TES II: Daggerfall - A Complete Retrospective

daggerfall released 25 years ago and guess what it's actually my favorite game in the series yeah i said it and this is coming from someone who played morrowind first and didn't even touch daggerfall until last year but after a long bonding session with this phenomenal game over the course of the pandemic daggerfall has proved itself to me so before we get started here over the next few hours i will deconstruct every aspect of daggerfall in an attempt not only to learn what made this great mid 90s immersive sim tick but also to convince you why i think you should play it okay first off most of the footage for this video was recorded using the unity version of the game which is the superior version all points made in this series are made with this version in mind including all the bug fixes that it makes there's gonna be a whole lot more reasons for unity supremacy which i'll cover later but for now sit back grab some snacks and prepare to experience your new obsession the marketing guys at bethesda knew exactly what they were selling when they put those words on the front of the box daggerful offers a world larger than any other in the series with more freedom and options for immersion than it had any right to have in 1996 it's a game where you can role play any single fantasy character that you can imagine with little to no barriers but before i spew over and over about how great the gameplay of daggerfall is we have to go to the beginning to a time where todd howard was just a young man begging bethesda to hire him the 1990s bethesda softworks which started from humble beginnings in its founders garage had grown to create a multitude of sports games not exactly what they're known for today but they had also acquired the license to make games for the terminator franchise making them an action game company more than anything else one of the lead designers and programmers there julian lafayette began working on a personal project with a small team of co-workers that project being a fantasy adventure game inspired by tabletop rpg hobbies we're talking dungeons and dragons and all that good stuff that project would be known as the elder scrolls chapter one arena [Music] dubbed the father of the elder scrolls by fans julian lafaye began laying the groundwork with the early core concept being gladiatorial battles set in a quasi-medieval fantasy world hence the game's name in his initial idea the player would choose a team to represent with one notable option being called the blades which as we know would later become the name for the emperor's personal bodyguard and spy network not long into development bethesda wanted the game to be so much more than just a coliseum-based attorney taking inspiration from a variety of classic first-person computer role-playing games lafaye's new plan was to take the limited mechanics of these so-called dungeon crawlers and expand them into an immersive world comprising of towns cities guilds and vast wilderness for 1992 this was not only ambitious but by many within bethesda it was thought to be impossible i mean the main consoles at the time were the snes and the sega genesis even doom was only a twinkle in john carmack's eyes so what le faye was proposing must have sounded like a schoomer induced hallucination regardless work pressed on lefey's project was green lit by management and his team grew just one year into development and disaster had already struck with the unforeseen release of ultima underworld the stygian abyss believe it or not based on this gameplay but this game blew people away with just how fluid it was the gone were the clunky mechanics of the dungeon crawlers that inspired le faye replaced with true 3d environments with praise from critics for the immersion these offered the team was dismayed by this new game's popularity partially due to it being more technologically advanced than their alpha builds but still they continued with the original plan as they had a card up their sleeves that ultimate underworld hadn't played that being the elder scrolls main strength all these years later it's scope they had created a massive world with countless cities towns and dungeons for the player to explore in addition to its unique lore introducing the continent of tamriel and its many races despite bethesda's inexperience with the fantasy genre and anything of this scale in 1994 gamers could lay their hands on the first game and what we would know as the best-selling western rpg franchise of all time arena was groundbreaking using procedural generation techniques the player could visit bustling cities filled with npcs guilds stores and taverns they could travel a huge world strolling through villages and towns looking for work and tips about the main quest or they could delve into deep and challenging dungeons while it missed its vital release date of christmas 1993 instead releasing in the far less desirable spring of 1994 it still continued to sell well over the course of the year garnering a strong cult following combining that with the word of mouth around the computer rpg circles an arena was a sleeper hit due to its inexperienced development and despite that delay in release arena still came with a huge amount of bugs and glitches a curse that continues to follow befezza softworks to this day patches were sent out on floppy disks fixed in the majority of them but in true befairs the fashion many were left to the community to fix in unofficial patches while clunky by today's standards the game was praised at the time for its cutting-edge graphics and interactivity and if you've played it you'll know just how dire the rpg scene must have been at the time look i enjoy arena really i've actually been binging it since picking it up for this review but boy oh boy is it an intuitive regardless of this the arena was a landmark title in many ways but also quite lackluster in others it was one of the first games to combine first-person role-playing with immersive sim design but it could often feel more tedious and annoying than engrossing and fun nonetheless the foundation for an amazing rpg series was there and the development of a sequel began immediately after the surprising commercial success this may have had something to do with this kind of misleading box art but have no fear where arena failed to deliver with the scantily clad women daggerfall makes up for this with some grade a pixelated nudity after arena won a game of the year award anticipation for a sequel into the world of tamriel was running at an all-time high in september 1993 beferesa stated that campaign mods for arena were planned to be released in 1994. that never happened the title of the game itself the elder scrolls chapter 1 the arena pretty much implied that elder scrolls was intended to be a series instead of just a standalone game over on the terminator side of the business bethesda had developed an in-house engine to rival it tech's first-person shooter offerings the x-engine first displayed its modern features in terminator future shock two impressive results introducing a was d control scheme and full mouse look as well as complex fully 3d levels i've got to say man as a fan of classic shooters like star wars dark forces and of course doom quake hexen and so on this game looks awesome i actually really need to check it out with this new 3d engine le faye's concerns over arena's single plane of movement were removed they now had the tools necessary to create the elder scrolls of their dreams okay up until this point all the information given in this video is pretty much common knowledge for the hardcore elder scroll fans like myself but wanting to do this series right i've been on a journey a journey back in time i've been trolling websites deep down in the web archive rabbit hall during my adventures into the glamour of the late 90s internet i have discovered a gem an essay by fellow elder school fans frank schlob and moritz ernst jacob i'm sorry if i butchered those pronunciations this essay brings together a ton of interviews and magazine articles written over the two-year development of daggerfall including interviews from julian lafaye and other top employees at bethesda all of my sources will be in the description but i've taken out the key elements for this video after arena's release lead designer ted peterson immediately began working on the story for the second elder scores game inspired by english literature such as hamlet he aimed to develop a plot that would unfold more and more throughout the next two years additional inspiration especially for quests came from a dungeon and dragons campaign that peterson and his co-workers were playing around the time inspiration also came from other tabletop rpgs for example the idea for vampire clans in the elder scrolls came from a game of vampire the masquerade peterson aimed for a pen and paper like rpg experience with a story that wasn't determined from the beginning but would change according to your decisions like a complex series of adventures lead into multiple resolutions while arena paved the way for a generic fantasy world daggerfall would flesh out details in a more narrow geographic part of the world for his story he focused more on the history characters and the politics and intrigues between them there is no big showdown at the end peterson believed that the players should do what they want and when they want to he even read all of the fan letters written to him regarding a sequel to further guide his process the team were working hard on creating content for daggerfall and already by summer 1994 they could present the first results at that year's ces convention an early idea set the game in and around mournhold the capital city of morrowind province but this was soon scrapped with the new location of the iliac bay and its surrounding countries daggerful had no solid announcement as is typical today instead information was leaked every now and then and until befezzer decided that daggerfall was showable enough to make more buzz around it this point was reached in late 1994 and kicked off with a computer gaming world magazine cover story about daggerfall shortly after the article was published befairs to show the trailer for daggerfall at the winter ces in 1995. this trailer explained parts of the story and showed affairs to employees as well as staff of a local theater group supplemented with animated scenes rendering was done on a silicon graphics station to ensure sufficient quality publishers by that time were eager to have games in an interactive movie style with lots of cutscenes telling the story throughout the game pc games magazine pointed out that actually rpg fans weren't looking for interactive movies but instead good gameplay even so publishers tried to be fashionable and implement this new technology that was shown off in the wing commander series and would later become an integral part of the command and conquer series the first wave of reports in magazines covered almost everything that would ever be said about daggerfall in previews showing how daggerful's development was a lot more straightforward than arenas these reports however did also show just how ambitious bethesda was with daggerfall with some of the claims not being fully implemented or missing altogether these reports talk to features like 18 pre-made classes and the possibility to create your own class yep more than possible the player can pick from various advantages and disadvantages like phobias and illnesses interactive entertainment even mentioned having no legs this is kind of possible you can choose to have some pros and cons to your class but having all your limbs is indeed necessary the player can choose popularity among certain factions yes you can choose your popularity in the character creator and change them in game by performing quests the player can become a vampire that can't act in daylight but has improved stats at night being a vampire will also make people react to you correspondingly yep this was the first game to introduce vampires into the elder scrolls and they behave as you would expect buying and furnishing houses and even castles you can buy houses but finishing them was unfortunately cut content there will be more items including 15 artifacts from arena plus new ones yep and this time they're linked to daedric quests an option to import arena characters nah this one never came to fruition a beastery where you can lock up monsters before you encounter them it was planned to include this in-game but it ended up being in the manual instead a potion maker to create your own potions with ingredients yep the crafting systems are alive and well in daggerfall in-game notification icons which show if you're using a spell yet they're held up here in the top left of your screen and under water levels there are underwater sections of some dungeons which contain slaughter fish and draft but they aren't really underwater levels as such now that is a lot but for the most part these claims were correct which just goes to show how damn impressive daggerful is this game came out in 1996 and gamers would be hyped about these claims today if they were made for the elder scrolls six in an interview with peterson after the release of daggerfall he stated that there were even more planned interestingly these would actually become reality in later games in the series these included conflicts between different factions with a real world impact cities could be under siege and all the imported npcs wouldn't just be sprites but feel like living characters who would develop a relationship with the player man this goes to show just how limited le faye and peterson were by the technology of their time in their heads they were already thinking of games as grand as oblivion or skyrim but sadly for them the technology simply wasn't there yet over in the art department lead artist mark jones and louise sandoval began work on concept art these artworks and renders were used for the official daggerful website jones also created the daggerfall logo together with in-game characters and textures while sandoval would help with the hand-drawn characters and create the cover artwork joe's proposed creating the sprites from 3d models similar to donkey kong country on the snes but peterson and le faye were skeptical instead asking for them to be hand drawn like an arena as they feared them looking too origami-like not deterred by this comment jones secretly prepared some rendered sprites when he showed them to lefey and peterson they were amazed and allowed him to proceed with the renderings even so a great deal of the sprites were already drawn by hand resulting in daggerfall having a mix of rendered and hand-drawn graphics mark jones described his impression of daggerfall's art style as mixed but not surprising due to the fact that over two years of development only about three artists remained in bethesda with high employee turnover meaning that 20 different artists worked on daggerfall every now and then befaster presented a new promotional box cover for daggerfall let's be honest here box art from the 90s definitely has a unique feel to it i'm not saying this doesn't look sick because it does but could you imagine skyrim being designed like this the first artwork was given to computer game world for the january 1995 issue followed by the cover art in the ces cinematic with another cover for the interactive entertainment issue 19 as well as a cover used in an interactive demo then changing away from this blue cover to this black cover that itself had a variant where the underking had full hair and one where the hair was more wretched and in the final cover finally getting a new border while the uk got its own cover this may seem like a lot but as a graphic designer let me tell you that this many revisions is actually on the low side in the 90s fear over entertainment media causing violence in teens was at an all-time high no longer was it metal music being the spawn of the devil this time it was those god dang video games the result was the esrb rating system which would later be a cause of concern for publishers with a high rate in making them believe it may affect sales of course gta and call of duty later disprove this theory but in the 90s it was a legitimate concern and daggerfall was not able to escape these new rules as an anecdote ted peterson mentioned the rating system in a later interview i got a questionnaire for daggerfall which was obviously made for much simpler games it asked questions like is there nudity in this game yes is there bloodshed yes can an innocent person be killed yes can there be a reward for killing an innocent person also yes needless to say we got slapped with the worst rating for a game and later lieberman listed us as being one of the top 10 worst corrupters of children of course i'm sure that sold a few units thanks again to frank schlob and mowitz ernst jacob for their work in gathering together all of that information back to daggerfall's actual release and it literally improved on every single aspect of the first game better graphics sounds controls rpg mechanics you name it think of arena as the beta for daggerfall with daggerfall being the true realization of lefay's brainchild whenever you talk to a developer who has just created the first in a series and then immediately goes on to start the sequel you will often hear now we know how to make a game comparatively to daggerfall arena was clunky difficult to control had a severe lack of customizability and while it technically gave you access to the entirety of tamriel your options of actual things to do there were limited without the same deadline pressures of arena lefey and his team were able to take a full two years of development by reusing the assets already made for arena combined with the new x engine they were able to jump straight into the game design upgrading their procedural generation algorithms to generate miles upon miles of terrain and combining that algorithm with a set of pre-made city and dungeon tiles to create all of the locations the player can visit it's truly a marvel what this small team could accomplish with an option for a simple ui and built-in mouse luck a relatively unusual inclusion in an rpg for the time daggerful is the first game in the elder scrolls series that controls like a modern game making it still playable today even for newer gamers its 90 plus page manual makes clear that daggerfall wasn't simply a cash grab on success of arena but instead a huge leap forward to create a breathtaking world this manual covers just the basics the devs thought you should know before playing the game and even then it barely scratches the surface unlike arena though an in-game tutorial of sorts is included making this manual more of a handy guide for those who want to delve deeper into the game's lore and there's a lot of it here even including the family trees of the key royal families around the iliac bay marketing stouts it as the biggest world ever made and for an impressively long time this was true and while we'll cover why the compact worlds of the sequels were the right direction in hindsight it is still wondrous to be able to travel for miles on a map the size of the united kingdom 88 745 square miles in fact cities are a realistic size not simple approximations they house thousands of npcs with multiple guild options splitting the temples nightly orders major skills and so forth so large was bethesda's ambition that gaming journalists at the time worried about the effects such a lengthy development may have with concerns of feature creep due to its absolutely colossal two-year development bethesda would never make gamers wait that long again right right tiger fall was so large that it became bethesda's first game to be exclusively pressed to cd with not a single floppy disk version in sight although they did send many a floppy disk patch out because it's bethesda guys the initial release was marred by bugs and glitches galore and only to perpetuate the stereotype that they would later become infamous for no of course they didn't fix them all the game at first glance does look similar to arena but the graphics are now in full polygonal 3d albeit with flat sprites this means the player can take advantage of 360 degrees of movement and verticality and it's used to its full potential here making dungeons far bigger and labrimphian than they honestly had any right to be but we'll talk more about all that later on before the theme of morrowind and its subsequent mainstream sequels arena and especially daggerfall were like these secret gems the only hardcore crpg fans knew about the reverence for daggerfall is almost unmatched compared to other rpgs released in the mid to late 90s and that's for good reason compared to its competitors it had introduced such revolutionary life simulator and fantasy rpg mechanics that would never truly take hold in any other series to this day with rivals like baldur's gate or fallout only offering a smidge of the depth that daggerfall had julian the faye would go on to call it his most difficult project ever and he says it nearly killed him ted peterson also stated as much in his own interviews their efforts do not go unnoticed though the elder scrolls chapter 2 daggerfall is a massive achievement for 1996. some say it was too ambitious and they are absolutely right the technology just wasn't there yet but even with this fact the game makes up for it in so many other ways select your home province a tomb now so enamored by elder scroll fans that they will argue for hours the strength of one race against another why one has the better politics or abilities and others are nothing more than pompous beings or farm equipment to be exploited while the law had not yet been so strongly divisive between the select races they are all here in the world of tamriel for you to choose except for the imperials who did not have a race of their own quite yet not until morrowind anyway oh you also can't play as the orcs either but their role in this game will be integral to the story so they are at least still represented just not by the player before this however we have the game's opening following some fitting introduction logo screens with a particularly memorable fiery before logo we are greeted to this fairly basic menu screen starting a new game remains similar to all the pre-skyrim games in the series where you will be picking your race gender and the class that will define your playstyle when picking your class there are 18 unique pre-made classes to choose from each of them having their skill set and law set out for you in the manual you can also have your class chosen for you by following an in-game questionnaire this is basically the same sequence of questions as in morrowind and even later in fallout 3 as the goat exam you take in fault 101 it was kept either as a little easter egg for the old school fans all the writers really couldn't be bothered to expand on them back to daggerfall and being the elder scrolls the only real option is to design your own class from scratch and in this game there are a ton of options more than we have seen in any bethesda game since i would even say that this is one of the deepest computer role-playing character creation systems ever made sure you can't adjust your facial structure your height or the size of your package but that doesn't matter here the customizability comes not in the form of aesthetics but in the complete control of your character's talents and mind primary major and minor skills advantages weaknesses and even your reputation with the various classes of the people in the world a daggerfall class gives you a level of character customization you can only dream of in the modern games even when those games are modded to hell there are over 35 skill choices to choose from in comparison skyrim only has 18. of course we have the skills for combat magic and stealth as you'd expect but there are also skills for traversing from running and jumping to climbing and there are even linguistic skills that allow you to become fluent in a variety of hostile tongues including giantish orcish and dragonish now these may not be the wisest nor the easiest choices to make but even having the option is what makes this customization so great these language skills as they were implemented were a little useless only allowing you to pacify an enemy mob with your charm but the idea was later built upon in battle spire it's a shame that so many of these skills were axed in the later games how cool would it be to be able to talk to the enemies in morrowind or oblivion like you can with the dragons in skyrim there are also a ton of special advantages and disadvantages you can give your character to make the game easier harder or simply more interesting from immunity the forms of magic or innate talents and certain skills to being forbidden from using certain weapon types or even being deathly allergic to certain spells the depth is unmatched by most games it is here one can make their run as easy or as hard as they like personally as a bit of a veteran not to toot my own horn too much but playing for the game with huge disadvantages like the inability the cast magic really keeps the replay value high to the point where i have no shame in saying that i have made more characters than daggerfall than in any other elder scrolls game combined to balance this system out each advantage or disadvantage chosen affects how fast a player gains experience in their skill sets an overpowered and easier build will level very slowly while a heavily disadvantaged build will level up to three times faster you can even adjust your starting reputations helping you to get an early in with a specific group while appearing undesirable to others this is especially helpful if you wish to play a noble knight respected by the nobility or the robin hood type beloved by the peasantry and underworld but despised by the upper classes what i'm getting at here is that i see lots of external role playing additions for skyrim from mods to dungeons and dragon style character sheets but in daggerfall it isn't just an add-on for the hardcore but a built-in mechanic of the game proper it's a true role-playing dream allowing you to become whoever you please aesthetics wise you can choose between several pre-made sprite faces after this you can name thyself once done we are greeted with the statistics screen being influenced by early tabletop rpgs daggerfall uses a dice raw system of stat allocation where the player must roll and re-roll their stats until they are satisfied with the outcome with enough patience it is possible to get some crazy beginner stats on this screen allowing your first few hours of gameplay to be much easier than they may have been otherwise after buffing the particular skills you want