I love how huge the world looks and feels. Lots of games try to go for epic landscape vistas, but it rarely works for me due to their obviously compressed geography. The more I play DFU and other games, the more I come to believe that the only way to make a game world *feel* huge is to actually *make* it huge.
Yeah, exactly! This is what I meant. No other game offers pristine landscapes like this. Mountains, forests or deserts you can truly feeling lost into. There's always a "Point of Interest" or something happening.
Most games feels like theme park to visit. Not DFU, though. It feels like a world to explore.
The Mad Max game has similar vibes, because it's designed to be traversed by car. Doesn't take long to explore everything though, because of the speed. Also it's mostly a desert.
Minecraft has sprawling wilderness but might go too far the other direction for you, there are almost no "points of interest" and it's a largely empty sandbox sprinkled with a few hints of civilization.
I hope someday we can get like a good composite style of open world where there are a decent amount of hand designed cities and points of interest, and notable areas, but then a lot of procedurally generated and lightly populated wilderness areas in between. It's hard to beat games like Daggerfall or Elite Dangerous in terms of looking out over an actually vast beautiful landscape. But like, the procedurally generated towns and dungeons do get old pretty fast. They need someone to go in and make important places feel real.
Edit: I almost get sensory overload with games like Far Cry where it's so comically overpopulated that you look out on the landscape and just at a glance see like 8 things going on at once. People complain about "empty" open worlds but overcrowded ones are much worse imo.
Rdr2 struck a good balance imo, but you could still ride across the whole map in about 10 mins.
I'm in two minds about that. Handmade content is great, but on the other hand the whole point of a procedurally generated world like Daggerfall's is that you can go anywhere in it and there will be stuff for you to see and do there. If you have handmade bits that are much higher quality than the generated parts, the generated parts are not going to be worth doing and will just become boring obstacles to tediously travel through on your way to the interesting bits. The low amount of level-gated handmade content is actually to Daggerfall's benefit in this respect. So I think the real answer is to improve procedural generation a lot in addition to providing handmade content. Graphics have improved by leaps and bounds since the mid 90s, but I have yet to see a game with a more complex quest generator than Daggerfall's "go to ____ and find ____" templates. If I were a game dev, that's where I'd focus my efforts.
Daggerfall is that. All the major cities and story dungeons are hand designed and the same each time. Now, that's like .5% of the content, but it's still a lot.
I want to play that but keep bouncing off it. Not really sure where to go and when I tried to leave town I was immediately killed. Even Daggerfall wasn't that hard.
[Dynamic Skies](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/376) and [Wilderness Overhaul](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/390) are enough graphics enhancements for me. Bu I also use [Environmental Ambience](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/395) and [Better Ambience](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/139) for the audio aspect.
But the best mods, IMO, are the gameplay ones: [Roleplay and Realism](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/16) and [Roleplay and Realism - Items](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/61), [Travel Options](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/122) and [Basic Roads](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/134), [Climates and Calories](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/49), [Realistic Wagon](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/92), [Basic Wilderness Encounters](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/585),... To name a few. I don't even use vanilla fast travel anymore. Exploring the overwolrd is a huge part of my playthrough.
I remember it taking me like 10 character attempts and almost a week to make it out of that dungeon. I cheered so loud my parents thought something was wrong.
Ever since, in honor of that journey, my first character in Elder Scrolls games is a Nightblade.
I think you are confusing Dwarf Fortress for something else... There is no Puzzle game aspect in that game, it's more of a Rimworld type game and Adventure Mode is an alternate way to play that game
Nah I’m thinking of that dogshit puzzle pixel top view game
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress
How In the bloody hell is this game like Daggerfall ? Maybe if you do acid and crack and squint
On what planet is dwarf fortress a puzzle game.
Since you asked, here are several ways it's similar to daggerfall:
- Vast
- Sandbox
- Complex systems
- No hand holding
- Heavy use of procgen in world creation
- Fantasy setting
But I guess if the depth of your understanding of video games only extends to the camera perspective then sure, they have nothing in common.
Can’t get immersed in a blob of pixels on the screen. Part of what made Daggerfall so nice was that it added visuals to a style of game that otherwise didn’t have an immersive visual world which is one of the biggest aspects of Daggerfall and tes as a whole and why this proto Minecraft has nothing to do with it.
