness map. With experience you will learn to recognize certain patterns in the wilderness that will indicate dwellings and/or dungeons. Also, the automap is ‘paged in’ as you traverse different regions. If you are near the edge of one region the automap may not show you the next region until you enter it. This is not a mistake in your automap, but a memory limitation of the computer. To hold 12 million square kilometers of maps would take more memory than most machines have!”

It is a little odd that the auto map is different in the wilderness and it makes sense that if the world was like Daggerfall then the map would be too large to be represented fully on the automap, and so the wilderness seems to be programmed for the auto map to only show a certain amount of the wilderness around you. But in Arena each town is its own instance and if you go too far the game glitches up. Was Arena intended to have a seamless world at one point? Julian might remember if someone would ask

Vorzak
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

Post by Vorzak »

Werewolf wrote: Sun Oct 09, 2022 1:58 pm Arena’s dungeons are dark and spooky.
Sure, I agree, Arena can feel gloomy and spooky at times for sure, I didn’t intend to say otherwise. The cramped darkly lit corridors, certain enemies and their sounds, combined with the eerie music can make for quite a creepy vibe of course, also getting attacked at night.

My point was that I believe in parts Daggerfall portrays aspects of a far darker tone, invoking feelings of isolation, fear, dread, etc., to the point of containing elements of horror and dark fantasy not really seen as much in the other ES titles. Yes, Daggerfall is generally a brighter game overall in lighting and colors than Arena. While I understand your assessment of Daggerfall’s world building themes, it doesn’t really contradict much of my assumption of there being deliberately placed visual and audible elements of horror in various parts of the game, in fact, it supports that notion to an extent. A few examples are some dungeon textures that are quite disgusting and horrific:
Screenshot (1822).jpg
Screenshot (1822).jpg (44.61 KiB) Viewed 3041 times
That combined with certain dungeon music themes and creepy ambient sounds like distant screams can make for a rather disturbing atmosphere at times. This kind of stuff generates an additional layer of unique atmosphere to dungeons and the night, the feeling of uncertainty and foreboding to your surroundings. Arena and none of the other ES games took it this far.

But that’s why I believe you might be overthinking the Daggerfall cover art as it blends in fine with the darker aspects of game. Besides, it’s marketing material. Like Jayhova is saying, they are marketing with DF’s main quest in focus, which is also fairly dark. All the other ES games (incuding Arena) steered away from more dark and mature themes and focused solely on adventure and high fantasy, the marketing of those games reflect that.
jayhova wrote: Sat Oct 08, 2022 12:41 pm But again the cover art from Arena was for a game that was never made.
That sums up my thoughts on Arena cover art.

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Werewolf
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

Post by Werewolf »

Those textures look like they easily could’ve come from Doom lol. With those textures and the ghost-themed storyline it seems that Daggerfall at one point aimed to be a dark fantasy. The darker tone that Daggerfall at one point seemed intended to have would’ve reflected the grey, amoral world and lore of Daggerfall, I previously noted that Daggerfall laid the foundation for an existentialist lore. In Daggerfall the Daedric princes were dark, apathetic to humans, and mysterious, for example, reflecting a modern materialist reinterpretation of the worldview of the Middle Ages. Future Elder Scrolls entries lore just became a standard fantasy lore and the Daedric princes became silly at times.

But released Daggerfall only invoked the dark fantasy theme at certain times, most of the time the game’s atmosphere is adventurous fantasy. I think the exciting soundtrack plays quite a role. The dungeons are darker but you only see those doom-like textures a part of the time, the dungeons overall are fully visible, feature a lot of big rooms, wide hallways, etc.

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jayhova
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

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Werewolf wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 1:19 pm Those textures look like they easily could’ve come from Doom lol.
Doom was a very popular game at the time. I don't doubt that it influenced the gruesome style of the early TES games
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

Vorzak
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

Post by Vorzak »

jayhova wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 6:21 pm
Werewolf wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 1:19 pm Those textures look like they easily could’ve come from Doom lol.
Doom was a very popular game at the time. I don't doubt that it influenced the gruesome style of the early TES games
Pretty sure he was speaking of how cartoonish they look while trying to portray violence and death, Doom had a similar style texturing but even more goofy looking.

But yeah, that’s what you get with 90s pixel art lol :lol:
Werewolf wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 1:19 pm But released Daggerfall only invoked the dark fantasy theme at certain times, most of the time the game’s atmosphere is adventurous fantasy. I think the exciting soundtrack plays quite a role. The dungeons are darker but you only see those doom-like textures a part of the time, the dungeons overall are fully visible, feature a lot of big rooms, wide hallways, etc.
They are actually more common in dungeons than you think, we generally just quickly run past when playing and ignore them. DF dungeons are massive and labyrinthine with so many types of blocks that we only occasionally see places with these textures and disturbing imagery, also they only show up in rooms not in corridors. There are also the torture tables with rotting flesh hanging off, which are actually fairly common in dungeons. If you were to shrink these DF dungeons down to the size that later games made them, you’d see these creepy textures around every other corner. But I don’t think they made the entire game look like that, but just enough dark fantasy/horror sprinkled in to create an interesting atmosphere. However, if you look at some of the early concept art for DF, it appears they might've always intended to have that dark fantasy and gothic look in game https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Concept_Art but just ended up toning it down a bit overall for release. Also, as you mentioned before, all the in-game cutscenes have a dark/gothic appearance https://youtu.be/8IgYg45NX-8
Excuse the gloom...

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jayhova
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

Post by jayhova »

So much of early TES used ideas and styles from other contemporary games. Bear in mind how close Arena 2 stayed in style to Arena 1.
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Vorzak
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

Post by Vorzak »

jayhova wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 7:09 pm So much of early TES used ideas and styles from other contemporary games.
Well that's obvious with almost anything (media, art, architecture, technology, etc.), even today with games and media in general often borrow styles and characteristics from each other. That's how the entertainment industry has always operated, often a combination of technical limitations on how to portray something fictional on screen, cultural influence of the time, embracing standards set by competition and the industry as a whole, etc.
jayhova wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 7:09 pm Bear in mind how close Arena 2 stayed in style to Arena 1.
Sorry, not sure what you mean by Arena 1 - 2. Are you classifying Daggerfall as a sort-of "Arena 2" or are you speaking of some early unreleased version of Arena?

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Werewolf
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Re: Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

Post by Werewolf »

I wonder if Daggerfall ended up being noticeably less darker then the concept art because of deadlines and shifting artists or if someone worried it would make the game unappealing. As flawed as Battlespire is it managed to fully implement the dark fantasy atmosphere from the Daggerfall concept art and cutscenes into the full game. Just seems to me that Julian prefers a darker atmosphere as his idea of a fantasy world is one of moral greyness and existentialism. It would’ve been interesting if Elder Scrolls would’ve continued and built upon the dark fantasy lore that Daggerfall laid out but alas the series lore ended up becoming a far smaller and far less interesting and magical version of Forgotten Realms. It’s almost as if the Daggerfall team knew that the eventual Elder Scrolls lore simply couldn’t surpass classic fantasy worlds like Tolkien or pulpy goodness like Forgotten Realms, so their answer was to have the lore be existentialist and gothic so it would be uniquely interesting

Also, will anyone ask Julian if Arena was originally supposed to be 12 million km instead of each town being it’s own instance?

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