to specialize in the most we finally pick our reflex adjustment this isn't something you'll see in modding games but it exists almost as a version of a difficulty slider slower reflexes allow new players or simply slower gamers to choose an option that makes combat easier but nerfs how fast you level up as a result for any experienced gamer and i use that term quite lightly when it comes to these choices i recommend high or very high for the most modern fast paced feeling result put it this way if you can play skyrim on the normal difficulty daggerfall on very high reflexes should be fine at first glance i will admit that this system can be very complex hence why such a hefty manual was included with the game but after a few run-throughs of the system along with some additional reading from said manual or with the help of a guide from say the unofficial elder scrolls pages it can be very simple to set up a perfect starting build i personally recommend a high elf melee build for your first playthrough as their racial ability of immunity to paralysis can be very helpful when fighting the more deadly enemies in the late game daggerfall's in-depth role-playing character creation is in stark contrast to skyrim's wider but more shallow approach forcing the player to enact restrictions upon themselves else they all slowly conform to the same warrior-made stealth archer build for some that may be fun but i like to role play in my role playing games and daggerfalls systems and baldies that gameplay style the best one of the most interesting mechanics that sadly didn't survive todd's wrath was the ability to traverse terrain on a vertical plane not just with levitation but via climate too making daggerfall the only elder scrolls where you can roleplay spiderman or an assassin's creed ancestor i'm actually playing an assassin's creed inspired playthrough right now and let me tell you committing a crime and escaping the town guards by climbing the nearest building and jumping along the rooftops is a level of freedom i didn't even know i wanted in an elder scrolls game once our character has been created it's time for some story exposition with a classic full motion video introduction here emperor uriel septim yes that very one i guess toupees with a fashion of choice for the royalty in the third era in a secret meeting septim gives you a mission to discover why the recently deceased king losandis of daggerfall is haunting his capital city with a spectral army and a cry for virginia as a side quest there is also a letter all you you'll hear sent to the queen of daggerfall but it never arrived with our missions in hand a player sets out by ship from the imperial city on route to the iliac bay but just as we are nearing the coast of daggerfall a freak storm hits and we find ourselves stuck in a cave with no way out so first things first yes this is one of the few elder school games where we don't start out as a prisoner we are instead one of the emperor's close friends however that doesn't mean the game doesn't start with a dungeon unlike arena we are thankfully given some basic tutorials here making this fierce encounter with the game's dungeon crawling a little bit easier when it comes to dungeons and combat this tutorial section is in part setting you up for about 60 percent of the game while i wouldn't call daggerfall a full-blown dungeon crawler this aspect of the game is a hefty one to balance this reliance on dungeons they have made them more than worth your while with loot being positively dripping off of most enemies you fight and can even be found in piles on the floor hallways caverns large open chambers thrown rooms and 100 foot drops into a watery chasm all this and more can be linked together by the procedurally generated dungeon algorithm making each dungeon unique each one feels like there will be something different at every turn albeit all with the same dark and grimy aesthetic which combined with the goliath sizes can make these things a bit of a chore to fully explore an auto-generated 3d map is given to you to help you traverse these mazes and while it may not look like it would help much at first glance when you realize that these dungeons can be 10 plus floors tall you soon realize that a map like this is really the only way they could give the player this information the map helps and teleportation spells soon become invaluable in finding the exit and due to their random nature especially when it comes to their loot unlike in morrowind oblivion and skyrim you need not worry about missing a special hidden piece of treasure if you don't fully explore them instead you can concentrate on completing whatever quest or goal brought you there and then focus on getting the hell out because of their size i think it's recommended that you don't try to fully explore these in this next section i will be referring to the dungeons as being randomly generated i want to make it clear that this isn't done on the player's end but instead was done in bethesda's offices 25 years ago so each dungeon the player visits has a unique seed from which they'll then procedurally generated from this may all sound confusing but basically it means that on multiple playthroughs you can slowly start to learn the layouts of the dungeons as they will be the same on each playthrough but as they were originally randomly generated during their creation all the flaws i mentioned relating to this still stand the randomly generated dungeons can be dauntingly large at first glance grow into seemingly endless limits and the handcrafted dungeons such as privateers hold here don't skimp on the size either often mixing in complex puzzles that i have no shame in admitting that i needed more than a few online walkthroughs to help me figure out due to the random nature of their creation all the non-story dungeons can be susceptible to areas that can be difficult or even impossible to reach between broken puzzles hidden doorways or areas requiring water breathing or levitation to even hope of reaching another problem is the monotony of them all sure there are different wall textures but other than the rare pieces of open geometry they can be painfully boring lacking the cutter and objects that help to bring dungeons to life in the later games i will say that the story dungeons actually fare better in this regard regularly containing rooms that you would expect in their environments including bedrooms broom closets and demonic ritual areas with all that said honestly dungeons can be too big and frustrating for their own good personally i recommend using the smaller dungeon option in the unity version of the game this makes them much less intimidating and frankly more fun it turns a two-hour long dungeon slog into a short 20-minute adventure which actually promotes exploration in my opinion as you're no longer worrying about whether you're heading in the completely wrong direction and wasting your time i will say while the story dungeons can also be very large because of their handcraft nature they are far more fun to explore and complete onto combat and i'll say it can feel clumsy at first the system is entirely dice roll based with the animated enemy attacks and your weapon swings being simple visual indicators and nothing more while it may look like your sword just cleave that guy's head off if the game instead plays a wushun noise then sorry but you missed if you've played morrowind before then you're already used to this and as i said verbatim in my retrospective for that game just because it's old doesn't mean it's bad it serves its purpose perfectly and lends itself to the player's feeling of progression as you level up your combat skills you will hit more and more often making the game feel more responsive and fluid as your character gains fighting experience this applies to blocking and dodging too it may feel like that dodge skill was a bad investment at first because of how little it seems to work but as you progress you'll find enemies find it harder and harder to successfully hit you the combat also uses a method of control that isn't seen too often nowadays with your weapon of choice being controlled by a swing of your mouse these wavy mouse controls can feel cumbersome at first but seeing as games like mountain blade kingdom come deliverance and chivalry still use systems similar to the one implemented here it isn't really fair to say that it's outdated per se although i myself turned it off in the unity settings to make the game feel a bit closer to the later games in the series i'm gonna be straight with anyone here who hasn't played daggerfall yet you will die a lot at first saving is essential with this game's high learning curve and lack of any in-game adjustable difficulty setting the quick save and quick load keys will become your bread and butter you see a door you quick save you turn a corner you quick save are you gonna take a jump quick save you get the gist if you're not saving every five to ten minutes out of fear you're doing something wrong daggerful is notorious for being difficult and this can sometimes even sound like an understatement with its moving platforms switches twists turns and enemies lurking out of sight daggerfall's sense of danger is unparalleled in the elder scrolls series only matched by its prequel in arena even while traveling in the wilderness you may be stopped to be interrupted by a variety of beasts including bears centaurs spriggans and even the fearsome dragonlin there is a vast amount of diverse enemies some that will be familiar to the newer fans and some that are not the daedra in particular have a completely unique roster to what fans may be used to and as i'm sure we've all come to realize with the success of the dark souls series difficulty doesn't mean it's bad it just means it's harder than skyrim or oblivion but once you get used to it you'll be right at home killing everything that comes across your path as you make your way through this first dungeon slowly learning the quirks and controls of this classic it is likely that you will level up later becoming a defining system within the franchise daggerfall introduced a complete leveling overhaul over the standard experience based system from arena rather than gaining a new level and spec it into your skills from there you instead level up your skills by actually using them like real life in a way if you swing a sword enough times you'll eventually get better at swinging said sword once a certain amount of these skills have improved you level your main level upon resting and then earn several points to bolster your attributes if you've played more window oblivion you should feel right at home with this system one thing to keep in mind is that in daggerfall you cannot master every skill instead you are limited to having only one skill at 100 level all the other ones will eventually max out at 95 percent while this leveling system isn't anything new by today's standards at the time i'm sure it must have breathed a breath of fresh air into the rpg scene when experience bars would have been dime a dozen finally after battling our way to the surface we can exit privateer's hold and find ourselves into the beautiful tundra of daggerfall province during the winter months from here we are free to do anything it brings a great sense of discovery this is what ties all buffers to games together and daggerfall is no different while every player completes the same first dungeon after that the rest is completely up to them there is an enormous number of paths for the player to go once you finally reach the end of the starting dungeon the game proper opens up and boy oh boy do i mean opens up daggerfall is the closest the elder scrolls ever got to true medieval fantasy life simulation run for hundreds of miles just to see what you come across find a town and sell off your loot and buy yourself a big old cart and now you can carry even more loot join a guild or a temple or even a nightly order complete quests earn money buy better gear learn spells create your own spells enchant your gear talk the kings and queens or seek to fulfill your psychopathic tendencies and murder the local populace and then join the dark brotherhood to make it legit if murder is not your thing why not become a kleptomaniac and make your money the nefarious way with the thieves guild are you being chased by the local gods well it's time to do a ubisoft and climb some walls and jump across some rooftops if you're more of the magical sort why not levitate the fast heights then realize you forgot your horse so why not take them with you too stash your 200 kilograms of gold into the bank and consider buying a house only to realize that the iliac bay has one hell of a housing crisis going on so why not take out a loan sure if you don't pay it back they'll send out the loan sharks after you but that doesn't matter cause you use the money to buy a boat and i highly doubt the empire is funding an extensive coast guard yeah the level of freedom daggerfall offers is a breath of fresh air compared to the increasingly linear and streamlined rpgs in the last 10 years and this is only scratching the surface of what you can do if the modern elder scrolls game is an action rpg with fantasy life simulator elements then daggerfall is a fantasy life simulator with action rpg elements thanks goes to lgr for that perfect analogy this may be daunting for some people but as someone who started this wonderful series with morrowind and always dreamed of a deeper system for truly living in the world of vardenfell i love the freedom daggerful offers in this regard you can stroll along the vast streets of a city talk to the locals visit a tavern drink all the mead you can handle and take a quest from a fellow to find a lost item deep in the cave and that is as legitimate a playstyle as making a beeline for the main quest or joining a guild regarding that main quest daggerfall has so many different activities for the player to do that the main quest actually comes to you rather than you to it after a few in-game months of learning and getting accustomed to this new world you have found yourself in you will be presented with a letter snuck onto your person if you reply to this letter then the main quest has begun and you have begun fulfilling your duties to the emperor but what if you don't want to maybe after that life-threatening storm you've decided to sword uriel and all these missions he keeps sending you on well that's fine you need not worry about it if you want to abandon it to live your life on your own terms then you are free to do so no threats of the gates of oblivion nor the return of deadly dragons daggerfall gives you so many options that it's almost impossible not to find something to do it reminds me a lot of a saying i've heard about minecraft if you can't find something to do it's because you lack imagination and i feel that really applies here too between the multiple guilds the main story the endless amount of dungeons daedric quests and countless radiant missions you're never lacking content or direction you need only luck for it i will say in the first five hours it's common to feel completely overwhelmed with everything you can do hell in my first ever playthrough years ago i spent nearly two hours just in that first dungeon fortunately compared to arena daggerfall offers quite a bit of quality of life improvements for example on the local map guilds shops and taverns are now color coded helping you to quickly identify where you want to go in these massive cities and if you do get lost asking citizens for their actions is simple although being a life sim not everyone is helpful depending on your reputation they may be downright rude to you but don't worry too much getting lost is part of the experience especially when you consider that there are nearly 15 000 locations comprised of towns cities temples farmsteads inns and dungeons and just like in real life not all of them are important in an elder scrolls first the scale of the world makes sense oh look is that the imperial city capital of the tamrielic empire most important hub of trade and politics for the whole continent population 194 this is daggerfall city capital of this tiny but still important province population around 2000 and it feels like it masses of npcs walk in the streets homes stretching as far as the eye can see and the maps show the true extent of this look at this and now look at this don't even get me started on whiterun yes i know the modding games are simply meant to be representative of the real locations but in daggerfall these feel like the real locations in all their glory scope and scale not just a limited view of reality well except for the fact that the cities are all very very flat an unfortunate problem with the procedurally generated manner in which the cities are made and of course i do understand it's the modern technological advancements in graphics that make these limitations a thing what makes this series so great is the seductive love of losing oneself in a vast open world where you can live another life and explore it all traveling to other countries for a fresh change of scenery or making a mistake in one place and having to flee to a new town so as to escape the law much like a modern befaster game the world is perfectly primed for the player to create a near endless amount of their own little stories small experiences unique to them whether it was getting caught and successfully blagging your way out of court or setting off on what should be a basic quest only for it to be far more than you bargained for the world has a great way of feeling far bigger than you full of secrets that you would never discover this humongous world with its limitless gameplay options helps to leave an impression that in some ways its smaller but better received sequels have never made sense for the longest time daggerful held the guinness world record for the largest single-player world ever developed featuring vast terrain including mountains forests plains tundra deserts islands open ocean and tranquil bays it's difficult to truly grasp how immersive the world feels until you actually play the game just looking at it here it may just look like an outdated 3d world but when you're there completing quests really living the life of an adventurer in high rock and hammerfell it pulls you in only as an elder scrolls game can sure you need some rose tinted glasses to look past most of the limitations of a game designed in 1996 but a lot of features are so unique to daggerfall that they don't feel as old as you might think one aspect that hasn't aged the day is the ambience a word that indigo gaming used beautifully to summarize what makes daggerfall feel so cosy to play by the way he has some great videos on this game so go check them out but i'll paraphrase the key points regarding ambience here there is always a sense of fable and imagination surrounding every location you find yourself in the same classic medieval fantasy feel one evokes when playing a tabletop game of dungeons and dragons or when watching a classic like excalibur or henry v from peaceful farms the ghostly witch's covens daggerful's sense of both visual and audio ambiance instantly transports you to its world immersing you into an environment that on the surface level shouldn't be able to graphically the game cannot even compare to 2002's morrowind never mind oblivion or skyrim yet its atmosphere can pull you in just as well as those titles if bethesda has one talent that bans all of their fan favorite releases together it would be their mastery over ambience and atmosphere when it comes to world design don't think you're only limited to playing in your human or elven form however as a series first you can also contract various life-altering diseases that give you unique powers and abilities of course this is vampirism and lycanthropy as seen in morrowind and skyrim but there's one more in daggerfall too where you can become a wereball these three forms are the ultimate mode of roleplaying as they come with some very heavy disadvantages with only a few advantages luckily there is a cure for all three of them so if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself succumbing to the diseases you need not worry about a ruined playthrough vampires even come with unique bloodlines and quests tied to them a style of play that was expanded upon in morrowind but then sadly abandoned after that for the lore fans out there kiersten the daedric prince can bestow upon you his unique ring giving you the power to transform into a werewolf at your own discretion which brings us on to the daedric artifacts these were already a thing in arena but now they have more law attached to them and they're tied to unique daedric quests a format that has stuck with the series since these artifacts vary from deadly weapons to books that can instantly improve your stats summoning said princes requires the player to discover hidden covens of witches or contact the various guild specific summoning experts but you must do it on a certain day for the daedric lords are very particular about when they may be summoned to the mortal realm later in this analysis i will be taking a deeper look into these quests as well as the various factions and guilds of the iliac bay the only downside or upside depending on how you see it is that this game does demand a lot of your time a normal playthrough can easily rack up over 50 to 100 hours especially if you're keen to advance through the guilds this may not sound like a lot to many of you but it is something to still keep in mind one thing is for sure though gamers in 1996 were definitely getting their money's worth in terms of replayability i've made it clear how massive this world is so of course a fast travel system is essential and even this is much deeper compared to the later games on the surface it works like oblivions or skyrims but includes some mechanics to bolster the roleplay elements no longer are you teleporting with some unknown amount of time passing instead you know exactly how long and how expensive each trip is with variables allowing you to change this traveling recklessly is faster but you won't heal your health magicka or stamina as you do so staying in inns is more expensive but does allow that passive healing and you won't be ambushed by the monsters during your trip that may take a fancy at your juicy flesh if you were to risk camping in the wild and traveling by land or ship will drastically change the length of your journey if you are traveling to sentinel from daggerfall for example it is far faster to sail over the ocean as the crow flies than it is to take a month-long trip around the coastline on foot this isn't just window dressing either as most quests will be time sensitive with limits ranging from a few days to an entire year so you need to take your travel time into account or you may just find yourself completing a quest and traveling back to claim your award only to arrive too late and instead miss out on that sweet sweet money this may all sound great but there is one main side effect of this staggering amount of content by even today's standards and that is that a large bulk of this world was made possible through procedural generation leading it to feel generic and empty outside of those key locations dotted on your map this is especially true when you compare it to the smaller scale sequels unity mods have gone a long way in addressing these issues with modifications like warm ashes rural roads and faster real-time traveling making traverse in this massive world a more modern and interesting affair than the fast travel system the vanilla game released with it was in part this procedural generation that would go on to cause a rift within bethesda with some of daggerfall's developers wanting the series to become more roguelike in nature capitalizing further on the more advanced procedural generation algorithms and their limitless quest systems after some internal staff movements and the departure of key members from the daggerfall team bethesda instead focused on smaller static worlds with more time spent on finessing the quests and the stories to be told within said world this led us of course to morrowind and the template for every bethesda game after 2002 and while my love for morrowind is as strong as for daggerfall i wish ted peterson julian lafayette and eric hebeling all the best with their new project the wayward realms i for one i'm very excited to see what they have in store for us you can keep updated with that particular project through their youtube channel and various social medias i'll leave a link to that in this video's description in this part we're going to be taking a deeper look into the factions guilds and the non-story related quests that daggerfall has to offer and let me tell you there are a ton of them like any elder scrolls you may be familiar with quests are a big part of daggerfall and outside of dungeon crawling i would say they are the biggest part and seeing as a large amount of the quest lead to a dungeon you could argue that they are one and the same but stop right there that is actually a misconception made by some people just like in arena many of the quests don't require leave in town whatsoever instead offering a respite from the action and some solace for the weaker character builds these quests are varied in form content and complexity and can be sorted into several different types of objectives and styles of adventure they will take you on besides the major storyline quests all quests in daggerfall except a very select few use random generation to vary where the player may have to go who they may have to find or what they may be looking for a modern example of these would be the end game radiant quests in skyrim although daggerfall offers a far larger pool of these quests to choose from and with more varied objectives than the offering from that game in total without any quest mods installed vanilla daggerfall comes with 227 distinct quests a pretty hefty number even when compared to a modern elder scrolls game they are available from several sources and differ wildly in tone style and time required to complete them the main sources of these quests will be from the various guilds and factions in the game in general the objectives of the quests will reflect the interest and goals of the quest giver the overall loop is the same as pretty much any rpg ever but in daggerfall there are a few more fail states than you may be used to the majority go like this find an npc with a quest accept said quest travel to the required location complete the objective and then return to the npc for your award you can fail at almost every stage of this perhaps you waited too long or travel too slowly and now the quest has run out of time making the travelling worthless and costly perhaps the