Daggerfall Unity remasters the classic Elder Scrolls
Alpha coming soon.
Since 2014, Gavin Clayton has been remaking The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall in Unity, making the incredibly ambitious RPG a bit more palatable—and moddable—for modern sensibilities. It's more of a remaster than something like Skywind or Skyblivion, however, with Clayton preserving the original but with high-resolution textures, mouse-look and, perhaps most importantly, bug fixes. There were a lot of them.
Over the weekend, Clayton announced that Daggerfall Unity's alpha release was imminent (cheers, Reddit), with the last bits of the v0.9 roadmap almost finished. On the roadmap itself, he adds that he's focusing on bug fixes and overall polishing, while mod and translation support will continue to be developed until it hits 1.0.
0.9 introduced lots of fun stuff, including vampirism and lycanthropy (Daggerfall lets you become a wereboar!), and the ability to swim, levitate, climb and crush stuff. All the core features have been implemented now, with only a few stages left until release.
Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls I played, and I remain convinced it's the best of the lot, but Daggerfall has its share of adherents. Morrowind was more refined and bespoke, but Daggerfall was a stupidly huge, elaborate RPG. Bethesda re-released it for free a while back, and you can download it directly from the official site.
To play Daggerfall Unity, you'll need a copy of Daggerfall, either from Bethesda or the other options listed here, but note that installation might be different depending on which you pick.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.
'I sat with Todd Howard for about 3 months': The Elder Scrolls Online devs talk working with Bethesda to make sure they don't break the lore of future games
'Very few' people would play a Morrowind-style RPG with 'no compass, no map' and a reliance on quest text, says ESO director, 'which is kind of sad'