The Elder Scrolls: Arena
Description official descriptions
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is a first-person action role-playing game in which the protagonist must rescue the Emperor Uriel Septim VII from his dimensional prison by recovering the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos. The emperor's position has been usurped by impersonator Jagar Tharn, whose slain apprentice rallies the protagonist in his dreams to find the eight pieces of the staff and return the status quo.
It is the first chapter in the Elder Scrolls series and the first game that is set in the fictional world of Tamriel. The game features 3D environments, with sprites representing non-playable characters and enemies. In the beginning of the game the player chooses the race for the protagonist, based on his or her home province. Each race has its benefits: for example, Redguards from the province Hammerfell have physical attack bonuses. There is no skill system; leveling up occurs after a sufficient amount of experience points has been accumulated. The player is free to raise any of the protagonist's main attributes by allocating the points gained with the level.
Unlike later games in the series the player can travel through almost all of Tamriel, instead of being restricted to certain provinces. There are over 400 cities, towns and villages to explore, as well as many magical items and spells to create. The player can walk endlessly in any direction as more and more land will be procedurally generated. Walking manually however never allows the player to reach other cities; the fast travel feature must be used for this. The player is free to go where he or she wants. The story itself is resolved in a linear fashion, although the locations of items is randomly determined at the start of the game.
Melee combat is performed through mouse gestures and spells are cast using a menu interface. The player controls only a single character, which happens in real-time. In the wild and in dungeons the player can expect opposition from enemies which need to be defeated and who drop loot. In the cities NPCs can be found, some will barter or provide other services to the player.
The CD-ROM release features speech in cutscenes and additional rendered sequences that the floppy version does not include.
Groups +
- Animals: Cats
- Covermount: PC Action
- Elder Scrolls series
- Fantasy creatures: Elves
- Fantasy creatures: Goblins
- Fantasy creatures: Minotaurs
- Fantasy creatures: Orcs
- Fantasy creatures: Trolls
- Gameplay feature: Auto-mapping
- Gameplay feature: Character development - Skill distribution
- Gameplay feature: Journal
- Gameplay feature: Paper doll inventory
- Games with manual lookup copy protection
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (DOS version)
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 77% (based on 24 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 60 ratings with 7 reviews)
The Good
After Ultima series defined the Western RPG quality standard rather early in its history, it influenced subsequent development of the genre in a somewhat odd way. The series' continuously growing preference for tight scripting (which culminated in Serpent Isle) paved the way to the RPG revival of the late 1990's, heralded by Black Isle and BioWare. On the other hand, the early, Ultima V-style template prescribed non-linear advancement, full free-roaming, and focus on exploration and gradual immersion into the game world rather than following an exciting story with interesting characters.
Elder Scrolls games by Bethesda are heirs to the second approach to RPG-making, but also to the groundbreaking Ultima Underworld games with their first-person real 3D navigation and action-based combat. So these games have the vast world and open areas of "regular" old Ultimas plus the immersive quality and atmospherics delivered by the engine used in the spin-offs. Arena is the first in the series, and while many people grew more familiar with its better-known sequels, it cannot be denied that Arena already contained in a nutshell many of the defining elements of the series' gameplay.
First things first: Arena is huge. It has an absolutely gigantic 3D world that surpasses by far anything that was created for role-playing games before it. The amount of towns, dungeons, and other places of interest is positively overwhelming. You get dizzy after emerging from the initial dungeon and realizing you can travel anywhere, at any time, on the enormous continent of Tamriel. The absolute freedom to do whatever you want is what makes Arena so addictive and awe-inspiring. Never before was there a RPG world of such size, offering such unlimited exploration possibilities. It is no wonder this feature became the cornerstone of the future series.
Now, it's true that much of this world is randomized, and some people tend to dismiss Arena because of that. But the game cleverly conceals its randomness by offering varied terrain, weather effects, and climatic changes influenced by times of the year. You can travel from Elsweyr to Morrowind and witness the first snow there. You can leave the city gate and travel in the darkness and snowfall, find a cozy abandoned house, rest in it, and be greeted by the clear morning. Graphically on par with contemporary first-person shooters, Arena manages to create a beautiful world that is in constant motion, calling you back even after you get tired from the repetitive textures.