objective is too well defended or if you're seriously unlucky place in an area you are simply too low level to access the quest timer may even run out on your way back to the original quest giver now that one really hurts some quests even have faction disputes built into them perhaps you have been tasked with protecting and escorting an npc on behalf of the fighters guild but during your mission some alleged members of the bank of daggerfall stop you with a warrant offering you goal to give the npc to them accept their offer and you will have earned more gold but will have sacrificed your reputation within the guild even risking being excommunicated all together if you decline the thug's offer however they will attack and with greater numbers possibly killing a weaker character build essentially while quests may be simple on the surface it's these little stories and flavor thrown into the gameplay that helps to keep them diverse especially if you're already in that imaginative headspace needed to build upon in this dnd inspired livestream some quests can even be completed in multiple ways given more choice and role playing options than you may expect for such a retro title whenever the player engages in a quest for any faction reputation with that fashion is impacted what is less obvious is the impact various quests may have on reputation with other factions quests accepted from upper class nobles for example often involve illegal smuggling which adversely affects the player's reputation with the thieves guild who want all illegal activities to go directly through them this means the player has to be careful with accepting certain jobs so as not to step on the toes of a guild they may already be a part of often quests will require you to find the location of a particular person oh and by the way now would be a good time to mention that there is of course no quest markers in daggerfall more when fans can rejoice all quests are logged in your quest log scroll aka your journal ironically though you won't have any obscure directions asking you to turn right after the third rock you see instead the instructions you are given are far more literal go to this town and find this person okay first thing let's travel to that town well it looks like hundreds of people live here how am i going to find this one person by asking the locals of course and yep you've guessed it not everyone will know who they are i mean that makes sense right this is one of those life sim elements of daggerfall popping up once again not everyone can help you so ask around eventually someone will know the guy you're looking for most will give you a vague direction of where that house is but if you press them enough and by that i mean repeatedly yell the question at their face then they may eventually mark the house on your map making your life a little bit easier just don't think about how terrified that npc must be of you now before i go into the guild system i may as well explain each type of quest you can find in daggerfall and contrary to some beliefs i've seen spouted online there are more quest types than many think i've seen some say most quests are just fetch quests but they are more nuanced than just that there are rescue quests that require the player to find and save an innocent npc these are usually given by noble or merchant characters the story goes that a faction in the game has taken a hostage and you being a valiant adventurer are just the person needed to go and save them these quests involve gathering information tracking down leads and then venturing forth to the final confrontation you gather the information by asking around town it's here that spec and into streetwise or other such dialogue based skills will become handy at the confrontation stage the player is usually offered a choice ransom or fight opponents at this stage are usually humans and are generally about the same level as the character think barbarians knights archers etc this type of quest poses a hidden danger though success often means a drop in reputation with the faction that had taken the hostage normally the thieves guild or the dark brotherhood a character that belongs to either of these guilds can lose enough reputation that they may even be expelled from them an expulsion from either one of these is permanent then there's the arena style of quest where the hero of daggerfall becomes a postman hey i didn't say every quest was revolutionary these delivery quests are often given by nobles and the thieves guild the player has to take item a to person b and then collect a reward sometimes this is spiced up by having the player go get the item themselves or have an enemies trying to intercept delivery and kill you most of these quests can be considered as smuggling operations hence the thieves guild's interest if you're lucky trouble can be avoided by moving quickly the enemies spawn slowly and can often be outrun if the quest does come from the thieves guild itself you should avoid city guards as they may intercept you causing you to lose reputation with the guilt as mentioned earlier doing these types of quests for anyone but the thieves guild also lowers your reputation with that faction in most cases some quests require you to find a specific item okay you got me yes these ones are literally fetch quests most of the time this means going to a certain dungeon and opening every door looking for that select item ingredient piece of armor or whatever else the random generation came up with the only frustrating part of this particular quest style is that you can't cheat it like in morrowind if someone wanted a pair of trousers in morrowind for example you could acquire them however you wanted by looting enemies or simply buying them from a tailor in daggerfall you have to get the exact one in that dungeon no other item of the same kind counts sadly assassination quests are just that find a person and kill them the location will vary depending on which faction gave the quest the fighter's guild will be more about finding a particular bandit leader or an evil wizard and then go into a dungeon and killing them there whereas dark brotherhood will instead have the player finding a poor soul's house in town and striking them down in front of their families thief quests are self-explanatory and mainly given by the guild of the same name go to the location in town sneak around and steal the item then make your way back to the contact while avoiding any gods some quests require you to bloody up an individual to send a message maybe they've been bad mouth in your guild or simply haven't been donating to the weekly temple rally whatever it may be it's your job to find them and give them a good beat down this quest is harder than it sounds as it can be unfortunately a little too easy to overdo it and accidentally murder that person meaning higher level characters may have to switch to their bare fists in hope that they don't go a little bit overboard finally there are protection quests these involve guarding an area for a certain amount of time whether it be standing in as a bouncer at the end for the night or waiting to ambush an attack on your local mages guild that the leader received a tip about that mostly covers the majority of the random quests or at least the ones i have played in my hundreds of hours but it's important to remember that each guild packages them up differently add and again to that ambience sure a fetch quest is a fetch quest but finding an ingredient for a special potion that may save a woman's life is different from recovering a lost family heirloom at least from a role play standpoint even if they are the same gameplay-wise one point to remember is that generally quests that involve dungeon crawling are easily the longest but provide the greatest opportunity for rewards and skill advancement the thieves guild for example has no mission that takes place outside of town great for the underpowered build but not so great when you consider that you won't be advancing your combat skills but hey maybe you don't want to use combat whatsoever at least from a roleplay standpoint daggerfall supports that with its town-based quest options the main negative of these random quests and it's quite a big one is that while they are packaged differently there is a lack of personality or life given to them past one or two paragraphs you get upon taking the quest there isn't any dialogue or world building around them it's a product of its time if you will to get 200 plus quests with the depth of a later elder scrolls game in a world as large as this would simply just be too much to ask for 1996. the character actors in some places the gaps have been filled extensively with the letter system but this can be relied upon a bit too heavily you'll find that you are regularly snuck letters onto your person that contains an information dump regarding your current quest and while this is cool at first it does wear thin after your hundredth quest and not to mention the fact that our character is completely oblivious to the thousands of street urchins just sneaking letters onto us all the time one advantage that the unity version offers when it comes to accepting these quests from guilds is that you are given the ability to choose your desired task from a list this way you can pick your favorite or do each one in order to experience every available option in the vanilla game they were offered to the player at random leading to the possibility to never play a certain type of quest if you were unlucky or even be given the same quest over and over and over right at this point quest doesn't even sound like a word anymore so let's get on to the guilds that offer them there are over 20 different joinable guilds in daggerfall including fan favorites such as the fighters guild and mages guild thieves guild and the dark brotherhood but we also have nightly orders and temples as joinable factions with a temple for each of the eight divines yes i said eight divines no the falmouth haven't got the daggerfall don't worry but without the soul of the underking the guy on the box art type of septum soul wasn't quite able to take his mantle and become talos hence why he only crops up after the events of this game's main story more on the main quest and all that lore later in this analysis guild function similarly to the later games in the series where the player joins at the lowest rank possible and slowly moves themselves up earning more gravitas in the guild with various rewards opening up once you advance further within the organization the system more closely resembles what fans may be used to in morrowind than in oblivion and skyrim however not only is your position decided by the quest that you complete but also by your skills you may complete tons of quests for the fighters guild for example but if you are a low level in any of the specific skills that they require then you will never be offered the ability to advance unlike in morrowind daggerfall unfortunately decided to pot this information in the manual leading to a lot of players not realizing this you can find out all about the specific requirements for your chosen guild using the uesp outside of skill requirements your guild rank is also determined by your reputation this goes up by completing quests and goes down by failing them it can also go down over time by simply ignoring the guild for too long all for a variety of the reasons discussed previously in regards to the quest related faction affinities advancing in rank within a guild offers a variety of advantages and services you cannot get outside of them these include but are not limited to level trainers daedric summoning information services special vendors for potions spells gear and soul gems crafting services for potion making spell making and enchantments identification services to find out what your enchanted items do free high-level gear free accommodation and free travel not every guild offers all of these however you won't be finding a spellcrafter in a nightly order for instance so it's not uncommon to join multiple guilds to gain access to as much content as possible that's the overview out of the way now for the nitty gritty of each guild type starting with the most generic but everyone's favorite rat extermination faction the fighters guild the fighters guild are a sophisticated mercenary surface often hired out as guards escorts and occasionally on more covert missions in the iliac bay the fight fighters guild is often essential for getting things done leading to a decent variety of possible assignments for the player some quests involve killing creatures that have made their way into houses killing giants or harpies in their holes or protecting people against danger not the shock you hear but yes every quest from the fighters guild requires fighting this is also the only guild that has a non-random quest the lord kavar quest series which may i add is a good look into how non-random quests could have been implemented into daggerfall i'm not sure why there weren't more maybe because they were too buggy too difficult to implement or simply because of time constraints but this is a pretty damn good series of missions however in the vanilla game it is unfortunately infamous for spawning a seemingly unending wave of assassins just another reason to check out the unity version the fighters guild operates out of guild halls in towns across the iliac bay region these guild hulls can be easily seen on the map from their distinctive square shape and they normally tower over most town houses being three stories tall and of a basic medieval style construction fighter skills are ideal for a character that is specializing in combat and heavy armor the guild trainer offers training in the skills seen on screen and the guild offers free accommodation on its top level most medium-sized towns will have a fighter guild too meaning that you're never far from your next assignment the smith will also repair your armor and weapons for free giving you another cost-saving benefit outside of the lord cavall quest the quest can be a little dry and not inspired but they are great for beginners with the extermination quests being ideal for grinding your weapon skills against low-level bats and rats in town without having to go into a deadly dungeon the mages guild is a medium-sized multi-provincial organization dedicated to the study and application of magicka this guild is the official center of magical study in tamriel and has existed for at least a thousand years and is one of the few guilds that was even available in arena applicants must show a minimum of magical ability before being granted admission although the guild does offer limited services to non-members unlike with the college of winterhold entry exam here it is instead just a skill check requiring level 20 in at least one magical skill the mages guild offers many magical services members and non-members alike may purchase spells or have enchanted items identified for them depending on your rank you may also receive training in the various schools of magic use the library and read up on the law buy soul gems purchase or create magical items and spells summon daedric princes and use teleportation services to travel instantly across countries this makes the mages guild the best guild to join when it comes to member-specific services the quests for the mages guild are some of the most varied in the game too they can involve simple quests such as casting a spell like open on a chest or sleep on a restless npc all the way to protecting the guild fetching an item or killing an evil mage many of the mages guild quests also have you help out or step on the toes of other factions so tread carefully when it comes to reputations the guild holes for the mages guild come in a variety of building shapes and interior designs and while these can vary wildly from each other they can generally be identified from their large blocky shapes on the map in my opinion this is the best guild and you will be able to join even as a non-mage build as you will likely want to spec into mysticism for the recall spell something you'll be needing if you wish to ever reach the entrance of a dungeon again the thieves guild is the official organization of burglars thugs and prostitutes yeah you hear that right i mean the lusty argonian made had to get its protagonist from somewhere the thieves guild is functionally similar to any other guild it's just that their particular industry is crime in practically every borough hamlet and city state in daggerfall the professional criminals have banded together for mutual protection like other guilds they offer special benefits to members such as bribing officials and judges allowing you to escape jail if you're unlucky enough to get caught the location of their headquarters in any town is always a secret only being known to those that have already passed the initiation trial into the organization to join the fees guild the player must pick 10 or more pockets successfully or they must break into a store using the lock picking skill soon after your exploits you will receive a letter briefing you on a trial you must pass to be let into the fold most of the quests for the thieves guild will unsurprisingly involve stealing an item although you may sometimes be helping a guild mate or smuggling contraband the main advantage for the thieves guild is that no quest uses a dungeon allowing the player to rise for the ranks without risking death at the hand of any number of ghastly beasts following the nefarious route and we have the dark brotherhood the unofficial assassins guild of tamriel the dark brotherhood is a mysterious organization often hired to carry out assassinations its members have a reputation as maniacs and daedra worshippers this is not altogether false either in fact some describe the brotherhood as a religious group of sorts devoted to their patron the daedric prince mephala and headed by a mysterious figure known only as the night mother to join the dark brotherhood you must kill at least three innocent citizens or 15 town gods this being by far the most gruesome entry task beware that each country in the iliac bay has a reputation system of its own if you become too well known as a ruthless killer due to say some not so stealthy assassinations then you may eventually reach the point where you will be attacked on sight the dark brotherhood's quests are usually standard assassinations such as the execution of freelance assassins and their employers or the execution of former members of the brotherhood who failed their tasks i'll say here that these two guilds in particular are maybe some of the most disappointing for the newer fans both guilds receive far more love and due diligence in the later games and while it is cool to see some of the lore already present here playing through these guilds is much more straightforward than the quest you will receive from the other factions that doesn't make evil characters not fun to play mind you it just means that you'll have to rely more so on your own gameplay to make the stealing killing and escaping a consistently enjoyable affair now for the most medieval faction group nightly orders these exist in all regions of the iliac bay they are the legions of knights who do the bidding of their regional ruler this is how the kings and queens access the warriors that fight their battles for them knights are the best trained and sport the shiniest gear and they have some of the best benefits including free stays at inns across the known world which also means free travel and when you reach the max rank you are given access to a free player home and let's not forget the three pieces of high level armor for each rank you progress while you may only join one nightly order they are effortless to join as long as you pass a skill check the rewards for performing quests for the order include increased reputation with the region's commoners and nobles rather than any monetary payment so while you won't get rich quick here unlike those dirty fighters guild mercenaries you will be renowned for being the noble knight that you are in addition you can improve your reputation with your order if you do quests for other nightly orders meaning you aren't just locked to the region your order operates in while the armor and free travel are great unfortunately nightly orders offer little else outside of that no crafting services and no special vendors nor training in terms of quests they are somewhat similar to the fighters guild but there are far more rescue missions involved for the pious among you we have the temples of the eight divines of tamriel much like likely orders you may only join a single temple i guess praising multiple divines wasn't quite in fashion yet temples provide benefits and services such as free healing disease curing skill training and dangerous summoning like with the other guilds some of these are locked behind the need to be a higher rank in the guild but for the non-religious characters you can still access the free disease kirin even as a non-member also some temples have exotic nude dancers this of course makes them superior to all the other factions case closed temple quests are a mix of fighting and token sometimes you will be simply finding a character to ask them for a donation and other times you'll be on a mission to uncover and murder a raven heretic who threatens to dissuade your divine's message so yeah that's all the joinable guilds quite a few more role-playing options than in skyrim like i don't mean to keep comparing this game to that one but it's hard not to what with them being in the same franchise i will say it's clear to see where the inspiration for more wins multiple guilds came from and it's a shame that so many options such as the religious factions have been lost in the goal of streamlining it's no secret that many have been burned by just how simplistic and dry the companions and college of winterhold felt and while daggerfall is certainly no comparison when it comes to epic quest and storytelling the ability to role play outside of a basic mage or common warrior is welcome before we take a look at the daedra there is first another type of quest those being the random quests when you ask around for work in town you'll eventually be pointed to an npc that offers you one of these quests upon completing or failing these quests you gain or lose reputation with the faction to which the quest giver belongs this could be for example the merchant faction which while not joinable directly does affect the prices you are offered a low reputation with merchants will lead to more expensive purchases similar for ins and the like random quests aren't as interesting as guild quests in my opinion and generally lack the same writing and window dress and that give the gill quests their personality daedric princes and their lore are a constant fan favorite and they found their first introduction here while the artifacts that many associated with them have been around since the first installation it is in daggerfall where a unique quest was given by these godlike figures to go retrieve them daedric princes are not easy to summon however being fickle beings that prefer to spend their time in the realms of oblivion rather than tamriel they can be summoned by the masters of the daedric arts who can be found in the mages guild dark brotherhood and oddly in temples a bit of a law oversight when looking at the game from the lens of the later games and their more developed lore but before this retcon it made sense there are historical christian texts that involve demon summoning with the basic idea being that an incredibly righteous and holy soul can force an evil being to do their bidding with this in mind temples do endanger summoning make sense especially when you consider ted peterson's influences of classic english literature which would of course include christian texts summoning a daedric prince is eye wateringly expensive costing as much as 150 000 gold pieces and only goes down in price depending on your reputation with the guild who is offering you the service and another caveat is that the princes will only be summoned on a specific day giving the player a very small window in which to successfully summon the prince that they desire if you would like to embark on molag bal's quest for example in hope of obtaining his famed mace then you must summon him on the 20th of even in star no other date will work even more frustratedly is that if it's raining outside or you are simply unlucky shelgarth the mad god may instead essentially [ __ ] block you as a joke forcing you to wait a whole year this is some pretty cool law that ties in nicely to just how pedantic and temperamental the daedra can be although it is entirely understandable why such hurdles were removed in the later games and after all this the submarine can still just fail all that money down the drain and to make it worse a failed summoning will result in waves of daedra foes coming after you it's unforgiving but hey the teacher don't quite like being ripped from their comfy oblivion homes into tamriel so can you blame them if you're wondering how the hell people back in 1996 even knew how to do this the summoning days were hinted at in the in-game book invocation of azura but as many people tend to ignore these books it's not surprising that daedric quests fell under many people's radar fortunately there is one other way to summon them that won't require the player to grind their way up to high ranks in those factions these are the witches of the iliac bay which is covens in daggerfall remain a mystery to many players even after all this time they are rarely mentioned in game and their locations are not posted on the map instead be in some of the few locations that can only be traveled to manually the first time with no fast travel options although the option to travel there does appear after discovering them fanular covering can be difficult but there are directions accessible on the uesp and other online guides there are 14 witches covers in the iliac bay and all of their major gathering places can be found in the wilderness maps to the witches covens can rarely drop in dungeons so if you really don't want to use a guide this is one of the only in-game ways to discover them summoning danger in a witch's coven is slightly different from summoning in a temple or the mages guild covens will only summon a random daedra no matter what the day is but will summon them whenever the player requires this is obviously extremely useful if you just missed a summoning day for a daedra and don't want to wait a whole year each daedric prince will require a certain service from any mortal that dare appeal to them if the mortar completes this duty to the satisfaction of the daedric prince they will grant the player possession of