The Elder Scrolls: Arena
Encyclopedia
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is the first game in the Elder Scrolls series
. It is a first-person computer role-playing game for MS-DOS
, developed by Bethesda Softworks
and released in 1994. In 2004, a downloadable version of the game was made available free of charge as part of the 10th anniversary
of The Elder Scrolls
series, but newer systems may require an emulator
such as DOSBox
to run it, as Arena is a DOS
-based program.
Like its sequels, Arena takes place in the continent of Tamriel, complete with wilderness, dungeons, and a spell creation system that allows players to mix various spell effects into a new spell as long as they have the money to pay for it.
Arena has been noted for its tendency to be unforgiving towards new players. It is easy to die in the starting dungeon, as powerful enemies can be encountered if the player lingers too long. This effect gradually disappears as the player becomes more powerful, and more aware of the threats that loom everywhere. Ken Rolston
, lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
, says he started the game at least twenty times, and only got out of the beginning dungeon once.
, this dimension is revealed to be a realm of Oblivion), and impersonated by Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn. The only way to bring him back is to find the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos. After the pieces have been collected, the hero battles with Tharn in the Imperial City. Ria Silmane, just prior to the start of the game, is apprentice to Jagar Tharn. During his usurpation of the throne, Tharn is unable to corrupt his apprentice, and so he murders her.
She is able to hold herself together long enough to direct the player's character how to escape from slow death in the dungeons through a teleportation device called a "shift-gate." Past that point, she lacks the power to manifest physically, and appears to the player during dreams. The central quest requires the player to obtain various artifacts. Each time such an item is found, Silmane appears the next time the player rests, in order to provide the general location of the next such item. The events portrayed in this game would later on be known as "The Imperial Simulacrum."
Part of this story is found in Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim within the book series "The Real Barenziah." The next game in the series is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
, released in 1996.
, who were doing Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and they literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it." Ted Peterson worked as one of the designers of what was then simply Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game." Peterson and Julian LeFay
were those who, in Peterson's opinion, "really spear-headed the initial development of the series". During the development of Arena, Todd Howard
, later Executive Producer of Oblivion, joined Bethesda, and saw testing the CD-ROM
version of Arena as one of his first assignments.
Initially, Arena was not to be a classic RPG at all. The player, and a team of his fighters, would travel about a world fighting other teams in their arenas, until the player became "grand champion" in the world's capital, the Imperial City. Along the way, side quests of a more role-playing nature could be completed. As the process of development progressed, however, the tournaments became less important, and the side quests more so. RPG elements were added to the game, as the game expanded to include the cities outside the arenas, and dungeons beyond the cities. Eventually, it was decided to drop the idea of tournaments altogether, and focus on quests and dungeons, on making the game a "full-blown RPG". The original concept of arena-combat had never made it to the coding stage, and so few artifacts from that era of development remain: the game's title, and a text file with the names of fighting teams from every large city in Tamriel, and a brief introduction for them. The concept of traveling teams was eventually left aside as well, because the team's decision to produce a first-person RPG had made the system somewhat less fun.
Although the team had dropped arena-combat from the endgame, because all the material had already been printed up with the title, the game went to market as The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The team retcon
ned the idea that, because the Empire of Tamriel was so violent, it had been nicknamed the Arena. It was actually Bethesda's founder Christopher Weaver
who came up with the name of "The Elder Scrolls,"" the description of which eventually came to mean "Tamriel's mystical tomes of knowledge that told of its past, present, and future." The game's initial voice-over
was changed in response, beginning: "It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls..."
Ted Peterson had joined the company in 1992, working assignments on Terminator: 2029, Terminator Rampage, and Terminator Future Shock, as well as some other titles." Peterson, Vijay Lakshman, and LeFay were longtime aficionados of pencil-and-paper role-playing games, and it is from these games that the world of Tamriel was created. They were also fans of Looking Glass Studios
' Ultima Underworld series, which became their main inspiration for Arena. The influence of Legends of Valour
, a game Ted Peterson describes as a "free-form first-person perspective game that took place in a single city," has also been noted. Peterson, asked for his overall comment on the game, replied "It was certainly derivative...".
The game's release was slow to build. Bethesda missed their Christmas
1993 window, and released the game the following March 1994, This was "really serious for a small developer/publisher like Bethesda Softworks." The racy packaging further contributed to distributor concerns for the game, leading to an initial distribution of under 10,000 units — a smaller number, recalls Peterson, than the initial sales for his Terminator: 2029 add-on. Nonetheless, sales continued, month after month, based upon good word-of-mouth. Soon, despite some initially harsh reviews, general bugginess
, and the formidable demands the game made on player's machines, the game became a cult hit. Evaluations of the game's success vary from "minor" to "modest" to "wild," but are unvarying in presenting the game as a success. Game historian Matt Barton concludes that, in any case, "the game set a new standard for this type of CRPG, and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation." The Elder Scrolls: Arena, had definitely pushed the envelope and started a series that went on to become a reference work in the genre.
