Arena: Urban Sprawl

 

The character arrives in Shornhelm, my first Elder Scrolls city.

       

We've had several comments to the effect that the opening Arena dungeon is very hard. I unwittingly contributed to that sentiment with my first entry, in which I reported fairly rapid death after only a couple of goblin battles and one attempt to sleep. What I should have made clear is that by that point in the entry, I had already accomplished my primary goal of describing the backstory and the basic mechanics. By the time I died, I wasn't really trying. I hadn't even saved.

   

In this session, I finished the dungeon. It was only one level, and it took me about an hour to explore the entire thing. I'm not saying it was easy; character Levels 1 and 2 were particularly hard. Every enemy seemed capable of halving my hit points with a single hit, and I was still getting used to some of the mechanics. For instance, I didn't yet realize that when an enemy is around a corner and you can only see part of him, you don't need to charge past him until he's fully in view and then turn around (the game doesn't offer a "strafe" option). As long as you can see any part of him, you can attack him perfectly fine through what looks like a solid wall.

   

I also didn't realize there were perfectly safe places to rest, but the game eventually clued me in.

        

Kind of makes sense, I guess.

      

Ultimately, the dungeon isn't big enough to be truly difficult. With the ability to save anywhere and reload in a few seconds, the level could have been full of liches, and I think I still would have made it. I would have just run past them.

        

My final map of the dungeon.

     

In fact, I got to Ria's teleporter in only about 10 minutes by (this time) following the left wall. I decided to turn around and clear out the dungeon first, but here's the thing (and please tell me if I'm wrong): I don't think this is the kind of game where you have to clear out the dungeon. The extra experience and treasure are nice, but there are endlessly-generated experience and treasure everywhere. Thus, there's no reason to explore any one particular place past its objective. It's a little like Telengard or Dungeon Hack in that regard.

          

Ria's portal.

       

Enemies were limited to goblins and giant rats except a couple of times when I tried to sleep, and some spellcasting humanoid blasted me out of existence before I could blink (or take a screenshot). I never encountered any of them during regular exploration. At first, I thought the dungeon must respawn, as enemies kept re-appearing in areas I'd already explored. But by the end of the level, I was convinced that they just roam quite a bit. 

  

Some miscellaneous notes about the dungeon:

      

• I like the sound: echoing footsteps, creaking doors, grunts and squeaks of enemies getting closer.

• There are lion's head decorations all over the walls. I don't remember lions being mentioned in the Elder Scrolls universe before.

     

Two piles of treasure and yet another lion's head emblem.

        

• I didn't find an elven sword this time. I did find a longsword, a short bow, and a belt. All of the armor pieces I found were metal and thus forbidden to my battlemage.

• "Fire Dart" worked really nicely, but I could only cast one or two between rests.

• If multiple enemies are near each other, you can damage them with one swing (and, presumably, one spell). 

• Secret doors seem to open when you walk into them. I mostly bumped into them by accident. I'm not sure that any part of this dungeon was accessible only by secret door; I think they just offered shortcuts to areas I could access the long way.

• Other than the first cell door, there were no locked doors, locked treasure chests, traps, or anything that theoretically would require a thief.

• There were a lot of places where I had to swim, and many of those had enemies waiting on the nearest platforms. 

        

A rat waits to attack as soon as I crawl out of here.

       

• I found several crystals, and the manual is silent on what they do.

• I kept all the equipment I found, including what I couldn't use. I never developed any encumbrance problems.

• Getting in and out of inventory is a tad annoying.  

• Enemies have a way of sneaking up behind you and hitting you before you're even aware. One second, I was walking along; the next, Ria Silmane was telling me that all hope was lost. 

       

I got to Level 3. Each time I leveled up, I could put 6 points into my attributes. I decided to always put 3 into my primary attributes (for the battlemage, strength and intelligence) and the other 3 in my lowest attributes. 

       

After killing two goblins.

