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.

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, 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.

Platform

PC

Developer(s)

Bethesda Softworks

Publishers(s)

Bethesda Softworks

Genres(s)

NA Release Date

April 5, 1994

MVGL User Score

6.3 by 84 user(s)

MVGL Difficulty

2.5000

Composer(s)

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194 User(s)

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