Elder Scrolls: Arena Playthrough Blog

part 2 ❦ Opening Hours

Continued from part 1

In Elder Scrolls news

Part of me held out hope for a shred of Elder Scrolls news on Skyrim’s anniversary. It came a few days later, with Phil Spencer confirming that TES6 will be a PC/Xbox exclusive, and Todd Howard mentioning a release date “fifteen to seventeen years after Skyrim.” (I.e., 2026–2028.) Suddenly, this playthrough feels less like a TES6 warmup than killing time in the middle of a release cycle gulf. At least there’s time for replaying other TES games or dipping into Elder Scrolls Online. I guess.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming

You may have noticed the crowned gray-zombie-looking fellow in the bottom corner of the first post’s screenshots. This was “Dineros,” an Argonian spellsword I created two months after Skyrim came out. (I have a penchant for dumb character names, you can ask my Oblivion Argonian “Giftbasket”.) I tinkered around in Arena for a few hours, enough to clear the notorious playthrough-kneecapping starting dungeon and get full roam of the overworld and a basic feel of the cities, dungeons, and procedural generation. As indebted as I feel to Dineros, I wanted to re-experience the character creation and first dungeon. And so, I christen Dineros II.

Classes and builds

RPGs of this era really like front-loading commitment.

You will probably not be surprised that Arena’s setting and worldbuilding were based off the developers’ D&D campaign. These pen-and-paper roots are obvious from the first glance at the list of classes, a list more concerned with fidelity to classic RPGs instead of sensible builds to play Arena with. Who is going to pick Healer in a single-player dungeon-crawler? Why is there Thief and Burglar?

The first three Elder Scrolls games only let you regenerate health and magic when resting, nothing mid-combat.* In the early games, magic-focused builds require commitment (unlike Skyrim, which minimizes the idea of a “build” or “role-playing” to let your character do everything). Magic is where all the fun and variety is, so there’s no way I was doing a straight tank—but I also wanted to be able to take a few hits and not crumble. My approach in Daggerfall and Morrowind was to stock up on magic potions, scrolls, and enchanted items so I didn’t have to dump everything into intelligence/willpower at the expense of strength/endurance.

I planned to continue this strategy: pick a Spellsword or Battlemage or something, let magic items carry me until I can reliably stay alive. But then I remembered another fun old-timey RPG mechanic Arena and Daggerfall share: class restrictions on gear. What tragedy to get dropped beefy loot and not be able to wear it! Even the unique over-powered artifacts (Ebony Mail, Auriel’s Shield, Auriel’s Bow—all here in Arena), no guarantee you can even put it on. (It’s tricky how to make builds feel special in ways beyond telling the player “no”. Arena has lots of “no”s.)

New-player guides (yes, they’re out there for Arena) alerted me to the Sorcerer class—ahem, “Sorceror”.

The biggest magic pool…but can’t restore magic while resting…but can absorb magic from enemy spells. Can use all weapons and leather and chain armor (rare for the magic classes here, even a Battlemage only gets leather)…but has a low hit rate and sluggish level progression.

This sounded interesting to me—at least, a change-up from my Daggerfall playthrough. Went from planning a magic-negligent build to the one with the most magic! (If I can’t get out of the first dungeon, I may reconsider.)

In case you’re somehow a numbers-averse ’90s RPG player, Arena can pick your class based on how you answer ten moral dilemmas. This is the first appearance of the legendary sweetroll hypothetical that Bethesda has referenced in multiple games since.

“Beast Races”

In a magical Google search from my Daggerfall playthrough I can’t recreate, I found a forum thread discussing Elder Scrolls, and found the inevitable guy whining about how Daggerfall was ruined by “pandering to furries.” I then noticed the post date: 2001. Morrowind wasn’t even out yet. Performative furry haters have been railing at God longer than I could’ve dreamed.

