The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard

Largely forgotten, this interim addition to the Elder Scrolls canon features unbalanced game-play, outrageous controls and irregular graphics.* Nevertheless, a patient and curious gamer will discover a lot of plucky Bethesda charm within a lighthearted story; not to mention some fun and unique puzzles and surprises. Most intriguing to me is how the game represents a decidedly transitional moment in gaming, not only technologically (though an odd jump featuring a lot of vestigial elements: KB-centric controls, rudimentary facial expressions, etc, is very apparent) but also in the development of Bethesda's and more importantly, the Elder Scrolls series' character. The game itself may be seldom referenced but fans will note items and elements of Redguard that remain distinct in subsequent titles. *Gog-gers have fairly noted that emulation issues may be responsible for some of the game's inconsistencies- honestly I don't remember the game running or looking any better when I played it years-ago and my nostalgia filter is very rosy indeed, but it's a distinct possibility. Caveat emptor.

Redguard is a very well-made game for its time, and its story is still one of the best in the entire Elder Scrolls series. You get to explore Dwarven ruins, talk to both a Sload necromancer and Clavicus Vile, and not least of all fight a dragon. Beyond the main plot involving Cyrus' sister, there is a wealth of foundational lore, including the rise of the Third Empire and the Redguard civil war. This is the game that gave us Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition. I recommend looking at the comic book The Origin of Cyrus! before playing the game to more fully understand the protagonist's backstory. You can find it on UESPWiki or the official Elder Scrolls website page for Redguard. You might also want to read the pocket guide mentioned above. Some of the reviews here talk about how the game is unplayable, but this is not the case for me. The performance isn't great, but that's true of most DOSBox games.

i avoided the game due to all the negative performance reviews but recently decided to buy it anyway having feeling nostalgic after watching a 3 hours Daggerfall documentary on youtube that mentioned Redguard. i loaded the game just to see for myself how bad the performance is and i was surprised to find out that it runs no differently than how i remeber running it with my 3dfx. movement, camera angle, combat, etc are all smooth. one thing that i didnt remember being as bad is audio. it sounds a bit crackly to me. maybe its the dosbox, or maybe i'm remembering the audio better than it actually was. anyway, if the reported performance is the only reason you stayed away from this game then i think you should revisit your decision.

I bought this one back in the day, while waiting for Morrowind to be released, but it never ran on my old PC, by the time I upgraded, I already Morrowind and it ran on my old system, so Redguard was forgotten, many years later I found the old game again covered in dust, I got it out, to find that unlike other titles this one hates anything that is not its core intended PC set up. it was a mess, I even tried repeatedly to set up a Virtual machine running Windows 95, then 98, then XP, in all cases, the game did not work in a playable manner, then I found this, a friend had bought it, and it ran on his Windows 7 system, but it was not running all that well, The game suffers because of the Video Adapter it wants, as no one can seem to emulate the 3DFX well enough to run this title (and I assume others) I would only buy this one as part of a bundle, and hope that someone soon fixes the issue stopping this from running well. as for GOG bringing this to us, thank you GOG, we can barely play it though, I am wish listing this one in the hope it gets the fix it needs so we can all enjoy it.

While another team is working on a Redguard Unity version, they are far away from even reaching alpha status. So if you are a user that read DustynB's comment and are confused why you can't get Redguard working in Daggerfall Unity, its because that is currently impossible. Now this game is very misunderstood. If you didn't live through the era of early 3D games, the controls are going to feel wonky to you. If, like me, you grew up on these games, the controls come back to you fast, just like riding a bike. The voice acting is very charming, but is incredibly hit or miss in terms of acting. Some of it is downright terribly over-acted, however this was common in those days. Bethesda may be a juggernaut now with thousands of employees and billion dollar budgets, but back then they were tiny, and the fact that this game was fully voice acted is a feat by itself, so appreciate that. The story and lore are the reasons to play it. You play during the reign of Tiber Septim himself, when he's uniting Tamriel! For younger gamers, this gem is absolutely worth playing. If you find the controls challenging, take a lesson from Dark Souls gamers and git gud.