| The Elder Scrolls: Arena | |
|---|---|
Elder Scrolls: Arena cover |
|
| Developer(s) | Bethesda Softworks |
| Publisher(s) | Bethesda Softworks |
| Series | The Elder Scrolls |
| Version | 1.06 (floppy version) 1.07 (CD version) |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Action role-playing, Open world |
| Mode(s) | Single player (first-person view) |
| Media/distribution | Floppy disk, CD-ROM, download |
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is an action role-playing open world video game developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1994 for MS-DOS. It is the first game in the Elder Scrolls series. 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.[1]
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.
Contents |
The game is played from a first-person perspective.[2] 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, 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.[3]
The Emperor, Uriel Septim VII has been imprisoned in another dimension (in a copy of the Black Horse Courier in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, 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.
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 SirTech, who were doing Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and they literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it."[4] Ted Peterson worked as one of the designers of what was then simply Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game."[4][5] Peterson and Julian LeFay were those who, in Peterson's opinion, "really spear-headed the initial development of the series".[4] 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.[6]
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.[5] 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.[4] RPG elements were added to the game, as the game expanded to include the cities outside the arenas, and dungeons beyond the cities.[5] Eventually, it was decided to drop the idea of tournaments altogether, and focus on quests and dungeons,[4] on making the game a "full-blown RPG".[5] 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.[7] 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.[5]
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 retconned 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,""[4] the description of which eventually came to mean "Tamriel's mystical tomes of knowledge that told of its past, present, and future."[5] The game's initial voice-over was changed in response, beginning: "It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls..."[4]
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,[4] and it is from these games that the world of Tamriel was created.[5] 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.[4][5] Peterson, asked for his overall comment on the game, replied "It was certainly derivative...".[4]
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,[6] 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,[4] and the formidable demands the game made on player's machines,[8] the game became a cult hit.[6] Evaluations of the game's success vary from "minor"[4] to "modest"[8] to "wild,"[6] 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 role-playing video game, and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation."[8] The Elder Scrolls: Arena, had definitely pushed the envelope and started a series that went on to become a reference work in the genre.
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 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.
| Book: The Elder Scrolls series | |
| Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. | |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||