The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall Goes Free

@Matshelge: Egads Man, who is the heavens has these insane requirements you speak of in this day and age?

WarOtter

I'm at at work with a 100MB/S connection...6 hours to go. Ohhhh boy.

@Saint Anima: Good luck with it, from what I've seen it certainly is different from Morrowind.

@Vecha: Tired of America's Solution to Health Care.: Huh, quit complaining, my max is 100KB/s or so.

'Excuse the gloom, but none may know of this matter.' This game BLEW ME AWAY at the time. I can still hear the creaking doors and the liches' screams. And King Lysandus' wails in the dark, dark night.

MaxLaadvermogen

@VenomIreland: Have I got a guest star?

@metallicorphan: My connection is normally pretty crap but it's cutting out every 30 seconds trying to download this ><

xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx

@Koztah: Nah, nothing will beat Morrowind!

Very nice game if you can handle the pixels.

Zorba

While it says only 66mhz, this is a lie. You will need at least 200mhz to run it without any sort of stuttering. I also believe it says it requires 8 mb of ram, but this is also a lie, 16 megs or stuttering will be a major problem. Now if your pc has the power of the gods, and matches these requirements, then its well worth a look at least.

Matshelge

Bug Ridden game though... google daggerfall bug stories... good reading

xone9

Awesome. Pure awesome. I've never been able to find a copy for purchase anywhere locally, and the ones I found online were usually snatched up quick.

Wolfgeist

Ah, the best of the series.

Koztah

I still, STILL prefer this game to Morrowind and Oblivion. Truly a classic.

gtc

@Ace11: I believe the original lacked an auto-travel function so for that reason alone I would recommend Daggerfall.

WarlordPayne

@2NinjasTapedTogether: You may be able to download a dos emulator for whatever you are running and relive the glory days.

yobbo

@OtisElevator:Hehe,yeah, I've spent days inside of a single dungeon in that game. God help you if you get lost without a recall point set.

WarlordPayne

@Moleculor: I think it's better than its sequels, too. They keep getting more and more simplified while I enjoyed the complexity of Daggerfall.

WarlordPayne

@MattB: It'll still be pretty damn unstable. I can remember two fatal bugs off the top of my head and I haven't played the game in a very long time. That said, the game is outstanding and well worth your time if you enjoyed any of the other Elder Scrolls games. It also has the best character creation I've seen in an RPG.

WarlordPayne

@Esper mind tricks: Chrome is saying it'll take 4 days for it to download. So I think we did do something to the site. =P 4 days. Thats not even funny.

did everyone start downloading at the same time? This think is going slow!

wooooooo!

@armchairnixon: Thank you so much for adding an edit button, Kotaku. We really needed one.

armchairnixon

It's massive, yes, but all the dungeons and such are randomly-generated, so it doesn't take up that much space because it's not like the new games that are all designed with a set world and unique dungeons; Daggerfall only has a set number of layouts to pick from, so it doesn't require as much space for environments.

armchairnixon

@spectralpulse: Yea. Didn't mind the wait too much. Got it in about an hour or so. Then....
Couldn't get past the first dungeon :(

@metallicorphan: I personally don't mind the wait. I find it highly respectful of a company to offer older games as a free download. Bethesda ranks up with Bioware and Atlus and to a lesser extent Square Enix with me. Cheers

spectralpulse

@Kitsune Sniper: Do what now!? I have a complete boxed copy at home that I never play (I started at Morrowind, and it's hard to go back). To eBAY!

Guitarzan2k5 - Bad puns are my business, and business is good!

You think that's a lot of game for being so small? Go look at Nethack.

Jennacide

@Cheevocabra: I've seen it said before by friends how buggy the game was. I would assume this version has all the patches produced through it's lifetime applied so I wonder how stable it is by comparison?

I think I'll wait until the download speed gets a bit over 25 KB/s, thanks.

Mink_Car

@RockyRan: More outdated than Oblivion? That's hilarious. Daggerfall is infinitely deeper than ES4, not to mention its leveling actually worked.

Cathartik

http://www.fileplanet.com/202291/200000/fileinfo/Elder-Scrolls-II:-Daggerfall-(Full-Game)

sanskrit

I guess Bethsoft found that source code. *snicker* I pity the poor saps who try to navigate Privateer's Hold for the first time.