their legendary artifact if a summoning is successful but you decline the quest once again waves of daedric foes will begin appearing to punish you for free in-game hours it's pretty clear that these demigods aren't to be messed with each day request is unique but still follows the general quest structures i mentioned earlier for the most part they are written quite accurately to how the prince's arbitrate to this day showing that much of the law we associate with the elder scrolls was already well cemented by this time much like the later games the artifacts are great end game loot and a good goal for any high level player is looking for something to do as mentioned in episode 2 daggerfall allows the player to be infected by and to become a vampire and a werebeast and while we're beasts do have some quests namely the hero scene daedric quest and the quest for a cure it is the vampire form that comes out on top here if you've played morrowind you may be aware of vampire clans and just how unfortunately underdeveloped and forgotten they felt daggerfall is much the same sad to say much like that sequel the ideas behind them sound great in daggerfall there are multiple vampire bloodlines all around the game world and depending on where you infected will depend on which one you belong to each bloodline comes with unique buffs and debuffs adding some variety for the player who crave some blood sucking action once you've completed your transformation you will now be taken into the fold so to say your vampire brethren will send you tasks via letters on a semi-regular basis your first mission will be to prove your allegiance via a right of acceptance in which the player must find and kill a member of a lesser bloodline unlike with other factions you can't ask for a quest from any kind of guildmaster nor is there any progression system tied to your bloodline definitely a missed opportunity to have some level of progression behind this hidden group vampire quests are fairly underdeveloped compared to other guilds with there being far less of them to choose from but much like the major skill quest the writing behind them is pretty good giving the player decent motivations as to why they are doing what they are doing curing your vampirism like every vampire quest also comes in the form of a letter the only way to beat your eternal disease is to find your blood father the vampire who infected you and then kill them killing your blood father will severely damage your reputation with your previous vampire bloodline but this is a small price to pay for being rid of vampirism once and for all and that covers every quest offering faction in daggerfall if anyone has the goal to say daggerfall is empty just send them this video because this game is filled to the brim with quests sure they aren't epic or overly scripted but they give the player a ton of content to complete for 1996 the amount to do is simply mind-boggling a cornerstone of modern elder scrolls is its crafting systems but did you know that these were first finding their feet in daggerfall while the player is not able to craft completely unaided they can utilize the aid of experts within the mages guild temples and the dark brotherhood there are three methods of crafting and we'll start with the spell maker which is honestly one of the most in-depth magic crafting systems i have ever seen even more so than the system so many including myself phone over in morrowind the spell maker is a powerful tool and is the first benefit you gain when joining the mages guild using the spell maker you can create custom spells with up to free effects depending on which spell effects are selected many parameters of these custom spells can be adjusted to a shockingly large degree allowing one to create powerful magic that can cause great harm apply debilitating debuffs or apply abilities onto the player including levitation teleportation and water breathing to name just a few the player can make spells far more powerful than what can be conventionally purchased as long as you have the magical prowess to cast them to customize your creations further different icons in various colors can also be chosen for each spell to appear on the heads-up display while they're active while these are unimportant for instantaneous spells they can be useful to color code icons for various types of spells with lasting durations next we have the potion maker a special service that can be found at most temples and within the dark brotherhood unlike spellcrafting this is an entirely free service for members of the appropriate rank a potion can be made in one of two ways either by mixing the ingredients that you have discovered on your travels via looting dead enemies or finding treasure piles in dungeons or simply by buying them from the appropriate vendors this method involves a level of trial and error as you discover which ingredients do what when combined the next way and by far the easiest is to use a recipe again these are discovered via loot or in stores as long as you have the ingredients a recipe will automatically combine them for you creating the potion of your desire potions are of course very powerful items allowing one to cast all sorts of magical effects on themselves without having to expend any magicka which can be essential for characters that have not specked into a magical based build sadly it is only possible to create single effect potions no potions with combined effects can be created nor can any created potions be sold to any vendor meaning that this isn't an easy exploit to make money but it is free so that's still a huge plus finally there is enchanting which is the hardest to access requiring the player to be the fifth rank in the even the major skill or the temple of giuliano's to gain access to the item maker enchanting is fairly simple you choose an item you wish to enchant add the appropriate effect and pay the fee you can choose up to a total of 10 advantages or disadvantages to apply to your weapon armor clothing or any other mundane item such as a gem or even holy candles although the more effects you add the more painful the price becomes unlike in later games not all enchantments require a soul instead that in itself is a unique style of enchantment far more powerful than the basic ones the mages can create a soul-bound enchantment causes the enchanted item to be bound to a non-human creature's soul the more powerful the creature the more powerful the enchanted item may be moreover certain creatures souls apply additional advantages and disadvantages to items enchanted with them for example an item enchanted using a daedra lord's saw makes the enchantment deadly potent against any danger that you're fighting but in return it causes the player to take damage in holy places if the item is equipped not to mention that making such a powerful enchantment will cost 80 000 gold pieces another unique aspect of these soul bound enchantments is that if the enchanted item breaks the creature's soul is released causing the creature to be reborn and begin attacking you you can imagine how terrifying that can be if you're using an extremely potent soul like a vampire agents crafted in daggerfall may not be as hands-on as in the later games but it still fills its role pretty well given a creative outlet for players to create some nutty overpowered spells and items as long as you have the reputation and gold to do so of course as with daedric artifacts this helps give some needed end game content and goals for the player to pursue in the next section we'll be taking a look at the best part of this game and that is its story a story that is far better written than it had any rights to be i would even argue that it is one of the most interesting stories told in the elder scrolls so far we will be analyzing the main quest including all of its branching paths and exploring some of the law associated with its epic tale of political intrigue as the main powers of the iliac bay scrambled to control tiber septin's legendary weapon of mass destruction the elder scrolls a series of vast law and history but not one many associate with amazing plots sure moorwind was pretty interesting especially with its final godly confrontation but then that formula was reused two more times leading to the newer stories boiling down to a simple narrative of bad things happening due to a bad guy and it is now our job as the protagonist to stop it in morrowind it was dig off earth and his corpus disease in oblivion it was mehru's dagon and a daedric invasion and in skyrim well that one was obvious arena being the first in the series didn't exactly set the bar high it was as generic as generic can be so when i said that daggerfall has a story far better than it should have earlier in this video series it was because of these comparisons honestly in my opinion it simply blows the rest of the games out of the water with only more wind and its crazy almost civvy lore threat holding a candle to it first it's important to outline how the player character interacts with the story in every other elder scrolls you play a hero a named character that goes onto fame fortune and even godhood as they adventure through and eventually master their respective game worlds in daggerfall you play a nobody not someone who starts from nothing and eventually attains glory you are someone the history books will mostly forget about there won't be any grand tales about your adventure or how you save the world from disaster but don't worry this doesn't mean your outcome isn't great arguably the agent as he will be known has as large of an impact if not a larger one than any other protagonist to grace those ancient scrolls there is some speculation that the agent may be the eternal champion the playable character from arena and while this fits with the player being one of the emperor's closest friends it would be likely [Music] and while this is only the second game in the series i think it's safe to assume that this also applies here we'll start with how the game begins we find ourselves alone with empire uriel septim vii and his trusted imperial battle mage akato the leader of the high council akato flexes his basic knowledge of fire magic and our secret meeting with the strongest power in tamriel begins we are a close and trusted friend of the emperor we know little more than that but we do know that he believes we are the person for the job he has a concerning matter in one of the more unruly parts of the empire the iliac bay encompassing high rock northern hammerfell and the rothgaryan mountains has found itself with a dilemma one of its largest cities daggerfall the capital city of a mighty kingdom of the same name is currently haunted by none other than its previous ruler king lysandis who with his spectral army terrorizes his citizens at night screaming [Music] daggerfall was a close and trusted ally to the empire it's important to remember that at this time septim's control of the empire wasn't at its strongest he had only recently been saved from the oblivion prison that jagar fan had sent him to in arena and when he was saved by the eternal champion he returned to a fractured unhappy and weakened state of affairs due to thon's incompetence as a ruler so when septim's strongest ally in high rock is killed in battle it's a big deal septon wants us to investigate this haunting find why the king has tormented his city and bring it to an end there is also the small and seemingly unimportant matter of a letter sent by the emperor to the queen of daggerfall uriel claims that this letter was of a sentimental value and that if we are to come across it we should destroy it we don't know this yet but this is the real reason the emperor has sent us we aren't given any more information regarding this letter but given the emperor's concerns in the meeting one imagines imagery of perhaps some sort of high-class affair among nobles but the truth is far more dangerous while it isn't clear at the beginning of the game the emperor has been deliberately lying to the agent not only in why we are performing the tasks set before us but also on our importance concerning the safety of the empire itself of course noah in uriel's recent history it makes sense why he would be so cautious he was just betrayed by jagathon only some years ago a subject he previously believed to be loyal so even in telling the agent how much he trusts them he doesn't really at least not fully with the meeting concluded the agent set sail from the imperial city heading for daggerfall where they are struck by a storm off the coast and find themselves trapped in a dungeon to the north of the kingdom first things first there is no a to b with one quest after another instead we are left to our own devices for a large part of the game with the player being trusted to find the next quest themselves which can make some aspects of the story confusing when trying to work out what is a randomly generated quest and what is a main quest that we should actually try to digest and remember this is one of my main critiques even this chart from the uesp doesn't do it justice as it implies that some of these quests are linked and while they may be from a storytelling standpoint a lot of them are still dotted around the world and can be easily missed without the help of a guide this is where the in-game player journal could have been far better and was made so in the sequel in daggerfall however it doesn't do a good enough job of logging the important story beats that have happened which made my first playthrough of the story quite anti-climactic as i found myself near the end with little memory of what had led me there i knew i had completed a lot of important quests but trying to tie them up into an understandable narrative in my head was quite difficult it's far too easy to play a mission out of sequence leaving you confused on what had just happened or what it was about you can even miss some of the optional quests which contain vital lore information that make your later decisions far more impactful this is where the technological limitations of this 25 year old game become an issue once more there are a lot of npcs to talk to and remember and due to these limitations they simply are not as memorable as they could have been in a modern game we all remember y'all ball goof for example either because of his voice acting animations or design but in daggerfall they are all flat sprites attached to a text box and while the art is great it's hard to attach a personality to someone when they all have your inner reading voice as their dialogue and unlike a book we aren't given enough information to help us form any memorable connection to these characters there is also a lot to learn about for some this sense of discovery is not only a breath of fresh air but exciting as you delve into the libraries learning all about the world and its history but for others it can be overwhelming there are multiple countries wars kings and so on to remember and understand it doesn't help that a lot of this law is hidden within books and while this is a continuing trend within the elder scrolls i feel that the newer titles have done a better job in letting the player experience the law through the world you don't have to read a book in more wins to understand that racism is a prevalent theme for example there is also the issue of the multiple goals given to the player it may only be two at first lysandes and the letter but the depth of these issues soon grows as the story progresses and without visual guides such as this some quests can be confusing in relation to your current goal you may think you are making a breakthrough in discovering the plot of lysander's death only to find yourself doing a mission regarding the letter although this may be more due to my own faults regarding reading comprehension this is where playing the game as an old-school tabletop rpg becomes important on my second playthrough i instead used the aid of a guide alongside my own real world notebook writing about my discoveries what i had noticed in the lore box how i had discovered the two of the same book exist both with entirely different accounts of the same event how certain characters interact with each other or even lying to our face about the motivations of another this is where i first saw the brilliance of daggerfall's writing now could it be told better 100 percent but the technology was for sure a limiting factor here as well as time constraints as i researched more into the law using the official strategy guide the daggerfall chronicles and online resources it becomes clear that there is quite a bit of cut content regarding the story which means that on paper the law sounds amazing but in game it can feel a little underwhelming at times quests also adhere closely to the structures i had gone over earlier in this series so if you aren't a fan of the style of question that daggerfall offers the main quest itself outside of the story it tells won't be very exciting but if like me you love a bit of political intrigue and good old 90s dungeon crawling then this is the place for you especially with the handcrafted story dungeons which feel far more real and interesting than their randomly generated brothers before we get to the main quest it's important to first set the stage for the current political climate that we are stepping into the recent calamity all began with betany island a small piece of land situated to the southwest of the kingdom of daggerfall to the south along the northern coast of hammerfell and the alakia desert lies the kingdom of sentinel who through a centuries-old contract claimed the island to be a part of their great kingdom bethany island's importance comes in its strategic position at the mouth of the bay whoever controls bethany controls the flow of trade similar to our world's gibraltar and its historical importance to the mediterranean sea the ruler of bethany is having issues with pirates looking for aid and stopping these thieves the local lord asks daggerfall for help as daggerful maintains one of the strongest fleets in the bay a deal is made and bethany becomes a protectorate of daggerfall this angers sentinel who feel that dagger will have illegally taken control of their sovereign territory through politics relations worsened between the two mighty nations and before long war breaks out with king lysanders of daggerfall and king cameron of sentinel leading their respective armies to the east lies way rest ruled by both the aging king edward and his dark elf wife the infamous queen baron zayer whose biography still crops up in every elder scrolls game after this wayrest has no direct interest in betany island but as one of the three most powerful kingdoms within the iliac bay the war is still of some importance to them it's not just something they can completely ignore as the war progresses daggerfall have several victories over sentinel and with the war seemingly coming to a close peace talks are brought to the table this meeting would be called at right grad keep a town and fortress within the neutral territory of anti-clare here is where the account fluctuates depending on what propaganda you read from daggerfall's point of view king cameron was civil enough and keen to sign the peace treaty until he saw that the treaty called for equal ownership of bethany this threw him into a fit of rage where he called for his men to cause a riot in the fortress and then into the town creating a mass of bloodshed and slaughter sentinel's account instead claims that the mad king lysandes was initially very grateful in how much land he was offering to sentinel in the terms they had agreed upon but upon reading the treaty presented to him king cameron noticed that the treaty had been deceptively rewritten by lysander's scribe to exclude the land transfers angered by this betrayal both sides then erupted into battle and retreated after mass casualties whichever is true we do not know lysandes army pursued a retreating cameron to the south of anticlare and both sides made camp waited for reinforcements and planned strategies for the upcoming battle the final conflict was set in stone the battle of kringane field was ready to take place this battle in the valley was actually rendered here in the game's press release trailer after a long fight daggerfall claimed victory but by all accounts both kings cameron and lysanders lay dead lysander's son the now king gothrid was crowned hastily behind the front lines following his father's death where he then led his army to victory against the route in red guards cameron's throne would fall to his widow queen akarifi gothrid would marry their daughter princess abakai as a peace offering between the two nations although sentinel's account of the war claims that this was instead a spoil of war taken forcibly these two opposite accounts full of propaganda aren't important to how the player interacts with the story but it does set the scene of the high tensions between these two powers and also sets the precedent of the unreliable narrator something that the elder scrolls continues to enjoy using over in way west they had their own problems with an imminent line of succession conundrum the elderly king edward will soon pass and one of his children are set to become ruler the eldest and with the strongest claim is his daughter princess elisana with the next claimant being the king's adopted stepson prince helseth first son of queen baron zaya this is also the same king helseth you will find in morrowind one of the few recurring characters within the series there are more powers of fut than just these three kingdoms however to the north east of wairasse lies orcinium the now unrecognized homeland of the angry and betrayed people of the orisma known colloquially as orcs they've had a rough time doing the third either having lost sovereignty of their homeland and being forced to turn to banditry and other forms of crime just to survive their leader the self-proclaimed king of the orcs gortwog seeks revenge against wayres and the other powers of the iliac bay hoping to carve out a land to call home and press forward a claim of equal standing and recognition among the other races of tamriel equally as powerful as the three kingdoms but with no land to his name is the king of worms mana marco the powerful lich necromancer who now controls the underworld behind the scenes since his defeat in the second ever during the timeline of the elder scrolls online the final power within the bay is the under king another lich like being who has been a thorn in mana marco's side he is also trying to control the nations from behind the scenes although with entirely different motives okay so we understand the recent war but we still have no idea why lysandes is haunting his capital city for vengeance let's go back to the beginning after we are stranded in a cave by a freak storm this is where the game itself starts i have talked about privateer's hall previously so we'll skip ahead to our first contact in regards to the main quest where we receive a letter from one lady brie senna asking us to meet her in a random tavern while our character is called the agent there is no indication that we are linked to the blades the emperor's private bodyguards and spy network but we do have contact with them through lady brisena who is the emperor's main blade contact for the region she's been busy during her time here successfully moving for the noble courts and now landed herself as the assistant to the queen of daggerfall a very advantageous position for a spy to hold during the meeting she brings you up to date on the current events asks you to go talk to the key powers of the region daggerfall wayrest and sentinel to go get some first-hand accounts on what they believe is happening in regards to lysandes when asked she does not know much of the missing letter but says that our best bet will be to start by asking the recipient herself the previous queen of daggerfall queen miniseries to whom the emperor had seemingly addressed the letter so what happens if you go to those courts and ask around nothing why because you are too low leveled and unknown asking any noble for help will often result in a retort alluding to the player not being ready yet own offering of a randomly generated quest unrelated to the story while these quests are a great way to earn gold and level you up you can see how for a new player who isn't using a guide it can be easy to be confused about what quests are related to the story or not the first quest regarding the story that you will receive will be at level 3 from one princess morgaya of way rest the daughter of queen baron zaya but her quest is related to the letter and not too like sandus's plot so we'll pick back up with her later at level four prince helsef morgaya's brother and prospect of future king of wayrest will be able to offer the player a quest helsei fuguy is a courier to deliver a letter of utmost importance to away rastian noble known as lord castellian castellian holds a high standing among in the way rest royal court and will be a key member in who decides king edward's successor come the day he passes prince helsef does what any wannabe king with a weak claim does and attempts to blackmail the lord with a letter be warned that reading the letter will lower your reputation with the way wairastian nobles if you want you can even deliver the letter to the prince's stepfather for some positive reputation games but this will fail the quest so it's not what we will be doing after delivering the blackmail lord castellian will begin sending knights and battle mages our way in an attempt to thwart our return journey you will have to get used to this it is very common for the nobles to try and kill the player when we learn too much luckily they stop their murder attempts once you finish the quest so it is your top priority to return to helseth else you will be endlessly hunted we return to the dark elven prince for our reward where we learn that wayres was more involved with the war than the reports let on some advisers were sent by the way rest royal courts to try and convince the warring kings of daggerfall and sentinel to settle their differences these advisors claim that they never made it as they were ambushed by gautwag and a band of orcs but helsef has heard rumors that some of them did indeed complete the journey and even had words with lysandes on the eve of the battle of cringefield and that's all we get this is a story of investigation and intrigue we only get breadcrumbs of information at each stage hence why maintaining a journal is so important to understanding what the hell is going on asking around castle daggerfall at level 3 we'll start another quest now this quest line is technically optional but the law that we learn from it is important in fully understanding the plot