Elder Scrolls co-creator recalls the year-long nightmare of making Daggerfall’s iconic box art

Modern Elder Scrolls games sport very minimalist box arts, typically showing a logo on a basic textured background. However, in the 90s, Bethesda’s RPG series boasted gorgeous—and now somewhat controversial—covers with detailed hand-drawn artwork.

While the original game, Arena, is teased for its 90s oversexualisation, the box art of Daggerfall is iconic for its horror-theming, showing a grossly detailed version of The Underking reaching out at the player in a thrash-metal style piece. However, getting to that final box art was not an easy process.

In an interview on the latest episode of the VideoGamer Podcast, Elder Scrolls co-creator Ted Peterson recalled the year-long “hassle” of making Daggerfall’s box art. Now working on Daggerfall spiritual successor The Wayward Realms, a stunning looking return to complex freeform RPGs, we asked Peterson to look back on one of gaming’s most iconic covers ever.

Making Elder Scrolls Daggerfall’s stunning box art

“Oh my god, that was such a hassle!” Peterson exclaimed. “My whole vision of it was… the poster for Excalibur. There’s a character over here, a character over there, a flashing light, something happening over there. It’s very [dyanamic], not just one single image.”

While Bethesda were also working on the game itself, the team also struggled to create the perfect box art for the better part of a year. As Peterson recalls, there were tonnes of iterations. One included The Underking reaching out at the top of the poster and further iterations made the ghoulish creature the focus.

“We went for that for a year, to try and find that combo that made sense and looked visually appealing,” the veteran developer explained. “Finally, we just landed on… ‘Rawwwr’. We [originally] had Medora with her cloak over her head, a knight charging into battle, there was a lot going on!”

As for why the Daggerfall box art eventually changed to the one we know today, well, cramming in a lot of different ideas turns out to be a difficult process. With a game as vast as Daggerfall with countless gameplay options and a deep story, Bethesda wanted to make sure every facet of the game was represented, but it was messy, overcomplicated and less effective than—as Peterson puts it—the “Rawr” of The Underking.

“It turns out, it’s harder than it sounds like to combine all these moments into one thing that kinda works together,” he explained. As for the Underking’s sole presence, “people really responded to it. I think he became bigger in each version of it where he’d be like ‘arrgh’ and then there’d might be be a girl with her hair under her cloak… eventually we just lost all of that.”

As it turns out, everyone resonated with the focus that Daggerfall’s final box art. To this day, the now 30-year-old RPG is still brought up as an example of box art done right. Decades on and this is the box art that gamers remember, and it’s truly special, despite the nightmare it took to make it.

For more of our chat with Ted Peterson, listen to the podcast here! Additionally, you can read some other snippets from our hour-long chat, such as the creator’s gratefulness for projects like Daggerfall Unity that continue to keep his work alive.