Cathartik

Cool! Arena is on there too for free and it's a whole 8.8 MB to download

PeteeWJ

sweet, the rpg i grew up on is now free *giddy* :]

@Vecha: Tired of America's Solution to Health Care.: Wow lucky you :|

I'm getting 10KB/s

As always, Im late to the party...:

Seems like we kotaku'ed the site :)

Esper mind tricks

@khronos27:yeah man tell me about it.I had like 100+ on morrowind but story progress? none.lol that game was so badass

kakashi3488

Fuck yes! I've been waiting to play this game for about forever! Morrowind is my favorite game, so I can't wait.

wox42

@Kitsune Sniper: My bad. At least we can all agree that diplodocs.com has it

Man, this just made my day.

@PeteyCoco: They don't have any there. Trust me. I work there. :p

rose tinted glasses? no thanks - all i remember about this game is how freaking buggy it was. Still loved it tho.

@SprinklesTDD: Seems like it. I'm getting 10 KB/s myself. :(

RockyRan

@emwurst: I haven't actually gotten around to starting Morrowind yet, though I have it sitting on a shelf waiting. While graphics don't usually concern me, the difference between Oblivion and Morrowind got to me a bit, so I needed to take a break before diving in. I do like the sound of the more depth though. Oblivion did make things pretty easy at times with the "go this way" arrow. Now talking about it makes me think I should start Morrowind soon. If I don't, before I know it Dragon Age will be out and I'll be playing that.

@2NinjasTapedTogether: That sounds exactly like me and Morrowind. I'd never do ANYTHING, but I had the greatest time in that game.

@K1NG EV1L: August 27 1998, Dear Journal, Today Daggerfall and I broke up. Not only was she more pixellated but she is also a lot buggier. Not the kinds that are in your trousers but the ones that ruin your life... Oh wait... Anyway, not only that but she would crash like Stevie Ray Vaughn. I still have fond memory of booting her up, starting with -1000 hp and going nuts while passing buzzing lights in a dungeon. Oh and at the same time I loved how I could shoot through walls with my arrows. It's like she didn't want to oblige her presence and wanted me to be free, oh SO FREE. But STILL, an open world more than half the size of Great Britain is enough to forgive and still love you Daggerfall. You have your issues but let's put that on the case of bad PMS and let's play again. Give me some of that freedom, I don't care if I only need to visit 6 spots to get you to heaven, I want to take the long way to get there!

Installing it now...took forever to download!
I've forgotten how complicated it was to play around with Dos....

This is the best entry in the series.

Rozzlit

this is the game that introduced me to furries... topless furries

mutedia

This game was the buggiest, most aggravating game that I've ever played. Even after being patched like 5 times its bugs STILL made it almost unplayable for any length of time... ...that being said, this game was INCREDIBLE and I loved it so much. Its innovation and customization features changed how I viewed video games from then on. So awesome.

@endless852: GASP! indeed.

DL now. Playing in the largest game ever made (Twice the size of the UK) should be interesting.

I loved just creating characters in this game when I was a kid. I'd spend forever rolling and rerolling characters and taking the personality quiz for determine your class. I must've played the demo for years before I moved on to other games. I had a hearty lol when Bethesda referenced the bully and the sweetroll dilemma in Fallout 3.

SanaEquiesterer

@2NinjasTapedTogether: Ideally, as long as you're on something vaguely computer-like, there's probably an emulator available to you.

Seems ElderScrolls: Arena is also free.

SagiMewtwo

I really do think this game was superior to Morrowind and Oblivion. Plus it had topless witches dancing in the moonlight and werepigs, and how can you not like those?

Moleculor

Ah, Bethesda you wonderful people. It's all the rage to put out back catalogues for free these days. Now, how about those rarities like Redguard XD

Oh my god! This demo was on one of the first disks for PC Gamer I had after I subscribed. I always wanted this, but by the time I had the money, much better games had dropped. I shall yoink!

Sweet, all they need to do now is make red guard free and I'll have the entire collection.

K1NG EV1L

@HudoKudo: 10 here.. oh well, it's free! Thanks Bethesda!

@metallicorphan: Yea I'm getting around 10-60KB/s when I normally get like 900KB/s

hmm,taking over an hour and half for 146 mb.....think i will wait a day or two

metallicorphan

FINALLY! I mean, I own the game, but I was expecting this sooner considering they released Arena a long time ago. Although, you have to give them credit, we probably got this to shut us up since we haven't gotten any news on TESV. Wereboar Nord Barbarian, here I come.