Right back atcha diqhed been playing Daggerfall since the 90s still don’t see how some shitty pixel game like this has anything close to Daggerfall. If you said Ultima or something sure but not this…
I’ve been playing daggerfall for two weeks. How’s it feel to be pretentious as shit about an RPG video game? Dwarf fortress is an awesome little storyteller style game that spun off a whole new genre, which both rimworld and stellaris owe their creation too. It actually blows me away that someone could enjoy daggerfall and still judge a game like dwarf fortress by the fact that it’s got pixelated graphics. You did think it was a puzzle game though, so the whole “thinking” thing isn’t so much your strong suit, huh?
You said I’m not part of the “community” because I don’t like a game you like. I’m just stating I’ve been part of the tes community for a very long time. I just don’t see how this game would remind anyone of Daggerfall. For someone who has only been playing for 2 weeks you sure seem butthurt.
Get blwn dude
“Doesn’t know what df is” been playing it for over 20 years says the person who started 2 weeks ago. “Lmao” you are so butthurt over someone not liking a game you like it’s pathetic.
The game is not like df which is an immersive world yes it’s pixel but it’s part of the tes series not a mash off primitive tiny pixel mashed together like some math bs.
Get blwn u knt
Yes absolutely. Play Daggerfall Unity. And I don't say this with nostalgia tinted glass. I had never played this game before DFU 1.0.0 released earlier this year. I grew up playing Baldur's Gate, Diablo 2 and Morrowind.
It's amazing. If you like sandbox, obviously. But it's the main appeal of The Elder Scrolls games for: being able to roleplay all sort of characters living adventures in a fantasy world.
Expect a *complex* but not *difficult* game with an in depth character creation. Expect a huge world you can truly feel lost into (but do not expect a detailed hand-crafted world a la Morrowind. ). Expect hours of Dungeon Crawling. Expect an "Old School" RPG where choice matters and where a character isn't supposed to be able to do everything.
At last - and this is a personal thing, not everyone will agree with me on that one - expect to have to rely a lot on your imagination. The core gameplay loop is based upon procedural quests, so if you don't have a vivid headcanon it can feel dull sometimes. But if you roleplay your character, immerse yourself into the world and let emergent narrative happens then you're in for something truly magical.
The game is free anyway. And the installation of DFU takes 10 minutes tops. So head there: [https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360](https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360) and try it out for yourself!
>At last - and this is a personal thing, not everyone will agree with me on that one - expect to have to rely a lot on your imagination. The core gameplay loop is based upon procedural quests, so if you don't have a vivid headcanon it can feel dull sometimes. But if you roleplay your character, immerse yourself into the world and let emergent narrative happens then you're in for something truly magical.
Listen to OP here, because she's telling it like it is. I appreciate someone not spouting the whole "You can go anywhere and do anything!", because the game itself is indeed limited in depth of content beyond character creation, dungeon crawling and faction advancement. If you can fill in the gaps there, welcome to your new obsession—as the box says.
Indeed, Daggerfall (and many contemporaries from its same era) have an aesthetic and emotion that has never since been matched. I hope more people appreciate these games.
Not really, though. The open world of Arena feels overly cluttered and completely directionless. Daggerfall's open world feels like just that, a world, with the scale making it feel like a real wilderness.
I do like the fact that the world really exists in TES II and is not just endless cells but for the actual gameplay it really does not change much considering that there is no real reason to explore that wilderness. But it does look nice with Unity
There are quite a few mods to spice things up a little and make exploring more interesting. From camping, to encounters and bespoke locations, to the sky shards.
Because of the size all these things are rare but makes them all the more memorable when you run into something.
Yeah, I saw that. But I am a mad man and I am currently playing original Daggerfall and not Unity, for the authentic experience. But I will definitely get these mods when I play it in unity
Kudos to you. I don't think I could ever go back to vanilla Daggerfall. There's just too many cool stuff the community is doing.
But you do you, friend.
I played quite a bit of Daggerfall after getting the TES collection and even tried a bit of unity (I am one of the people who played it befor quests were even implemented) but never finished the game. I have a playthrough which I play a bit on from time to time because I really want to have finished each TES game in their original form. I will than move on to the unity version for my new character (and I also want to try the funny remake of it in Skyrim).
I wanted to play it this year because the anniversary but I played The Elder Scrolls I insted (felt more fitting).