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.
The version that was released as freeware
by Bethesda Softworks
in 2004 is the 3.5" floppy disk version, not the CD-ROM edition.
In 2005, the CD-ROM version was released on a limited edition re-issue for PC. This version included DOSBox, which would install automatically onto the computer, so the user would have no compatibility issues. The cover was in the same style of Morrowind.
The Elder Scrolls
The Elder Scrolls is a role-playing video game series developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks.-History:...
. It is a first-person computer role-playing game for MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, developed by Bethesda Softworks
Bethesda Softworks
Bethesda Softworks, LLC, is an American video game company. A subsidiary of ZeniMax Media, the company was originally based in Bethesda, Maryland and eventually moved to their current location in Rockville, Maryland...
and released in 1994. In 2004, a downloadable version of the game was made available free of charge as part of the 10th anniversary
Anniversary
An anniversary is a day that commemorates or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event...
of The Elder Scrolls
The Elder Scrolls
The Elder Scrolls is a role-playing video game series developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks.-History:...
series, but newer systems may require an emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
such as DOSBox
DOSBox
DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
to run it, as Arena is a DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
-based program.
Like its sequels, Arena takes place in the continent of Tamriel, complete with wilderness, dungeons, and a spell creation system that allows players to mix various spell effects into a new spell as long as they have the money to pay for it.
Gameplay
The game is played from a first-person perspective. Melee combat is performed by using the mouse, and dragging the cursor across the screen to attack. Magic is used by cycling through a menu found by clicking the appropriate button on the main game screen, then clicking the spell to be used, and its target. This makes playing as a mainly magic-using character quite difficult. The game world is very large. Players may explore outside cities into the wild. There they may find inns, farms, small towns, dungeons, and other places of interest. As the terrain was randomly generated, it may be repetitive to some. It is not possible to reach other cities without using the fast-travel feature. Several hundred towns, dungeons, and NPCs are available.Arena has been noted for its tendency to be unforgiving towards new players. It is easy to die in the starting dungeon, as powerful enemies can be encountered if the player lingers too long. This effect gradually disappears as the player becomes more powerful, and more aware of the threats that loom everywhere. Ken Rolston
Ken Rolston
Ken Rolston is an American computer game and board game designer best known for his work with West End Games and the hit computer game series The Elder Scrolls...
, lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, often simply referred to as Morrowind, is a single-player computer role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, and published by Bethesda Softworks and Ubisoft. It is the third installment in The Elder Scrolls series of games, following The Elder Scrolls...
, says he started the game at least twenty times, and only got out of the beginning dungeon once.
Story
The Emperor, Uriel Septim IV has been imprisoned in another dimension (in a copy of the Black Horse Courier in The Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionThe Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a single-player action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and the Take-Two Interactive subsidiary 2K Games...
, this dimension is revealed to be a realm of Oblivion), and impersonated by Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn. The only way to bring him back is to find the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos. After the pieces have been collected, the hero battles with Tharn in the Imperial City. Ria Silmane, just prior to the start of the game, is apprentice to Jagar Tharn. During his usurpation of the throne, Tharn is unable to corrupt his apprentice, and so he murders her.
She is able to hold herself together long enough to direct the player's character how to escape from slow death in the dungeons through a teleportation device called a "shift-gate." Past that point, she lacks the power to manifest physically, and appears to the player during dreams. The central quest requires the player to obtain various artifacts. Each time such an item is found, Silmane appears the next time the player rests, in order to provide the general location of the next such item. The events portrayed in this game would later on be known as "The Imperial Simulacrum."
Part of this story is found in Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim within the book series "The Real Barenziah." The next game in the series is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is a first-person, traditional role-playing video game for MS-DOS developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1996. It is a sequel to the RPG The Elder Scrolls: Arena and the second installment in The Elder Scrolls series. On July 9, 2009, it was made available...
, released in 1996.
Development
Bethesda's history as a "sport-and-port" game developer did not help it when it began its first action-RPG venture. Designer Ted Peterson recalls the experience: "I remember talking to the guys at SirTechSir-Tech
Sir-Tech Software, Inc. was a United States-based video game developer and publisher founded by Robert Woodhead and Norman Sirotek. While the original company closed its doors in 2001, its Canadian counterpart Sir-Tech Canada continued to operate up until late 2003.Sir-Tech is best known for the...
, who were doing Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and they literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it." Ted Peterson worked as one of the designers of what was then simply Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game." Peterson and Julian LeFay
Julian Lefay
Julian Lefay, sometimes referred to affectionately as the "Father of The Elder Scrolls", joined Bethesda Softworks shortly after the company's creation in 1987...
were those who, in Peterson's opinion, "really spear-headed the initial development of the series". During the development of Arena, Todd Howard
Todd Howard
Todd Howard is an American designer, director, and producer. He is currently Game Director and Executive Producer for Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the creation of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls video game series. GamePro magazine named him to the Top 20 Most Influential People in Gaming...
