It looks like I'm going to have some time on my hands for the next few months, so I was thinking about trying to actually finish Arena. I've been playing the game since it was released, but for one reason or another I have the tendency to get halfway through and lose my saved game, switch computers, or some other thing that causes me to lose track of the game. I figured taking videos and posting them to Youtube might make me feel accountable for finishing it, so I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in watching a playthrough.

I'd mainly be covering story dungeons, as the downtime in-between quests usually isn't very interesting. I have one test video up, and another uploading as I write this.

At the very least, it would let people who don't care to go through the whole game experience it through the magic of Youtube and my masochistic tendencies.

Anybody up for seeing these?

Update: Due to popular demand (two posts), I'll be starting on this lengthy endeavor very soon. It may take me a few weeks (months?), but I'm going to put forth my best effort to finish the game this time. I'll be using a Breton Spellsword by the name of J. Whistletip. "The whistles go WOOOOOO"

Let's do this thing.

Let's Play!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KnMr862mmQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtsLXU2SE60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6xjNxOID-U


Random throwaway test videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3PEuX6tYOg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ_oL7B8LC8

i sure wouldnt mind

I would love to! I myself enjoy Arena quite a bit but have never made it past two or three staff pieces, usually because I am stricken with the same misfortune as you (hard drive failures or something of the sort). I would definitely watch this if you were to do it from start to finish.

Well, I suppose that's it, then.

I feel like a little explanation is in order. Basically, I'm not in school right now, I don't have a job (hopefully this will change soon), and my car decided to die yesterday, so in the meantime I'm playing videogames. I've got a second interview with a bookstore and an appointment with a temp agency, but both of those are a few days away.

I won't be doing audio commentary for a few reasons. I dislike hearing myself talk, for one thing, but the main reason is that I'm too lazy to splice together audio clips. Youtube's built-in captioning works just fine for what I need, and this way I can go straight from DOSBox output to Youtube. I also mentioned this in one of the videos already up there, but you'll probably see me dying, saving, and reloading a lot. Arena is an unforgiving bastard, which is one of the reasons I love it.

With that said, I'll go pour myself a glass of tea and get started on the first staff piece. This should be fun.

Edit: Well, I gained 4-5ish levels in the span of an hour. My character's still pretty weak, but I'm dying a lot less at this point. I'll start on Stonekeep tomorrow.

wow, the sound is really good on that, though i couldnt play like that, too fast.


I now have an urge to play too! damn you

I'm interested in seeing it too
I found Arena much harder than DF... died so much more, even in the first dungeon.

I beg to differ.

My one complaint with Arena was how the enemies just seemed to pop out of nowhere - unless you had a Light spell active, you could only see a few feet in front of you - in the course of two seconds, what was previously blackness could throw an entire pack of enemies into your face. Regardless of the CPU configuration you use, movement and combat is a lot more rapid and unrealistic compared to Daggerfall. Is it actually possible to outpace enemies while backtracking?

In Daggerfall you usually would just walk backwards while inching forward once in a while to get a few hits onto your enemy. The knockback also generally kept them from getting too close to you. In Arena, you usually both just begin flailing your weapons madly until one or the other is killed. :toughninja:

Arena's combat is definitely more difficult, while Daggerfall totally trumps Arena in the dungeon department. Arena's dungeons are relatively straightforward and are far easier to complete. It's also easier to level in Arena, since it goes on generic experience points and not a set of skills.

I haven't ever gotten past the fifth staff piece or so, but in my experience Arena never really lets up on difficulty as far as battle goes. In Daggerfall, your character eventually gets better, and even though there are more difficult enemies they're still pretty easily dispatched.

Anyway, most of it is a matter of opinion.

I finished Stonekeep about an hour ago and the video will be up soon.

I think I might enjoy this.
Does anybody know some good Daggerfall Lp's?

There appear to be some on Youtube, but I don't know how complete they are.

Fang Lair is turning out to be frustrating. If it's this boring to play through, I can't imagine how tedious it will be watching it. I'll start the upload soon.

Just watched Stonekeep, very nice.

what are you using to record though?

DOSBox's built-in utility. It works pretty well, but it seems like every time I sit down to play someone calls me or I have to go do something in the middle of recording. I paused or stopped recording at least three times during Fang Lair (which I've still not finished, by the way). I'll start uploading as soon as a particular school-related program finishes downloading. My connection here svcks.

Well I found a daggerfall Lp.
He/she uses a similar style to yours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AEIMV-DXus&feature=PlayList&p=84462DFAD01C8643&index=0
EDIT-Rofl,the trumpets that sounded when you got the objective were also used in a show on nickelodeon called double dare.