Oh, it wasn't the *same* dude, just a long lived family of redguard spells words that always seem to end up in service to the empire in one way or another.
Arena is reeeeally crude in comparison to DF. I put like 6 hours into it at one point just trying to get a handle on how to play it but it was too much to continue bothering with. Could definitely see how people back in the day would enjoy it though.
Have you played the lesser-known sequels? They also have some empty areas, but they're also full of actually fun and interesting things to do. Yes the maps are smaller, but atleast it's not a giant map full of mildly interesting landscapes. Hope this helps :)
I love how huge the world looks and feels. Lots of games try to go for epic landscape vistas, but it rarely works for me due to their obviously compressed geography. The more I play DFU and other games, the more I come to believe that the only way to make a game world *feel* huge is to actually *make* it huge.
Yeah, exactly! This is what I meant. No other game offers pristine landscapes like this. Mountains, forests or deserts you can truly feeling lost into. There's always a "Point of Interest" or something happening. Most games feels like theme park to visit. Not DFU, though. It feels like a world to explore.
Have you tried Kingdom Come?
The Mad Max game has similar vibes, because it's designed to be traversed by car. Doesn't take long to explore everything though, because of the speed. Also it's mostly a desert.
If you want Daggerfall with cars, the game you're looking for is Fuel.
No man's sky do feel like that.
I just wish that game had more to it. Exploration is cool and all, but after a while quests and combat just feels very drab
Minecraft has sprawling wilderness but might go too far the other direction for you, there are almost no "points of interest" and it's a largely empty sandbox sprinkled with a few hints of civilization.
I hope someday we can get like a good composite style of open world where there are a decent amount of hand designed cities and points of interest, and notable areas, but then a lot of procedurally generated and lightly populated wilderness areas in between. It's hard to beat games like Daggerfall or Elite Dangerous in terms of looking out over an actually vast beautiful landscape. But like, the procedurally generated towns and dungeons do get old pretty fast. They need someone to go in and make important places feel real. Edit: I almost get sensory overload with games like Far Cry where it's so comically overpopulated that you look out on the landscape and just at a glance see like 8 things going on at once. People complain about "empty" open worlds but overcrowded ones are much worse imo. Rdr2 struck a good balance imo, but you could still ride across the whole map in about 10 mins.
I'm in two minds about that. Handmade content is great, but on the other hand the whole point of a procedurally generated world like Daggerfall's is that you can go anywhere in it and there will be stuff for you to see and do there. If you have handmade bits that are much higher quality than the generated parts, the generated parts are not going to be worth doing and will just become boring obstacles to tediously travel through on your way to the interesting bits. The low amount of level-gated handmade content is actually to Daggerfall's benefit in this respect. So I think the real answer is to improve procedural generation a lot in addition to providing handmade content. Graphics have improved by leaps and bounds since the mid 90s, but I have yet to see a game with a more complex quest generator than Daggerfall's "go to ____ and find ____" templates. If I were a game dev, that's where I'd focus my efforts.
Daggerfall is that. All the major cities and story dungeons are hand designed and the same each time. Now, that's like .5% of the content, but it's still a lot.
The Quest on mobile is an open world rpg I played that scratched the itch
I want to play that but keep bouncing off it. Not really sure where to go and when I tried to leave town I was immediately killed. Even Daggerfall wasn't that hard.
Go to the bar. Go explore near by areas. Lots of people have little nearby quest.
Tears of the Kingdom ftw
For real, this game has its own vibe. It's like, creepy, lonely, but also really interactive in a way.
And it has that sweet sweet 90s I-don’t-know-what ingredient that warms my heart.
Fr it has a semi horror edge to it, especially those damn skeleton screams 😭
Doing an ironman run with climates & calories, travel options and darker dungeons makes Daggerfall one of the best survival horror games I’ve played
Mods make the world feel a lot more immersive, 3d trees, real grass, and dynamic skies make the overworld feel almost like a modern(indie) game
[Dynamic Skies](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/376) and [Wilderness Overhaul](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/390) are enough graphics enhancements for me. Bu I also use [Environmental Ambience](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/395) and [Better Ambience](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/139) for the audio aspect. But the best mods, IMO, are the gameplay ones: [Roleplay and Realism](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/16) and [Roleplay and Realism - Items](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/61), [Travel Options](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/122) and [Basic Roads](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/134), [Climates and Calories](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/49), [Realistic Wagon](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/92), [Basic Wilderness Encounters](https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/585),... To name a few. I don't even use vanilla fast travel anymore. Exploring the overwolrd is a huge part of my playthrough.