queen abikai formerly princess of sentinel is concerned for the well-being of her grandmother-in-law who has been missing since the war of betany where she left the royal court to retreat to her castle following a disagreement with her son king lysanders abakka instructs us to visit this castle the fortress known as shiddungen the grandmother in question norfaga was a powerful sorceress and her castle is not to be trifled with you will come across what is likely to be the most dangerous enemies you have encountered yet this can all be bypassed however as long as you have enough magical prowess to cast an open spell on the locked door that faces you near the entrance or if you know the password you need to type when activating this banner but you won't learn that until later either way you'll finally reach the throne room where norfaga covered in torn and dirty robes can be found rambling incoherently it is clear the former queen is insane but there is nothing else we can do by the way the password for the lich who guards the exit door is shut up i'm not joking there is something always amusing about these classic typed answers a lot of dos games used a clear reference and hold over from the classic text based adventure games like zork the agent can now return the queen abikai with this information she'll thank you for performing the task and she rewards us with a leveled magical item again notice that we seemingly did not progress the plot a whole lot at first glance but all will make more sense as we play on a week or two later abacai will send a letter to the agent asking for our assistance when we report to the queen she confides that she wants us to go do some snooping on her mother-in-law's affairs abacai has noticed that the widowed queen miniseria is paying for the up cape of castle necromoghan recently the dowager queen left daggerfall with a bundle of letters and later returned empty-handed abakai asked miniseries advisers about her mother-in-law's journey where they informed the queen that miniseria was visiting castle necromochan abakai is rightly suspicious of what miniseria is doing with this castle and sends us to go investigate so let's just travel there and uh where's the castle yeah daggerfall does this sometimes i assume it was some disconnect between the overworld designers the main writers and the dungeon designers the interior itself is fairly castley albeit infested with the undead and the writing alludes to it being a castle but this exterior is most definitely not that while exploring these handcrafted dungeons is a far more enjoyable experience than the randomly generated ones beware that they are still very large they are intended for the player to spend a few hours in them so if you aren't interested in discovering every knocking cranny in search of loot i highly recommend these online guides eventually we discover some burned letters reading them is difficult due to the broken nature of the heavily burnt paper but we can make out that these letters were sent between king lysanders to a mistress whose name appears to be medora the contents vary from love letters to letters arousing suspicion that miniseria is aware of the affair there is also an interesting letter that gives us some insight into one of lysandes's former conflicts in which miniseries father prince klaus fought a colony of orcs alongside the king however after beating the orcs in battle the king's father-in-law continued his slaughter onto the wives and the children of the aurisma lysanders failed to stop the bloodbath instead just looking on in horror the final letter mentions the king's wants to run away with this medora following his imminent victory at cream game we can at this point speculate that this was the king's final letter before his untimely death in that battle it's clear that minnesera has brought these letters here to get rid of them either to get over the heartbreak of her husband's betrayal or to not tarnish his memory in the court either way it is our job to return them to abba kai the queen is of course quite shocked at this revelation but can't help us in uncovering any more details regarding who the mistress in question was at level 5 you'll receive another letter this time from a young prince in sentinel you might be starting to see a trend here receive a letter telling us that they have information regarding our investigation go to that person who then tells us we have to do a quest to gain their trust and then we finally get the information we came for this method of storytelling isn't necessarily bad and i commend the team and lead writer ted peterson for even attempting to tell a story that wasn't so cliche or linear as their rivals but i have to admit that the limitations of the systems in place do hurt the main quest experience to some degree now i could sit here and give the rundown on each and every quest throughout the entire story but instead i'd rather give an overview from this point on regarding the plot lines at large especially this one you receive from prince lowton of sentinel which tells a tragic medieval story regarding his older brother whom he barely remembers it's these small stories that you interact with along your journey that makes daggerfall's main quest stand out to me sure the outcome of this small quest bar in the nugget of information you receive at the end it doesn't really lead anywhere just being a well-written standalone story which is honestly where this game stands out well the quests in terms of their objectives may not be innovative but the writing and wrapping around them helps to give them purpose and some memorability in the same way that some of the smaller quests in morrowind story did as well like buying that talvani slave and dressing her up the convince the ashkan after resolving prince lowton's mystery he tells us what we needed to know regarding lysander's affair the medora we have heard about is no other the medora de rennie a high-elf sorcerer and current matriarch of the durreni clan who live within the durrani tower the ancient adamantine structure found on the isle of balfierra it is believed to have been built by the aedra themselves during noon's creation our new goal is clear we have to find and interrogate medora durani the agent travels in haste to the goliath doreni tower of legend and yeah look the law regarding this place wasn't quite as extravagant as it would become later on so let's just ignore the anti-climactic reveal of its current architecture there any tower as a dungeon is pretty darn good on your first way through it offers some decent challenge which acts as a way to ensure you aren't progressing too far into the story early on as you will get yourself decimated by the number of undead found you especially the lich that lives outside my daughter's chamber my god this guy can go suck a dick honestly these obstacles can be frustrating if you're trying to rush the story too fast but after some leveling and guilds and whatnot you shouldn't have too much of an issue here especially if you've got some powerful enchanted artifacts with you a bit of advice though if the main quest is your only priority on your current playthrough leave a mark spell here because for the majority of lysander's plotline medora dareni is going to be a common quest giver and unfortunately you'll find yourself having to go through this castle again and again including that lich this ends up turning a good dungeon into a huge headache madora tells us that she can indeed help us when it comes to her dead lover but first we have to do a favor for her again the pattern is clear by now we aren't going to get any information from anyone without rubbing their back first the style of quest given isn't unheard of in rpgs but it does get a bit tired after a while and that is no different here medora needs us to go get an ingredient for her that she hopes she can use to lift the curse placed upon her this curse explains why the rainy tower is in the state that it is what with its rampant undead infestation as we have learned from those burnt letters minnesota was aware of her late husband's affair and in her anger she cast a spell of medora as a punishment for her betrayal locking her within this ancestral home by the way what is it with lysandes and sorceresses it seems every woman in his life was a mage of some kind but i guess that's brains for you hey back to that ingredient from adora and she knows exactly where to get it that should make the quest easier right well she tells us that norwaga is the one who will know where it is amadora suspects that she may not be in good health following her son's death it's this writing and technological limitation that especially feels awkward we already know that northanger is insane but there is no way of telling medora this information although one could argue that a line like this is necessary as the quest for queen abakai in which we learnt that information was optional these branching paths make the story much more replayable but man they don't make my job any easier but they are a part of why i think this story stands out among the rest of the series they just don't offer the same experience although as we can see how clunky it can be at times you can kind of see why they have chosen to simplify in this regard but i feel that there's no reason why a modern game with more expressive dialogue and optional dialogue inputs can't capitalize on this non-linear storytelling in a way that daggerful couldn't and we did see small aspects of this in skyrim and even more so in fallout 4 with its companions but that dialogue system isn't exactly one we should be applauding we know nilfarga isn't going to be able to help us so it's down to us to search her castle the ingredient turns out to be a unicorn's horn you might be wondering if we could have picked up this horn on an earlier occasion for time-saving purposes and sadly no this is something we'll see to be possible in morrowind which was a cool way to make second playthroughs more interesting but nagaful wasn't quite there yet madore congratulates us rewards some leveled loot and alludes to some greater trials that await us but that is all she can do for us as of now 30 days later medora will contact you via telepathic communication she has found a way to calm lysander's soul using a bag of magical dust but the only person who knows about the dust is gortwog goldbaugh tells us that he is happy to help us to aid and preserve in lysander's memory this seems a bit odd what with lysander's having been an accomplice of an orc genocide in his youth but don't worry we'll learn more about that oddity later the dust of rest for death is hidden in a random dungeon back on madora's island found on the body of a mummy this is where the smaller dungeon unity option comes in handy once the mummy in question has been slain we can take the dust from its corpse the magical powder is wrapped in some parchment which contains a damaged letter from gortwalk to medora goldwalk had attempted to alert medora of an assassination attempt from none other than way rest he had dispatched some orcish soldiers to stop the attack but in doing so he worried that if the empire were to find out about an attack on their citizens by a band of orcs that the osmo would never be respected like the khajiits and argonians this is quite interesting from a law standpoint it's no secret that the beast races aren't looked upon fondly by the races of man or myrrh and they especially have a bad time in the northeast but the sea goat walk fear that the orcs may never be as equal as them really pops into perspective how hated the orcs are madura tells us that this letter never reached her in time but she was aware that some orcs had attempted to save her lover but they were murdered in their bid to do so she tells us that king edward and the rest of wayrest aren't entirely loyal to the empire perhaps given a reason for why they were so keen to dispatch of the loyal lasandes medoa wants to enact revenge against those who have wronged her but for now she needs time to prepare the dust giving the agent another month for free time to investigate the optional quests or do some guild quests i should mention here that most likely you will be doing the letter plot alongside lysander's plot again adding to the confusion of what is going on between the two of them once we return to medora she hands us the prepared powder informing us that pouring it onto lysandes's corpse will soothe his soul enough for us to talk to him but the actual exorcism of him from this plane can only be done by his choosing with dust in hand we find ourselves in a predicament we don't know where the body is fedora tells us that it isn't the one in the monument erected at queen game field so what now we're back to the branch and paths these two quests to the left here are also necessary for our journey as they will help us identify not only how lysander's truly died but also where his body rests and this is where i will critique the non-linear story once again like it's cool that you can run these quests simultaneously allowing you to discover the revelations as you go but i have to admit from a casual standpoint surely this would have been an easier way to tell the story that way you won't have any issues of people finding certain information out of sequence which would make it so you don't have to keep a physical notepad painting the truth has us breaking into way rest castle on behalf of queen akarife of sentinel she claims that way rest is holding an heirloom of lysanders within their dungeon and she wants us to go retrieve it breaking into these castles is quite amusing in a clunky kind of way you'll notice that they all have these scary looking exits this is the exit door used for all dungeons in the game to make it so the player could effectively break into the dungeon and vaults of these castles and hence have enemies and the like within them the building itself had to be contained within the game as a dungeon opposed to a normal residence this also means that the only thing stopping you from actually starting the break-in is opening the wrong door while you're there this is a good way to get yourself killed by the court battle mages if you're a little too explorative in the earlier levels yeah i discovered this the hard way the heirloom in question is a painting what's interesting about it is that it appears to hold some magical qualities as it plays out a scene much like a video recording the description says that the painting depicts a tent filled with wayrestean men debated alongside another man dressed in daggerfall colours one of the way rest men stabs the daggerful man as the painting faced the black with the death of the man if you haven't worked it out yet this is a depiction of the murder of lysandes by a wayresty and noble what's interesting about this however is the nature of the painting we haven't seen animated imagery in the elder scrolls since this borrowing a quest in oblivion and it begs the question of who painted it and why is it some kind of cursed image that portrays the betrayal and cannot be destroyed hence why ray rest is locking it away or did they have this commission themselves as some kind of sick memory they can varnish perhaps krinakarifi isn't much help she simply applauds the agent for his loyalty and tells him he has to keep what he saw a secret that it's a royal matter that only concerns the royals there were a few instances in this story that really could do with some explanation and this is one of them ted peterson has said in interviews that he sometimes likes to not give too much detail to allow the player to speculate themselves but man in this instance i wish we could at least understand the intention behind this painting's existence as time progresses the agent will receive a letter from the underking this mysterious figure is never shown in game but his presence can be felt multiple times throughout the main quest he will always communicate to us through letters from his agents the letter informs us that they are aware of the job we did for queen akareefi and that they must have some kind of dialogue with her whether she is knowingly communicating with the underking or not we don't know but we can infer that the underking's network is well ingrained into the political landscape of the bay the underking's agent needs us to retrieve an item that the necromancers have stolen these necromancers are of course the ones who answered to manny marco not only was this item stolen from the underking but it was subsequently cursed and then gifted to the blades why we can only speculate but what is even odder is why the blades would accept such a gift in the first place regardless we are tasked with retrieving it the blade's headquarter for the bay is castle luchkwich in ukelon if you're wondering why i'm pronouncing it as luchui it's because the spelling seemingly implies that this is a name of at least some level of real-world celtic origin especially welsh with its use of the double l making a noise this is a bit of a tangent but i find it sad that over time these celtic elements have been slowly lost within the elder scrolls it used to be that you could even find nodes wearing kilts but as a simplification of the lore has happened over time nodes lost their celtic roots becoming purely knock-off vikings and the bretons stopped being medieval english and instead became french britain aka brittany is in france so i understand the reasoning but i digress back the castle you won't find any blades agents here nor will killing anything within the castle seemingly hurt your reputation with that faction and that's because it is currently infested with the undead it seems that the stolen item has cursed the base and turned all those inside hence why the item in question is guarded by vampires it's not ever stated as such but it would make sense from manny marco's standpoint to attempt to push the blades out of the region using this method again making the reasoning behind the blades except in the gift a bit odder but i guess we can assume that they took the item without the knowledge of who was given it to them after returning the item to the underking's agent they will lift the curse and give it to us where it becomes a random piece of enchanted leveled loot then comes a nugget of information that we need to save lysander's soul we are told that lysandes was not killed at cringefield which we already know but they also tell us that his true body is buried in manivia the province to the north of the isle of balfiera the crypt is then marked on our map interestingly we are told that the underking knows this because lysandes is a true descendant of tiber septim this revelation will become a lot more important later in this analysis we finally know the location of lysander's body and we have the method in which we can calm his rage so that we can communicate with him the crypt is another epic handmade dungeon that will truly test your limits you need to be pushing level 10 or higher if you want to have a chance here the puzzles within them are also becoming exceptionally difficult by this point my hat goes off to anyone who figured out these without the help of a guide when we finally find lysandes we can pour the ash on his body and listen to his demands [Music] you soothe my rage i do not seek to be placated i see vengeance upon he who screwed me if you would truly lay my spirit tourette be the excrement of my verdicts against lord of waywards [Music] and now we have our target the way rest your noble in the painting was none other than lord woodbourne the current fiancee of princess elisana and the prospective future king of wayrest lysander's made his request clear we are to kill woodbourne there are a few paths we can take from here given some player choice to us we can either confront woodbourne himself where he will confess his killing and then duel us to his death slaying woodbourne releases lysander's soul and the deed is done or we can instead steal wood-borne's diary this memoir reveals that king gothrid lysander's son is allied to woodburn and that the old king got walk did indeed try to save lysandes's life on that fateful night it seems that woodbourne allied himself with gothrids so that he would support what claim to the wayrest throne a claim that lysandes did not back the diary also highlights the tensions between the breton natives and the dark elf royals from baron zaya's side with some of that elder scrolls racism we have all come to know and uh love i guess maybe that's not the right word to use we can take this diary to a main character of our choice although only a few will actually release lysander's soul so be very careful at this stage else you will never be able to resolve this part of the main quest madore will tell you that she will enact her revenge and the player should avoid wood-borne mana which sounds like she's gonna have a destruction magic field day against its inhabitants baron zaya will use the diary as proof of woodburn's treason and have him tried and executed these are the only two options that will soothe lysanders and stop his haunting given the diary the goat walk will only aid you with a gift of gold given that the queen akarifi will bring no productive result as she has no interest in the diary and telling either king gofred or abikai about it will only anger them as it exposes their part in the plan resulted in them sending their guards after you while there is some choice unless you want to role-play someone who doesn't want to aid lysandes for whatever reason you're limited to either killing woodbourne yourself or getting madora durani or queen baranzaya to do it for you with lysandes's soul free from noon the agent has been successful in resolving a royal conundrum but due to our lowly status we are unable to solve the issues any further we cannot expose king gothrid of his treachery against his father nor do we have any other options than to pursue the second seemingly less important task of the emperor's lost letter but before that let's first clear this whole thing up in case you're still confused the following summary is a full rundown of the lysander's story when you take into account all parts of the law which does include but isn't limited to the quests we have played through and this is my main gripe with the story on paper it is the best in the series i hope you can see where i'm coming from already with that statement if not then i think you will after this breakdown and remember we haven't even got the letter yet the big issue is how it was told so much information is found outside of the main missions and even the game itself and it is far too easy for people to miss vital information that makes it all make sense so how did lysandes die king lysandes also known as the dragon of daggerful has had a rather uneventful rule during his tenure as sovereign born in the 4th century of the third eva he has led a simple mostly peaceful life marion queen miniseries and fathering one son prince gothrid while his reign was quite unchanging he did hold shame over one aspect earlier during his reign where he and his ally prince claus the father of his future wife minnocera led an expedition against an orca settlement to the east after defeating the male warriors in battle prince claus continued to slaughter the local inhabitants including the women and the children despite their pleas for mercy king lysanders who outranked klaus still didn't order his future father-in-law to stop this genocide would haunt lysandes and later in life he would secretly support king goldwater's claim for equal recognition and reinstatement of the kingdom of orsinium this is why gottwalk is a close ally of lysanders king lysanders is a man of regret but otherwise seems content with his small family and powerful position within the bay but he was not as loyal as he would outwardly like to seem for he was having an affair with his court wizard madora durani lysandes and durreni's affair had reached the climax and the king was keen to finally relinquish his title and run away to love freely with his mistress the perfect time to enact this plan came when the events of bet in the island sparked the war of betany lysander's mother a powerful sorcerer named nolfarga cautioned against war claiming that she sent doom and destruction if lysandes went to battle ignoring his mother's wishes daggerfall declared war against sentinel as lysanders left on expedition minnesota began to uncover evidence of her husband's affair heartbroken by the discovery miniseries banished madora to the rainy tower cursing her to be trapped within several victories put daggerful in good stead to win the war but still no fargo begged for the king to sue for peace ignoring her wishes the queen mother resigned from the court retreating to her private castle deep within the rothgarvian mountains she leaves behind her minion scak mat to stay in the court and relay any information to her who is skakmat he's a dragon yep that's right not only did dragons exist for many years before their eventual return on a mass scale in skyrim but norwaga was powerful enough to keep one as a servant this shows just how capable of a mage she is unfortunately a lot of the content surrounding scat map was cut which is a shame because having a dragon in the game would have been epic lysanders briefly reconsiders the war following his mother's exit calling for a meeting between the two powers to take place where they could discuss terms and sue for peace the meeting that writes grad keep goes terribly resulted in the mass slaughter of the local royal family and some of the native citizens both armies meet at queen gane field and make their preparations for the final battle the official accounts tell of how king lysander's tragically died during the fighting and that his son was promptly coronated in the field going on to lead his men to victory but this is untrue lysanders never planned on being at the battle instead he was the send they look alike to take his place where goffred would then either wait for this double to fall in battle or take the mata into his own hands either way he would be able to then take his place as king wanting his father to be happy goffred helped his father to execute this ruse that ruse being as such on the eve of the battle lysanders had arranged for a small delegation from wayrest to arrive at his camp led by a minor lord from the region namely lord woodbourne woodbourne would bring the look alike with him where the lookalike and lysandes then switched clothes the next day the lookalike would enter the battle and lysandes would escape with the wairestian delegation traveling east by ship to balfierra not knowing of this plan and fearing for her son's life no fargo ordered her dragon to cast a fog spell over the battle hoping this unnatural smog