Decided to go back and play all the TES games because Oblivion was so fantastic to me, and because the Skyrim Forum is frankly dangerous right now. What you will find here is my play-through journal. It will include my thoughts on the game as it unfolds. Right now I am just downloading the game and trying to get it underway. Stay tuned.

Alright, downloading it straight up from http://www.elderscrolls.com/arena. It says I will need an emulation program to play it, and that a link has been provided. Reading the PDF that came in folder... noob to this kind of thing.

Where do I find the DosBox Emulator?

At the top of this forum they've put together a guide for everything you'll need to get it running. Have fun playing!

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/479044-how-to-get-the-past-games-to-run/

Alright I got this baby up and running. Time for a real entry.

So I missed big chunks of the opening story but one of my rules is no back peddling, I keep a little journal of everything and thats what I have to rely on. A real Man or Mer would not necessarily remember everything either. So I do not allow myself a super human memory.

What I got from what I say was that a man named Jagar Tharn Betrayed the Emperor and sent the Emperor into another Dimension (If I am wrong, let me be wrong for now).

After the Into movie i was prompted with "How do you wish to select your class?"
Options: Generate, or Choose.
I decided to generate my class, and was asked the following 10 questions, (I paraphrased them in my notes).

1: You find a trapped and critically wounded Animal what do you do?
A:End its suffering with your dagger.
-at this point I discovered one read on by clicking the top or bottom of the scroll, nice touch I thought-
B:Study Animal and let nature run its course.
C:Use herbs to calm and free the animal, knowing that I may be taking food from a hunter and his family.
-I chose C because I love animals and no intelligent hunter would rely on stationary traps. There are also other food sources.

2: You are on a sinking boat during a sevre storm... seems hopeless.
A: Attempt to save yourself using a bucket to keep water out of your boat and stay afloat.
B: Die like a noble with no fear.
C: Dive into the current and try to survive.
-I chose C because I wanted to live and didnt have much faith in the bucket. Thought about B but there is noone there to admire your courage and drowning would svck.

3:Army Commander Scenario.
A: This path of action means 1/2 your men die and 1/2 live guranteed.
B: This path of action is a 50% chance you all live or all die.
C: Allow your men to decide.
-I chose B because DEATH OR GLORY! Id never accept that half of my infantry would just die, and I think that transfering this decision to my men is a cop out. I am the commander so I must make decisions and stand by them.

4:Catch a poor boy stealing a candlestick from my family:
A:Tell him to put it back and ask my family to help his, but dont steal.
B:Say nothing about it.
C:Bust him and tell my father.
-A: I wouldn't bust a kid that needed the money for his family, and if I went with B I could be blamed for taking the stick. So I chose A, seemed fair and helped him.

5:An Old man is fatally injured on the road, tells me to go straight to the constable. As I walk to the constable a Strange man appears on the road. He may be the thief.
A.Follow the strange man.
B.Note the strange man but procede to the constable because the Old man may die.
C:Note the strange man but procede to the constable because I promised the Old man I would.
-B: I am a man of my word, but Id go to the constable to save the old man rather than to demonstrate my integrity.

-Posted fearing character limit, more to come-

Alright continuing on with the questionnaire:

(sore throat... decided to call in lol)

6. Your father tells you a story about a man on the battlefield who sacrifced himself to save his infantry in a futile battle. What would you have done:
A: Flee and save yourself.
B: Sac yourself and save your men.
C: Attempt to save both yourself and your men by creating a distraction,
-C because I am a rather quick witted individual and I think I could come up with something on the fly to save us all, at worst I would damn sure try.

7. A waif-ish looking boy is stealing bread from a baker, food is rare do to a recent draught.
A: Stop the Boy
B: Block the Baker to save the Boy.
C. Let your Father handle this situation.
-C I chose to let my father handle this. He is older and wiser plus I can watch and learn from what happens.

8. There is an awkward, small, and clumsy boy in your battle class. Your instructor assigns the class to divide into infantries for a mock battle, and the odd boy is on your side. What do you do with him?
A: Doom him to death on the front-line.
B: Make him a Scout.
C: Keep him close and educate him at various posts.
-I chose B. He is obviously useless as a front-liner, and in war you need to use what you have rather than throw it away. I opted out of C however because I must also command an infantry that may not like it if I kept such an oddball near my command (wouldn't I want a better solider holding that kind of rank?).

