TES II: Daggerfall for Free!

I've been playing Skyrim pretty steadily since it came out, but after having hit level 78 and completing every major quest line in the game and expansions, I thought it was time to change gears a little.

So I started playing Daggerfall on Friday, with a Bosmer thief, and finally got out of the starter dungeon—apparently I'm still not done the tutorial—tonight. I died more times than I care to remember. I couldn't complete a fight with a rat without having to rest for 14 hours. Progression was marked when I could fight a human enemy (and subsequently rest for 14 hours) instead of my prior tactic (run screaming). Skeletons I'd still prefer to avoid. But I'm level 2! I have a full set of leather armour, an elven tanto, and no ranged weapon, which is a shame since Archery is my highest skill. Well I had found a bow on a skeleton, but I couldn't rest after that fight and something probably ignominious killed me and of course I hadn't saved, so: no bow. Doesn't matter, I didn't have any arrows anyway.

But I got out of the dungeon, and tried to fast travel to Daggerfall—but apparently I might no survive the trip. Huh? My status says I'm healthy. Okay, maybe that's just a thing it says since the fast travel brilliantly lets you choose "cautiously" or "recklessly", and whether to stay in inns or camp. But no, I arrive at Daggerfall and drop dead. So I filter the map to towns, click on the nearest one, and successfully fast travel. And am immediately informed that I have the Plague and likely won't survive a few days.

Did you see me in the dungeon? I'm lucky to survive a few minutes. Nonetheless, I know how to tackle disease: cure potion, or temple. This game is very much—very very very much—from another era, where things like "tutorials", "explanations", and "giving the player the slightest clue as to how to play the game" weren't necessarily givens. Wait, I am playing with the tutorial on. It told me to fast travel, then said it would be back in 7 days when I should be in Daggerfall (that's when I died of the Plague, remember?). But they did provide manuals in those days, and I had glanced at it—besides, I'm from the future, and have sunk untold hours into Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. I have an inkling.

Sadly, no NPC will give me the time of day. Those who don't immediately blow me off—including the entire half-naked entourage at the Temple of Dibella, where I had hoped to get cured—can't point me to an alchemist on this side of the province, let alone in the town, and the trader will only buy my weapons and armour.

Of course it's amazing to consider the vast leap forward between Daggerfall and Skyrim. It's easier still to trace the evolution of the third through fifth TES games, but the gulf between Daggerfall and Morrowind seems unbridgeable—like they aren't even identifiable as the same line of game, if weren't for their trappings of attributes, skills, levelling, and lore. But how they play is irreconcilable. Even having had no experience with any CRPG before (shameful, forgive me), I was in and playing Morrowind—successfully—no problem. With 10+ years of CRPG and TES experience behind me, I'm stumbling through Daggerfall as fantasy's biggest incompetent. I make Nondrick look heroic—and I'm trying!

So that's where I've left it for now. Level 2, barely a threat to rats, stuck in some unfriendly backwater, abandoned by the tutorial, and dying of plague.

m0nk3yboy wrote:

OP link is 404ing, any idea where to look now, my Google Fu is failing me?

there is a link to it on the daggerfall page:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/daggerfall/

Gravey, this is my new favorite thing.

I always felt the starting dungeon was less a tutorial and more a trial. It was the game's way of telling you, "if you can't survive this, you're going to have a rough time out in the world."

This is the game that started it all for me.

A girl I was dating at the time owned it for some peculiar reason. She lived over an hour away from me so I would leave work on Friday, spend the whole weekend at her place, then drive back to work Monday morning and stay at my place until Friday again.

Every once in a while she would go somewhere with her friends for a few hours on a Saturday. One day I installed Daggerfall on her Gateway and that was it; I was hooked.

Ironically, it was Daggerfall that ultimately caused that breakup. I was spending more time playing it than playing with her.

WARNING: Stay away from Vampires. They will chase you the full length of the map while the sun is down. I vividly recall wasting about an hour just running while being tailed by an overly attached Dracula wannabe.

FSeven wrote:

Ironically, it was Daggerfall that ultimately caused that breakup. I was spending more time playing it than playing with her.

Well if was meant to be she would have taken you up on your request that she and her friends cosplay the whole House of Dibella.
Did you at least get to keep the game?

The best part is, you necroed a thread, only to die of the plague

Just out of interest, what are you running it on? I know you emulate on the Mac, but are you running Windows 7, and if so, how well does it run? I had issues with Fallout running on my Bootcamped Mac, wondering if it's just a Bethesda thing or not?