would obscure the fighting and protect lysandes prince gawford used this opportunity to kill the look-alike with an arrow a conflict and account claims that it was a sentinel archer that dealt the killing blow but with the limited visibility this seems unlikely it was the fact that lysandes officially died at this battle despite her best attempts to save him that drove northarger mad with grief on route to balfierra woodborn stationed the ship off the coast of manivia it was here that woodburn planned to murder the king got walk learning of this plan and trying to save his oldest ally attempted to intercept the assassination but his men were cut down woodbourne then used his altercation to his advantage pinning the murder on the orcs when discussing what had happened among the small selection of nobles who were privy to the true events from that night so why does woodborn want to murder lysandes lord woodburn is the leader of wayrest military and is betrothed to princess elisana in the event of king edwi's passing he will become king of wayrest and one of the most powerful men in the region over the years however prince helsef's claim to the throne has been slowly growing more and more powerful fearing that he may lose out on his chance at being king woodbourne searches for allies to help press his fiancees and hence his claim to the throne gortwug agrees to back woodbourne only on the condition that woodbourne will return orsinium to the orcs and back their claim of equality woodburn was trying to get daggerfall to back him too but had been repeatedly refused by king lysanders but he did have the support of his son gottfried and hence woodburn's elaborate plan was made which side was gothrid on then it appears that he wanted to help his father to be happy in his escape with medora durani and with the lookalike dead he would be king either way but when you try to expose woodpunk's diary to godfred he attacks the player out of anger that he too will be exposed it's left a little open but i think it's safe to assume that he may have had some hand in woodbund's plan but maybe never intended for his father to be killed why did woodborne even have to kill lysander then he was seemingly going to be out of the picture in durani tower that one i think is more simple lysandes was a loose end that couldn't be trusted who knows what lysandes would have done if he learned of woodbourne's plan to claim the wayrest throne murdering the former daggerful kings seemed to be the best idea at the time if only woodbourne had considered he lived in a fantasy world in which angry spirits could haunt the living realm he may have even been successful that's the first half of the story done and this is the least important aspect of the whole quest that's right all uriel wasn't entirely truthful about that letter a letter that references a power so strong that it dwarfs any other antagonist we've seen in this series the emperor's secret letter to the queen of daggerfall has been lost and as far as we know it never reached its recipient whoever that was we know that there are three living queens of daggerfall the secluded northarger the dowager queen miniseria and the current figurehead and sentinel princess queen abikai while it was intended for the player to run both plot lines simultaneously you can completely ignore the letter quest until after completing the lysandes one which will result in the blades agent lady brisena contacting the player for the first time since the beginning of the game she will give a quick rundown on the situation and push the player forward in the quest line removing the need for some of the earlier missions playing the story this way misses a lot of the more nuanced law in the process though and as this is a detective based story it makes sense to discover every clue as we go so it's right back to the beginning for us the first notable person to contact the agent will be princess morgaya of way rest at level 3. she sends a letter asking for the player to come visit her and help her the quest itself seems fairly straightforward magaya requires a messenger to deliver a letter on her behalf the recipient isn't just anyone though the princess is dealing with manny marco the king of worms she has a proposal for the ruler of the underworld and needs a reliable adventurer to deliver it i can't help but question why it must be the agent that is chosen to do this task and not one of the many royal knights at her disposal however where the random new kid on the block who manifested themselves out of a cave in daggerfall province just a few days earlier and at level 3 were simply not high leveled enough for the undead infested dungeon she ascended us to explore yeah we're the protagonist of course we have to be the one that does the cool story actions but there are times where using the player instead of anyone else is questionable in the lysander's plotline you can't even start it without first gaining the trust of the royals by performing random quests for them at least given some plausible reason why they may trust the agent but morgaya sent a letter out of the blue at an arbitrary level an achievement you can even reach by just spamming jump in a low sealant room the letter attempts to hand wave this by saying that morgaya's spies have learnt that we may be interested in the emperor's letter that seemingly wipes away my criticism then surely well yes but also no this may seem harsh but it immediately makes me wonder just how this knowledge reached her the intro cut scene makes it seem that the emperor is only passing this knowledge to us in private at night with no one else present except okato are we to believe that the emperor isn't so distrustant of others or that okato may have loose lips the letters word and helps explain why morgaya is seeking us but it doesn't tell us just how she knows this i will on the other hand agree that it could have been mana marco that informed her of this who knows what magical powers he can perform to gain information i just wish that we could have started this quest organically instead finding it by talking to more gaia herself after gaining the trust of her family just like the agent has to for her brother helsef's quest princess can be found within castle wayrest standing beside her mother morgaya gives us our task and as i have praised previously the writing here does a good job of explaining the limitations of the game with an in-world explanation she tells us that the sorcerer at scourge barrow who we are yet to find out is manimarco is not expecting us and hence there will be no preparations made and that necromancers do not see death as a bad thing what this means from a gameplay perspective is that scourge barrow will be a dungeon filled with hostile enemies that will attempt to kill us despite manny marco being a passive npc i've said it before but the writing around these quests does a great job of window dressing your objectives in an interesting way even if i must question its choices sometimes the princess's letter contains some juicy information regarding her relationship to money marco in which she agrees to give her first born royal child to the necromancer in return for him exerting his influence onto the king a first hold within the somerset isles where manny marco will use his power to let the high elf king communicate with his dead son quick side note but the summerset isles has had four spelling changes throughout three games so don't be surprised by this unorthodox variation in arena it had two m's and then just the one in daggerfall and the u changed into an e in some of the morrowind lore books this is totally just the writers changing their minds as they go but it is fun to pretend that from an in-universe perspective there may just not be a definitive spelling seen as the name itself is given to the land of the ultimate by men the more traditional among the highest will refer to it as alano manimarco gives the agent a letter of reply stating simply done continuing your life as the iliac bay's courier of choice you return to way rest to give mogaya the good news she explains her elation in how she will become queen of first hold as with the lysander's quest we then receive the information we came here for the emperor's lost letter is in the possession of goldwag who purchased the letter from the fees guild goat walk is holding the letter and sending copies to all the known powers within the iliac bay in an attempt to unveil the location of the powerful artifact that the letter mentions so that he can use its power himself in an attempt to make his own kingdom and gain equal footing with the other races of tamriel with the information we needed for magaya we already know exactly where the elusive letter is with no discovery or investigation needed which raises the big question of that level-free requirement for the princess's letter to automatically reach the player it is simply a big mistake from a patient standpoint these quests which we will be covering contain needed information and law that helps the agent to understand just how gort walk managed to come into possession of the emperor's letter they covered the letters journey and the events that had to take place for it to end up so far from its intended recipient not only that but the final quest that concerns the alleged recipient herself the queen of daggerfall actually ends with her directing the player to morgaya and hence starting the quest we just played that led us to the information about goldwog the worst thing about all of this is that these quests don't open until the player is level 5. this is a pretty big oversight in the storytelling at the beginning of this quest line while you don't necessarily need to play these before the mogai quest for them to make sense the fact that they come after the morgana quest makes the investigation less impactful as you jump straight to knowing who has the letter within a single mission with no discovery of how it got there i initially wondered if scorch barrel was made so difficult to act as a sort of a soft barrier to the player preventing them from completing the quest at the level it becomes available but it has a 30-day time limit forcing the agent to complete it urgently due to the vast distance between way rest and manny marco's lair it feels odd to criticize this so much as i had a ton of positives to say about the lysandres plotline for the most part and the rest of the letter plot and especially its law is brilliant but man this choice right at the beginning is just weird the beast has us investigating where the letter went in the first place a seemingly more natural starting point we know that the letter was sent to the queen of daggerfall but we also know that that refers to three people so who received it queen abakai's mate sindasa usually spends her time toiling away in the kitchens of daggerfall castle but one day not long after the defeat of sentinel at the battle of greengane field a letter arrived at the castle from the emperor cindassa was there when abakai took receipt of that letter from its deliverer and saw the queen's reaction upon reading it sindasa isn't dumb however and knows that this information is worth something so before she will tell us anything we of course have to help her she gives us the task of slaying a werewolf in a random dungeon with the beast slain who turns out to be her sadly cursed brother she gives the details abakai was initially pleased to receive the letter tearing it open in excitement but the joy soon left her face as she noticed that the letter was not for her she then turned to surprise and shock as she read further on choosing to hide the letter within her vanity table she told tindasa that she'll make sure that it gets given to minisera under the knowledge that the letter was seemingly for minisera we can go talk to her and find out whether she ever received it from her daughter-in-law be cautious here though as for whatever reason the gods will always attack you when you try to enter the dowager queen's chamber even when she is expecting you so you will want to be fast when entering an accident miniseria informs us that abba kai never gave her the letter she wants us to investigate this matter further but we must do so carefully to not enrage her son goffred it might just be a throwaway line but i like to think that this alludes to some level of anger issues or ragefulness in her child she even makes it clear that despite being her son he may still act irrationally it's not a huge thing but it's a nice bit of character development for a man who took his throne via an elaborate assassination plot against his own father if we accept the quest she will give the player a short information dump regarding the lysandres plotline and then present us with our mission the emperor apparently sends his mail to the iliac bay using the same courier who has a randomly generated name she can't help us in locating him but does tell us that he is a member of the knights of the dragon so we should ask them to help us in locating the man miniseria also gives the agent a signet ring that will prove to the knights that we are not just some curious bystander if you confront abba kai about the missing letter she plays koi simply telling the player that the letter was stolen and she doesn't know where it went it may seem innocent at first but taking this action will not only severely lower your reputation with the daggerfall royal family but abakai will begin sending bands of nightblades to hunt and assassinate you for the duration of this quest the knights of the dragon claiming loyalty to their former queen begrudgingly provide the agent with the current location of the emperor's private courier once you've tracked him down the courier initially takes insult in miniseries questioning of his delivery explaining that the letter was addressed to the queen of daggerfall and at the time of the delivery that was queen abakai not minisera as far as he's concerned he did not make a mistake so it's clearly a misunderstanding associated with the emperor's vagueness and whom the letter was actually for miniseries says as much explained that the emperor must have sent the letter while asander still lived and that by its arrival gothard and abakai had already taken the throne how did gortwalk of all people come into possession of this letter then it all comes back to sindasa she's just a lonely mage who only had queen kai's strange reaction to the letter to go off she doesn't know what the letter contains but she does know it must be pretty juicy to cause such emotion she uses this to her advantage selling a tip off to the thieves guild who promptly infiltrate the castle and steal the letter immediately fencing it onto the highest bidder the king of the orcs there is also a third path to finding this information which follows the blackmail quest for prince helsef which i covered earlier in the video queen baron zaya pleased with the agent's success in helping her son will ask whether the agent can help her with an urgent matter regarding her reputation as i'm sure you already know baron zaya is one of the few elder scrolls characters to have a biography she actually has two one that is let's say more in line with what the queen would like the peasantry to believe and the second called the real baronzaya being truthful and made of not just one but five separate books baronzaya makes it clear to the player that these bucks are nothing but lies and that the author was promptly executed and the books destroyed but to her horror those pesky orcs have gotten their hands on one of the lesser-known volumes and are threatening to punish and spread them across the bay for all to see can i just say that it's clear throughout this story that goltwog is a master troll that will do anything to annoy the rulers of the iliac bay baron zaya asks us to find the buck within the orca stronghold and destroy it before it is leaked to the public we aren't the only ones interested in the book however many markers necromancers are also trying to get their hands on it if the player leaves the quest for too long in this case just six in-game days then the necromancers will beat you to it and take it back to scourge barrow if you do leave it too late gortwalk will contact the player via one of his orc shamans magically beaming a message straight into your head he will ask you to retrieve the stolen chapter and return it to him for a random enchanted item however in doing this you will not receive the information you need regarding the emperor's letter whether you retrieve the buck from orsinium or scourge barrow you should return it to baron zaya if you want to be able to start the next quest in retrieving the letter itself unlike miniseria or morgaya baronzaya gives us a little bit more information regarding what said letter may contain he reveals to the agent that gortwog is a contender for the totem of tiber septim a powerful artifact that may allow him to destroy way rest and even the entirety of the iliac bay before i divulge to you what this baby looking thing is we must first retrieve the letter with both mogaias and miniseries quests completed miniseria will tell the player that she knows exactly how she can get goatwalk to hand the letter over she hands the player a treaty to deliver to the orc for its exchange miniseria is offering to support the orcish king's claim for sovereignty by saying that she may be able to help persuade the emperor regarding the matter as long as goldwag agrees to return the stolen letter to the agent gautwag pretty much tells us straight up that he doesn't care if we take the letter but we must go find it ourselves and in doing so he cannot promise that his orcish horde will be as friendly to us as he is when we finally reach the letter in an appropriately adorned room we can claim the item needed to complete the second story quest so that's it right we have the letter the emperor should be more than pleased we've solved both of his tasks i guess we can just have one cheeky look at its contents though seeing as it's already opened queen miniseries i have grave news the totem of tiber septim has been found you know what this means the power behind high receptor could be unleashed upon tamriel again rumor has it that lord woodbourne a minor lord of wayrest has possession of it he will doubtless lose it soon you must persuade him to turn it over to you or lady percena the court of wayrest has no love of king lysander but you still have influence there i am asking you to use it on my behalf uriel septim emperor of tamriel the totem of tiber septim this thing that's the best way to describe it by the way it is neither a staff nor a want it is seemingly some kind of mini robot looking device one defining feature is this face which looks similar to this one does it not yeah not really i know i'm reaching here basically the totem of tyra septum was the device used by its namesake to control the mighty numidium the grand dwemer bronze tower a mechanical titan of destruction and carnage using this object septim crushed his enemies and subdued all those that once defied him it's no wonder that uriel was so secretive of this letter then the letter and more importantly what it tells us is the real reason why the agent was sent on this confidential mission no one else could be trusted with such dire knowledge whoever finds and controls the totem can in theory control the forgotten brass titan once more to wreak havoc upon tamriel in achieving their own goals we already know that gold walk seeks to totem to give him the political power he needs to claim independence and equality for his orcish people uriel wants to totem back and set him hands not only because it is his birthright but because it will give him the destructive weapon he needs to crush all those that despise the empire and seek to carve out their own independent kingdoms remember that the empire is in a weakened state following the events of arena and uriel will need all the help he can get if he is to hold the realm together under his rule previously the blades had held the totem since the times of tiber septim but had mysteriously vanished and found itself in no other than lord woodborne's castle the man who murdered king lysandes the emperor knew of the totem's new location due to his spy network and this is why he planned on the letter telling miniseria and lady percena so that they could begin making plans to recover it but over the course of the war of betany either through some kind of deal we never hear about all by the same mysterious circumstances that took the totem from the blades the totem has now found itself in the possession of king goffred held deep in the vault of castle daggerfall lady presenter will be the one to tell us this via an urgent letter either at the end of the lysander's plotline after the former king's soul has been released or a few weeks after the emperor's letter has been retrieved from the orc stronghold the only reason gottfried can't currently do anything with the totem is due to the mantella still being lost this does bring up the question of why gothard's grandmother nell farga never told him that it wasn't a furious unless she does not trust him for some reason there is also a third quest that can trigger lady rosanna's letter regarding this information to be sent to the player and that is the soul of a lich a quest for manny marco given to the player some time after completing the prerequisite morgaya quest this is a simple fetch quest in which the agent must track down a specific glitch and trap its soul in a magical scarab for the king of worms to use the quest is nothing unique but what is odd is that its completion is enough to completely bypass the entirety of the investigation and begin the totem quest i can't understand the reason why by given multiple methods for which the final ending of the game can be accessed more players are likely to progress the story enough to actually finish the game but in choosing to jump to the total quest in this way it's too easy for a player to miss the required law that explains not just what the totem is but why it is so important if you focus only on the lysandres plotline and then accidentally speak to ladybrussena following her urgent letter not only will the next quest in your journal be the penultimate one to the entire main story but you will be soft locked out of the emperor's letter plot again removing the investigation aspect of this story of course it was intended for the player to run both quest lines simultaneously and while that can make the progression confusing at times it at least ensures you will play the majority of the quests but my argument remains that a more linear advancement perhaps with only a few branching paths would make this whole ordeal less of well an ordeal before we cover the totem quest there are still these optional quests with one in particular the mantela revealed containing the necessary law to help the agent's decision making in the coming hours of gameplay you see daggerfall has multiple endings seven in total and each affect the outcome of the iliac bay to different degrees and while all endings end up happening due to a later retcon in morrowind which we'll be covering later in this analysis from daggerfall's standpoint role playing and choosing the ending that you desire and the one that makes the most sense for your specific agent's personality is an all-important choice so the more information we can have before making it the better the mantela revealed isn't technically a quest as such even though the game handles it that way instead it is a trigger for free letters to be sent to the player containing lore dumps regarding the numidium the totem and the mysterious mantella which powered the numidium in the times of type of septum here's what we know about the totem following the new information given to the agent from these letters the totem is an artifact created by zurin arctus tiber septim's trusted imperial battle mage it controls the numidium and without its power the brass guard would instead rampage indiscriminately it is a tool of utmost importance legend says that the numidium was so large that its hand could strike moons from the sky of course this is probably hyperbole but the numidium is certainly not any ordinary dwemer centurion akulakan also known as the second numidium was a reconstruction by morrowind's antagonist dagoff er and it is believed that akulakam was built using the same plans that instructed the building of the original numidium and while akalakan is truly colossal in stature i think it's safe to say that its in-game depiction was shrunk to fit the more gamified scale of morrowind's game world the numidian in comparison against the realistic iliac bay would have been truly gigantic a fearsome golem of ruination said to be one thousand feet tall while the totem is the artifact needed to control the numidium it is said to have no power as long as the dwarven behemoth's mantella heart is missing the mantela was a gem infused with the life force of zurin arctus tiger septim used the numidium to conquer tamriel and declare himself emperor but he didn't stop there using his tool of mass destruction septum would destroy or pressure any neutral royal families that did not declare themselves to the empire he would then install his own local monarchs ones he knew would be loyal to him and only him angered by this misuse of the colossus he helped bring to life zurin arctus stood against his previous leader and friend attempting to reclaim the numidium's power source in the ensuing battle the powerful mage faced off against the dwemer machine and in the climax of the combat both the creator and the creation were destroyed with the mantela being transported into a furious the realm beyond realms known as the immortal plane and the birthplace of all magic the nomidium was blown into pieces that were scattered across tamriel while arctus split from his life force and the part of his soul that was power in the mantela fell into a semi-slumber forced to live a life of cursed immortality he became known as the under king the undead being that seeks to tote him not to control his most famous creation but to regain his soul so that he may finally pass from this world as a safeguard against the misuse of the totem artists placed a seal on the device so that anyone not of the septum lineage all possessing powerful supernatural affinities would be instantly killed if they attempted to wield the totem to control the new medium this is the first time the numidium was ever mentioned in the elder scrolls and while it is a shame that so much of its lore is given to the player via letters seeing a dialogue in this game is purely through text boxes the method in which the knowledge is given to the player doesn't really matter it would have been nice if we could