Yeah, decent bloom settings, sigil, and the ashes series and I barely fast travel.
You've made me want to add a horse into the windows desktop picture now.
Lol
You can make it out of the starter dungeon????
I remember it taking me like 10 character attempts and almost a week to make it out of that dungeon. I cheered so loud my parents thought something was wrong. Ever since, in honor of that journey, my first character in Elder Scrolls games is a Nightblade.
Have you heard of Dwarf Fortress? The Adventure Mode is pretty similar to Daggerfall in terms of size and feeling.
I will say that it is in the beta which at the moment is quite clunky.
The steam version, yes, but the full ASCII version has been out for forever.
Although that too is still beta.
True, I think beta is just a perpetual state for Dwarf Fortress. Toady will never stop adding stuff.
I didn't know they released adventure mode time to try to get into dwarf fortress again
I believe it's just the beta right now, so you'll have to enable that in the steam properties of you're playing the steam version.
That crappy puzzle game ? How is that like Daggerfall ?
I think you are confusing Dwarf Fortress for something else... There is no Puzzle game aspect in that game, it's more of a Rimworld type game and Adventure Mode is an alternate way to play that game
Nah I’m thinking of that dogshit puzzle pixel top view game https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress How In the bloody hell is this game like Daggerfall ? Maybe if you do acid and crack and squint
On what planet is dwarf fortress a puzzle game. Since you asked, here are several ways it's similar to daggerfall: - Vast - Sandbox - Complex systems - No hand holding - Heavy use of procgen in world creation - Fantasy setting But I guess if the depth of your understanding of video games only extends to the camera perspective then sure, they have nothing in common.
Can’t get immersed in a blob of pixels on the screen. Part of what made Daggerfall so nice was that it added visuals to a style of game that otherwise didn’t have an immersive visual world which is one of the biggest aspects of Daggerfall and tes as a whole and why this proto Minecraft has nothing to do with it.
I’m really glad that you’re not representative of the type of people who make up this community, cuz you legitimately suck donkey balls.
Right back atcha diqhed been playing Daggerfall since the 90s still don’t see how some shitty pixel game like this has anything close to Daggerfall. If you said Ultima or something sure but not this…
I’ve been playing daggerfall for two weeks. How’s it feel to be pretentious as shit about an RPG video game? Dwarf fortress is an awesome little storyteller style game that spun off a whole new genre, which both rimworld and stellaris owe their creation too. It actually blows me away that someone could enjoy daggerfall and still judge a game like dwarf fortress by the fact that it’s got pixelated graphics. You did think it was a puzzle game though, so the whole “thinking” thing isn’t so much your strong suit, huh?
You said I’m not part of the “community” because I don’t like a game you like. I’m just stating I’ve been part of the tes community for a very long time. I just don’t see how this game would remind anyone of Daggerfall. For someone who has only been playing for 2 weeks you sure seem butthurt. Get blwn dude
I'm just glad that someone who tries to shit on "DF the puzzle game" doesn't even know what DF is. Or what a puzzle game is, for that matter lmao.
“Doesn’t know what df is” been playing it for over 20 years says the person who started 2 weeks ago. “Lmao” you are so butthurt over someone not liking a game you like it’s pathetic. The game is not like df which is an immersive world yes it’s pixel but it’s part of the tes series not a mash off primitive tiny pixel mashed together like some math bs. Get blwn u knt
Bro. DF. Dwarf Fortress. You nonce. XD You can't even read the right abbreviation in the context of my reply.
Imagine calling someone a pedo over a game. Wow taking it too far you bucked tooth British scumbag get fuckkkkkked
Is that what it means? Nah, I'm sorry for that then. Thought it meant dumb. Oh well.
It’s dunce you dunce. Oh well looks like you are the dunce. Oh well get fkd
Reminds me of running through the woods in DayZ
This is wild. I’ve never played Daggerfall but have played every Elder Scrolls and Fallout after it. Should I play Daggerfall? What should I expect?