EDIT:
OP link is 404ing, any idea where to look now, my Google Fu is failing me?

m0nk3yboy wrote:

The best part is, you necroed a thread, only to die of the plague

Just out of interest, what are you running it on? I know you emulate on the Mac, but are you running Windows 7, and if so, how well does it run? I had issues with Fallout running on my Bootcamped Mac, wondering if it's just a Bethesda thing or not?

I'm not dead yet!

Daggerfall runs in DOS, so all you need is DOSBox—but since you use a Mac, I can do you one better and recommend Boxer. Just download Daggerfall from Beth's website, drag-and-drop it into Boxer, and Boxer will automatically set it up for you, in true Mac fashion.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I always felt the starting dungeon was less a tutorial and more a trial. It was the game's way of telling you, "if you can't survive this, you're going to have a rough time out in the world."

Tell me about it. In stark contrast to a modern RPG, I learned the "you can't explore everything" and "run away" lessons quickly. I'm not even sure I can rely on my TES knowledge either, since I haven't found an alchemist or shrine I can immediately pop in at—let alone been given a hint by the game as to how to proceed with curing myself. The only viable route (in 1996, and so how I'll play it now) is the manual. So I've got my lunchtime reading lined up.

I wonder how much of Daggerfall's obstinance is a product of its time, and how much is a product of a not-very-well-made game. For instance, I start the game, as a thief, with a single piece of armour—which my class forbids me from equipping. So it's traditional RPG design, and class restrictions were very much accepted wisdom back in the day. That's fine, but then why not start me off with something I can equip? These sorts of questions continually pop up every time I think, "Well now what?" or "The game should really explain that".

That said, the game definitely has ambition, even if it lacks execution (for whatever reasons). The pruning and streamlining have moved the TES games from complicated front-heavy RPGs to player-focused experiences: take Daggerfall's Primary, Major, Minor, and Miscellaneous skills; then Morrowind drops Primary, Oblivion drops Minor, and finally Skyrim drops classes altogether. But in other respects, it's really interesting to play a game where the designers seemingly had no restraints, and saw no reason not to build in everything they could think of to make the most expansive RPG imaginable—no matter where it leaves the player.

I just find it funny that there was a huge kerfuffle over nipples hidden in resource files in Morrowind, whereas Daggerfall has naked boobs EVERYWHERE.

I think Morrowind's still my favorite (I haven't visited Morrowind in Skyrim just yet so maybe that'll change). It just felt so exotic.

That and it let me make a ring that constantly, uncontrollably shot fireballs when equipped. The guards LOVED that one.

It's been a long time, but I remember when Daggerfall was released it was a buggy disaster. I'm hazy on the details but PC Gamer burned the hell out of it. It was essentially unplayable until a major patch was released, iirc.

Even then, there were things that were just flat out broken -- the amazing combination of random quests and procedurally generated dungeons actually produced some dungeons where the objective was literally unreachable. I easily sunk 100+ hours into it at the time. It was way too ambitious I think. It's scope was unrivaled, I think even today.

I've got some very fond memories of playing, though I think it's definitely one of those games where the memories are best left as memories.

Daggerfall was released back when Bethesda Softworks was synonymous with game-breaking bugs. Daggerfall was the game that taught me to make redundant saves after a crash corrupted my one and only. The game is actually still broken in a few ways. As Duffman noted, there were occasions where a dungeon's objective would be in a room floating off in space, not actually connected to the dungeon at all.

In spite of that, it still won some GOTY awards and we're still talking about it. Plus, BethSoft has really cleaned up their quality control. I'd call that a win.

Duffman wrote:

It's been a long time, but I remember when Daggerfall was released it was a buggy disaster. I'm hazy on the details but PC Gamer burned the hell out of it. It was essentially unplayable until a major patch was released, iirc.

That was AFTER they (and or other mags, I cant remember which I subscribed to way back then) spent MONTHS previewing every dirty detail of it, making me salivate for its imminent release. What a serious letdown. Still, my brother and I powered through the awful, awful bugs, but that was after several months of being completely unable to play. Once it was (relatively) playable we learned to save and save OFTEN. We also learned how to trigger certain bugs, like falling through the world to walk on top of dungeons and take the final McGuffin without dealing with the legions in the way.

Neverwinter Nights was a similar story. The magazines previewed every aspect of this amazing upcoming dungeon and adventure designer. The story was supposed to be more of a demo of what their amazing creation engine could do. What was release was a hobbled level generator and an uninteresting RPG that clearly was the focus of the production by the end of the project.

