The Elder Scrolls: Arena - intro & beginning dungeon - Bethesda Softworks, 1994 - PC / DOS RPG CRPG

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Published on February 12, 2024 3:42:41 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijmz-rpA_tM

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The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994)

Duration: 25:57

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More about The Elder Scrolls: Arena (from Wikipedia):

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is an open-world action role-playing video game developed and published by Bethesda Softworks. The first game in the Elder Scrolls series, it was released for MS-DOS on March 25, 1994. The game follows the player trying to uncover a conspiracy against Emperor Uriel Septim VII.

Arena takes place on the entire continent of Tamriel, complete with wilderness, towns and dungeons which are procedurally generated. The game features a day/night cycle and includes a spell creation system that allows players to mix various spell effects. Development for Arena was initially planned to have the player travel in towns across Tamriel, fighting other teams in their arenas until the player became "grand champion". As development on the game progressed, side quests took more importance, and the tournament aspect of the game took a back seat. Role-playing elements were added to the game, and the game expanded to include towns outside the arenas and dungeons beyond the cities.

Arena would spawn later sequels that created a series which has gone on to become one of the biggest western RPGs of all time. The game received praise from critics and would go on to win several awards such as Computer Gaming World's 1994 "Role-Playing Game of the Year". The game set a new standard for this type of CRPG and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation. Although not as popular as the later games, Arena generated a cult following and was successful enough to spawn a popular sequel, Daggerfall in 1996. In 2004, a downloadable version of the game was made available free of charge as part of the tenth anniversary of the series.

Designer Ted Peterson recalls the experience: "I remember talking to the guys at SirTech who were doing Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and them literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it." Peterson worked alongside Vijay Lakshman as one of the two designers of what was then simply Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game".

The game was originally due to release on Christmas Day 1993 but it was then released three months later in March 1994. The misleading packaging further contributed to distributor distaste for the game, leading to an initial distribution of only 3,000 units—a smaller number even, recalls Peterson, than the sales for his Terminator 2029 add-on. "We were sure we had screwed the company and we'd go out of business." However, PC Gamer US reported in late 1995:
Word-of-mouth did the trick. The game-starved RPG fans looked at Arena, loved it, and spread the word. Sales rocketed; awards and accolades rained down. Today, more than eighteen months after publication, the game is still selling and still being played avidly.

Arena was originally released on CD-ROM and 3.5" floppy disk. The CD-ROM edition is the more advanced, featuring enhanced speech for some characters and CGI video sequences. In late 1994, Arena was re-released in a special "Deluxe Edition" package, containing the CD-ROM patched to the latest version, a mousepad with the map of Tamriel printed on it, and the Codex Scientia, an in-depth hint book.

When previewing the game in December 1993, Computer Gaming World noted Arena's "huge world split into nine provinces", many races and terrains, NPC interactions, and absence of level limits. The magazine stated that the game had sophisticated graphics "without forgetting the lessons of the past in terms of game design" or being "more like [console] action games", citing similarities with Ultima IV, Wasteland, Dragon Wars, and Darklands. The magazine in April 1994 said that Arena "looks like a cross between Ultima Underworld and Might and Magic: World of Xeen", with both depth and sophisticated 3D graphics. It surmised "This may be the 'biggest' world, in terms of game play, that will reach store shelves this year", with a "rich and compelling" storyline and setting.

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