I remember playing this game for dozens of hours.... this game is so huge, I didn't even find out what the main story was about...something about a king

Bedlam

Two megabites out of 148. Fantabulous. 4 hours left. Has this thing been Kotaku'ed? D:

SprinklesTDD

@Vecha: Tired of America's Solution to Health Care.: I'm getting like less than 20 now, consider yourself fortunate! Started off at around 50...Guess its just busy.

Now if i can get this bad boy running on my PSP, well whoa-ho-ho, that'd be great news.

pandafresh

If I recall, there was a surprising amount of nudity. Random nudity, too. Walk into a house - and ope! There's a naked woman there. Walk into the bar - woah! Where'd her top go?

And yet no one batted an eye, best as I remember.

I guess Bethesda just wasn't that big in the public eye back then. I mean, imagine if Fox got a hold of that one.

They can't pull stuff like this nowadays - just look at how much crap they got for having a topless skin that you could hack into only in the PC version. Even the console versions got re-rated. Odd how times have changed.

It's not like they pulled punches with Fallout 3 - that game earned its M rating twenty times over. But I recall someone asking the developers if the game would have nudity (referring to the original Fallout, and perhaps digging at Bethesda's pedigree).

They replied that no, they thought they would get pushed into the AO mark (or something to that effect.

Certainly gives cause for a moment of poise.

The Forgetful Brain

Wow this is amazing. One of the best Elder Scrolls games ever made released for free. Maybe they should also port this to PSN and live and get some extra money from that.

The Swearing Gramps

@Squiffy: Real-time 1st person rpg. You're familiar with the other Elder Scrolls games right? Morrowind, Oblivion... (I won't say it, but I'm thinking it.) Well, basically Daggerfall is set in the same universe, with largely the same mechanics. If you're not familiar with those then, (where have you been living?), your skills level up through use, and it's about as non-linear as you can get for an rpg. There is a main story line but you can ignore it for all the side quests if you like. Imagine an MMO, just with nobody else online. And a heck of a lot more pixelated.

nomadder

@Kitsune Sniper: There are a few websites that provide the pdf. manuals for old DOS games. I think mobygames.com does it.

hmmm, I may have to give this a download. I've been exploring both classic western and japanese RPG's, so this is awesome.

@Psudonym: I like your logic!

Woah.. the game had 148 MB!??? That's a lot for it's time! Never played it, getting it now :)

@Kitsune Sniper: Wonder if those prices will drop now? Then again..guess the collectors will want the box and all.

Daggerfall is one of the biggest games i've ever encountered. Thousands of towns, tens of thousands of dungeons -- dungeons so damn vast that you could get lost and NEVER find your way out again, and of such quantity that many were never even tested or played by the designers themselves. Enjoy ;)

OtisElevator

Holy crap. This game still goes for over $50 on eBay; $100 or more if complete!

Does this thing include the manuals in PDF form?

@Saint Anima: By the way, that tagline is over 10 years old so don't let it get your expectations too high.

Y'know, I consider myself a classic gamer, but I never tried this game. I think Baldur's Gate was my first RPG. Before that I was all into the adventure games (Sierra's Quest games, Monkey Island, etc.) How's this one? Turn-based, real-time? If you could liken it to other games of the era I'd appreciate it.

Anyone have slow slow speeds? I'm barely getting 100KB/s...

Back when they were building the empire, I wonder if anyone realized they were building an empire...

nomadder

@Saint Anima: gasp!

endless852

would you recommend this game over the original?

Oh dang, whatever am I to do? How do they expect me to run this game with my PC?! But I kid, I remember a few years ago there was a download for both Arena and Daggerfall...but when I tried playing them the audio was all skippy and junk. Then again...my computer now is waaaay better compared to what it once was.

マジカル パイ

"rose-tinted glasses to play." :sigh:

Ohhh, please and thankyou. I can't resist a free game... Unless it's Gex 64.

burtwonk

@Phantom6612: This must be the case for so many of us. And it's so difficult to backward through these games. Oblivion made everything so easy with fast travel and the simplified fighting system. I actually just started playing Morrowind and it's a challenge. I do appreciate that you need to listen to directions and read signposts to find your way around - which would have made Oblivion more rewarding for me. I hope I can figure my way around Daggerfall.

emwurst

Free. I like free. Most things should be free. Things that no one makes money off of anymore should be free. Rich people should give away more things for free. Bethesda is obviously rich people. And they're giving away something for free. They're my kind of rich people... Now if only they'll let go of that horse armor.

Psudonym

Who will be the first person to find some reason to bitch about this?