Even though NPCs are random as well, there are many dialogue templates that are surprisingly well-written and often quite amusing. You can always hear different responses in every tavern; you can bargain with shop owners and repeatedly talk to jesters and listen to their stupid jokes. People have different names and occupations and also refer to the protagonist's race during conversations. Nice text descriptions greet you whenever you enter specific buildings. Naturally, after having been doing this for a while you'll see how everything repeats itself. But still, there is a big difference between an enormous randomized world and a small one; the possibility to physically move in every direction at any time in a seamless 3D environment is simply exhilarating, no matter how many recurrent elements you encounter on your way.
The role-playing system in Arena is simple: you create your character, fight enemies, gain experience and level up. Were Arena just a dungeon crawler, this simplicity would have made it boring; but the necessity to explore and travel in order to encounter tougher enemies and obtain better gear is what makes the whole process so addictive. You never know where you may find some great armor or a particularly challenging beastie to defeat. There are hundreds of cities and dungeons; each city has several shops, and each dungeon has foes lurking in the darkness. You choose your own adventure in all this vastness; you decide where you want to shop, how exactly you outfit your character, what you specialize in, and so on. The game never dictates you the pace; you choose it on your own. You can perform quests, search for treasure, bargain and trade, go on a killing spree, hunt for monsters, steal valuable items, or just walk through the countryside. It's this free-form role-playing that makes Arena uniquely entertaining.
The main quest may be very simplistic, but if you follow it you'll encounter the game's only planned, hand-made dungeons, assignments, and items. There are also some interesting riddles you'll have to solve along the way. Outside of the main quest, there are plenty of missions offered by country rulers to undertake, as well as the artifact quests, which hold some of the game's most powerful weapons, armor, and accessories.
The Bad
The obvious flaws of Arena owe their existence to the severe technical limitations of its time. 3D gaming was still in a rudimentary state, and the only way to create immense 3D environments was by using the same elements over and over again. To the game's credit, I must stress that there are many such elements - certainly enough to create a considerably large game world in which every single NPC, object, terrain style and building would be unique. That is why I can't help thinking that perhaps it would have been more reasonable to reduce the size of the world somewhat and minimize the randomness.
I don't particularly like the idea of endless countryside. You can walk for hours and never reach another town; terrain, lone buildings, wandering NPCs and enemies will be procedurally generated as you advance, never coming to an end. Again, I'd prefer exploring a world that would be less jaw-droppingly gigantic, but coherent in its structure. In the end, much of the exploration in Arena is reduced to bringing forth the world map and clicking on a location of interest.
You can travel to any Tamriel province in the game, but towns will still look the same. There are certain racial diversity among the inhabitants and differences in landscape and climate, but I didn't notice any variation in the architecture. Imperial City, for example, is the same collection of blocky, bland buildings as the most decrepit village at the outskirts of High Rock. If you have visited one tavern, you have visited them all; all weapon and armor shops in Tamriel are managed by identical twins; the same types of NPCs, graphically and personality-wise, appear everywhere. The game generously presents you with an incredibly large world to explore, but doesn't fully encourage you to do that. You can safely base yourself in any of the provinces, never leave it, and you will have seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. You'll only have to travel all over this world because the main quest requires you to do so.
Speaking of which, the main quest's premise is certainly not worse than in any other fantasy RPG, but the extremely formulaic structure makes it somewhat tiresome and repetitive. You'll always follow the same scheme: listen to rumors, detect the next province of interest, locate the next questgiver there, complete a mission for him or her, and learn the location of a dungeon containing the staff piece. Also, the riddles you'll need to answer to get the crucial items, while entertaining, cannot be bypassed; if you can't figure out the answer to any of them, you'll be stuck, unable to find any other way to continue the main quest.
Fans of Elder Scrolls games got used to the rich lore of their world, presented in detail in long conversations and well-written books. Unfortunately, there seem to be no books in Arena, and the conversations are brief and rarely concern any cultural topics. As a result, the world of Arena lacks depth and intellectual appeal, becoming a rather generic, simplified fantasy environment with recycled themes.
The Bottom Line
Notwithstanding its limitations and shortcomings, Arena amazes with its sheer ambition. Its accomplishment as the first fully free-roaming 3D RPG cannot be overlooked. Ahead of its time, Arena contributed and paved the way to the genre's subsequent development, and still remains a surprisingly enjoyable game today.