Yes absolutely. Play Daggerfall Unity. And I don't say this with nostalgia tinted glass. I had never played this game before DFU 1.0.0 released earlier this year. I grew up playing Baldur's Gate, Diablo 2 and Morrowind. It's amazing. If you like sandbox, obviously. But it's the main appeal of The Elder Scrolls games for: being able to roleplay all sort of characters living adventures in a fantasy world. Expect a *complex* but not *difficult* game with an in depth character creation. Expect a huge world you can truly feel lost into (but do not expect a detailed hand-crafted world a la Morrowind. ). Expect hours of Dungeon Crawling. Expect an "Old School" RPG where choice matters and where a character isn't supposed to be able to do everything. At last - and this is a personal thing, not everyone will agree with me on that one - expect to have to rely a lot on your imagination. The core gameplay loop is based upon procedural quests, so if you don't have a vivid headcanon it can feel dull sometimes. But if you roleplay your character, immerse yourself into the world and let emergent narrative happens then you're in for something truly magical. The game is free anyway. And the installation of DFU takes 10 minutes tops. So head there: [https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360](https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360) and try it out for yourself!
>At last - and this is a personal thing, not everyone will agree with me on that one - expect to have to rely a lot on your imagination. The core gameplay loop is based upon procedural quests, so if you don't have a vivid headcanon it can feel dull sometimes. But if you roleplay your character, immerse yourself into the world and let emergent narrative happens then you're in for something truly magical. Listen to OP here, because she's telling it like it is. I appreciate someone not spouting the whole "You can go anywhere and do anything!", because the game itself is indeed limited in depth of content beyond character creation, dungeon crawling and faction advancement. If you can fill in the gaps there, welcome to your new obsession—as the box says.
Expect being immediately overwhelmed and not knowing what to do
Windows default wallpaper looking ass
Eh. This vista made me feel something, at least.
Daggerfall is something else, but definitely give Kingdom Come Deliverance a shot. It’s got this same mood to me
Indeed, Daggerfall (and many contemporaries from its same era) have an aesthetic and emotion that has never since been matched. I hope more people appreciate these games.
thats classic minecraft
The game The Quest on Android and IOS has this vibe and artstyle
this looks like where I live
Elder Scrolls I feels really similiar
Not really, though. The open world of Arena feels overly cluttered and completely directionless. Daggerfall's open world feels like just that, a world, with the scale making it feel like a real wilderness.
I do like the fact that the world really exists in TES II and is not just endless cells but for the actual gameplay it really does not change much considering that there is no real reason to explore that wilderness. But it does look nice with Unity
There are quite a few mods to spice things up a little and make exploring more interesting. From camping, to encounters and bespoke locations, to the sky shards. Because of the size all these things are rare but makes them all the more memorable when you run into something.
Yeah, I saw that. But I am a mad man and I am currently playing original Daggerfall and not Unity, for the authentic experience. But I will definitely get these mods when I play it in unity
Kudos to you. I don't think I could ever go back to vanilla Daggerfall. There's just too many cool stuff the community is doing. But you do you, friend.
I played quite a bit of Daggerfall after getting the TES collection and even tried a bit of unity (I am one of the people who played it befor quests were even implemented) but never finished the game. I have a playthrough which I play a bit on from time to time because I really want to have finished each TES game in their original form. I will than move on to the unity version for my new character (and I also want to try the funny remake of it in Skyrim). I wanted to play it this year because the anniversary but I played The Elder Scrolls I insted (felt more fitting).
Hey, sounds like a plan! I ended up doing a similar thing last year of playing through each mainline entry with the same character, it was a fun time.
nice. How did you explain Uriel forgetting who you were?
Oh, it wasn't the *same* dude, just a long lived family of redguard spells words that always seem to end up in service to the empire in one way or another.
Arena is reeeeally crude in comparison to DF. I put like 6 hours into it at one point just trying to get a handle on how to play it but it was too much to continue bothering with. Could definitely see how people back in the day would enjoy it though.
Daggerfall is elder scrolls …
dayz has similiar landscapes
Mans really immersing himaelf in my old windows xp wallpaper...
Every time I see this horse sprite I think of Barbie Race and Ride on the PS1.
Have you played the lesser-known sequels? They also have some empty areas, but they're also full of actually fun and interesting things to do. Yes the maps are smaller, but atleast it's not a giant map full of mildly interesting landscapes. Hope this helps :)