The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

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The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

Developer(s)	Bethesda Softworks
Publisher(s)	Bethesda Softworks
Engine	XnGine
Release date(s)	August 31, 1996 1996
Genre(s)	First-person RPG
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: M
Platform(s)	MS-DOS
Media	CD-ROM

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is a first-person freeform computer role-playing game (CRPG) for MS-DOS, developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1996. It is a sequel to the popular CRPG The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The game is out of print, but copies can usually be found on online auction sites and used game stores.

1 Gameplay
2 Game world
3 Story
4 Endings
5 Continuity
6 Bugs
7 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The key feature of Daggerfall as in all The Elder Scrolls games is the freedom the game offers to players. Players are free to play the game in any style, from an honorable knight to an evil assassin. Players are also free to stray from the main quest at anytime and can choose not to do it at all.

Daggerfall features a spell creation system where, through the Mages Guild, players can mix a variety of different effects, such as fire damage and levitation, into custom spells. The game will then automatically generate the mana cost of the spell based on the power of the effects chosen. Daggerfall shipped with several spell effects that did not function correctly, or simply did not function at all, namely the transformations.

Other features include an equipment enchantment system (similar in concept to the spell creation system), the ability to buy houses and ships, vast amounts of clothing and equipment, dynamic political relationships between kingdoms, the ability to become a vampire, werewolf, or wereboar, and the combat system, which utilized mouse movement to determine the direction of sword swings in melee combat.

The political system is supported by a net of Guilds, orders, and religions, all with unique tasks and quests. Joining and contributing to these facilities allows the player to raise ranks and achieve higher reputation in the game world. According to one's reputation, NPCs in Daggerfall will react differently (for example, over time nobles will be more well-mannered with the Player character if he's a high-rank Knight or Royal Guard).

Unlike Arena, or any future games in the series, Daggerfall featured nudity prominently, both on NPCs (particularly witches and temple priestesses) and on your character's portrait when you removed all of your equipment. Options to turn off both nudity and blood are available.

[edit] Game world

Daggerfall, like the other games in the Elder Scrolls series, takes place on the fictional continent of Tamriel. In Daggerfall, the player may travel within the High Rock and Hammerfell provinces of Tamriel. The journey through these realms is made difficult by a wide range of formidable enemies, the strongest of which are the Daedra.

Daggerfall is the largest Elder Scrolls game to date, featuring a game world estimated as being 161,600 square miles — roughly twice the size of Great Britain — with over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore. According to Todd Howard, Elder Scrolls programmer, the game's sequel, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is 0.01% the size of Daggerfall. Vvardenfell, the explorable part of the province of Morrowind in the third game has 6 square miles. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has approximately 16 square miles to explore. In Daggerfall, there are 750,000+ non-player characters (NPCs) for the player to interact with, compared to the count of around 1000 NPCs found in Morrowind and Oblivion. It should be pointed out that the geography and the characters in these later games are much more detailed.

An automap was implemented to help players navigate through the lengthy tombs and ancient underground fortresses. Players have to visit approximately 6-8 provinces in order to finish the game, although a total of 47 areas are present. A limited array of building blocks were used to construct the towns and dungeons, causing some reviewers to complain about the game's monotony. In 2002, Morrowind, the third game in the series, responded to this issue with a smaller, more detailed world with unique-looking cities and NPCs with greater individuality.

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Daggerfall is a city in the Breton homeland of High Rock. The player is sent here at the personal request of the Emperor. He wants the player to do two things. First, the player must free the ghost of the late King Lysandus from his earthly shackles. Secondly, the player must retrieve a letter from the Emperor to a Blades spy in the court of Daggerfall. The letter reveals that Lysandus' mother, Nulfaga, knows the location of the Mantella, the key to resurrecting the first Numidium. 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 Numidium. Through a series of mishaps and confusions the letter fell into the hands of an orc by the name of Gortworg. Gortworg, not knowing what the Mantella is, consults 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. In order for the player to give the Mantella to anyone, the player must kill king Lysandus' murderer and put his ghost to rest. After accomplishing this, the power of the Mantella restores the Underking's power.

[edit] Endings

Daggerfall has six different endings:

If the player activates the Mantella himself whilst 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.
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 once and for all, losing his own life in the process. 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, defeat the orcs, and to unite all the provinces of Tamriel under the Empire once again.
If one of the Bay Kings wins (any of them), they use the first Numidium to defeat all the other kings just before the Underking destroys it and himself.
If the King of Worms receives the Mantella, he uses it to make himself a god.

[edit] Continuity

Since Daggerfall had six very different endings, the writers of the Elder Scrolls series had to be creative when writing the sequel. It is revealed in books in the sequel Morrowind that at the end of Daggerfall, a "Warp of the West" had occurred, that is, a phenomenon resulting in a space/time disruption in which all of the endings occurred at once: the PC is slain by the Numidium, either the Kingdom Bretony, Sentinel or Wayrest is victorious,the "Bay Kings" and the Imperial forces are defeated by the Orcs, who then create their own kingdom of Orsinium, all of Tamriel is united under the Empire once again, the King of Worms becomes a god(although he is mortal in TES:IV when the player character kills him, though it is likely the soul of Hannibal Traven being stored in the Colossal Black Soul Gem the PC had in the fight had something to do with this), and the Underking is reunited with his heart.

However, in Oblivion, treasure hunters claim to be hunting for treasure on behalf of Orsinium and Gortworg.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Bugs

Daggerfall had numerous software bugs in its initial release, to the point that it was theoretically impossible to complete the main story in the original retail version. Even after numerous patches, including a special patch that adds extra items released by CompUSA, many issues were still left unsolved.

One bug caused players running up stairs to fall through the terrain into a featureless black space which irate gamers nicknamed "the Void". Some players later used the Void to their advantage by using it as a shortcut to other areas within the game. Another infamous topic was that of "the horse and the carriage": a player wanting to enter a town after its gates were closed for a night had to use a levitation spell to fly over the walls or the climbing ability to climb them. In any case the player's horse and carriage (which could be purchased in the game) stayed with the player as if they had been in the player's pocket. Additionally, there was a bug in which, once the player had reached the top of the wall, if the player jumped while running towards any of the battlement-style parapets on top of the relevant wall, it was possible to perform a ridiculous leap which hurled the player hundreds of feet through the air, invariably killing them upon landing unless they were very well trained in jumping (such as a master acrobat character), or were skilled or lucky enough to land upon a roof, or unless the player knew any spells to slow aerial descents. This jumping bug would occur when the player jumped towards other slanted surfaces, such as roofs. Additional bugs made some skills pointless: Picking locks is the primary skill of a thief in Daggerfall. Only after picking many locks is it possible to break some of the advanced locks in cities. A simple open-lock charm learnt in any magicians' guild will open any lock in the game, so lockpicking by hand becomes obsolete. It was possible to learn this cheap charm with a freshly rolled character, pick the lock of a bookstore at night, steal all the books, sell all those books to the owner in the morning and repeat the procedure thus making vast amounts of money - this could be spent on real estate and ships.