       

The first time I rested after I leveled up. Ria appeared and elaborated on the main quest. She said that the artifact that Jagar Tharn used to banish the emperor to Oblivion was the Staff of Chaos. It is now the only thing that can bring him back. Knowing this, Tharn has disassembled it and scattered its pieces across the continent. She divined that the first piece was in a place called Fang Lair, originally inhabited by the "Dwarves of Kragen," but abandoned after a Great Wyrm took up residence there. She knew it was in the Dragon's Teeth but nothing about its specific location. "Perhaps there are sages or scholars who would know of this place." Obviously, there's a Tolkien homage here. I don't remember the term "Kragen" before, but I think the Dragon's Teeth are the range west of Skyrim. Markarth in Skyrim is at their base.

           

There are even markings on the staff where it was segmented.

      

When I took the portal, I found myself in a snow-blanketed city called Shornhelm, NPCs roaming back and forth everywhere I looked. If the dungeon felt a bit like Ultima Underworld, this part of the game felt more like Legends of Valour. The automap of the city, pre-filled with building footprints but not the names of businesses, showed the same sorts of connected buildings, walled buildings, courtyards, and other interesting shapes as the Valour map.

   

As I explored the city, there were some interesting visuals—trees, stone statues, canals, fountains, gas lamps, clothes lines strung across the street from second-story windows. But there was also a certain uniform blandness to everything, and if commenters hadn't already mentioned this, I think I would have figured out fairly quickly that the cities in this game are procedurally generated. The types of locations must be fixed, but they're distributed randomly across the city for each new game.

       

Walking past two very different types of statues outside a temple. I swear I've seen that second one somewhere before.

       

I soon found out something vital: If the building has a shingle hung by its main entrance, it's open for business, and double-clicking on the door lets you in. If it doesn't have a shingle, it's a private business or residence, and double-clicking on the door attempts a burglary. I hadn't been in the city for more than five minutes before I tried to enter a random building, heard "stop thief!" somewhere behind me, and was dead before I saw the guard attacking me. I guess capital punishment is the default for everything in Jagar Tharn's Tamriel.

             

The NPCs are generated as well: Barbara Wicking, "the city-state thief"; Mordard Wicksley, "a typical mercenary"; Belladonna Hawkton, a fieldhand; Alabyrick Hawkwing, a squire; Victoria Yeomhouse, a guildmaster. (Even in that small sample, you can see how the prefixes and suffixes come together; I'm sure I'll meet a Wickhouse and a Hawksley at some point.) They each have a little elevator speech ("I got into Shornhelm a little while ago, looking for some excitement"; "I work my heart out during the harvest and starve in the winter") in response to "Who are you?" You can also ask where things are, which gives a defined list of topics. It is pre-populated with lists of inns, temples, and stores, or you can just ask for the "nearest" of anything. Sometimes, the NPCs give you a generic direction ("try to the east"), and sometimes they mark it on your map for you. I wonder if personality plays a role in this. "Fang Lair" is also on the list; more on that in a bit.

       

I wouldn't be so quick to admit that in this town.

        

The final bit of NPC dialogue is for rumors; you can ask for generic rumors or rumors about work. NPCs kept telling me that a mysterious woman named Rogue Gondywyr at the King's Dragon had a delivery job.

        

About one-quarter of the city.

       

The main benefit of procedural generation is that the cities feel realistically large (if artificially square). It takes about 40 minutes game time (and about 2 minutes real time, with no obstacles) to get from one corner to the other, which seems reasonable for a medieval village. There are probably around 100 buildings in it. It also removes a certain pressure from the player to see and do everything, explore every corner, talk to every NPC just in case he has a quest. The player ends up treating the city like he would a real city: asking for directions and homing in on the places that have the services he needs. At the same time, there's no real fun in exploration, and I'm betting that the game is too early to do fun things like vary the architecture when I get to Elsweyr or Black Marsh. Still, I could envision a good game that balances hand-crafted and procedurally generated content. I think it's possible that Starfield did that quite well, and the only reason I don't think so is that I disliked so many other aspects of the game.  

