Weekly 'What Games Are You Playing?' thread #I think it's actually 23

You won’t find any of this in Arena You will find a dungeon crawler trying to masquerade as a breathing living world equipped with a digital dm to help you live in it.

As expected, this divided focus harms both aspects of the game. It is an okay-ish dungeon crawler with a thin coat of ye olde fantasy paint applied to it Besides boozing and being a bitchboy courier, there is little you can do in the larger world before you delve into yet another cave or crypt. By playing as an Altmer I have apparently bypassed a lot of frustration with the game, as High Elves are immune to paralysis, which btfos certain enemy types completely Still, even this game has the overambitious style that Bethesda cultivated through the years, although the large world is as deep as a puddle, so it under-delivers just the same.

TES Daggerfall

The improvements from the first game, both story-wise and gameplay-wise are great and elevate the game to a level that makes it very comfortable to play, provided you can look past the age and some weird design choices.

The world outside of the dungeons is actually worth interacting with now. You can become a member of a guild, take out loans from a bank, purchase property (which includes ships), evade loan sharks (using said ships). Combined with an alchemy system that allows you to taste certain body parts of uncertain creatures and make various potions using them, this game gives you one of the best John McAfee simulators put there.

The dungeon crawls are more intuitive and fun, largely thanks to mouselook All this fun is severely hampered by the proc gen nature of the majority of the dungeons. Yes, Bethesda’s choice to do proc gen planets is really a Retvrn to Trvdition moment. And no, the dungeons aren’t different for each playthrough, the devs did the proc gen process only once and then put the results into the final version. So there are hundreds of expansive labyrinthine dungeons across the game for you to explore, which comes with the drawback that they weren’t really tested by anyone.

I almost dropped Daggerfall when I had two dungeons in a row where the objective was in an unreachable location. If not for my faith in Todd, I might’ve ended the whole pilgrimage prematurely This isn’t a problem with the Unity version, I hear, but I am one of those insufferable strags who like to get the vanilla “release day” experience and have subjected myself to DOSBox tomfoolery

The story is unique in both its content and its presentation. There is a bit of autism involved in how you actually unravel the mysteries, but it is the good old-fashioned kind of autism, not the Little Lamplight kind of autism.

TES Redguard

This was easily the game I was looking towards the most during my pilgrimage, purely because it is the only game on the list that I haven’t played before independently. What intrigued me most about it is that two Bethesda veterans, Kurt Kuhlmann and Ashley Cheng, consider Redguard to be their favourite game to develop, despite the general reputation of the game being that of a misguided spinoff. Todd also always brightens up when discussing it, so it clearly holds a spot in the old guard’s hearts. Surely something so special for these people must actually be good, or at least interesting?

I was actually genuinely surprised with how well the worldbuilding and the narrative were holding up to modern TES standards. Turns out a lot of the lore we attribute to Morrowind actually came from Redguard. Despite not being an rpg, which might’ve doomed the game, it has a strong grasp on its tone and atmosphere. Although you can see Indiana Jones/Prince of Persia through the stitches, it still has the feeling of an Elder Scrolls game.

As mentioned, this is not an rpg but an action adventure game with puzzle elements. Not even the good kind, but the ‘90s kind of puzzles. I would still take them over the kindergarten puzzles we got in Nordic barrows

I had no problems adjusting to a stat-less TES game, although I still have many grievances towards the combat system, which I still don’t understand most of the time. Doesn’t help that the game starts with a fight and as such gives the worst first impression imaginable

The character interactions were mostly pleasant, not only because all of the dialogue is voiced, but also because every other character gives you an exposition dump that actually reveals interesting info about Tamriel. Besides, the main character, Cyrus, is voiced by a the standard redguard voice from Morrowind and Oblivion - Michael Mack, who is always a pleasure to listen to. Unfortunately, Cyrus is not one of those neurodivergent protagonists, like JC Denton or Henry of Skalitz, so he mostly plays a Han Solo-esque “merc with a heart of gold” role

The dialogue style and bits of the atmosphere reminded of Oblivion quite a lot, which is surprising considering that Redguard came out in ‘98. Honestly, at certain points it felt like Morrowind was a fluke and that Bethesda always wanted to make games in a style closer to Redguard, as their marketing would slowly prioritise the sense of adventure more so than role-playing Todd, however, prohibits such thoughts and insists that players being anything they want to be is still a priority for the developers. May his words be proven true yet again

I couldn’t force myself past Cyrus’s reunion with his sister, as the mysterious combat and the asinine puzzles got the best of me. Skimming YouTube playthroughs reveals that I didn’t miss much and did about 2/3 of the game.

I understand now why it is such a beloved project among Bethesda devs. I also see it as an important puzzle piece in the larger DNA sequence of Bethesda design. Despite the somewhat cool story elements and lore, I wouldn’t recommend this game purely out of the terrible gameplay, which was already outdated by the time of the game’s release, at least according to its old reviews.