But, sure enough, like that guy pointed out, Arena didn’t have the anthro bug. (Yet.) Only orcs are missing (exclusively enemies in Arena, some friendly NPCs in Daggerfall, but not a player character until Morrowind). The Khajiit are here, but…

“Thy race is born of the desert, where life is cruel and harsh and death comes on vultures wings. Thou art feline and sleek, deadly hunters of the wastes…”

At least they’re just elves with facepaint, and not the creepy elves with cat tails of Daggerfall. They are described as “feline,” so the seeds were planted.

Which leads to my beloved, the Argonians—

Default male Argonian.

Not default but what is going on here.

Hmmm. Described as reptilian, but tailless and flat-faced. Unique in a field of humans and elves, but far removed from the tailed green scalies they’d become in Daggerfall.

But it’s not like the other races were spared. Please do yourself a favor and see all the face options on the UESP wiki. (I like the Wood Elf background, the one real picture among the fantasy pixel-art backgrounds, I hope it was some developer’s Maryland yard.)

Even with a face like that, I’m indebted to play all Elder Scrolls as an Argonian. Besides, it’s not like Oblivion’s Argonians were any more handsome.

Thy mien canst be altered by clicking thy face.

I’ve selected the spiky ’80s new wave haircut for Dineros II. It speaks to me.

Prison bust

Bad news. Emperor Uriel “To Be Voiced By Patrick Stewart” Septim IV got blasted into hell by the Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn, who is now impersonating him on the throne. You are a lowly member of the Imperial Court dumped into the Imperial prisons (presumably the same that Oblivion opens in). You are filled-in on all this by the ghost of Ria Silmane, who speaks to you in dreams and every game over screen.

Thankfully, she has alerted you to a key hidden in your cell.

Although quaint by the standards set by Daggerfall’s starting dungeon (God…), the opening is a decent hurdle to new playthroughs. The ’90s were a Wild West of keyboard controls before the WASD-type standards were set in place, and Arena is a colorful example of this, requiring you to attack by right clicking and “swinging” your mouse across the screen in the direction you want to attack.† (Arena also has no in-game controls page or button remapping.) If a rat gets a few bites in before you figure this out, you’re dead and likely discovering that the game didn’t auto-save and you need to go through character creation again. And there ends many experimental Arena playthroughs for Elder Scrolls Anthology buyers.

And yet, even knowing what I’m doing, playing through this dungeon has reacquainted me with my first and strongest impression of Arena…

Old 3D is nerve-wracking

I’m pretty resistant to horror sequences in video games, usually running into them with a giggly exhilaration. That said.

Arena is easily, easily the scariest experience I’ve had in a video game. And worse, I don’t think it’s ever trying to be. A lot has been written about the recent trend of “PlayStation horror” aesthetics, but shared nostalgia aside, I completely get it. Old 3D video games have a lot of horror elements unintentionally baked in: the short draw distance, making enemies only pop in when they’re already right in front of you (or behind you…); the inevitable harsh, hostile difficulty; the low-resolution audio samples and graphics; the eerie way billboard sprites rotate to always face you; the surprise factor of glitches and clipping errors. Arena’s unique onscreen messages in the opening dungeon don’t help downplay the eerie mood.

I had a jumpy time playing Daggerfall too (Daggerfall would sadistically play distant enemy and door-opening noises even after fully cleaning out a dungeon), but it at least had the decency to show an enemy down the hallway.

The opening dungeon isn’t too bad, really. Even with the stock iron dagger, goblins and rats go down in a few swipes. (Although, only once, a human bandit spawned to sink arrows into my face—hello!!)

As long as you have the attack controls down, recognize rear attacks quickly enough to turn around, and rest in niches when you can, you can get out quick. I did get out quick, but not quick enough to escape jumping in my chair, bumping my desk, sending my drink and monitors swaying.‡ I’ve never felt more alive!!!

Dineros Uncaged: The Blow-by-Blow

Before you can make it to the final portal, you’re treated to another ’90s PC game staple—the piracy check!