         

Even the tavern names are procedurally generated.

       

My first priority was to sell my excess equipment and buy the armor that I didn't find in the first dungeon. NPCs directed me to the Basic Weaponry Store, which despite its name had leather boots, greaves, cuirasses, pauldrons, and gauntlets as well. Even after those purchases, I had 1,790 gold. I began to wonder if Arena set the Elder Scrolls trend of giving the player enough money to last the rest of the game in the first dungeon.

      

Being a battlemage is cheaper on the wallet than some other classes.

          

I next followed directions to the mage's guild, apparently the only guild in Arena (no faction quests here). There, I realized my 1,790 gold wouldn't go that far. It also wouldn't identify (at 200-270 gold pieces each) the crystals that I found in the dungeon. I did determine that my longsword was a Longsword of Lightning and that two bracelets were a mithril bracelet and an elven bracelet. I should mention that there were "steal" options in both the mage's guild and the weapon shop, but crime is something I'm going to have to investigate later. So is spell-making. Be patient.

        

I'm going to have to come back.

           

The King's Dragon, in one of those oddities you get with procedural generation, shared its building with another inn called the King's Bird. You'd think that would cause some confusion. I started clicking on NPCs to find Rogue Gondywyr, but instead, she "approached" me (a message came up with no visible NPC) when I clicked on the bartender. She offered me 57 gold pieces to take a dagger to the Restless Ogre. "If it isn't [there] by Sundas, 6th of Hearthfire, my life ain't going to be worth a copper," she said. That's tomorrow.

   

I did the quest, and besides the 57 gold pieces, it gave me enough experience for Level 4. It's hard to imagine that it's going to be worth it to do too many of these, though. 

       

Yeah, walking from one building to another really took a lot out of me.

      

I got some interesting responses to asking about Fang Lair:

   

• Chrystyna Ashham, the interpreter: "There ain't no such thing!"

• Agrane Yeomford, the historian: "Isn't that just a legend?" 

• Ysyn Hearthston, the cook: "No one's heard of that in the past 500 years." That seems like a paradox.

• Mordyval Gaersley, one of the personal priests of King Rodore: "I honestly have no idea. Try someone else. Maybe they can help." I wonder what King Rodore is the king of. 

• Morgorya Hearthwing, the thief: "You wouldn't be the first searching for that. Why don't you try somewhere in the cities of Hammerfell. I heard something happened there."

• Uthane Buckingcroft, the city-state historian: "Have you tried asking at a temple? They seem to know everything." I did, in fact, try asking at a temple, but I couldn't find any NPCs in the temples. Indoor NPCs don't really have dialogue options anyway; they just give you one line. 

• "Try the local inn. Tales are flying back and forth about something unearthed in the province of Hammerfell. Maybe you should check there." 

            

Rochester looking dapper in his full suit of leather.

       

After typing all of that, I realized that the same NPC will give you all potential responses to a location if you just keep re-selecting the same dialogue option. They never seem to kick you out of the conversation, unlike NPCs in some other games we could mention. 

   

I got my answer about the king when I double-clicked on a gate (thinking it was the gate out of town) and found myself in the king's audience chamber and saw King Rodore before me. "It is well known that Shornhelm is currently at peace with its neighbor, North Point." Part of me wonders if even that is procedurally generated. The king had nothing to say to me except to suggest I explore the surrounding wilderness. "You may come back with something useful." 

        

Approaching the king.

       

We'll have more about the calendar and time system later, but for now, suffice to say that time doesn't pass too quickly in the game—about 12 minutes of game time for each minute of real time. I did all of this in one day and had time to spare. If I hadn't been leaving the game window to type this entry, I might never have experienced nighttime.

     

The world started to get darker starting at 17:00. By 19:00, there was no light except in an immediate radius around me. At 20:00, hostile enemies start appearing on the streets. At first, I thought, cha-ching!, but it turns out they're a bit tough for a Level 4 character. 

