One of the most intriguing and ambitious mod projects that I’ve been following over the past 10 years has been Daggerfall Unity, a full recreation of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall in the Unity engine. Made by Australian IT business owner Gavin ‘Interkarma’ Clayton, the project modernises Daggerfall—infamously the biggest RPGs in existence in terms of world size—for modern rigs, makes it playable in high resolutions, with modern control schemes, and applies all kinds of fancy lighting and graphical effects proffered by Unity. Basically, it makes the 1996 game, which could understandably be deemed unplayable by today’s gamers trying to go back to it, playable again.
Crucially, it’s made Daggerfall very much moddable, and at the time of writing there are already nearly 500 mods forDaggerfall Unity at Nexus Mods. So naturally, as I customarily do for every Elder Scrolls game I play (or not play, as is often the case after a modding marathon), I modded the hell out of Daggerfall before jumping in for my maiden voyage into the unfathomably large game that encompasses the entirety of the Elder Scrolls world.
Sharpening The Dagger… Fall
Now, I want to have something pretty close to the original Daggerfall experience in terms of mechanics, levelling, quests, and all those things, but I just want that experience to be as palatable as possible for my modern gaming eyes. As such, my focus was on graphics and visual mods.
DREAMwas a great place to start, a massive graphical overhaul that claims to overhaulallgraphics assets in the game. I was super-impressed by how it added bump-mapping to the wall and floor textures, causing light sources to glisten off them realistically. I’m a little bit in two minds about whether I prefer the crispy new NPC textures or the charmingly pixelated older ones; it does give fights and NPC interactions a kinda cool visual novel or comic-book feel, as you essentially do battle with high-fidelity cardboard cutouts, but on the other hand it’s a bit eerie to have everyone in every inn you walk into to staring you down wherever you move, as demonstrated below.
Every Elder Scrolls Game Ever Released, Ranked
From Arena to Online, these are the strongest entries in the beloved Elder Scrolls series.
Do read the PDF when installing DREAM, because there’s a little bit of fiddling to do both in the file directory and in-game to get it all optimised.
The other graphics mods I used wereDynamic Skies,Improved Interior Lighting,Lively Cities(increasing the number of people milling around towns),Taverns Redone, andReal Grass. The one gameplay-ish mod I downloaded isTravel Options, which adds a new ‘time-accelerated’ travel that automatically activates under certain fast-travel conditions. It’s a tad janky, causing me to get stuck running into buildings at 1000MPH, but an interesting way to get perspective on just howvastthis game is.
And with that, I dove into Daggerfall. First impressions are pretty good for what may well be the first ever truly open-world RPG. The game runs and playsextremelysmoothly. After changing the default keybindings to a more modern layout, I settled right into the combat, which if anything reveals how certain core elements of the series have stayed the same right up toSkyrim. Melee combat is a very rhythmic affair of gauging the pace at which your enemy is attacking, then getting into range between their attacks before gliding away from them.
“I Don’t Know How We Managed It:” How Fallout: London Succeeded Where Others Faltered
We speak to the creators of the ambitious Fallout 4 total conversion mod set in London, which is launching soon.
At the lower levels at least, I’mwayfaster than most enemies, so it’s mostly a case of kiting them around and pot-shotting them. Enemies drop plenty of loot, and by the time I left the tutorial dungeon I was already kitted out in a full set of chain armour (armour weight/class apparently has no effect on stealth, so I fully plan on realising my dreams of being a heavy-plated stealth assassin, because the Nine know no other game will let me do it).
I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about Daggerfall’s dungeons, which are labyrinthine tangles of repeated textures that you’re able to spendhourslost in if you’re not careful. Even the relatively small tutorial dungeon gave me a sample of that, with the map that unveils more of the dungeon as you explore it offering scant help in traversing it. Stay tuned for my upcoming feature I plan on writing about my first foray into one of the game’s proper dungeons. Honestly, I’m kind of dreading it.
Running around the overworld of Daggerfall Unity, which looks absolutely beautiful all modded up, I decided to test out some of that world size by running on foot from Privateer’s Hold (the tutorial dungeon) to the nearest town, which is literally a couple of pixels away from it on the world map. I’d say it took about three minutes to cross those couple of pixels, and lucky for me I don’t have to continue testing the map’s size myself, because a bunch of years ago some expeditiousYouTuber dedicated a 15-part part seriesto walking across the entirety of the map, which took him a mere 70 hours.
A Classic Revived
Daggerfall Unity is an incredible accomplishment, opening up a largely forgotten chapter of the Elder Scrolls series to a modern audience. I doubt I’m going to play it through in its entirety, but certainly would like to check out some of its more exotic continents, and perhaps track down my old pals at the Dark Brotherhood to see how far I can progress down its questline.
This is where open-world RPGs began in earnest, and in the condition that it’s in now thanks to this Unity remake, Daggerfall is worth a look-in by those fully deserving of the time of those wanting to take a step back in time with a whole load of modern conveniences. You need to own The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall to play Daggerfall Unity, but you canpick it up for free on Steamthese days, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Oh, anddon’tplay the GOG.com version of Daggerfall Unity, because that one’s seriously out of date. Justdownload Unity straight from here instead, which will give you the latest 1.0 release.
It’s Time For Bethesda To Give Obsidian A Pop At The Elder Scrolls
Amidst revelations that Obsidian pitched Elder Scrolls spin-offs to Bethesda years ago, now could be a great time to make that a reality.