I tried the first one a while back...would have loved to have played it back when it was first released though. Very very dated though...:(

Hmm, never tried this before so I guess I can give it a shot! Would be my first experience with the Elder Scrolls series. Yep.

In my process of playing the Elder Scrolls games in reverse order, this works wonderfully.

I'd be more excited if the game wasn't mind-numbingly dull, frustrating, and often broken. (Still, a true milestone for open-world gaming.)

goestoeleven

I tried this once. It has a really creepy vibe through the whole thing. Even in the cities. I felt very... Alone and confused? And that's not neccesarily bad, games that give of strong moods are few.

I am so in.

Cool. My disc is so scratched I can't install it anymore. Very cool.

Thanks for the tip, downloading it right now.

njd09

Aw man, this was one of my first PC games... If only I still had a PC running. I think I'll download it and store it for the time when I actually DO get a PC again. I loved this game... but I didn't ever get anywhere. I'd usually kill someone, get arrested, plead guilty, kill someone else, get arrested, plead guilty again, and then get an offer for the Assassin's Guild... and then get bored and start again. Ah to be young again.

I'm sure it's way more outdated than Oblivion gameplay-wise, but hey, you can't beat free. *starts downloading*

RockyRan

Actually I remember Daggerfall having the fast travel. Oh how I loved that game. My hometown was one that'd I'd found the location for in a musty tome hidden deep in a crypt. It had wonderful things like CLIMBING and a horse drawn CART! I'd never leave a dungeon with even a single arrow left in it. the only reason I stopped playing is because my super awesome character got stuck in a dungeon that seemed to have lost it's front door and my teleport wasn't working. I'll forgive all the bugs for the sheer size and freedom it gave.

Sontrowa

I may have to wait a few days, as it seems trying to open the zip file after download gives me the message, "Windows cannot open the folder," and that the file is invalid. :|

@Dillon Barfield: Ugh, I still hate cliff racers.

@VenomIreland: What the hell are you talking about? I told you. I wasn't complaining. I was just letting people know the download speeds were low. Are you going to repeat yourself again?

@Vecha: Tired of America's Solution to Health Care.: Huh, quit complaining, you should be glad you can even get downloads that high.

@VenomIreland: I wasn't complaining. I was just letting the guy know I had low download speeds as well. So. Bugger off?

@VenomIreland: It was good, but the glut of annoying sky rats and the fact that most of the game looked like a dust bowl was unappealing ... Arena was the best in my book ...

Dillon Barfield

Must... download... now!!!!!!

DoubleJ169

I wanted this game so bad when I was a kid but my mom wouldn't let me have it and my computer wouldn't run it. Now I don't care.

@VenomIreland: That you do, congrats. Anyway, on to the discussion: I'd say both are equal. I found that while Morrowind had some incredible writing and a non-standard fantasy world that was so easy to get lost in, it didn't have the scope that was NEAR what Daggerfall had. Either way, both amazing games.

Sean MacLean

REST WELL THIS NIGHT, FOR TOMORROW YOU ARE SAILING TO THE KINGDOM .. OF DAGGERFALL! BAMF !

sirmarcelot

It is massive. I remember hearing that the total land there was to explore equaled the size of Great Britain.

Voltar

@Thorax: I love free too. I never played Daggerfall so this is perfect for me.

Caylis

Would love to get this but to be honest I doubt my computer could run it. Yeah I need an upgrade..

Lee

@mariospants: Not yet, I'm trying it again but it will apparently take three hours.

Has anybody actually gotten this to download? It's taking forever...

This can be a real pain to get working in DOSbox, but I firmly believe it's a game everyone should try once. Morrowind's gameplay is arguably better. Oblivion's graphics are 1000 times more immersive. But the sheer scope of this game is beyond impressive.

bardofawen

@nomadder: Awesome, thanks! I googled up a few screenshots and it reminds me of Ultima Underworld a bit.

Gonna give 'er a download and check it out. I've been on a big classic gaming binge lately. Dug out all my old discs for the Lucasarts and Sierra games. Even trying out EQ1 again for the first time in 3-4 years. I know, it's not classic gaming per se, but it's classic MMOing to me!

Dunno if it's my connection or if the site is being hammered, but it's downloading at 6k/s! Yikes!

*Looks at the installation requirements*

Does anyone know how to use something with DOS?

Richard Winterton

@Sam Pagan: That happened to me when it had not properly downloaded cos it cut out some reason.

xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx