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Agreed, I really did enjoy Oblivion!

I'm sure you know this, but Morrowind was an excellent game.

Yes Im clocking in at a whopping 4KB/sec. I know this is retro gaming, but does the dl speed have to also be retro? This ridorkulous. Mirrors anyone?

Mirror : http://www.gamershell.com/download_48334.shtml

Thanks for the mirror; the download speed for Daggerfall was unbearable at best (and tended to "complete" early a lot at only a few percent downloaded. >.

Weird, Was getting 200kb/s *shrugs*

Yes. But they released Daggerfall yesterday. Not bad to mention that Arena is available as well.

The work involved in porting an old DOS game to run on Windows would be far more trouble than it's worth, especially if they are just giving it away.

They are releasing them for free for historical reasons. :p

If you read the main article you'll see that Arena was released back in 1994, and Daggerfall in 1996. They were both dos games, with a resolution of 320x200 pixels and 256 colors. Sucky graphics? Indeed by today's standards - just like a Ferrari Testarossa is now technologically inferior to the cheapest japanese city car.

Back in in 1994 I was seventeen, and if there was something Arena and Daggerfall outlined for me, was the dangerous direction RPGs were taking. A quick jump to 2006 and I try to play Oblivion well knowing what awaits me: stunning graphics, seriously breathtaking.

But then, what? It's a huge virtual dollhouse with every NPC being equally shallow. Quests are: go from point A to point B, get item X and bring it to point Y, kill all the monsters on the K location. Awful.

Also, said hyperrealistic graphics begin to countereffect their purpose: when a bottle was just a bunch of pixels, I didn't expect from it anything else than being takeable (and it wasn't always so, aside from games like Ultima, in most other RPGs stuff like bottles, glasses or candles were usually nailed to the furniture).

But in Oblivion a bottle really looks like a real life bottle: shiny transparent glass, the sound when you move it, the reflections. So when you throw it and it's indestructible, that "suspension of disbelief" that's just *everything* in a virtual environment - poof, goes away.

So in the end ok, skip stuff like the Elder scrolls I to III for their graphics, but if you play Oblivion for the graphics only, well, I don't see what another add-on can bring you. Oblivion itself, Knights of the Nine, Shivering Isles: you can finish all of those by slashing a weapon around repeatedly and talking everyone frantically without even reading what they have to say. Hooray!

A game doesn't have to have great graphics to be fun. In fact they don't have to have graphics at all, as in text adventures for example.

Thanks for the confirmation guys.

shinji257: thanks. This means it's not an add-ons to the current Oblivion IV.

resle: It's just me. I don't like going backward. It's just my preference. Our logic will never conform with mine and we will not agree on many things as it seems from your comment. To me, an entertainment has to be full blown awesomeness. Realistic is the keyword to my logical perception of what entertainment should be. Anything close to the affinity of "resorting my will and choices" will not explain my hunger for quality or perfection. My logic entails "a high attention-to-details" on many spectrum of perceivable options. But I am sure this is hard for you to swallow.

I can understand your stance on Oblivion as it shows that, (because you had previous experience) you have high expectation of what should or could've been. To me, your description about it being "a huge dollhouse" is a bit skewed because of your different perceptions or perhaps a different expectation of what the game should/could have been. Expectations has a major role in how you perceive things here.

As I have shown a bit of differences between you and me, we can never conform with each other's logic on this issue. We think on a different level. But thanks for the input nevertheless.

Skyfrog: I move forward.

Your missing out on alot by not playing TES III:Morrowind. That's the problem with the "x-box" generation, its all about graphics, and they have forgot that games originally had immersion and gameplay, which are far more important than graphics. Some games you know will have bad graphics, but will immerse you in a way, that it activates the imagination. With games all about graphics today, people lose that sense of imagination that they had, because everything is starting to become laid out for them.

No offense to you, but its this kind of logic that imo is destroying the gaming industry and let me explain.

Back in the mid 90s it was all about the gameplay. Since pure gameplay has nothing to do with processing power is was in a sense easy to focus on gameplay and not bother that much with graphics and/or sound simply because PCs were not exactly fast, you didn't have APIs like DirectX to make the process easier, you had DOS thus no true multitasking etc etc. You didn't even have multiplayer support besides 2 people using the same keyboard. So it was down to gameplay to make or break a game.

Back in the time I was personally mad about adventure games of all sorts. I fondly remember the greatness of titles such as Monkey isle series, Leisure Suit larry (1 to 7 only, not the latest ripoffs), Indiana Jones series, Full Throttle, The Dig, Grim Fantango, Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive and tens and tens more of QUALITY adventure games.

Beside adventure games (back in the day possibly the most thriving genre) you also had lots of RPGs that defined the words hardcore and awesome (anyone remember Menzoberranzan and the likes?) and even driving and sports games were fun! I remember the endless hours of sensible world of soccer (SWOS). If I were to show SWOS to a teenager today he'd think I'm a lunatic to say the least for enjoying such an "ugly" game. But seriously, I don't think any soccer game will ever reach the gameplay greatness of SWOS.

Then we swifted into the 21st century. We suddenly had 3d accelerators (as they were called back in the day), we had directx, opengl and slowly but steadily every game was striving to sport the best graphics often neglecting the gameplay.

Nowadays we're at a point that a games quality is first and foremost measured by its sound and graphics and then everything else. Games are rushed out every year as so called "sequels" that do nothing to make the game better, they just update the graphics engine a bit, add an extra couple of hours of half-arsed "story" and publish. Just was EA and others have been doing for YEARS now milking people.

If you think a game has to be "realistic to be entertaining" you should check World of Goo. A game made by a team of 2 guys that focuses purely on the gameplay. The result? Best seller on Wii and on the PC. I'm sick and tired of these so called "games" that feel more like an interactive boring movie than a true game. I want to see something original and something that I'd like to play for years to come. Give me the new Tetris, the new Fate of Atlantis, the new SWOS. I don't want yet another WW2 FPS, yet another Fifa sequel, yet another GTA (speaking of which, GTA1 and 2 were AWESOME back in the day).

/rant out; an angry old-school gamer.

Deadlydread: Yup. I think I am missing out on the fun things in Morrowind but I've seen the characters and graphics and it does not pull me in. For me, when it comes to something that should define what is full throttle experience, it has to have all those elements to satisfied my thrill. For an example, I don't like to just listen to songs. I need a visual entertainment to go with it. That means I can't shut my eyes and just listen to the audio and visualize a virtual element based on the song. One might say that mentality lacks creativity but it's not that. To me it's the COMPLETE experience I need. What is a house without windows and doors? It is these details that make up what full throttle experience should be.

Harbinger: Yes I can relate and fully understand your sentiment and logic on everything you said there. I have a friend who's pretty much pertain the same mentality as you. But I am not that person. As I have stated above, the elements of a certain object must be presented in the game in order for our mental state to perceive it as "realistic". A game must contains so much details, be it graphics-wise, or even emotions and activities the NPC does that needs to pull the player in. For an example, if a NPC was doing repeated actions time-and-time again, then it would tick you if you seen it too often. The realism here is if the NPC randomly or selectively interact with you on personal level and the outcome of their actions be different. The perception of the player would feel more depth when something in the game is surprising and unexpected. But when you play the game over and over and the NPC would routinely say or do the same thing, then the element of surprises is gone. So "realism" and "depth" of the interactiveness grabs people's attention. This is why it's critical that some game developers these days to include PhysX engine as it adds depth of realism to the game.

We human, since childhood to our adult life-span, we have trained our visual acuity to differentiate what is real and what isn't real. This aspect of our lives NEVER stops. This is why it is essential that I must have all the elements to enjoy it. For me, 56K of RAM isn't enough for my computer. Bah, not even 1Gig. We humans thrive for more experience and awesomeness in all things. So if you think that my kind of logic ruin the game industry, so then why do we need to add more spice to the game play. On the contrary, I believe it's my kind of mentality that push the envelope of gaming industry. Because the demands are there, that's why the game industry have to supply it. Hence, this kind of mentality pushes the boundary innovation, high and better.

My mentality is like this. If a hands that does not have five fingers, then what use can you get out of it? The depth of realism in a game is like that to the mind. If there's no depth, then how can you enjoy a full experience? But ofcourse, this is just me. I need all elements to enjoy it. It simply boils down to that short phrase but my explanation is suffice, I think.

I would not view your input as a "rant". It was quite an opinion that I do respect and understand.

Well I understand your point of view. Don't get me wrong, I love eye candy. But I DONT want gameplay to become a sacrifice in order to get out more eye candy, faster and to sell more of the same old repackaged crap. I want my games to be based around fun and gameplay. For example I think crysis if boring as fcuk, I couldn't give a darn about its graphics if the story and gameplay are a snoozefest.