, later Executive Producer of Oblivion, joined Bethesda, and saw testing the CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
version of Arena as one of his first assignments.
Initially, Arena was not to be a classic RPG at all. The player, and a team of his fighters, would travel about a world fighting other teams in their arenas, until the player became "grand champion" in the world's capital, the Imperial City. Along the way, side quests of a more role-playing nature could be completed. As the process of development progressed, however, the tournaments became less important, and the side quests more so. RPG elements were added to the game, as the game expanded to include the cities outside the arenas, and dungeons beyond the cities. Eventually, it was decided to drop the idea of tournaments altogether, and focus on quests and dungeons, on making the game a "full-blown RPG". The original concept of arena-combat had never made it to the coding stage, and so few artifacts from that era of development remain: the game's title, and a text file with the names of fighting teams from every large city in Tamriel, and a brief introduction for them. The concept of traveling teams was eventually left aside as well, because the team's decision to produce a first-person RPG had made the system somewhat less fun.
Although the team had dropped arena-combat from the endgame, because all the material had already been printed up with the title, the game went to market as The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The team retcon
Retcon
Retroactive continuity is the alteration of previously established facts in a fictional work. Retcons are done for many reasons, including the accommodation of sequels or further derivative works in a series, wherein newer authors or creators want to revise the in-story history to allow a course...
ned the idea that, because the Empire of Tamriel was so violent, it had been nicknamed the Arena. It was actually Bethesda's founder Christopher Weaver
Christopher Weaver
Christopher Weaver is a software developer, innovator and entrepreneur, and the founder of Bethesda Softworks. He spearheaded the development of the first physics engine for realtime sports simulation, culminating in the creation of the original John Madden Football for Electronic Arts, as well as...
who came up with the name of "The Elder Scrolls,"" the description of which eventually came to mean "Tamriel's mystical tomes of knowledge that told of its past, present, and future." The game's initial voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...
was changed in response, beginning: "It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls..."
Ted Peterson had joined the company in 1992, working assignments on Terminator: 2029, Terminator Rampage, and Terminator Future Shock, as well as some other titles." Peterson, Vijay Lakshman, and LeFay were longtime aficionados of pencil-and-paper role-playing games, and it is from these games that the world of Tamriel was created. They were also fans of Looking Glass Studios
Looking Glass Studios
Looking Glass Studios was a computer game development company during the 1990s.The company originally formed as Looking Glass Technologies, when Blue Sky Productions and Lerner Research merged....
' Ultima Underworld series, which became their main inspiration for Arena. The influence of Legends of Valour
Legends of Valour
Legends of Valour is a role-playing video game developed by Synthetic Dimensions and released by U.S. Gold and SSI in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST and PC DOS systems, with the additional FM Towns and PC-98 versions in Japan only...
, a game Ted Peterson describes as a "free-form first-person perspective game that took place in a single city," has also been noted. Peterson, asked for his overall comment on the game, replied "It was certainly derivative...".
The game's release was slow to build. Bethesda missed their Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
1993 window, and released the game the following March 1994, This was "really serious for a small developer/publisher like Bethesda Softworks." The racy packaging further contributed to distributor concerns for the game, leading to an initial distribution of under 10,000 units — a smaller number, recalls Peterson, than the initial sales for his Terminator: 2029 add-on. Nonetheless, sales continued, month after month, based upon good word-of-mouth. Soon, despite some initially harsh reviews, general bugginess
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
, and the formidable demands the game made on player's machines, the game became a cult hit. Evaluations of the game's success vary from "minor" to "modest" to "wild," but are unvarying in presenting the game as a success. Game historian Matt Barton concludes that, in any case, "the game set a new standard for this type of CRPG, and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation." The Elder Scrolls: Arena, had definitely pushed the envelope and started a series that went on to become a reference work in the genre.
Floppy disk, CD-ROM and Deluxe editions
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.
The version that was released as freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
by Bethesda Softworks
Bethesda Softworks
Bethesda Softworks, LLC, is an American video game company. A subsidiary of ZeniMax Media, the company was originally based in Bethesda, Maryland and eventually moved to their current location in Rockville, Maryland...
in 2004 is the 3.5" floppy disk version, not the CD-ROM edition.
In 2005, the CD-ROM version was released on a limited edition re-issue for PC. This version included DOSBox, which would install automatically onto the computer, so the user would have no compatibility issues. The cover was in the same style of Morrowind.
External links
- UESP Wiki Arena section
- TES: Arena manual
- Free official download, from The Elder Scrolls official site
- ArenaSetup : A ready to play version for modern Windows using DOSboxDOSBoxDOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
based on the CD version.