have got some cut scenes contained in the numidium seeing as this is the only game in which it exists itself not just as a copy or a mention in a textbook but this is probably asking for quite a lot for a niche game in 1996. the two optional quests that i haven't yet covered aren't paramount to the main story in any way elisana's robe follows a similar story as the quest for her stepbrother claulu helsef the agent must deliver an item to lord castellian a high-level noble who will be key to choosing who will succeed king edwire where hell seth threatened the lord for a letter elisana showing a clear similarity to her fiance lord woodball decides that a letter isn't enough she has the agent deliver an enchanted robe that when worn by the lord will conjure free daedric seduces to murder him elisana's betrayal is a great example of all the critiques i have been making regarding the issues of these very different plots being run simultaneously and that's because the entire content of this quest mentions the lysandres plotline while the quest cannot be started until near the end of the letter plotline it is even possible to run this quest in which elisana and lord woodborn tried to murder the agent for investigating the lysander's assassination after completing that entire plotline this means that woodbourne can threaten the player beyond the grave regarding a matter that is no longer an issue clearly this quest is meant to be linked over here somewhere but its existence really helps drive home my points regarding the over complexity of this quest structure the totem is within the dungeon of daggerful castle leading us to our second royal break-in of the story when the agent finally reaches the totem we will be met with a message upon picking up the powerful controller the totem says that the agent is unworthy of wielding the totem only those of tiber's septum's bloodline may carry me now this can cause a lot of confusion for those who know the septum bloodline history and there's two ways to look at it either the totem is literal and only a direct descendant of the infamous conqueror can wield it in which case how can all these characters be worthy well on a side note let's propose that thai receptor's lineage may look similar to the real world genghis khan's if you don't know there is an old genetic study that links a large proportion of males in asia the middle east and eastern europe to a single genetic ancestor from around the time of genghis khan's great conquest across the continent the idea proposed from this finding was that khan's empire was so fast that it granted him access to a large number of women across said empire whether willing or not to spread his seed so to say perhaps septum was similar and that throughout his conquest he had had many illegitimate children lead into such a diverse pool of descendants the problem with this theory is that it was never stated in any law that tiber septim was like this he had even forced baron zaya to have an abortion when he found her to be pregnant oh yeah that's just how old this queen is by the way she's been around and i mean like really around and there's also the other problem with that old study about genghis khan haven't been disproven this leads to a second theory and the one that i subscribe to although maybe i shouldn't as you'll learn later on what i believe the totem is referring to here is dragon blood thai was septum is a well-known dragon born haven't been a student of the grey beards themselves and the amulet of kings that he used to keep the dragonflies alight requires dragon blood to work of course this means all the septums are dragonborn too and as we've seen in skyrim dragonblood can be possessed by those outside of the septum bloodline as with the doverkin playable character and with mirac so if dragonblood is the necessary component it makes much more sense that the totem can be wielded by the kings and queens of the iliac bay as it is proposed that those with dragonblood are more likely to attain greatness that all sounds interesting but sadly it's all speculation and conjecture as nultharga instead has found a loophole in the totem the totem need only be given to those of royal blood this is frustratingly a clear hand wave and really makes one question how smart zurin arctus was in putting the seal on the totem if it can be so easily overcome so much of the in-game references leading to this point make it clear that only septum's descendants can use the totem so for it to be suddenly retconned within its own game tells me that this was perhaps a rushed change to the planned narrative with the totem in hand it doesn't take long for news to spread than the agent has the world's biggest macguffin you will soon receive a ton of letters from the most powerful leaders within the iliac bay each given their specific reason for being the perfect candidate to wield the power of 100 nuclear weapons these reasons vary from power conquest godhood equal rights peace and death and to help sweeten the deal they will also each offer bribes of gold and unique artifacts although some of them are lion and will instead send assassins your way once you hand over the totem and here is where the greatest level of player choice ever given within the elder scrolls begins the player has the opportunity to choose whom they give the totem to and with this choice determine the ending of the main quest we have not had multiple distinct endings within the series since and when we discuss the warp in the west later on the reason will be obvious in total the player has seven choices way rest daggerful sentinel gortwag the under king manny marco and the emperor way rest daggerfall and sentinel will use it to control the iliac bay goldwork will use it to declare orsinium as an independent nation prove the orcs as an equal race and crush any that dare to refuse this the underking will destroy the numidium release his trapped soul and finally receive the death he has wanted for centuries manny marco will use it to become a god placing a part of his soul into the heavens and mantling the necromancer's moon attaining immortality or you can simply return it to the emperor who will use it as his ancestor once intended to maintain control over his empire with an iron fist the pose and all those that ever show a sliver of disloyalty to the septum regime unfortunately the totem as an artifact is criminally underdeveloped in the law and there isn't a lot of material surrounding it we just have to take it at face value and accept it double negative has a great section on why this whole situation doesn't make sense but i'll just take it as it is the totem is a powerful baby thing that does big magic on a bigger robot and that's probably all we'll ever know after your choice has been made no fargo will telepathically contact the player northaka is noticeably less insane since her son has been avenged and asked the player to meet her at her castle so that they can seal the agent's choice into the annals of history which is ironic as the choice ends up having not a single bit of importance due to the warp in the west when playing through the story for the second time and while researching and writing this script one question i kept asking myself was how did the emperor of tamriel a seemingly wise and knowledgeable man mess up this whole letter ordeal so poorly the war of bethany can take some of the blame for how the letter missed its target but why risk sending a letter anyway and why the queen miniseria of all people well let's summarize just what happened from start to finish using all of the available law surrounding it the emperor was lying to the agent about the importance of the letter that much we know but he was also lying about who it was really for while it was addressed for queen miniseries its true recipient was to be lady brisena our blades contact the blades had an additional task ever since zurin arctus's final battle with the numidium which resulted in its destruction the blades have been searching for and collecting the lost pieces of the dwemer construction from all across tamriel they also had possession of and protected the totem of tiber septim they had completed their task and rebuilt the numidium but there was still one important piece missing the mantella the green heart of the numidium powered by the soul of zurin octus it was banished to a feverish due in the colossus's final battle trapped in a prison of its own making the mantellin crux nolfarga lysandes's mystic mother so powerful that even a dragon kneels to her was able to track down the mantella contacted uriel regarding this promising to give him the location but only if septum promises to not use the numidium to threaten her son's power as king of daggerfall uriel was foolhardy and overconfident not an uncommon disposition for the most powerful man of a whole continent to hold he was not going to lower himself and negotiate with a sorceress and certainly not after the broken trust towards mystics following his imperial battle mage janga thorne's betrayal scepter instead planned to use his extensive imperial spy network to discover the location himself his agent for the region of high rock lady brisena had successfully integrated herself into the royal court of daggerfall and from here uriel concocted a plan he was going to have brisena use her political power to try and pry the information away from northanger knowing that norfago was powerful the emperor was suitably cautious choosing to communicate with brasena using only physical methods of communication like a letter opposed to using any magical means of opening the dialogue with his agent firing that no fargo could intercept these this is where the letter in question comes into play the letter was not directly addressed to brisena which would open far too much suspicion instead it was to be sent to the queen of daggerfall as brisena was part of the court the plan was that she would see this letter and notice the emperor's unique seal which would tip her off that this was indeed for her instead uriel used a trusted courier to deliver this letter who set off from the imperial city only days before the outbreak of the war of betany unable to safely reach his destination the courier transferred the letter to a knight of the dragon who would be better suited to safely deliver the letter to the royal court of his liege but by the time the letter had finally made its way to its destination the war had already concluded like sandisk was dead gotford was now king nilfarga on the brink of insanity had left for her private castle and minnesera was no longer queen of daggerfall due to the ambiguous address of the queen of daggerfall the letter does not get sent to the dowager queen as planned so that presenter could successfully intercept the letter instead the knight does as asked and gives it to the new queen abba kai this new queen reads the letter and while she doesn't fully grasp what it entails she knows that it wasn't meant for her not knowing its gravity and not knowing what else to do she leaves it in her desk the queen's attendant seeing a letter from the emperor and the queen's befuddled reaction to it knows that this must have some intrinsic value linked to it she tips off the daggerfall feveskill to the letter who of course steal it and sell it to the highest bidder that bidder bien goat walk gortwald consults manny marco regarding the letters meaning manny marco knows that this is the key to the godhood he so desires goldwog sensing the king of worms excitement decides to sell copies of the letter to all those with power and the goals to buy it hoping to cause conflict in the region just one letter had caused a far bigger problem for uriel than he could ever imagine no farga tells us that she is ready to teleport us to the mantellin crooks the prison within a furious in which the mantella has concealed itself she offers the agent one last chance to tie up his affairs in noon and uses her magical prowess to send them to the final story dungeon of the game aetherius is not just a vast wondrous and dangerous experience it is also the biggest flex over the rest of the series where else in the elder scrolls can you float in space between asteroids battling elemental daedra and then coming across the floating head of the blind god in which schaelgart stands in its empty left eye socket shell golf is here to help the player locate the mantela in this insane realm but why shayagawa for not anyone else honestly it's never explained but trying to explain anything that the daedric prince of madness does is going to be difficult this realm as in the mantellin crux is merely a section of aetherius as was sovengard in skyrim it is a space between realms between mundus and oblivion the agent continues through rooms of lava past humongous medieval weaponry and confusing puzzles all around when you have finally made your way through the crux you arrive at the prize the large green gem that once powered the great new medium and will again after we release it from its prison upon touching the mantela the agent is sent back to norfolk where she asks him to look upon the book of time as the result of his choice is written into the elder scrolls centuries of undead sleep are shaken up rousing the under king no mortal force will stop his fateful reunion with the ghost of his heart and he joins with it in an all-consuming fiery embrace and for just one moment he is flesh and blood and blessed death is granted to high receptors battle days and that brings us to the multiple endings i've already explained what each choice will lead to and unfortunately the endings themselves are simply 15 second long rendered cutscenes with some voice over a rather anticlimactic reward to this main quest but as with a lot of this game it's another consequence of the age and limitations of the technology of its time although i would have liked to see perhaps some more information from text boxes on the outcome of the agent's choice just to give a bit more of a payoff most endings conclude with the underking mustering all the power he can to face the new medium once more destroying it for good and regaining his soul so that he can finally have the sweet release that he has been seeking for hundreds of years there is also a cancelled additional ending in which the agent could ignore the totem's warning and upon activating the mantela they would attempt to control the new medium themselves where the giant would quickly kill the agent and the totem would eventually fall into imperial hands this ending is mentioned within the official strategy guide of the game midnight was likely cut close to the end of development we don't know why but it could have had something to do with the fact that it ignores the entire taiwan bloodline thing and even bypasses northfarga's royal loophole which essentially makes a loss of the in-game law entirely useless so it's no wonder that it was removed whichever ending you choose they are all in vain due to the largest retcon in elder scrolls history to conclude my thoughts on the story as a whole my main takeaway is just how much greater it could have been in a newer game with animations a more dynamic and fleshed out quest system and more modern technology the writing is phenomenal and the execution is great for the time but man it could have been so much better which is in a sense an allegory for daggerfall as a whole a bunch of amazing ideas limited only by the technology of its time which is why the wayward realms is so exciting when i started playing daggerfall i honestly didn't expect much from the game's story as i assumed it probably would have aged very poorly as a lot of stories from games from that period have but still i wanted to experience this game mostly for historical purposes but then i got hooked much like the later games in the series the main quest most definitely is not needed to fully enjoy the game and i personally see little need to ever run it again as for me daggerfall's main streams are in its vast open world and the role-playing possibilities it facilitates it's common for people to ignore daggerfall's importance to the law of the elder scrolls while kirkbride's morrowind contribution to the series should not be understated it seems many attribute a lot of the elder scrolls world building to his style of writing when he was often just following the form of the previous law in the series when you look into just how much of the law was first introduced not in that third installment but instead six years earlier undoubtedly daggerfall lore needs more love there are so many things we owe to the elder scrolls too the eight divines the 16 daedric princes jigalag bandar the history of the yokuda sword singing the history of the septim empire the skyrim conquests and the war of succession the durani clan prophet marook and the elysian order the battle of the glanumbria moors the siege of orsinium the dark brotherhood every single guild the psijic order and last but not least the new medium while this video won't focus on every aspect of the law introduced in daggerfall because as that list shows along with the vast number of books on screen right now is that there is far more than people may realize when they discuss the big three as they seem to have become known instead this video will take a deep dive into the aspects that affect daggerfall's main story the most and the effects that leave the largest lasted impact on the series as a whole this boils down to two features in particular the mantela that powers the mighty numidium and the warp in the west the first documented case ever dragon break as a quick disclaimer to help explain some of the more complicated aspects i will be pulling from lore that was written after daggerfall this intro may have had a snarky undertone against those that dismissed daggerfall's law but the new law added by kirkbride as well as peterson in morrowind and later still helps to improve the stories within said lore the mantella in its simplest explanation is a soul gem created by tiber septim's imperial battlemage to power the numidium it is commonly believed that the bright green crystal contained part of the soul of said battle mage sir and arctus when tiber septim began to abuse his newfound power arctus confronted the brass titan and defeated it in combat destroying the numidium scattering it across tamriel and trapping the mantela with inaphilius by accidentally trapping the mantela away from nirn zurin arctus was forced to live a cursed life of immortality where he would become known as the under king if you have played oblivion you may know him as the infamous septum hated mage who cursed the rest in place of the armor of tiber septim sankator what is commonly believed about the mantela however may not be entirely true it may be more than just the underking who is powering this gem during the time of tiber septim's conquest the invasion of morrowind hit a crossroads due to the power of the false tribunal gods understanding that a military victory was unlikely diplomacy between septum and vivec began the tribunal gifted with a level of foresight from their false divinity sensed doom if they continued to fight septum yet they did not want to show their hand too early and let him know that thus a deal was struck malward joined the empire under unique conditions where they maintained their independence while also allowing imperial colonization into the region in return for this compromise the tribunal gave the numidium to septim the numidium up until this point sat dormant within the red mountain the dwemer had built the colossus before their eventual defeat at the hands of the kyma the ancestors to the dunmer the nomidium was intended to be powered by the heart of lorcan but it was never realized how to actually do this on the cusp of a military defeat at the hands of indirol nerevar's kaimu army the dwemer attempted to awaken the numidium using specialized tools on the heart and in doing so the entire race simultaneously vanished vivek knew that the numidium was useless without the heart and was also very aware that without their regular pilgrimages to said heart the tribunal false godhood would slowly fade as it is by tapping into the heart of lorcan that they maintain their divinity not wanting septum to demand the heart be handed over vivec instead lied to septum claiming that the dwemer never discovered howderpowered a machine septum agreed to the terms having received the gigantic but otherwise useless dwarven construction he asked his most trusted imperial battlemage to find a way to power it as mentioned earlier zurin arctus invents the mantela a powerful soul gem beyond normal understanding the official story that tiber septim would like history to remember and the one that daggerfall contains is that the mantella was powered by arctus's soul but the reality may be a whole lot more interesting the actuarian heresy details these discrepancies after researching the numidium for some time arctis concluded that the power required for the new medium needed to be godly in nature such as the previous intended power source the heart of lorcan the literal heart of a deceased god if you ever look into the elder scrolls law you may notice that there are two under kings mentioned throughout history one being our box art model and the other being a legendary nord eastmere wolfharf ismail wolfhoff the original underking was an undying aspect of shore sure being the nordic name for lorcan meaning at the heart of lorcan and wolfhof are similar in nature septim and arctus in a cut-in plan decided to lure wolfhoff into a secret meeting convincing eastmere that they intended to invade and destroy morrowind's dark elves a little backstory to this ismail wolfhoff was a high king of skyrim back in the first ever and during his early reign he fought battles against alduin years later wolfhoff continued his warmongering and began expanding his empire he opened war against the khymer of morrowind where he allied himself to the dwemer in an attempt to wipe out the golden elven people however he suffered a crushing defeat as his dwarf and allies vanish as they attempted to activate the heart of lorcan concluding that his dream of a human-led tamrielic empire was over ismir stepped away from the public eye becoming the first under-king also known as the ash king due to being an aspect of shore ismir was a demigod of sorts he was immortal or at least very long living allowing him to puppet many events throughout history from behind the scenes centuries later as tiber septim began his ascension through the ranks eventually declaring himself emperor and beginning a conquest across tamriel eastmere saw and septum his chance to attain the goal he had set himself all those years ago yet tiber septim did not defeat the dark elves as wolfhoff had wanted the once chimeri people were still not conquered not only that but the elves had bargained for some very favorable benefits izmir felt betrayed his dreams were still unfulfilled and he promptly cut ties with septem it was the promise of destroying the dumb of a good then using the very dwarven machine they had given the septum that convinced izmir to come visit the emperor and his imperial battlemage zurin arctus planned to use the soul of ismail wolfhoff to power the mantela essentially creating his own heart of lorkhan when wolfhof arrived and he realized the deception a battle ensued where wolfhofs arctuses and potentially even a part of tiber septim's soul were all trapped into the gem this is the second lesser known story that the emperor didn't want the public to know he simply told them that his battlemage had figured out a way to power the golem this is why the underking has the best claim to the totem of tiber septim in daggerfall as his own words state it is my heart it is my mantilla it is my totem he not only made the mantella but his soul is within it and it was only by tiber septim's betrayal a betrayal of his closest friend that the under king finds himself in his damned position he only desires the release of death and will cause no harm to anyone else if you give the totem to him making it the most peaceful option while a lot of this law came later in morrowind it was alluded to at times in daggerfall for example the king of worms tells the player that zurin arctus was betrayed by typoceptin alluding to the second theory of how dimantella was powered manny marco isn't very reliable however as he also claims that the underking would surely throw all of tamriel into conflict if he regained his body a fact that that ending quickly dismisses as the underking simply destroys the new medium regains his soul and then passes on to death it is this second theory then in which eastmere wolfhoff zoo and arctus antibes septum souls or at least part of their souls reside within the mantela that helps explain the biggest change after daggerfall and it isn't just the warp in the west it is instead the inclusion of a new god one that didn't exist previously talos before the events of daggerfall talos simply didn't exist within the lore there were still nine divines but the ninth one was shaw aka lorcan so how did talos attain his godhood the world of tamriel by that i mean the planet it sits on is known as nurn nirn resides within the plane of mundus which was created by lorcan sharp sure was known by another name by the imperials to them he is shazaar shazam is not worshipped by the imperials however for he is known as the dead god or the missing god his power and presence is not felt unknown whereas a player can pray to a divine such as dybella receive her blessing and gain noticeable benefits for their devotion praying to shazar does not come with any proof of his existence hence he is missing the whole history and law is very complex with a ton of celestial size happenings occurring during the creation of the universe but basically lorkhan is a part of the world of mundus itself hence why his heart sits within the red mountain his rotten body forms the two moons within the night sky too so uh yeah this is some pretty strange law while worshiping cezar does not show any proof of his presence the theory is that he does show his presence via his use of incarnations within select humans these incarnations are then known as cesareans one that we already know of is ismir wolfhoff within the elder scrolls universe in means incarnation where the nerevarine is the reincarnation of indorel nehrevar a cesarean is an incarnation of shazar aka the nordic god shaw aka the elven god lorkhan it's confusing i know some of those confirmed the half those aspects of shezo within them would be tiber septim himself ismia wolfhoff as we already know and possibly even zurin arctus which means ironically wolfhof may have never been needed to power the new midian due to the unreliable narrator used within the test law