I'm a huge Oblivion and Skyrim-fan and overall fan of interactive art and storytelling, so I was wondering if the classics are good? Got them for free with Fallout Tactics.

I am hoping that they are to Skyrim what Fallout 1+2 are to Fallout 3, but I don't know if that's the case? Generally I'm not so concerned about the graphics, I just want to know if the quests + books are interesting.

Let me pit it gently: those games were made when storytelling wasn't considered to be important element in games, and when games weren't played for the story and "RP". And so they are played very differently from recent TES games. If you want unusual world with tons of big dungeons, big cities, etc., you will find a good surprise, if you play for story, I don't think you will enjoy these games.

I guess I should just play Morrowind if I want a good story, huh? (I have not played Morrowind)

Morrowind is midway between Daggerfall and Oblivion+, when story wasn't standing in the way, but world was already very small. Those games are famous for their worlds and freedom to interact with them in multiple ways. Morrowind is more like "make your own story". I think you will like Morrowind for storytelling, but... well... I hope you will like what made those games famous (and it wasn't story)...

Actually, both story and lore are pretty damn good in Morrowind, if you are willing to properly investigate them. On superficial level it's just doing what NPCs tell you in order to get the next quests and the individual quests and justification given for them range from decent to fairly good.

However, there's a lot more to the main storyline. First of all, to understand it properly, you need to understand politics in Vvardenfell and generally province of Morrowind. The best way to do that is to read relevant books and listen to NPCs which have something to say on the matter. Next step would be doing faction quests and quests for great houses - various factions give you various sort of information, but since Morrowind is all about freedom, just pick ones which seem to be the most interesting to you. Again, read books which you find during those quests and which seem relevant, figure out which important NPCs have which roles and how do some of the more obscure quests fit into what were you asked to do previously. And lastly, go and do the main storyline.

There's a lot of information to process in Morrowind, and you don't really need any of it. If you decide to just go and play the main questline, you'll be given a fairly decent story in kind of a fantastic world with fantastic lore. If you put effort into actually understanding the main questline, you'll be rewarded with something magnificent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0ut_PUAxfU

It's funny - I've actually listened to the main theme all my life, but I always thought the game was too difficult, so I never picked it up.

Heard there's a difficulty slider in the newer patched version, so I might give it a try. Thanks for replies.

That slider has been there all the time. Have fun!

Play them based on your like of old games, not on your like of modern Elder Scrolls games.

Arena is a slog without much in the way of true side-quests, but with tons of procedural-generated stuff to explore if you want. There's a pattern to the main quest where you have to complete dungeon A to find the location of dungeon B, then complete dungeon B to get a piece of a magic staff. There's not much to it other than that. I think the classes matter more than in later games, with some class-based equipment restrictions.

Daggerfall actually has a fair amount of story and a long, branching, varied main quest, and introduces the concept of in-game lore books that are in all the later games. It also has procedural-generated side-quests, joinable guilds (including temples), more open classes (including custom ones I think), and tons of other stuff. The game is *huge*, although a lot of it is random pre-generated content, which means lots of towns and dungeons without much purpose. There is probably as much opportunity for role-playing in Daggerfall as there is in Morrowind. Daggerfall also let you buy horses, carts, houses, and (useless) ships; the horse in particular is sorely missed in Morrowind. The main thing I *don't* like about Daggerfall is that the dungeons are essentially 3D mazes that are extremely easy to get lost in; they actually had to include a mapping guide in the game box (I bought it when it was new), which didn't even help much. The game is also a bit buggy.

The modern Bethesda RPGs, by contrast, have relatively tiny worlds with lots more to do. For me the best part of the new ones is that they can be more rewarding to play in an exploration-driven manner instead of just a quest-driven one. I still appreciate the old ones (Arena+DF) for what they were, and managed to actually play them all the way through about 5 years ago.

Class actually does matter quite a bit in Arena, for a few reasons:

1. No custom classes, so you can't make super classes like in Daggerfall.
2. Only some classes can use magic. (I strongly recommend playing a spellcaster the first time around, especially since this game has a Spellmaker, but none of the customization options and makers of later TES games.)
3. Equipment limitations, as mentioned above. In particular, some classes (Healer) can't use bows (which are actually good in this game, especially since ammo isn't a factor), while only 3 classes can use plate mail (the only armor that can be magical).

I liked Daggerfall's story, it's not as spelled out as the stories in the newer games but personally I like to use some imagination to fill in the holes.

Many of the quests are just randomly generated like 'take this thing and go find this person' but there's an interesting overall story. But I like to imagine why that might be happening.

The thing that I'd be worried about was the bugs and old UI. I haven't played GOG's version though, I sure hope they cleaned it up to not crash so often.

The thing I really liked about Daggerfall was the game mechanics, they felt much more interesting and balanced to me, and much more customize-able.

It doesn't crash *too* much with the last patch.

The UI is actually pretty decent for a game of its era. The inventory management kind of sucks because it displays things as a single-column vertical list of randomly sorted items, which can only be filtered by broad categories (weapons, armor, magic items, ingredients, etc.).

The game's key mapping is good - you can set it up for modern WASD+mouselook controls and it feels pretty intuitive as a result. I remember Bethesda making a big deal out of it at the time, as Quake was about the only game that offered it back then, and only via a console command. Most FPS-style games were still designed around Doom-style keyboard-only controls where you drive around like a tank (forward/back/turn).

Good to hear. I used to run it with WASD keys and it wasn't too bad I thought. I remember having to click way more than I liked though, but I can't remember why...

The big crash I remember was area of effect spells, drove me nuts when I found out my mage I'd been working on forever could only cast touch and direct spells, the game would crash every time I tried area of effect.

Maybe I'll give the GOG version a shot again. I'd love to actually finish the game one day...

I'd like to know though, do the parental controls still work? I'm not such a fan of the nudity in the game. Especially now that I have kids around.

EDIT:
Went ahead and bought Morrowind. As far as I can tell the parental controls have been removed from Daggerfall. Unfortunate.

Daggerfall was neat as a simulator. There are details in it that just aren't present from Morrowind onward.
The dungeons themselves are pretty irritating. They're monstrously big and are like running through a rat maze. I'd probably like Daggerfall most out of all the Elder Scrolls if it wasn't for that.

Are you aware that you can make your life easier in those huge random dungeons? The [ and ] keys will cycle you through the most important dungeon locations. It's a cheat, yes, and it's immersion breaking in a way, but on the other hand, to spend hours on hours to get through not very exciting dungeons with little variance in their building blocks is also not much fun, once you've done it a couple of times.
What actually may be fun is to enter a dungeon, use ] (repeatedly, if you want, until you've found what you came to find), and then try to find your way back to the exit without using ] again - try it! The thrill is that you may encounter opponents which are too strong for you. If you know where the exit is, you can flee and return later, but when you're lost in the middle of nowhere, it's a different story :-).
I myself use this cheat reluctantly, and never for the hand-designed main quest dungeons. But sometimes I tire of a dungeon and feel like completing it as quickly as possible. Or I'm in a mood to play the "get lost and find exit" game.

Bought Quake [the so called "The Offering"] and got TES I-II games. Started the Arena one, answered 10 questions and here I am playing a Breton Rogue, the game is fantastic! Love battling monsters and putting my skills into Luck and Agility, so much fun. Arena was ugly back then in 1994, it's the same now. But the cities are huge indeed, finding your way around was never been so... nontrivial ;)