      

What's even the point of having a walled city?

       

Miscellaneous notes on the town:

      

• NPCs stop and face you when you get close. They stay stationary until you walk away from them. That's a refreshing contrast to a lot of games, where you have to chase them down. 

• NPCs indoors don't have the full set of dialogue options. They just shout one line at you. Most of them are rude.

    

Personality is my worst attribute.

      

• If you find a location on your own, the automap does not record it. You have to type it in.

• There's a haggling mechanic in shops, but as with many games, I'm not sure it's worth the time. One side effect is that even if you don't haggle, you have to accept the sale price of items twice, which is a little annoying.

• There's also a damage/repair system, but the armorers want multiple days to fix even slight amounts of damage. I have to spend the week in an inn just to get my longsword sharpened? 

           

Good thing time passes slowly in the emperor's prison.

      

I spent the night at an inn; no rumors about Hammerfell, no matter what the NPCs said. You can book rooms in quality from a "single" (10 gold, at least in this case) and an "emperor's suite" (75 gold). You hit the "camp" button and appear in the room automatically. All the rooms look alike, but I guess the amount you pay affects the quality of rest and the number of hit points you restore.

        

This "emperor's suite" needs some work.

        

In the morning, I headed for the exit. I hoped once I got outside, the automap would tell me where I was in the world, but it didn't—until I checked the manual and realized that you have to right-click on it to get the world map. I could have done that from within the town. It turns out that Shornhelm is in the middle of High Rock, home of the Bretons, one of the smaller provinces, which itself has 31 cities. Just for fun, I clicked on Skyrim, and damned if Whiterun, Riverwood, Riften, Windhelm, Winterhold, Dawnstar, Solitude, Markarth, and Dragon Bridge aren't all there, in roughly the locations you'd expect, in 1994. There are, I should add, lots of smaller towns that aren't in The Elder Scrolls V (e.g., Black Moor, Graniteshaft, Dunstad Grove, Laintar Dale), but you could chalk that up to 200 years having passed and smaller cities being abandoned or renamed.

       

My current location.

        

Commenters have told me—and I have no reason not to believe them—that you cannot walk from one city to another in Arena no matter how long you're willing to spend. Each city in this game is apparently like a planet in Starfield, with an infinite amount of procedurally generated landscape around it. On the province map, there's a road heading southeast from Shornhelm that goes to a village called Markwasten Moor. In the real world, there's no road. I walked southeast from the city for about 10 minutes and passed plenty of trees, buildings, NPCs, inns, fenced-in fields, walled compounds, and ponds. I even got onto something that looked like a road at some point. But the automap continued to place me solidly in Shornhelm.

      

Wandering outside of the city.

         

There were oddly no monsters in the wilderness. Maybe they only come out at night, like in the towns? I know there are random dungeons, but I (without trying very hard) didn't find any. I'll explore at least one or two random dungeons at some point, but for now I clicked on Hammerfell and deliberately chose one of the smaller towns (Riverpoint) rather than a large city. The game said it would take 13 days to travel there, but there's no cost to travel in Arena, no food to worry about, and no chance of disease, drowning, or other calamities on the road. Saying all that makes it sound like I'm taking a dig at Star Trail, but I'm honestly not. Those survival elements can be fun, too. It's amazing how much variety we get under the large umbrella of "CRPGs."

        

Most people online seem to think The Elder Scrolls VI will be set in Hammerfell. I'm still hoping for (but not expecting) Akavir.

        

Before I wrap up: a commenter sent me a link to a translation of the French version of the Arena manual. It has a lot more detail on the backstory, to wit:

     

• Talin's last name is Warhaft. 

• Jagar Tharn used to be head of the Elder Council.

• He couldn't just kill Emperor Uriel because Uriel had used the Amulet of Kings to cast a spell that would alert all of his imperial guards if he died.

