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This is a first-person computer role-playing game. Like its sequels, it takes
place in the continent of Tamriel, complete with wilderness, dungeons, a spell
creation system that allows players to mix various spell effects into a new spell as
long as they have the money to pay for it, and numerous other game features that were
ahead of its time. The Emperor, Uriel Septim VII has been imprisoned in another
dimension and impersonated by Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn. The only way to bring
him back is to find the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos. After the pieces have been
collected, the hero battles with Tharn in the Imperial city. Ria Silmane, just prior
to the start of the game, is apprentice to Jagar Tharn. During his usurpation of the
throne, Tharn is unable to corrupt his apprentice and so he murders her. She is able
to hold herself together long enough to direct the player's character how to escape
from slow death in the dungeons through a teleportation device called a shift gate.
Past that point she lacks the power to manifest physically and appears to the player
in dreams. The central quest requires the player to obtain various artifacts. Each
time such an item is found, Silmane appears the next time the player rests to provide
the general location of the next such item. It was easy to die in the dungeon the
players start in, as
powerful enemies could be encountered if the player lingers too long. However, this
effect slowly withered away as players became more powerful and more aware of the
threats that loomed everywhere. Arena is noted for its large environment, which is
significantly larger than the sequels. This is due to the game's randomly generated
areas which allows for large numbers of different combinations for each area. Combat
is performed by using the mouse and dragging the cursor across the screen to attack
if a melee weapon is used. Arena was originally released on CD-ROM and 3.5" floppy
disk. The CD-ROM edition is the more advanced of the two editions, featuring enhanced
speech for some characters and CGI video sequences. In 2004, on the occasion of the game's 10th anniversary, the game was made freeware. |