Revisiting The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
Looking back at the original vision for an iconic franchise
Thanks to Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls (TES) needs no introduction. The series is today known as the best-selling RPG franchise of all time and is fairly unique as a game that has transcended beyond ‘core gamers’, despite being about warriors and dragons. To many people, Skyrim might as well be the only game in the series, despite the words The Elder Scrolls V hiding sheepishly above its much larger subtitle. As I’m sure many of the people reading a site like SUPERJUMP know, the series has a fascinating history, with each main entry bringing a unique flair. But it’s no secret that each Bethesda game is more casual and accessible than the last, and the further back you go, the nerdier the fanbase gets.
Enter Daggerfall, which was created long before crushing financial pressure forced Bethesda to reinvent their flagship series with Morrowind in order to avoid bankruptcy. Daggerfall presents a completely different interpretation of The Elder Scrolls and can feel completely alien to fans of the more recent entries. Many commentators have described the game as less of an open-world RPG and more of a fantasy life simulator. Just like the later games, the main quest is there but can be entirely ignored in lieu of other adventures. Unlike later games, you could instead decide to take out a loan from the bank, skip town to avoid paying it, use the money to buy a ship, sail to a faraway kingdom, find a quaint hamlet to settle in, buy a house, and spend the rest of your days dungeon crawling and doing odd jobs for the locals down the tavern.
This is all because Daggerfall prioritises freedom over scripted events. The game is a sandbox built for your own role-playing stories to unfold. The downside to this is that, in order to create this sprawling sandbox (famously bigger than real-life Britain!), everything is procedurally generated. Everywhere looks more or less the same, with the only differences coming when you travel to distant kingdoms — and that’s only because the procedural generation is slightly altered depending on where you are in the game world. A village in High Rock looks different from one in Hammerfell but that village looks very similar to every other village in High Rock.
This extends to the dungeons, which, due to the nature of their haphazard generation, are impossibly huge, labyrinthine, and very repetitive. Dungeon-crawling can be brutally hard and you can spend hours of real-time in just one, but it’s ultimately not the focus on the game (something they clearly forgot when coming up with the idea for the dungeon-crawling spin-off Battlespire). The real meat of the game is interacting with people — exploring countryside farms and sleepy hamlets, hanging out in taverns, getting chewed out by some racist Breton because your scaly Argonian skin flaked off into his beer. You know, classic high fantasy stuff.
To make up for the lack of narrative, Daggerfall instead focuses on sheer scale and freedom. Guilds have less going on in them (quests are randomly chosen from a selection of pre-created jobs — no storylines here), but there are far more of them, with countless knightly orders, witches' covens, and temples to join alongside the more typical guilds found in later games. Or you can just do odd jobs — either for the most blue-blooded nobles or the seediest criminals. What role you play in this sandbox is largely defined by the person you decide to be, when faced with the game’s detailed character creator. Some characters get on better with the upper class, some prefer dealing with criminals. Some can levitate, some can speak to spriggans and convince them to fight alongside them.
Sure, it’s not groundbreaking to have a character creator with so many options in a CRPG, but the difference is that so many competing games in the genre can’t compete with this level of openness. Games like Baldur’s Gate and Disco Elysium may offer similar levels of character customisation, but you are railroaded into following the main storyline. Imagine that level of roleplaying freedom combined with the sandbox design of The Elder Scrolls. It’s true freedom to be any person you want to be, and live out exactly the life best suited to that person. Then, when you get bored, you can roll an entirely different character and do it all again.
Of course, Daggerfall is an old game, and that comes with its own issues. It can be brutally hard, and the opening dungeon is infamous for being a trial by fire. Attacks only have a percentage chance to deal damage, and when your skills are low, you will miss more often than you hit. Some stronger or enemies (or spellcasting ones) can’t be hit at all unless you have the right kind of equipment. Some of this will be familiar to those who have played Morrowind, but the game certainly isn’t forgiving for those who are only familiar with Oblivion or Skyrim.
It’s hard to recommend the game to everyone, but it’s a damn shame to think that not everyone could experience it. Luckily, there are some talented Youtubers out there like Indigo Gaming and Zaric Zhakaron, creating playthroughs of the game to give new players an idea of what kind of character they can create. Or, possibly, more importantly, give new players an idea of what they should do. There is a lot to do in Daggerfall, but the game doesn’t bother to tell you about any of it. And even if you do know how much there is, the sheer amount can then be overwhelming. PC games in the Nineties were built for hardy sorts.
Daggerfall just subscribes to a different philosophy altogether. Beginning with Morrowind, Bethesda frontman Todd Howard would push his vision for a series that was more focused, more narrative-driven, and more action-heavy. Of course, he made the right move. The modern games are all-time classics worthy of the highest praise, but they are entirely different. I often wonder what would have happened if Bethesda had stuck with the focus on a huge sandbox.
What would the procedurally generated worlds look like today? Would we have a huge-scale Tamrielic life simulator, like some kind of cross between Kingdom Come: Deliverance and No Man’s Sky? Interestingly, we might find out soon enough. A sizeable chunk of the people responsible for the original Elder Scrolls games have banded together to form Once Lost Games and are working a spiritual-successor-of-sorts named The Wayward Realms, with their website boldly declaring that they aim to create a whole new genre: the “grand RPG”. It’s early days, but the possibilities excite me immensely.
If I’ve somehow convinced you to play this beautful, mad, incredible game, there’s never been a better time to play it. The fan-made engine overhaul Daggerfall Unity has modernised the controls, freshened up the graphics, and encouraged a burgeoning modding community. Those modders are making the game prettier and more interesting, adding more quests and more depth to the world, offsetting the procedurally generated drabness.
The game is more active than it’s been for the best part of twenty years — there’s never been a better time to jump in. And it’s free! Bethesda made Daggerfall free a long time ago, alongside its older brother The Elder Scrolls: Arena. I can’t vouch for that one, but the original game does feature the entirety of Tamriel in a quaint, barebones, MS-DOS form, which is interesting in its own way.
Still, it can’t hurt to give them a try. It’s not like a newer TES is going to drop any time soon.