I dont think I've had a PC subscription since then!

Gravey wrote:

Daggerfall runs in DOS, so all you need is DOSBox—but since you use a Mac, I can do you one better and recommend Boxer. Just download Daggerfall from Beth's website, drag-and-drop it into Boxer, and Boxer will automatically set it up for you, in true Mac fashion.

Greatly appreciated and Falkuse for the new link also!

Gravey wrote:

The only viable route (in 1996, and so how I'll play it now) is the manual. So I've got my lunchtime reading lined up.

I may be mixing up my Bethsofts, but I think I bought this game for my brother back in '96, and it shipped with a novel. No, seriously, a full on book based on the game. He said he got nowhere until he read it.

Of course, once you're done with Daggerfall, you can launch into Arena...

Gravey wrote:

I'm not even sure I can rely on my TES knowledge either, since I haven't found an alchemist or shrine I can immediately pop in at—let alone been given a hint by the game as to how to proceed with curing myself. The only viable route (in 1996, and so how I'll play it now) is the manual. So I've got my lunchtime reading lined up.

Surely there's someone on news:comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg who can help you out.

And the Daggerfall Newbie FAQ on UESP appears to have largely the same text as one posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg in January 1997, so I'd say it's fair game.

IMAGE(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/42351335/Daggerfall1.png)

I went back to the Temple of Dibella to see if there was a shrine (as per Morrowind et al.), and instead found a man in a loincloth who would heal me for 400+ gold. That taken care of, it was onwards, to the city of Daggerfall.

Now Daggerfall the city is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way across Markarth, but that's just peanuts to Daggerfall. In some respects the bigness of the towns is a little perplexing—like the spaces between buildings. Even the narrowest alleys are comfortable enough for Euro Truck Simulator 2. Then there's the footprint of the city itself. I don't know how much of the game is hand-built and how much is randomly generated, but in either case I think it runs headlong into that "we can do anything" ambition mentioned earlier. Sure, it communicates this is a "big city" by being, literally, big (if weirdly airy), and filled with multiple shops of varying quality, which take minutes to schlep around to. I spent over an hour in Daggerfall last night, and only identified—manually, on foot—a handful of the stores. (Only one NPC was kind enough to actually mark a store on my map.)

I can respect the principle of that devotion to immersion, but the smaller cities of Skyrim make a lot more sense. Sure, even the biggest city in Skyrim is just handful of shops and homes and a tavern, and a handful of pedestrians. But it feels like a real city, simply by dint of the game saying it's a city, and being bigger than a village. As the player, I'm happy to accept that illusion because, most importantly, it's a space that's usable to me. I need the armourer: it's right here—I need the herbalist: it's right there. Since I'll be visiting multiple cities in the game, they needn't each be the size of Dunwall or possess the verisimilitude of Liberty City (which are appropriate for their games). Consider the cities of Euro Truck Simulator 2: its London or Paris don't even pretend to be representative of actual cities. Instead, they're stripped down to focus on the elements that are most important to a trucker, i.e. the player: garage, services, jobs, and of course all the highways that connect them.

The reason I'm talking so much about the city is that I spent my whole evening in it. Except for (or more accurately, especially because of) a brief moment where I accidentally stole some things, and was released from prison outside the city gates at night with a ghost screaming "Vengeance!", my climbing skill failing me miserably, and forcing a reload when it killed me (thus preserving my reputation, if losing me a chunk of time), I wandered the city. The ghost episode in fact reinforced my fear of doing anything in the game that could lead to bodily harm, so instead I made it my personal quest to find a nice pair of grey pants to match my new shirt (ironic since I assume that was Lysandus). With the purchase of some leather gloves and a smart golden helm, I'd completed my armour set, so next was getting some proper adventuring threads to replace the rags I'd started in. You can see how far I've come in the screenshot.

If there's one thing I've missed since Morrowind, it's being able to layer clothes. How did we lose the ability to wear robes over armour, or a cloak? I'm sure everyone has some grievance or other about how RPGs aren't as good as they used to be. This is mine. I found Daggerfall will even let me wear a formal cloak under my casual cloak—but decided that was belabouring the point.

So that's how I spent my night: running around this ludicrously oversized city, avoiding adventure, and looking for all the general stores.

Next time: Adventure! (?)

Katy wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I'm not even sure I can rely on my TES knowledge either, since I haven't found an alchemist or shrine I can immediately pop in at—let alone been given a hint by the game as to how to proceed with curing myself. The only viable route (in 1996, and so how I'll play it now) is the manual. So I've got my lunchtime reading lined up.

