Introduction to The Elder Scrolls I: Arena

In 1994, interactive multimedia developer Bethesda Softworks released their first major RPG, The Elder Scrolls I: Arena, whose open ended gameplay would set the bar for all other immersion roleplaying games to come. In the game you play a character of your own design (race, class, stats, and face) who, as is the ritual in all of the Elder Scrolls games, must save the world (Tamriel) from sure destruction!

The thing that made Arena so unique was its non-linear gameplay. You could play it for days and days without ever having to follow the main storyline quest. There were enough random deserted mansions or dungeons to keep you occupied for a long, long time. Add in the random escort, delivery, rescue, or artifact quests given by npc's and you had a dungeon crawler that would last you all summer.

(Everything beyond this point is directed to those who'd like to give Arena a spin)

For those of you interested in playing Arena, Bethesda released a free, downloadable version in celebration of the game's 10 year anniversary. You can download it here - http://download.cnet.com/The-Elder-Scrolls-Arena-10th-anniversary-full-install/3000-7539_4-10281566.html

Here are some tips and fixes that I've come up with during my time playing this game -

• Save your games with a number after each save as there isn't a "Load Last Save" option. For example, my current save game is "Dan478" because that is my 478th save. When I don't do this, I've found myself loading through multiple saves, trying to find which one was my current game, which is rather frustrating.

• Save often! I was almost to my 100th save by the time I exited the initial dungeon - The Imperial Sewers. Oftentimes you'll round a corner to find yourself face-to-face with something that will lick yer hide in one or two hits. Also, because of the age of the game and the fact that it has to run through Dosbox, it does crash from time to time. Neither of these things are much of a bother if you save often.

• If at any point during your gameplay you find that the npc's are directing you to the wrong city for the next portion of the mainquest, all you need to do is check a guide to see what the actual city is, and then go there, locate the questgiver, and talk to them. They should give you the quest as normal.

• If for any reason an NPC who should give you a quest, or who should accept that a quest has been completed, doesn't do so, you need to exit the building where they are located, save, completely quit out of Arena, start Arena back up, load to the save you just created, reenter the building, and speak to the NPC. He should then give or accept a quest or quest completion respectively.

• If you ever enter a building and are greeted with a black screen filling your heads-up display you'll have to, first, completely close and then open Arena, load your last save, and then sleep until a different time of day (9 am is my preference). When you reenter the building it should load properly. (This has only happened to me once. I think it had to do with the change from the shop being open to closed, based on time of day.)

• Shift+ J = Jump. If you ever find yourself stuck on a ledge after stepping down off it - turn yourself away from the ledge and jump outwards. You may have to turn a smidgen left or right and try jumping again.

I hope you'll all give it a shot. It's certainly not a game that everyone will be able to play through from start to finish, but it is an excellent game, and worth at least a peek!

For a little bit of back story I highly recommend reading this introduction, straight from Arena's Game Manual - http://tes.riotpixels.com/arena/files/arena-manual.pdf