In that case it depends on how you look at it.

I think these forums judge Oblivion more harshly because the people here are fans of Bethesda in general.

As a stand alone game, Oblivion is pretty nifty. But a lot of people who didn't start with Oblivion are disappointed because it fell short of what Bethesda is capable of.

In my opinion, you have to compare it to the developer's other games if you want to judge it fairly.

What's with all the Arena-hate, yo?

Arena - Legendary Hero
Daggerfall - Forgettable Hero
Morrowind - Mythic Hero/Unknown Hero
Oblivion - Regional Hero

I've only played 3 and 4...

Morrowind: Dated
Oblivion: Current
TES V: Anticipated

That skeleton at the top of the stairs in Privateer's Hold is a truly mighty opponent. Kills me 7 times out of 10.

I run past him and close the door behind me.

By the way, when I said "this speaks VOLUMES" I meant that it goes to show how personally and seriously fans seem to take what is said on this forum, if manwhocaomearound is gonna use his one word to describe Oblivion as "underrated" when it's overrated literally everywhere BUT these forums.

Even on CNN. Did you see? Did you see?

To be fair, CNN is a bunch of kids with touch screens, pretending to be intellectuals. They just give the illusion of having a valid viewpoint on things.

Not that I'm siding with Fox News. Anyone who has worked in a news studio can tell you that it's all trash.

Arena: Sleepy
Daggerfall: Bashful
Morrowind: Doc
Oblivion: Dopey

Guess that makes sense...

Arena = Traditional
Daggerfall = Random
Morrowind = Art
Oblivion = Marketing

ARENA: under-rated (I like it and if you don't, go jump in a fire!)
DAGGERFALL: huge!
MORROWIND: AWESOMENESS!!!
OBLIVION: haven't tried it yet

Why's everyone trashing Arena? it's a great game, for 1994 it's awesome

A lot of gamers, these days, hold graphics and engine way above fun or originality.

Arena was hardly original.

I don't know of any RPG before it that used Khajitts or Argonians.

Or had a world of that size and scope. Or that treated fatigue the way Arena does.

Or changing seasons or even a calendar with holidays, like in Arena.

And wasn't it the first one to use first-person, real-time combat?

Ultima Underworld was designed before Arena, if I recall correctly and had real-time combat. (And I know there's one or two games before Ultima Underworld that had first person real-time combat as well)

Regarding Argonians, Arena didn't had much lore before Daggerfall came in. The Argonians in Arena were merely non savage lizardmen with their own territory. Lizardmen have been in many other RPGs before Arena. Again, Ultima Underworld had a community of them as well, and they had their own language. (A nice quest was to learn their language actually, very cool. )

Regarding world size, Final Frontier II: Elite has the whole of space, the whole galaxy ,with real-time distances between each planets. That makes it larger than Arena but, of course, not as detailed. That"s something I give to Arena. The huge, randomized world, but still detailed enough.

Changing SEasons and calendar with Holidays, I *think* the Ultima series had this already. (Not the first person titles, but the "over the top view" ones.)

But I think Amazon Queen was talking more about the storyline which was like a tale one woult tell his children to get them asleep. The story of a bad magician who banished the bearded king to a bad world and an hero travels around the world to find 8 pieces of a magical staff that destroys the bad mage. A world with human-sized cats and lizards and elves and dwarven weaponry.

In any case, I like Arena, but it"s not my favourite title. (Favourite title being Daggerfall)

Name any TES RPG with a real original plot, though. Or any story written in the past 5000 years for that matter.

I guess I have to try the Ultima series. Really been meaning to. But, right now I'm trying Bard's Tale after I finish Baldur's Gate.

Was Ultima real-time, first person combat though? Was it Doom-style, like Arena?

Clearly Daggerfall is better than Arena, imo. Because it's an improvement on the concept in every way.

Then, they start re-inventing the wheel and it gets debatable.

As for Final Frontier: Elite- That's outer-space! Totally different. :hehe:

Oh what I meant by how un-original Arena's story is, is that there's few lore around it. Like many children's tales where all you know is who's good and who's bad. Of course most (If not all) stories always use the same basic elements, sometimes the most unoriginal, but when you insert unpredictable twists or loads of lore about the world and the elements connected with the Main Plot, that's where it can "hide" the unoriginal elements.

Like Morrowind which also has a very cliche story. But with all the lore concerning the characters involved, the past, the future, the factions and events, it made me forget I was just a hero saving the world.
Since by the time Arena was made there wasn't much lore in it, other than the races descriptions and the intro, it was really about a good hero saving a good bearded king from a bad evil mage.


Ultima Underworld has real-time combat, a la Doom or any TES title yes. By holding the attack button on the mouse, you gain power then you release the button and your character will hit (or miss) the enemy. In fact, I'm sure Underworld has been an inspiration for some elements of Arena.
I personally didn't like the Ultima series, the one from the top-down view or the isometric ones, but I really, really love Ultima Underworld 1 and 2. I highly recommend them.

You're right about Final Frontier. Hah! But, now that I think of it, Arena is bigger than Final Frontier. Because Arena's wilderness never ends and constantly gets re-generated as you walk. So Arena's Tamriel is larger than our galaxy. Oh my. bliviongate:

Yeah, Arena doesn't have the deep world that other RPGs are known for.

But gameplay-wise, I think it stood out for its time.

Arena-Large.

Daggerfall-Massive,

Morrowind-Addictive.

Oblivion-Scaled Down (Two words. Sorry.).

Arena: Unknown
Daggerfall: Almost
Morrowind: Closer
Oblivion: Disappointing

Hams has a point that most TES games don't have a 100% original plot, even if the stories are still written pretty well. Daggerfall was the closest they came and I do feel it was unique in it's own way. It was one of the few RPGs that didn't deal with some big, overblown end-of-the-world plot.

BTW, "real time, first person" type RPGs have been around for ages. First time I encountered one was Dungeons of Daggorath in the mid 80s and I'm pretty sure it'd been around for a while already. I know it wasn't the first. In fact, a "real-time, first-person" rpg/adventure was even attempted on the old Atari 2600 with Crypts of Chaos. Boy did that one svck.

Come to think of it, the TES series seems to borrow a lot of plot ideas from the old Bard's Tale series. Morrowind was all about a mad god. Well, that was the main thing of Bard's Tale 3. Arena was about an evil wizard where you needed to assemble pieces of a staff to destroy the wizard. Well, that also sums up what one does in Bard's Tale 2.

Im sorry i should probably know this but what does ala mean? ive seen it alot, on assumption i associate it with aka but could u tell me what it actually means?

"in the style of"

Arena: Birth
Daggerfall: Huge
Morrowind: Awesome
Oblivion: Meh

How does ala translate into "in the style of"? oh its french never mind.

Technically it's spelled "à la" but without the à key on US English keyboards it's difficult to spell it properly, so it's usually shortened to "ala" instead.

I just thought it was because we're lazy. :shrug:

Not in this case

Oh sorry I forgot to put my "à" in there. I'm French.

Could also translate to "like in". It's another of our expressions used sometimes in the English language.