Surely there's someone on news:comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg who can help you out.
And the Daggerfall Newbie FAQ on UESP appears to have largely the same text as one posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg in January 1997, so I'd say it's fair game.

Nice one. Thanks, Katy.

Think of it this way Gravey: suppose you were a stranger walking into middle age Jerusalem, or London, or such. Some sort of busy, bustling metropolis. There would be 20-30 buildings minimum that were closed/useless to you for every one you cared about. You would have no idea where anything was. It would take you considerable time to move from point A to point B. Being a foreigner the locals probably wouldn't be terribly helpful, if you could communicate with them at all.

Kind of encompasses the RP part of RPG, don't you think?

I miss this a bit. While frustrating, it felt more "real". Hell, Pools of Radiance happened completely inside a single (ruined) city didn't it? That said, I'm not sure old fart me has the patience for it anymore.

I started a game of Daggerfall a couple of years ago for nostalgia's sake. After getting killed by a Daedric Prince in the "tutorial" dungeon, I put it back down. I am not man enough to play that game any more.

My hat is off to you Gravey. Please keep the write-ups coming so we can re-live yesteryear through your pain.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Well if was meant to be she would have taken you up on your request that she and her friends cosplay the whole House of Dibella.
Did you at least get to keep the game?

I like that better. I broke up with her because of her overwhelming selfishness.

Didn't get to keep the game. Or the dog.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I think Morrowind's still my favorite (I haven't visited Morrowind in Skyrim just yet so maybe that'll change). It just felt so exotic.

Same here. That music just sucked me in never let go. I could write a thesis on all the things I love about Morrowind. I was very, very excited when I heard the music visiting Solstheim in Dragonborn.

To date, Morrowind is the only game soundtrack that I own. But that may just speak to my poor library of game music.

You can also download Arena (the first TES game) from http://www.elderscrolls.com/arena/
This was the era when you could import your charactier from one game (Arena) into the next (DF).

Gravey, one of the designers at Bethesda wrote a blog post the other day about how the player perceives the size of the world and cities versus the realism of the graphics. Seems timely based on your post above:
http://blog.shaneliesegang.com/2013/...

LilCodger wrote:

Think of it this way Gravey: suppose you were a stranger walking into middle age Jerusalem, or London, or such. Some sort of busy, bustling metropolis. There would be 20-30 buildings minimum that were closed/useless to you for every one you cared about. You would have no idea where anything was. It would take you considerable time to move from point A to point B. Being a foreigner the locals probably wouldn't be terribly helpful, if you could communicate with them at all.

Kind of encompasses the RP part of RPG, don't you think?

Oh absolutely, and like I said, I respect that focus on immersion. It's a fantastically ambitious ideal, and I love it when designers believe some element of their game is more important than player ease, for whatever reasons (immersion, comment, etc; e.g. every potentially-frustrating-but-deliberate element of the inimitable Far Cry 2).

That said...

beanman101283 wrote:

Gravey, one of the designers at Bethesda wrote a blog post the other day about how the player perceives the size of the world and cities versus the realism of the graphics. Seems timely based on your post above:
http://blog.shaneliesegang.com/2013/...

This blog post goes into the thoughts I was having way better than I was able to articulate them (thanks for the link!). I was also trying to mention ETS2 as much as I could. While I appreciate that Daggerfall just dives right into "literally big", the non-idealistic part of me—the part that just put the kid to bed, had dinner, and has maybe two hours to play before sleep—wouldn't mind sacrificing a bit of realism for impressionism.

Shane Liesegang wrote:

What’s most fascinating to me from a media/theory perspective, though, is that impressionism arose in part because the rise of photography had removed the burden of realism from visual artists. Since a camera could depict pure reality better than the most skilled painter, painters were free to begin experimenting in other kinds of depiction. Conversely, gameplay impressionism is at least partially caused by production and technological realities; the number of people living in a city is as constrained by our ability to create stories and dialogue for them as it is how many AIs an Xbox 360 can healthily handle at once.

The funny thing is XnGine is so primitive compared to Gamebryo/Creation (well, nearly anything really), but that didn't seem to have stopped Beth from creating the gargantuan world they did. I suppose at the time it seemed like this tech and their random procedures and whatnot allowed for creation on an unprecedented scale. But then to what end? It looks like Daggerfall was ultimately criticized for that scale, at least in that it resulted in a lot of samey-ness. So ironically as tech improves and the visuals and objects/people get more detailed, differentiated, and realistic, the geography becomes less realistic and more representational (at least when trying to represent a "large" game world—there's never been a better time than now for Warren Spector's "one city block" RPG). From 188,000 square miles down to something like 14 (meaningful) square miles in Skyrim.

