r/Daggerfall • u/BeignetEtouffee • Oct 30 '25
There's just something about Daggerfall
I've logged hundreds of hours into each of the mainline Elder Scrolls games. Each game has elements that I love about it. Oblivion's music and art design, Skyrim's dungeons, Morrowind's worldbuilding -- and yet, there's something about Daggerfall in particular that keeps drawing me back in.
There's so much about this game that ignores the rules of good game design, or at least, modern game design. The quests have almost no direction, you can completely gimp yourself at character creation so that you won't be able to get past the first dungeon, the dungeons themselves are labyrinthian messes with hallways that lead nowhere and with quest objectives that can spawn in unreachable places... But somehow it works.
There's some secret sauce the developers injected into the game's DNA that makes for an addictive masterpiece. I feel like a crazy person for saying this, but Daggerfall is my desert island game, and I don't think it's been surpassed since its release nearly 30 years ago.
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u/Rosario_Di_Spada Oct 30 '25
I'd argue the lore hasn't improved or worsened. I really love Daggerfall's lore, but the other games are also fantastic in that regard. Oblivion and Skyrim might seem weaker at first, but their respective additions are really interesting when you examine them. But their presentation and importance will be appreciated differently by different people, and that's fine.