9. Your Armsmaster is being a dike. Some classmates put a snake in his sock.
A. Do nothing to prevent the prank.
B. Inform the armaster that there is a snake, but dont rat out friends.
C: Rat out your classmates.
I chose A: This is probably going to end badly for everyone anyway. If I choose B the master will PT my ass until I tell him. If I choose C I piss off all of my friends. So I just enjoy the laugh before we all suffer together.

10. There is a lottery and you win it. However a less fortunate family emerges and claims they won.
A: Say nothing and allow the less fortunate family to claim the money.
B: Step up and Claim your prize.
C: Claim my prize, but split it 50-50 with the poor family.
-Chose C. Seems the fairest to me, and given the scenario we may have picked the same lottery tablet. Who knows?

Upon completion of the questionnaire the screen displayed this message:

"Thou wouldst survive longest as an Assassin. Wilst thou accept this destiny?"
I of course chose YES.

A couple comments here:
I loved this creation process, it made me feel immersed because it built a little background for my character, and it gave me a realistic class based on my decisions rather than based on a dice roll or allowing me to simply rig up an unbeatable class. It felt more real to me. I enjoyed how my mind was engaged by the questions.

Up Next I named my character Zero. I like the concept of that because Zero means nothing. You can assign whatever features you want to a character named Zero. He/She is not decidely male or female or having any specific characteristics. It leaves the rest of the creation process wide open.

Gender: I chose Male. Sometimes I choose Female, but today I chose Male.

"From where dost thou hail from?" (I quote these things because I enjoy the old English speak. Again, it makes it immersible, and perhaps delightfully cheesy.)
I was presented with a map of the entire Empire of Tamriel.
Options:
High Rock:Land of Bretons
Skyrim: Land of Nords
Morrowind: Dark Elves
Hammerfall: Redgauards
Imperial Providence: For whatever reason this was not selectable on my download. *shrug*
Black Marsh: Argonians
Elsweyr: Khajiit
Valenwood: Wood Elves
Summerset Isle: High Elves
CHOSE: The Summerset Isle because I liked that it was an island off the mainland. I loved that it was called "Summer"set Isle. Summer being my favorite season. I didnt have a visual representation at this time as far as what a High-Elf looked like. Yet "High Elf" sounded cool to me, we've all heard of Dark Elves and Wood Elves. High Elf was provocative to me.

"Thou wilt be known as the Assassin Zero, who wouldst call Summerset, land of the High Elves, his home."
Accepted.

"Know ye this also:
Thy race is tall and stately, for thou art Kings among princes. Thy people were first on this land to breathe the spring air and first to leap, nimble with the wind. Thine eyes canst see all even when naught is out by thy mistress of the Night."

I like how at this point I still haven't seen my High Elf, but I have this beautiful picture of who he is and how he holds himself. The character is himself, but created from my decisions.

"Thoug body and mind must be strong and agile if though art to succeed as a Assassin." (I liked the slight grammatical mistake, gives the game character).

"Go Ye now in peace. Let thy fate be written in the Elder Scrolls."

Finally to the Character build Screen.
"Distrube thy poins as needed, keeping in mind the reccomendations for they chosen class..."

I wrote down my starting stats in my notebook for my personal keeping, but I doubt that you all really care about the specifics. I saw that my character was already strong of mind so I assigned my bonus points to his body 8 to strength, and 5 to Endurance.

You then get to pick your character's head from several terrible haircuts that look like the late 80's-early 90's hair metal cuts. I rather wish that Id never been shown my character, I think allowing me to visualize him in my head wouldve been preferable, but alas. I chose a nice long grey hair. Elf looks nice and Regal if a bit flamboyant.

So I confirmed my class and race, and the game opens in a scene where I learn from a dream sequence woman, that Jagar Tharn, an Imperial Battlemage is Impersonating the Emperor and I find myself in his dungeon. The Dream Lady says also to not succumb to greed or I may die in the dungeon, she tells me where the key to my cell is. Tells me that I have untapped power, and that upon escaping the dungeon I must go East then South and find a SHIFT GATE which will transport me to somewhere safe. I must sleep if she visits me again.

When I started up my game it was running slow but I pressed CTRL=F12 and it smoothed out as the PDF file promised.

See you after I escape the dungeon.

"Kindly Waiteth while ye olde disk needs to be accessed."

And I awaken in The Imperial Dungeons 12:30pm Tirda first Hearthfire in the year 3E 389

"You awaken to the drip of water from somewhere above. The cell walls are covered in slime as are the chains which hang from above. Your eye however goes to a strange ruby glint from the corner of your cell."