as well as fan theories and various interpretations izmir's role becomes cloudy and not one hundred percent clear but his role as a cesarean is vital to how his soul alongside type of septums and zurin artists were able to combine when they were released from the destroyed mantela all three cesareans combined were powerful enough to mantle the empty space left by lorcan they rose together and became talos a real divine whose presence can be felt when he has prayed to the man-god became real only a single one of them dying for example tiber septim despite how great his achievements were was not enough for him to ascend to godhood hence why he wasn't a god in arena or daggerfall but three great souls combined together is enough talos becomes a god but there may be a bit more to it this next bit is my own interpretation of things tiber septim was a dragonborn a being possessed in the divine infusion of akatosh the aedric god of time by becoming a god himself time itself broke folding in on itself and making every ending of daggerfall simultaneously true and false at the same time the results of the endings remain every war was won every goal achieved but how it was achieved the battles themselves none of that happened due to the time breaking nature of the occurrence in arena and daggerfall talus does not exist as a god but due to time over right in itself during the warp in the west by morrowind not only does talos exist but he has always existed when a historian of tamriel tries to look back through time talos will always be mentioned even though he technically did not exist the elder scrolls rewrote themselves fittingly talos is the tamrielic god of conquest with all three of his souls being responsible for conquering the continent in one way or another talos is both the cause and the largest effect of the warp in the west i should also mention that there are theories that the numidium itself is so powerful that the simple act of powering the device was enough to break time so it is possible that the warp would have occurred without the releasing of the souls and the mantling of talos the warp in the west so we've discussed how the warp in the west happened but what were the effects of its occurrence going into and then out of it when you choose your ended in daggerfall they are all in vain the three great powers conquered equal land within the iliac bay becoming neighbours and erasing the minor kingdoms consolidating the region and all of them becoming loyal to the empire the orcs gained their equality among the races of tamriel the under king vanished from the annals of history and manny marco achieved the goal of godhood splitting into two forms a pathetic physical version that we come to meet in oblivion and a true god-like being who roams the sky as the necromancer's moon and helps the necromancers to create black soul gems whenever he is present within the night sky the numidium in all this vanished perhaps it is at the bottom of the bay or it was blown across the continent as before we don't know for sure but so far no one has found any proof that it still exists everyone gets what they wanted and the deadly weapon of mass destruction becomes lost once again this became known within history as the miracle of peace retcon meaning to retrospectively revise typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previous described events the warp in the west and the concept of dragon breaks within the elder scrolls are the very definition of this trope but it is important to note that the warp was not invented to simply write off the player's choice of ending in daggerfall instead it was to ensure that there is no singular cannon ending by choosing to make every ending cannon a player can switch from daggerfall straight into morrowind and see the effect of their choice with playable orcs a strong empire and some new lawbucks confirming what really happened unfortunately we don't actually know the minutia of what was happening within the iliac bay during the dragon break itself we do know that the time warping effects were localized to only the bay region the bucks in more wind are vague and as it's set on the other side of the continent the people of vardenfeld don't know nor care what happens in the west very much some famous characters were present during the war such as bao and zaya but she won't say anything on the matter all we know is that the event started on the 9th of frostfall and had concluded by the 11th the book where were you when the dragon broke details accounts from four people including manny marco it becomes clear that everyone lost track of time for those two days and that only the stars and moons remained constant a khajiit scholar mentions that the numidium was seen rising in all three provinces simultaneously and the king of worms simply states that he was here there and here again seemingly explaining that he has ascended and descended godhood becoming the necromancer's moon and remaining unknown simultaneously it essentially sounds like a huge [ __ ] when used sparingly these retcons can be an interesting lore mechanic and in the case of this one it was necessary in their goal of giving the player freedom daggerfall unfortunately left bethesda with little choice between deciding a singular cannon ending and hence betraying all those that had chose otherwise or making the compromise that they did nevertheless my issue with these retcons and specifically dragon bricks is that people are using them too much to wipe out all contradictory accounts when discussing the law sometimes contradictions are on purpose by the game writers to make the player not just blindly trust what they see and hear but to think more deeply about it and this thought process ties in perfectly to wanting the player to embody a detective while they investigate the ongoings in daggerfall daggerfall was even the first game in the series to deliberately incur unreliable narrators and contradictory reports with its war effectively accounts and these different perspectives are not the result of some dragon break it's simply too convenient to subscribe every little lore tidbit to a dragon break when there are more interesting reasons for different accounts on events i don't know what to make of the idea of rhett conan as a whole it feels curious that later game materials have the authority the strikeout law by virtue of being the most recent title for example with daggerfall ebenom is a deity for the red gods but with the elder scrolls online he has been rewritten as a nord and possibly even written out of history itself so where does it stop what is to keep future installments from erasing manny marco or perhaps even talos the nature of video game development indeed means that writers change over time microsoft could ask bethesda to wreck on the games from the beginning although of course they won't well hopefully it's also important that we bring up that there are such things as a good retcon such as the adamantine tower in daggerfall it's well less than impressive from the outside let's be honest and the cities from arena have been reckoned a ton too even daggerfall was guilty of this changing not only the design of the cities but their locations within the geography even the ecology of the world changed with a rainforest now being present in north west hammerfell which i guess begs the question of what is a retcon and what is simply the development of a game's universe over time i think we can all agree that the later games would have suffered if bethesda felt it was necessary to adhere closely to what was designed and put together back in 1994. fortunately with the elder scrolls true retcons without any kind of in-universe justification are indeed rare nevertheless these retcons give a lot of power to the later games which can confirm refute or specify things mentioned in previous installments as morrowind did with daggerfall because it was the first lore heavy game of the series daggerfall regrettably gets the short end of the stick in many regards that doesn't mean however that its law is bad in fact it boasts many books that have reappeared in every single elder scrolls game but unfortunately its sources can be more easily undermined by later titles and that concludes all i have to say regarding daggerfall's story and lore the law within the game itself is as entertaining to read as the later titles and offers the structure that later titles would follow within game box alongside dialogue being the main methods of divulging information to the player while the majority of the analysis so far has looked at the unity port of the game it is only fair to review the game properly by diving into the dos version in all its glory in the mid 1990s the personal computer market was still niche large strides had been made by devices like the commodore 64 zx spectrum and the amstrad cpc here in the uk among many others these all attempted to market pcs to a wider and younger audience and while their attempts were met with some success the market was still one dominated by those most interested in the medium hence software of any kind was rarely designed with ease of use in mind for mass market adoption instead coming with huge manuals and the requirement of some basic early computer knowledge computer rpgs then they were just as complicated these were games for pc enthusiasts and specifically the kinds of enthusiasts that were also into tabletop role-playing with complex leveling systems stat checks combat multipliers and other in-depth systems the audience expected complexity it's not surprising then that rpgs from the dos and later windows 95 era tend to be bewildering to anyone with modern sensibilities early elder scrolls titles arena and daggerfall likely intimidate the modern player from the off with their in-depth character creation and relatively high difficulty from an era where a souls type game was just called a game this series so far has utilized the unity port of daggerfall an ambitious project that took an asian relic straight into the 21st century boasting capabilities that would have blown the minds of gamers back in 1996 and while i made it clear back at the beginning that the unity version is by far the superior way of experiencing the game until these last few years the daggerfall experience was not so simple it would be unfair of me to analyze a game for so many hours and mostly ignore its original state so let's take a journey back in time to play the original emulated version of the elder scrolls 2. the dos version of daggerfall was released with high system requirements for the time and was notoriously buggy both aspects of which didn't help it with reviewers yet despite these setbacks previous fans from marina alongside those enamored by rumors of its immense size and unusually long development time dove into one of the grandest fantasy world simulators ever released the game received a fair amount of awards over its release period and was certainly not obscure obtaining a level of fame or in some cases infamy among hardcore pc gamers ion storm even referenced the game in their design document for deus ex except it was used as an example of what not to do calling the game wide but shallow so why is it now after all these years that daggerfall is receiving more love well the household name that the elder scrolls has become may be one reason but the other is the unity version here i would like to preface that i love daggerfall the last few hours of video should show as much but man the original version of daggerfall has simply not aged very well now there may be some bias here i'm a 90s baby and my first gaming experiences were on the more focused playstation 1 so while games like crash bandicoot may share the same release year they don't share the same audience budget scope of design no hardware yet those games are still very playable all these years later with that said daggerfall is simply unpleasant to play after all that time as one gets used to how modding games or iterations of games feel going back to the classic way can be difficult i will note that some of these problems may be due to emulation through dosbox but seeing as this is the main way the majority of people can experience this classic version nowadays these critiques are still valid the movement for one is uncomfortably clunky becoming more fluid in the full screen mouse look mode but still plagued by odd stoppages and hiccups when swinging your weapon the game also feels slow clearly limited to a low-ish frame rate and even loading between areas in the overworld or when entering a building can take a good while graphically there is of course poor visual distance but this isn't all that in common to some of the other games in the series and honestly it helps add to the ambiance the weather effects at times can be a bit too extreme though this fog being a prime example sound design is also more gratin sound effects can play far too frequently or at odd volume levels [Applause] this is also accompanied by some bugs for example i had this rogue electronic note in dungeons [Music] the default controls are a trip too allowing you to play the entire game using only a mouse which makes it feel even older than it is this is an optional feature for those more accustomed to that style of crpg design though yet it is weird that they would make it the default as by 96 this method was already on the way out even more strange is that for some reason controlling daggerfall using these controls feels far more cumbersome than it did in arena it might have something to do with it being retroactively bolted onto a more modern engine daggerfall's x engine was designed with modern 3d world spaces in mind so forcing the player back into a scheme better suited for the faux friday of arena was unnecessary the wilderness was also more boring of course daggerfall's vast procedurally generated open world is empty by modern standards but this original version does not use the topographic measurements that were included in the game's files resulted in the outside world being entirely flat and only having small polygonal triangle mounts to simulate the ground the unity version corrected the issue by using that unused topographic information to its full advantage helping the landscape of the iliac bay to come to life with hills cliffs lakes and all the other features you would expect to find in the countryside interestingly dos daggerfall does in fact have some elevation with it mimicking the same elevation you see on the world map for example areas in the rough guardian mountains are much higher than on the coast of daggerfall however this elevation is even across each square of the world map these squares be in the land you actually walk on so the player most of the time will never actually know they have traveled upwards and it's all but impossible to notice this change from the ground thanks to commenter aji hamathi for this information this flatness of the landscape combined with the fog of war harms the sense of such a huge world too an area in which that all-important sense of scale that nagafur prided itself on is crushingly diminished the game at launch was also super buggy and in a bad state and this wasn't just your common haha funny bethesda glitches but game breaking problems in the uk version there was a bug in it that meant one of the key dungeons later on in the game didn't appear on your map so you literally couldn't complete the game unless you could manually find the dungeon which with the scope of the game world is all but impossible issues like these aren't so much of a big problem today you just release a day one patch and fix it however in 96 the internet was still in its infancy so the only way to receive patches was via floppy disk or cd even bethesda's modern day freeware version of their own website isn't ideal missing patches and tools to make the game more accessible before the unity release the uesp version was recommended for its inclusion of the eye of argonia tool which extends to draw distance albeit mildly and it includes all official and some unofficial tweaks and bug fixes such as making the baronzaya dark l family actually be dark elves they were originally not green grey in appearance despite the player's choice of dark elf being so when analyzing daggerfall over this series i was worried that perhaps i was seeing the game through rose tinted glasses looking over shortcomings that others may see but it isn't playing the dos version that i see that wasn't the case the many laurels i have attributed to daggerfall are deserved when they are not hampered by the x engine and the issues associated with such a dated game the design philosophy was solid and it is by modernizing said philosophy into an updated engine that allows the game to shine in a way that it never occurred before i first played daggerfall in 2014 and struggled to even get out of that first dungeon and honestly i don't believe i would have ever picked it up again if not for the tremendous effort of a man down in australia one gavin into karma clayton clayton had been tinkering with daggerfall since the late 90s being a fan of the original game since release as a veteran within the daggerfall scene and haven't worked in it for just as long he was the perfect man for the job while the unity version went through the standard affairs of early pre-alphas that all such fan projects tend to do with the project started in 2014 after just five years in 2019 the first feature complete alpha of daggerfall unity or dfu for short was released while the unity version continues to be updated in the pursuit of perfectly replicating the original in terms of its classic graphic style the game is all but done boasting everything you would expect from modernized controls a smooth and fast playing experience a lack of bugs and most importantly mod support modern is a hallmark of the elder scrolls and while some tools such as the iaforgonia did exist for the original version of daggerfall modern ex engine was a very limited experience compared to what fans would become accustomed to with gambrio in the future titles so it is by utilizing the user-friendly unity engine and opening the game up to modern that garen clayton has given us the gift of an elder scrolls 2 with the modern capabilities that one expects from the series the modern community may not have the size of even morrow wins but those that do mod the game are very dedicated and have created many excellent mods these add new more dynamic quests improved graphics that make the game look relatively modern improved music taking the old midi music from the dos version and given it the orchestral treatment we all love about the modding games [Music] and then there are the role-playing enhancers these add monsters into the overworld and interesting sights to see in said world making it actually worthwhile to walk around and not use only the fast travel combine these with road mods and a speed changer and you're well on your way to giving yourself a more modern elder scrolls experience but in a province the size of the uk basically dfu is the way to experience daggerfall the only reasons to play the dos version would be for nostalgia or to see what the original was like but for me i see no reason to ever go back except for morbid curiosity the unity version makes daggerfall far more approachable to the modern elder scrolls fan which is what this video series is all about showing newer fans that it is worth going to check out the earlier games and not just stop at morrowind as so many do hell even i did for the longest time where morrowind was cut back with a low budget desperate times and endless passion that allowed it to excel following the reviews and knowledge they had from their previous games daggerfall was made with grand ambition in mind using forward-looking ideas and a groundbreaking scope but it was unfortunately hampered by limited technology and a short development time and it is these reasons that the original dos version simply doesn't hold up where other retro games like doom do considering it would struggle to stand out from the hundred other sword and sorcery rpgs if you were to glance at a screenshot or even the back of the box feature list daggerfall's greatest surprise is how experimental its design is from those procedurally generated dungeons which seem more like a product of 2016 than 1996 to the lack of guidance and the sheer scale which have little in common with almost any other rpg in existence today daggerfall doesn't just shoot for the moon it shoots for pluto it's weird unforgiving and often uncomfortable but there's a reason it has such a strong hold over those of us who love it few other games can provide power trips window shopping and a claustrophobic sense of horror side by side and with a thousand other possibilities in between daggerfall doesn't restrict or guide it allows you to exist and make whatever you will of its world there are well-written characters and plotlines to uncover should you choose to chase them and they're a good reason to play if you're excited about elder scrolls history and law but even outside of that it's random rpg roguelike nature offers a gaming experience that feels oddly modern if not very elder scrolls as many may know it now daggerfall shines with its overzealous ambitions of what a game should be it attempted and not always successfully to incorporate vampire masquerade style undead tribes political scheming espionage and demonic infiltration and behind all of that an rpg system that completely rewrote the rules of its predecessor the elder scrolls series has seemed much more conservative since even the beautifully strange morrowind is far more focused and traditional in its goals a fair criticism of daggerfall would be its lack of focus and not only for the player but in its design its limited array of building blocks used to construct the towns and dungeons caused reviewers to complain about the game's monotony and they were right over time the game can become samey without the help of mods or a focused roleplaying imagination it like many other classic rpgs relies on how much you're willing to invest into it to learn its quirks and truly fall in love with its retro charm these are problems that bethesda themselves took years to course correct from red guards and later morrowind's design took a dramatic shift away from procedural generation but retained daggerfall's core ambition to simulate a whole world but with passion and focus morewood's landmass is tiny next to daggerfalls it doesn't even amount to a full percentage point in comparison but it rightly chooses depth over breadth machine designed levels were no more for more wood onwards everything in tamriel was placed there by hand and the continent did become all the richer albeit smaller for it daggerfall isn't everyone's cup of tea i know that but i personally rank it just below morrowind for the best elder scrolls game it's at least worth giving it a try the game is free and available for all i wish we can see some of these deeper rpg elements return but bethesda is clearly keen on continuing the streamline which financially seems to be the best course for them the mantle has fallen onto other game studios to carry on daggerfall's legacy but for now daggerfall unity's unique combination of massive scale limitless quests vast array of content exemplary character customization and computer role playing elements along with its engrossing atmosphere and ambience make it one of the most compelling games to fully immerse and lose yourself in this was one hell of an undertaking but i hope i have succeeded in giving daggerfall the in-depth analysis that it deserves if you've made it this far well congrats this was a long video and certainly not a normal undertaking for this channel while i will continue to create long form videos they aren't the standard most of my reviews are closer to 20 to 40 minutes long but when a game deserves it it will receive a multi-hour long analysis if that's what you want then you can subscribe for more analytical and retro gaming videos this video was originally made over eight parts most of which will now be unlisted apart from those that can stand on their own in the future if i do a long video like this it will probably just be released as the final product and not split up time for the credits most of the music is from daggerfall and later included more wind oblivion and skyrim tracks and the occasional arena or red god ones unfortunately there isn't 3 hours and 45 minutes of peaceful daggerful music and i didn't want to reuse the tracks too often and cause monotony the artists who created the artwork used for the lore section are referenced within the description and whenever i used a fellow youtubers clip within the video they have been referenced on screen you may have noticed that my audio quality was a bit of a mixed bag throughout i changed microphones multiple times and learned how to not just edit my audio better but also how to record it if you notice my voice is sticky or a bit wet sounding i'm sorry about that i spent countless hours trying to correct the issue but it seems a problem with my short tongue and welsh accent i have gotten better at hiding it through experience however a big thank you goes to patriciantv for inspiring this series while we may not share the same opinions when it comes to daggerfall nor am i as intelligent as an analyzer as he is it was his epic retrospectives that motivated the creation of this video and the overall direction that this channel has taken following my own morrowind video thank you also to zarak zacharon which i probably pronounced wrong his insights into daggerfall over the years were what made me pick up the game originally and again when the unity version was released all other thanks to those creators mentioned throughout this video indigo gaming double negative moet earns jacob and of course the guys over at once lost games the biggest thank you though goes to you the viewers when the series started i had just 400 subscribers and averaged 200 views a video this channel has come a long way over the past six months and i'm excited to create more content for you thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Jwlar

Views: 6,159,826

Keywords: the elder scrolls, elder scrolls, daggerfall, tes II, tes 2, tes 2 daggerfall, tes II Daggerfall, making of daggerfall, history of daggerfall, daggerfall gameplay, daggerfall unity, daggerfall development, daggerfall documentary, elder scrolls documentary, making of the elder scrolls, history of the elder scrolls, Daggerfall Analysis, jwlar, daggerfall deconstructed, daggerfall review, daggerfall retrospective, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - A Complete Retrospective

Id: 16YEMiNxNCs

Length: 226min 44sec (13604 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022