From what I remember from the instructions, combat in Arena actually is intended to stress timing of attacks-- you can actually parry if you swing at the same time as an opponent. Unfortunately, the opponents animations are somewhat jerky and make it enormously hard to anticipate things like that.
I had a different experience with Arena. I beat it the first time I really played, when the game was new (Great guns, has it really been over fifteen years?), but with Daggerfall I've never even so much as scratched the MQ. I needn't point out to most players of the older Elder Scrolls how unbalanced magic can be in Arena. A single good shield spell, magic reflection/absorption, and 'destroy wall' and you're pretty much set for the whole game. Set up a shield of hundreds of points and a spell reflection and you can walk through a crowd of liches (and did, late in the game) without even lifting a sword. And that's just with a lowly Bard, weakest of the magic-using characters. I haven't watched the videos you're making, so, I don't know if you're playing a magic-user, though. Having to rely on magical items and potions does up the difficulty of the game quite a bit.

My persistence is already waning. I haven't finished Fang Lair yet, and my life is probably going to get hectic again really soon. I'll do my best to continue this in my spare time, but I can't make any promises as to when (or even if) it will be complete.

That video makes me want to get into Arena. :nod:
Eventually you should try and finish the game, you'll be a little bit sad that it's over but you'll feel good about finally completing it.

I still haven't finished Fang Lair, but I'm uploading the parts I have finished. I know where the exit to the second floor is, I just haven't gotten around to finishing it, yet. Enjoy the 4 or 5 parts it took me to finish this damn dungeon.

I remember little difficulty with Fang Lair. Then again...passwall.

Heh this brings back fond memories indeed...may have to dig out my old disk and "try" to get to work...
A few questions to jog my memory...
1. Were boats available to explore lakes looking for island tombs?
2. Trolls...did they regen unless their corpse was burned?
3. There was a well done staff piece dungeon that sticks in my mind...misty woods and lots of ghosts...
was it called the glass forest or something similar?
4. The round shield...does it say "die" on the front of it? lol

Yeah i finished this game way back when it came out (I'm old) with a redguard barbarian named Conan...how he
figured out those riddles I will never guess ha ha!
I'll have to try to get it running...daggerfall took me like 4 hours to get running...this can't be much more difficult I imagine (dosbox)

I am just about to start watching, the only Daggerfall LP's I have seen don't have any commentary, which is a let down. Part of the draw for me is gamer commentary!

Edit: I know this is for Arena, just I skimmed through the thread and saw someone mentioned DF LP's.

depents on what voice the commentator have, ive heard some really spine-shilling voices on youtube that totally ruined any LP they was involved with.

Commentary can be interesting, but I don't know what I could say to make the game any more entertaining. I also don't care for hearing my own southern drawl. That, and I'm really lazy and don't feel like splicing it in despite it being a relatively easy process.

I had a job interview today, and might have one for a full-time position coming up. I haven't really been playing Arena too much, but I'd like to grab the Oghma Infinium before going to the second dungeon. I probably won't be putting this up since the artifact dungeons are random and, hence, not incredibly interesting.

One last thing: Instead of just recording and going through these dungeons, I think I'm going to go through them once without recording just so I get a feel for the dungeon (and where the exits are), and then record while going through a second time. This will definitely take a bit longer, but I don't have to feel like an idiot awkwardly losing myself in these dungeons. The videos will hopefully be more informative/entertaining as well.

If demand is high enough, I might do some commentary, but this will push video updates back even further. It's not like I'm going to even make it halfway through the game within the next month, anyway, so I don't know what difference this would make.

A little update:

I finished Fang Lair and I also jacked my stats up via the Oghma Infinium, although I didn't record the latter. My Fang Lair videos are kind of crappy, so I'm going to attempt a better job with the Labrynthian. There's a noticeable jump between the 2nd and 3rd Fang Lair videos, and it's because I got tired of trying to find the exit to the second level while under pressure of recording it. I also spliced some clips together for the third video. It's fairly cohesive; I'm just a perfectionist and dislike the smallest inconsistencies in videos like these.

Anyway, the second video up is up and I suspect the third will be soon. I'm going to be starting on the Labrynthian either tonight or tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Since this is a fairly active topic I thought I would ask here instead of starting another topic. I have an old Win98 machine with DOS installed on it. Do I need to install Dosbox to play Arena or can I use my original DOS to play the downloaded game? It seems silly to me to download Dosbox when I have DOS on that machine. Can I use the Win2000\XP instructions to start the game?