Elder Scrolls co-creator is “super grateful” for fans remaking old games, but the feeling is bittersweet – “no one had to recreate Casablanca”

It’s now been 31 years since the release of The Elder Scrolls: Arena, the first entry in Bethesda’s now universally beloved RPG series. While Bethesda works on the long-awaited Elder Scrolls 6, long-time fans are going back in time to bring some of the series’ oldest entries to modern audiences.

In recent years, fans have brought both Daggerfall and Morrowind to modern engines, allowing them to run on modern hardware and experience a new boon of mod support. For Elder Scrolls co-creator Ted Peterson, now working on the amazing-looking Daggerfall spiritual successor The Wayward Realms, this level of fan admiration is unparalleled, but also a bit bittersweet as the complexity of games often stop their original incarnations from being as timeless as creators would like.

Elder Scrolls co-creator on the limited lifespan of games

In an interview for an upcoming episode of the VideoGamer Podcast, Peterson explained that games are the only medium that require remakes and remasters, unlike books, film, comics and more. While the fantastic work of the Elder Scrolls community has kept the series alive unlike any other, it’s also sad that the medium needs projects of such dedication.

“Oh my god, Daggerfall Unity has been the best,” Peterson explained. “It’s funny. Like, it’s great, obviously. I really appreciate it. It’s funny because no one had to recreate Casablanca to say, “Oh my god, look at this movie from 70 years ago’. You just go like, ‘Yeah, it was of the era and the dialogue is great, and the chemistry is great’, and nobody says, ‘It’s fine for the era’.

Before the release of Daggerfall Unity, gamers who wanted to play the game could download the original PC version for free from Bethesda and play through DOSBox. However, as Peterson explains, that process was hard for newcomers and could result in a “flaky and weird” experience and wasn’t the actual original version of the game that Bethesda built decades ago.

“It’s bizarre… I mean no one could play Daggerfall for ten years,” the Elder Scrolls co-creator said. “Maybe even longer. They could do DOSBox, but it would be flaky and weird. I mean, it totally reinvigorated people’s interest and people saying, ‘Hey, this was actually a decent game!'”

“I think we knew we were doing something special at the time, but that’s the way I feel right now.”

ELDER SCROLLS CO-CREATOR TED PETERSON

With the new emergence of Daggerfall players thanks to Daggerfall Unity, thousands more gamers have been able to experience a game that not only helped RPGs evolve in the Western space, but also was something amazing in its own right.

“I mean, [I’m] super grateful [to the fans],” Peterson explained. “I think we knew we were doing something special at the time, but that’s the way I feel right now, Honestly, maybe a Daggerfall reboot at some point might be fine. Obviously, at this point, Bethesda owns it all, so if they want to do it, then they’ll do it.”

Right now, Peterson is working on The Wayward Realms, a crowdfunded first-person RPG in the same vein as Daggerfall’s open-ended, procedurally generated nature. With the return of Elder Scrolls’ learn-by-doing experience system, in-game books and a wide, expansive world with tonnes of lore, the new role-playing game might be the Daggerfall return fans have been craving.