But then I have the hindsight of being able to compare Daggerfall to the improvements of Morrowind made in response (echoed again in Oblivion's random dungeons and then Skyrim's hand-built dungeons). 1996 Doom II/Quake-playing me would have had his mind blown open, but then he also didn't have a job or do his homework and could afford the time. This doesn't mean I wish Daggerfall were different though—the subsequent games are different, and with good reason. I really do like that Daggerfall tried to do it all—it's a brash, idealistic teenager of an RPG.

I don't know how much of the game is hand-built and how much is randomly generated, but in either case I think it runs headlong into that "we can do anything" ambition mentioned earlier.

The cities and villages were hand-built, as were buildings (used for shops and houses and temples and the like). Major storyline quest dungeons, the ones every character does, were also hand built, if I remember correctly. All other dungeons were randomly generated (you can usually tell which are random and which are not pretty easily).

LilCodger wrote:

Think of it this way Gravey: suppose you were a stranger walking into middle age Jerusalem, or London, or such. Some sort of busy, bustling metropolis. There would be 20-30 buildings minimum that were closed/useless to you for every one you cared about. You would have no idea where anything was. It would take you considerable time to move from point A to point B. Being a foreigner the locals probably wouldn't be terribly helpful, if you could communicate with them at all.

Kind of encompasses the RP part of RPG, don't you think?

I miss this a bit. While frustrating, it felt more "real". Hell, Pools of Radiance happened completely inside a single (ruined) city didn't it? That said, I'm not sure old fart me has the patience for it anymore.

Ha! This is how I feel when I feel tempted to fire up some of the older, more "challenging" games.

I'd love to say I've spent the last four weeks diving deep into Daggerfall. But that would be an awful lie.

When I left our hero, she was in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to see and no one to do.

IMAGE(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/42351335/Daggerfall2.png)

Back in the city of Daggerfall, my search for pants was interrupted when I remembered: I had an actual quest! And not just the main quest, but a side quest, to find some guy and deliver some thing, for a reward of less gold than I'd been making selling my intro-cave loot. So not a balanced or even interesting quest. But it was a purpose.

With nothing provided but the immersive ability to beg the uncommunicative asshole citizens for help, I eventually triangulated his location ("West of here", "East of here", "A little north of here", and so forth) and collected 72 gold. Okay. Not a compelling quest.

So breaking all my traditions of Elder Scroll play, I decided to pursue the main quest. Long story short, the uncommunicative assholery goes all the way to the top. I've been sent by the Emperor personally to investigate the ghost, but the queen of Daggerfall won't talk to me, and the king won't listen—only want to send me on another quest. The game even told me to go here, though I never heard from the tutorial since then. C'mon, give me something to latch on to! Hook me! Compel me!

"Challenging" indeed, karmajay. The game resists being played at every turn.

Alright, fine, I'll go to Whereverville to do whatever-the-heck. The next part of course is entirely my fault. Instead of fast-travelling, I decide to explore this land and ride to my destination. I can follow the coast east and south and the town shouldn't be too far away.

Well, it's bigger than it looks. And more sparse than I might have imagined. The view distance of about thirty feet wasn't helping either. I clopped along for about 20 minutes, half watching American Idol, and moved about two pixels' worth on the overland map.

So that's where I stopped. It'd be terribly unfair to compare this aspect of the game to Skyrim, so I won't. That Bethesda took a very deliberate different tack with Morrowind was obviously a very correct decision, establishing one of the most compelling aspects of the series—a big world worth exploring. Or maybe I was just in a uniquely barren, featureless part of Daggerfall?

But alas, I won't find out. I almost feel bad, as a huge TES fan, turning down an entry. On the other hand, it's from such a different place than Morrowind et al., technically, philosophically, that I really shouldn't.

If nothing else, I feel bad letting down this thread. Adventure? *fart sound*

The vast open areas of Daggerfall were always a theoretical selling point to me (Hey isn't that a cool concept !! ) I believe I actually installed this once myself..didn't get very far of course.

I chalked it up to being a piece of gaming history and let it be. TES 3-5 have been pretty fun sandboxes after all.

I was going to give it a go but the way everyone stands around in the same place and the way quest are handled turned me off. The standing I could deal with but unorganized way quest were tracked was the deal breaker.