The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is a 1996 action role-playing game published by Bethesda Softworks. The second installment in the Elder Scrolls series, it was released on September 20, 1996 for MS-DOS, following the success of 1994's The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The story follows the player, sent by the Emperor, to free the ghost of King Lysandus from his earthly shackles and discover what happened to a letter sent from the Emperor to the former queen of Daggerfall.
Compared to its predecessor, Arena, the player can now only travel within two provinces in Tamriel, those being High Rock and Hammerfell. Daggerfall consists of 15,000 cities, towns, villages, and dungeons for the character to explore. Arenas experience-point-based system was replaced with a system that rewards the player for utilizing role-playing elements within the game. Daggerfall includes more customization options, featuring an improved character generation engine as well as a GURPS-influenced class creation system, offering players the chance to create their classes and assign their skills.
The game was a critical and commercial success, with sales of around 700,000 copies by 2000. The game was followed by The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in 2002. In 2009, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls franchise, Daggerfall was made free to download from the Bethesda website.
Gameplay
Daggerfall, like the other games in The Elder Scrolls series, takes place on the fictional continent of Tamriel, in which the player can travel between the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell. Like all The Elder Scrolls games, the player does not have to follow questlines or fill specific character roles, allowing the player to play the game how they see fit.
The game features over 15,000 cities, towns, villages, and dungeons for the character to explore, which gives the player many options when buying a house. In addition to exploring the world the player can join a number of guilds, orders, and religions; all with unique quests and tasks for the player to do. Joining and contributing to these organizations will allow the player to gain ranks and gain a reputation in the game world, which affects how non-playable characters (NPCs) and other factions view the player. One special feature in Daggerfall is the ability for the player to create their own spells using the game's spell-creation system, which is unlocked by joining the Mages Guild; allowing the player to create custom spells with varying effects, the game will automatically generate the magicka cost of the spell based on the power of effects chosen. Similar to the spell-creation is the ability to enchant equipment. The player can craft or find a variety of equipment. Players also have the ability to become a vampire, werewolf, or wereboar.
The combat system uses mouse movement to determine the direction and effect of the weapon swing in melee combat. Daggerfall features a wide range of enemies; the strongest being the Daedra, which can make the journey through these realms difficult. In order to finish the game the player must visit at least 6–8 of the 47 explorable areas present in the game.
Plot Daggerfall is set in the Iliac Bay, between the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell. The player is sent here at the Emperor's request. He wants the player to do two things: First, the player must free the ghost of King Lysandus from his earthly shackles; Second, the player must discover what happened to a letter from the Emperor to the former queen of Daggerfall. The letter reveals that Lysandus's mother, Nulfaga, knows the location of the Mantella, the key to resurrecting the first Numidium, a powerful brass golem created by the long-lost dwarves. Tiber Septim, the founder of the Empire, previously acquired the Numidium from the dark elves of Morrowind and used it to halt the aggressive expansion of a fascist elvish faction in the distant past.
Seeking to return the Numidium to the Empire's control, the emperor wants his spy to force Nulfaga into revealing the location of the Mantella so that the Blades can finish the reconstruction of the machine. Through a series of mishaps and confusions, the letter fell into the hands of an orc named Gortworg. Not knowing what the Mantella is, Gortworg consults Mannimarco, the King of Worms (the leader of the Necromancers). During this time, the Underking, who originally destroyed the first Numidium because of its misuse by Tiber Septim, is recuperating deep within a tomb of High Rock after expending so much energy destroying it the first time. For the player to give the Mantella to anyone, the player must kill King Lysandus's murderer and put his ghost to rest. After accomplishing this, the player must steal the totem of Tiber Septim from King Gothryd of Daggerfall and free the Mantella from its prison in Aetherius. Following this, the player has six choices regarding how to deal with the Mantella.