It was at this point that I was quite aware that this game was running on the Doom engine, which is kind of nice.

Tricky as a counsel guy to get used to the mouse+Keyboard controls, but I find my way easily enough to the key. Now this key on screen is not ruby at all, its yellow like any key, until it goes up in the inventory.

Open the first gate with that key and find what looks like an armory lying on the floor, but alas it is only a small sum of gold. Thus we now know what random drops look like.

Next an on screen message reminded me that I was to go West and then South, I had accidentally written east in my notebook.

Other messages let me know when enemies were coming "Hear the skitting of claws." One of these messages assured me that it was safe to rest in the little wall niches, but its not. If you rest there you awaken to 2 or 3 goblins and this where you find how poor the melee combat on this game is.

The way it's meant to work is you hold the right click on the mouse and then swing it to create lunges, stabs, and slices, but its flawed and you often miss.

I tried very hard to learn it but ultimately wound up rushing through the dungeon and avoiding the enemies. Entering the blue shift gate and answering its riddle. Wizard Rand Costs 740.

Controls I discovered are as follows:
R=Rest
J=Jump
L=Logbook
M=Map
A=Raise weapon
S=Settings

and you move about with the arrow keys.

Now lets see what this city has to offer. lol.

Rosefield 5:56pm Tirdas 1st Hearthfire 3E 389.

Spent the evening wandering about finding an Inn. Some Joker introduced himself as Horny then as Randy. Then proceded to call me an inbred. I think he was flipping me off between juggling. Survived a random Goblin Attack, who knew they would come into the cities?! Final stumbled into the Laughing Inn while I was met by a dark elf whom asked me to deliver a book of prayers to the Conclave of Baal by Middas 2nd Heartfire. It took some mingling with the towns people, but I was able to find the conclave and deliver the book on time. My reward? Why Sweet satisfaction and 16 gold pieces.


(How do you sleep in a bed in this game. I rented one but wound up using R to sleep after many attempts to click into bed?)

Got my map filled in by some of the locals. Leveled up, and Delivered an old book to the mages guild. 19gold WOOHOO!

Alright. So I fiddled around with this a little longer, but Im finding the pacing of the game very slow. It starts off Immersive but then it deteroriates into being monotonous and boring. Not going to force myself to finish it, especially with no audience. lol.

You have an audience!

lol Man I hate to say but this game just is not worth the time and effort it would take to write all this. It's deep and it is immersive, but the combat system on it, is so brutally crippling that I just cannot have fun with it.

I like a lot of the things about it, but I feel the vision of the game was a bit behind technology at that time. It's not unplayable, and in it's heydey it wouldve been something that players were used to.However knowing that I have much better playing games sitting right next to me. I feel the time I spent with it, gave me what I needed from the game.

Try Daggerfall - While it has the same Right-click-and-drag attack mechanism, you can adjust the rest of the game's controls to play quite similar to the new ones, complete with mouse-to-look and WASD movement. In fact, I find it can have quite gripping combat, with frantic attempts to slash and parry enemies using the right combinations and timing of attacks.

Actually Zero, you made me want to go back to play Arena again. I tried the download version (because as with Daggerfall, I can't find my old disks.... *sigh*) with dosbox, but my machine doesn't seem to like it. I can play Daggerfall okay.... I might have to do some tweaks to the ini file or something....

I definently reccomend Daggerfall instead, seeing as it is what made TES the superpower it is now.

Arena is pretty much a dungeon crawler, and although I love it it is mainly due to nostalgia. Do one for Daggerfall, it isn't nearly as derpy with DOSBox and is a lot more fun.

You couldn't choose to be an Imperial in Arena or Daggerfall. I think Morrowind was the first where you could play an Imperial.


Perhaps you were suffering from low Agility, giving you a penalty to to hit score?


That's how you do it. Just Rest inside the inn, and you're moved to the room you rented.

If this was already posted, I apologize. But here is a link http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/?title=Arena_:_ArenaSetup_EN This is the FULL version of Arena, with all cut-scenes intact. It also is pre-patched and DOS Emulator is pre-installed. Literally download and play. It's from UESPWiki. You can also follow the link on that site for a full ready-to-play Daggerfall. ENJOY!

Hey, thanks! I think I'll grab that instead of trying to find my disks....

Here's the Daggerfall link for anyone interested. http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/?title=Daggerfall_:_DaggerfallSetup_EN

That was an interesting read while it lasted.