Clearing this test, the Shift Gate warps you to a town in your homeland, in my case Riverwalk in Black Marsh. The town is celebrating Life Day New Life Festival, and the people are enjoying free ale in the taverns.

Feels very ’90s fantasy that the one worldbuilding detail is too much dang taxes, but then again, this is the nefarious Jagar Tharn’s doing…

The text tries to convey a jolly warmth, but what you’re thrown into is a strikingly stark dead-of-winter beauty.

The town walls illuminated by street lamps, the distant trees and buildings barely perceptible silhouettes against the almost-black sky and distant mountains. Cities aren’t safe havens at night, and monsters and bandits will spawn around you.

Even though the town spawns monsters and has wide acres of empty brush, you (weak, unarmored, potion-less) can’t rest within the walls. I felt cheap and dodged the inn to pop outside the city gates for some free legal resting. Naturally, every hour of resting is a new dice-roll for an enemy to interrupt.

I spent a while attempting to get back to full health, only for the joys of scraping past a hard enemy to get dashed by a rat or goblin interrupting my rest at 10% health and killing me.

This wasn’t sustainable…it was time to actually heal at an inn. What does this look like in Arena? Towns are filled with fake buildings you can’t enter, making finding an inn a longer process than it should be. Thankfully, the eternally bustling NPCs can help.

I accidentally asked for inns in general and not the nearest inn, and got this great list of generated names.

A good night’s rest at the Unfortunate Dungeon.

When asking an NPC where the nearest inn is, some just give cardinal directions (and some just don’t know at all). Triangulating an inn this way can take time, but you can keep asking NPCs until one gives up and marks your map.

Tyromeda must think I’m a real dumbass.

After making it to the Crimson Dragon, I’m given the tempting offer to sneak into a room. I’m not risking the dice roll (not with my character’s dismal Luck attribute!!), so I pay for the single room.

Spacious!

With overflowing heaps of goblin-blood-stained gold, the next to-do was to get real armor and weapons. Riverwalk didn’t have a blacksmith, so it was time to travel to a proper town. (All fast travel is immediately accessible.) A fun trick of Arena’s worldbuilding is using a real-world scale for its overworld size and travel time. These two town icons right next to each other? 100km apart, two-day travel time.

It doesn’t really mean anything, since you can’t actually walk from one town to another in Arena.§ I think it’s genius—a small illusion of dialogue windows, passing dates on a calendar, and a looped animation of a horse-rider to make you feel like you’re traversing a massive continent. Even though the Elder Scrolls games moved away from the literal continent scale of Arena and Daggerfall, in this small touch, Arena establishes the series trademark of massive rolling maps, open and explorable to your whim—even though it’d take a few games to actually populate that giant map with distinct features to reward the exploration.

With weapons and armor acquired, it’s time to walk beyond the town walls I hugged (and repeatedly died at) before. Civilization continues past the town, with loose houses and temples dotting the winding, procedural ninety-degree bends of the roads, and a mysterious population of NPCs bustling along criss-crossing perpendicular paths through the billboard-sprite forests and crops.

My future house.

I have a goal: a dungeon! Every town has small, low-level randomized dungeons in its outskirts. Easy to flee if things get out of hand, and a good test to see if my character doesn’t suck ass.

Going up.

D’oh.

A bandit killed me from behind while angling my view for this screenshot. Planned???

The general combat loop isn’t different from what I’ve recounted from the starting dungeon and outside of town: I can only take one or two enemies in a row, but after a quick nap on a rested platform, I can clear the place without getting massacred.

The loot’s better, and I’m still getting blasted by the trumpet-fanfare of level-ups. Concerningly, I don’t have enough magic to cast my starting spells, and no enemies are even casting magic on me to absorb, getting me no benefits from the Sorcerer class. But I’m staying alive and leveling-up, so I think I’m in the clear.

Up next in part 3… Enough random generation! The first massive, hand-crafted main quest dungeon begins.

Originally posted 2021.12.06

homeposts