Daggerfall has several endings: If the player gives the Mantella to the Underking, he absorbs its power, passes into eternal rest, and creates a large "magicka-free" area around himself. If Gortworg is victorious, he uses the Numidium to destroy the Imperial forces and the "Bay Kings," the rulers of the several provinces of the Iliac Bay. The Underking arrives shortly thereafter to destroy the first Numidium, losing his life. Gortworg then succeeds in creating Orsinium, a kingdom of Orcs. If the Blades are victorious, they succeed in recreating the first Numidium and use it to defeat the Bay Kings and the Orcs, as well as unite all the provinces of Tamriel under the empire once again. If any of the Bay Kings win, that king will use the first Numidium to defeat all the other kings just before the Underking destroys him and itself. If Mannimarco receives the Mantella, he uses it to make himself a god. One more ending, as described in the strategy guide The Daggerfall Chronicles and elsewhere, was planned by Bethesda, but is not achievable in-game: if the player activates the Mantella while in possession of the totem (the controlling device of the Numidium), the Numidium will slay the player, go out of control, and be destroyed by Imperial forces.
Development
Work on The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall began immediately after The Elder Scrolls: Arenas release in March 1994. The project saw Ted Peterson assigned the role of lead game designer. Originally titled Mournhold and set in the province of Morrowind, the game was eventually relocated to the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell, in Tamriel's northwest.
By mid-1994 Daggerfall was the new name. Developers at first planned to connect it with Arena and one or two more games as done with Might and Magic: World of Xeen, but Arenas experience-point based system was replaced with one that rewards the player for actually role-playing their character. Daggerfall features an improved character generation engine, one that includes not only Arenas basic class choices, but also a system that could allow players to create their own classes and assign their own skills, with an option to pick GURPS-inspired bonuses, disadvantages, or disabilities.
Daggerfall was initially developed with an updated 2.5D raycast engine, but it was eventually dropped in favor of XnGine, one of the first truly 3D engines. Daggerfall realized a gameworld "the size of Great Britain," or approximately 209,331 square kilometers filled with 15,000 towns and a population of 750,000. According to Julian LeFay, "The whole idea with Daggerfall was that, like a pen-and-paper role-playing game, you could play for years. You know, keep the same characters, keep on doing stuff." A YouTube channel called "How Big is the Map?" walked across the entire map, a feat that took a total of 69 hours.
Daggerfall, in Peterson's opinion, was only lightly influenced by contemporary video games, as they simply "weren't very interesting." "I can remember playing the latest King's Quest, Doom, and Sam & Max Hit the Road while working on it, but I can't say they had any profound impact on the story or design." Daggerfalls most profound influences came from whatever analog games and literature Julian LeFay or Ted Peterson happened to be playing or reading at the time, such as Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask, which influenced "the quest where the player had to find the missing Prince of Sentinel," and Vampire: The Masquerade, which influenced "the idea of vampire tribes throughout the region."
Olympia, Washington based MediaTech West, which was acquired by Bethesda in 1995, helped develop the game.
Daggerfall was completed on August 31, 1996, almost three years after production began. It was released in North America on September 20, within the game's intended release window, and in the United Kingdom on November 1. Like that of Arena, Daggerfalls release suffered from buggy code; while the game was patched multiple times, users were still upset about its stability. The yearning to avoid what were, in LeFay's words, "all the stupid patches we had for Daggerfall" led to a more cautious release schedule in the future. Ted Peterson left Bethesda following Daggerfalls release and went to work for a series of companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco: Film Roman, AnyRiver Entertainment, Activision, and Savage Entertainment.
Community support Although Daggerfall did not come with official modding tools like later The Elder Scrolls releases, enthusiasts for the game developed tools on their own to access the game's content soon after its release; as a result, a number of additional quests, graphical enhancements, and gameplay features were developed by third parties. Notable works include AndyFall and DaedraFall.
After the end of official support by Bethesda, some mod makers have repaired bugs in the latest official release of Daggerfall with community patches or engine remakes.la-serie-the-elder-scrolls-l-aspect-communautaire on jeuxvideo.com (April 30, 2010) The DFQFIX quest-fix pack and HackFall were the most recent attempts at this. DaggerfallSetup is a community-made Daggerfall installer for modern Windows versions.The Elder Scrolls & Skyrim • Seite 2 von Martin Woger on Eurogamer (2011-06-16, in German) The aim of this project is to install and easily run a fully patched Daggerfall on a modern Windows operating system under usage of the DOSBox emulator. This game installer setup contains many official and unofficial patches and also fan translations for several languages, including French, Russian, Spanish, and German.