DOS · by Unicorn Lynx (181771) · 2011
Under a rough surface lies an epic adventure
The Good
The World. A huge gaming world full of quests, factions, lords, ladies, and death awaited the player everytime you started a new game. A new game is certainly that..a brand new game, with new dungeons, new quests, new people. The replayability of this game was staggering
The Bad
The Bugs! Horrible bugs that just seemed to multiply as time went on. Casting magic missle often scheduled a date with the DOS prompt. You really had to save often to have any hope of enjoying this game
The Bottom Line
This game was the first of an entire series of Elder Scrolls adventures. Each new game brought forth a new perspective to the land. I highly recommend playing it even if its for the sake of seeing where it all began. If the presentation doesn't impress you, the scope will!
DOS · by MaiZure (59) · 2003
Beautiful world. Now for a story to go with it.
The Good
The world - the first-person perspective, 3-D world with day and night, seasons, weather (it rains! it snows!) just blew me away. In the towns, I could see building reflections in the puddles on the street. Sometimes I'd just stay in one place and simply watch the world go by (best at night - what a busy sky!). After I lost interest in the plot, I continued only to see what different kinds of places the designers had come up with.
The Bad
The plot - been there, done that. And while it is true that nothing forces you to do any particular thing, it's also true that the plot will not advance unless you accomplish certain specific goals in a certain specific order. And those goals are all the same goal, repeated eight times. If the game is played again from the start, the quest items will appear in different locations, but that doesn't make the game "non-linear", IMHO (or interesting enough to play again).
The endgame - that was easy. Did I simply have the best spell for that job? My character wasn't even the best spell user class!
The user interface - I'm not new at this kind of game, and I still died several times before I figured out how to even begin to defend my character against attack. And having to switch between several screens to review little pieces of information was a pain.
The riddles - the problem is not the riddles per se (some of which are quite fun), but that fact that if you can't solve one, you can't advance in the game. There's no way around needing what's behind the riddle-locked door. Another feature of linear game play.
The travel - why can't I walk from one town to another if I want to? There's inns, farms and dungeons along the way! That would be letting me do what I want, a feature of non-linear gameplay!
The bugs - once in a while the game would freeze up. Saving often helps here. The character status symbols aren't always current, which can mislead you into thinking your character is okay when s/he isn't.
The Bottom Line
It's as if, having come up with a rich, detailed fantasy world far beyond anything that had been seen before, the designers were at a loss as to what to do with it. The game itself is not nearly the quality that the environment is. The designers almost admit as much in the manual, writing that you don't have to pursue the quest if you don't want to, but can instead run around the environment killing the peasants or whatever. Maybe so, but that doesn't lead anywhere - what's the point?
Perhaps that's what they really mean by "non-linear".
DOS · by anton treuenfels (34) · 2001
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Skill system in Arena? | MrFlibble (18266) | Jul 21, 2013 |
Release date on main summary | Izmir Egal (73) | Jul 29, 2012 |
Term of development. | Virgil (8563) | Nov 1, 2007 |
Trivia
Development
Arena was at first, not going to be a RPG, but instead a gladiator style game. Someone came up with the RPG idea, and it caught.
Freeware release
To coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls series in 2004, Bethesda Softworks released the first game, Arena, as freeware. It can be downloaded from the Elder Scrolls website
Inspiration
The Elder Scrolls: Arena was primarily inspired by a collection of pen and paper RPGs, the Ultima Underworld series, and the first-person RPG Legends of Valour.
Translations
A German version of the game was announced and the box distributed in Germany even included a sticker and post card offering to exchange the game for the German version once available. However no localized versions were ever released. One reason may have been that the game's program code is using fixed text lengths, making it very difficult to find equal length translations for other languages.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- May 1995 (Issue #130) – Role-Playing Game of the Year
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Related Sites +
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Official Elder Scrolls Website
Bethesda Softworks official site for the Elder Scrolls series. -
Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages!
A wiki page that is dedicated to the Elder Scrolls series. It a great source for hints and backround information concerning the Elder Scrolls saga. Just about everything can be found here.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by faceless.
Windows Apps added by Plok. Windows added by Rik Hideto.
Additional contributors: Blackhandjr, Isak, Iggi, SGruber, Patrick Bregger.
Game added January 27, 2000. Last modified March 15, 2024.