The Elder Scrolls - A Promise Unfulfilled

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Indigo Gaming shares his thoughts on the unfulfilled promise of The Elder Scrolls.



In my very first feature-length documentary/analysis video, I take a look at the best-selling RPG series: The Elder Scrolls, from its humble beginnings in Arena, through the massive trendsetter Daggerfall, its delayed sequel Morrowind, the acclaimed Oblivion and the popular but divisive Skyrim, as well as the spinoff games: Battlespire, Redguard, The Elder Scrolls Online and even Shadowkey. I hope you enjoy this complete Elder Scrolls history lesson, opinion piece and documentary.

Arena - 2:39
Daggerfall - 7:06
Battlespire - 14:17
Redguard - 19:00
The Road to Morrowind - 22:00
Morrowind - 25:34
Oblivion - 34:28
Skyrim - 47:52
The Elder Scrolls Online - 1:02:30
Elder Scrolls: Legends - 1:07:44
The Creation Kit and Modding - 1:08:27
The Elder Scrolls That Could Have Been - 1:11:22
More information.
 
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massive trendsetter Daggerfall

Eh? Is he talking about the trend of releasing extremely buggy games? ;)

Daggerfall was more or less a niche product. It wasn't until Morrowind that Bethesda really exploded onto the scene.
 
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Even though...wouldn't say that Daggerfall was the best game, but to me it certainly was the most impressive one, the one which stood out more than any other and the one I like to think back to the most due to it's possibilities (buying house, getting transport horse...) and gigantic world with it's randomly generated huge dungeons...which...granted were bugged like crazy.
 
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Daggerfall was a hollow and broken mess, in my opinion.

But it was certainly impressive in its ambition.

But I think it's one of the weakest of the series.
 
People that say Skyrim is shallow haven't played Daggerfall
 
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People that say Skyrim is shallow haven't played Daggerfall

That, or they didn't actually realise how shallow the game was because they were taken in by the ambition of it :)

I remember being very impressed with it, initially.

But then I played it a little more.
 
Daggerfall was a hollow and broken mess, in my opinion.

But it was certainly impressive in its ambition.

But I think it's one of the weakest of the series.
If one looked at the unused files, so was Ultima IX.

As for Daggerfall… all I remember is being eaten by a rat because I couldn't get camera low enough to spot it…
 
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The acclaimed Oblivion, the popular yet divisive Skyrim... Saves the time of listening to the vid.

At least, streamers provide quality content.
 
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Daggerfall had the most promise with the size of the world and the possibilities. For the first few hours of playing it, I was never more excited in a game. If they would have only made exploring outside the dungeons more exciting and added things to meet and fight in the wilderness.

The automap would confuse me more by looking at it.

It's a great video and posted it in another thread. One of the few I watched all the way thru.
 
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Daggerfall and Elite 2 Frontier both taught me the value of actual content over size and numbers. I've never looked back, really.

But to each his own.
 
Still waiting for someone to take a modern swing at a Daggerfall style RPG. A large amount of handcrafted content sprinkled in a large procedurally generated world like Tanriel. With modern advances and tricks something interesting could be done.

I feel like the next TES is going to be larger than Oblivion & Skyrim. I wouldn't be surprised if it uses some theories from Daggerfall. I can't see Bethesda continuing to do the same things with devs like CDPR hot on their tail. Beside that, Beth always is pushing forward, trying new things and wanting to make their dream games. I have a gut feeling we're going to see a much larger world than we're used to with TES VI. It won't simply be Skyrim 2.0 in another province. IMO.
 
Daggerfall had the most promise with the size of the world and the possibilities. For the first few hours of playing it, I was never more excited in a game. If they would have only made exploring outside the dungeons more exciting and added things to meet and fight in the wilderness.

There was encounters (monsters spawned once in a while) if you went and traveled on foot, i.e. without fast travel, between destinations. It was super long to travel that way though.
 
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I never really played Daggerfall, but it was my understanding that you couldn't actually get anywhere by travelling directly through the wilderness; fast travel was actually necessary. Is this wrong?
 
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I never really played Daggerfall, but it was my understanding that you couldn't actually get anywhere by travelling directly through the wilderness; fast travel was actually necessary. Is this wrong?

The devs claim that the game world in Daggerfall is as big as England. If that's true, it would literally takes days of real time to traverse the map without fast travel.

I wouldn't care to test that myself, but I'm sure someone out there has. :)
 
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I still remember repeatedly spotting that Daggerfall box at my local Electronics Boutique and, despite it piquing my burgeoning interest in RPGs, the reviews over how buggy it was (to the point of being incompletable) made me pass it over. Post-launch patches were pretty hit or miss those days.
 
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I really enjoyed Daggerfall when I first played it, but yeah, it hits a rather shallow plateau once you get a bit into the game. Still, for the time it came out I stuck with it for quite some time before boredom hit.
 
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I stuck with it until a game crash corrupted my saves. Then that was it for me.

Never even got to the main quest.

Really want to sometime.
 
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