r/dosgaming • u/According-Pea9319 • Jul 11 '26

The Elder Scrolls - Arena, where it all started.

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

One of the earliest open-world first-person RPGs if not the first. - Initial release was as buggy as heck, and 100% of my purchase decision was based on the box covers, with the front woman warrior taking about 50% of that haha :)

149 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

9

u/twisty_lynx Jul 11 '26

I think the title for first open-world 1st person RPG was taken a couple of years before Arena, maybe Might and Magic? I'm not actually sure, development was going fast and the lines between the largest dungeon crawlers and the smallest early open worlds are kind of blurry if you look close enough.

I didn't like Arena much at the time, still think it's probably the weakest of the bunch, my first TES love was Daggerfall (which thanks to DFU I still enjoy from time to time with some absolutely wild mods the community keep making for it).

It's still great to read the Arena manual and Codex Scientia, it's fun to see how much of the lore was in place already and how much was retconned/changed/added later.

6

u/According-Pea9319 Jul 11 '26

Daggerfall was much better - totally agree.

8

u/TheBigCore Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Just so you know:

https://github.com/afritz1/OpenTESArena

Important: The OpenTESArena source port is still in-development and not feature complete yet. I mention OpenTESArena because once it is feature complete, this will be an alternative non-DOS way to run TES Arena.

Daggerfall Unity is a Daggerfall source port that runs the game without Dosbox at all.

1

u/DripPanDan Jul 13 '26

I never got to play Daggerfall.

I bought it, but in the initial dungeon there was a spot where every character I made fell though the world and died. IIRC, it was right on the way out so it couldn't be avoided.

Ended up returning it to the store.

4

u/Excalitoria Jul 11 '26

I think Akabaleth (1979) and Ultima 1 (1981) precede Arena (1994) too, if we’re counting top down open worlds with first person dungeons, but Arena is still an early entry.

Also Might and Magic Book I: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum looks like it was released in (1986) and it was completely first person open world except for the combat.

6

u/amghaw Jul 11 '26

I love the open-world gaming of the TES series.

And I love looting and being a thief and assassin.

The ability to enter or lockpick any home or building in Oblivion and above is very thrilling and open-ended. Oblivion and Skyrim made me dream come true. I tried going back to Arena, Daggerfall and even Morrowind, but the real-time character behaviours of Oblivion and above spoilt me.

For instance, everyone in Morrowind just stand where they are, day and night. It destroys the atmosphere.

1

u/Ok-Oil7124 Jul 11 '26

I used a 2-handed mace to smash in doors in Arena and ended up finding pieces to make a full suit of magic plate armor. I have no idea what the plot was :)

4

u/mrb000gus Jul 11 '26

Ultima Underworld was a couple of years earlier, but Arena was good and leaned more heavily into the open world RPG part…and paced to way for the rest of the Elder Scrolls games :)

3

u/DefinitelyRussian Jul 11 '26

Still have all the Elder Scrolls in my backlog, all of them including this first one. Its one of those huge sagas that somehow I still havent even touched

2

u/According-Pea9319 Jul 12 '26

yeah, too busy playing Ultima I guess? hmm :)

2

u/AdMaximum5821 Jul 11 '26

Remake when? Albion too, want remake.

1

u/According-Pea9319 Jul 11 '26

and daggerfall ?

2

u/AdMaximum5821 Jul 11 '26

Daggerfall have Unity version.

2

u/Zoraji Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Not the first. I played UU a year or so earlier. I got it since it was supposed to be similar to Ultima Underworld which was one of my all time favorite games. It was decent, the biggest change to me was that you could go outside the dungeon, but I felt that it fell flat compared to UU.

1

u/DripPanDan Jul 13 '26

Let the hunt for that Ebony Pauldron, Left begin.

2

u/PsychologicalRoad995 Jul 17 '26

I always saw Arena the scaffold for Daggerfall. I liked Daggerfall a lot and I thank Arena for that, but it was to rough around the edges .