• The heir at this time is Uriel's daughter, Princess Ariella Septim. One wonders what happened to her between this backstory and the beginning of Oblivion. During that game's prologue, Uriel mentions that his sons are dead, but he doesn't say anything about a daughter. 

• It was Talin Warhaft who accidentally gave Tharn the idea to replace the emperor. During a banquet, Talin recounted a story in which he and his friend, Marten the Blade, were threatened by bandits. Marten cast an illusion spell to make himself look like the bandits' leader.  

       

I was about to post a fan theory that the "Marten" of this story later entered a holy order and became the "Brother Martin" of Oblivion, but the story makes it clear that Marten was older than Martin, and that he had a son and retired. Still, one wonders why all this good material was cut from the English versions of the manual. 

       

Time so far: 3 hours 

 

Star Trail: Sweet Is the Swamp with Its Secrets

They're kind of cute.

          

I started this session by replaying a lot of Lowangen. As commenters figured out after my last narration, I had obtained a fake Salamander Stone when I attacked and pillaged Vindaria Leechbroon's house. When I followed and accosted Gavron, who had stolen the stone from me in the first place, he misdirected me to Leechbroon's house. It was really in the house of his friend, Ailian Sevensprings. Unlike Vindaria's house, the player cannot force his way into Ailian's house prematurely. But once the player has confronted Gavron, even if Gavron lies, new options become available at Ailian's house.

   

All the options seem to end in a battle of roughly the same composition as Vindaria's house: about eight warriors and elves. When it was over, we had a second, identical, Salamander Stone. We also got some nice armor.

      

A lucrative battle. The "plate armors" and "chainmail armor" were actually plate and chainmail greaves. Toadskins are a light armor, and "orc hooks" are axes.

     

Also, Mahasim was sick with battlefield fever, so I took him to a healer. I paid the healer three times, but she couldn't cure it. I had to consult the manual to see that the treatment is a combination of joruga root and gulmond leaves. I don't know if I had both of those items before I was stripped of all my equipment when entering the city, but I sure didn't have it now. Moreover, I couldn't find any herbalist in town who had both. Finally, I took him to a different healer, and finally it worked. I owe you a rundown of the herb, potion, and healing system in general, but this is the wrong entry in which to do it, as herbs in Lowangen (like everything else) cost a fortune.

       

That doesn't seem fair.

        

While I was exploring some other things in Lowangen, I decided to take a tour of the temples, donate a substantial amount of money, ask for a miracle, and see what happened. I reloaded after each one because I couldn't afford the totality of the financial drain. This is what I got:

  

• Tsa: Healed one character for 7 hit points.

• Rahja: Made us all "enchanting dancers." This took me almost 100 gold pieces. Presumably, we could have made some of it back by dancing in taverns. 

     

I'd pay for this in real life. I'd even settle for "competent."

       

• Peraine: Healed one character for 5 hit points. 

• Ingerimm: Donated everything I had and got nothing. He's clearly still sore. 

• Phex: "Elates all thieving hearts." I guess maybe this would have been a good stop before burgling the Exhibition Hall.

• Hesinde: Could not get anything out of her, no matter what I donated.

• Travia: Filled our stomachs. I wish we could tell the populace about this trick. That's one way to outlast a siege. 

• Boron: Granted protection from undead.  

      

All I can say is, this world has an interesting definition of the word "miracle." (Granted, my party didn't need much. I assume if one of my characters had been dead, one of these gods would have resurrected him.) Also, the same woman's face appeared when granting us the miracle in each temple. Maybe the gods use a common messenger.

            

Surely, that was the work of a god.

      

Some other bits about Lowangen, mostly clued by commenters:

   

• There's a smith named Roglima the Great who, if you pester her a few times about STAR TRAIL, tells a long and (probably because of translation issue) somewhat confusing story. It concerns an ancient dwarven prince named Tordol who set out to find the perfect alloy. In his quest, he conquered the Great Peaks from the orcs in a massacre so violent they were renamed the Blood Peaks. Eventually, he found the ore he sought (called "Dark Soil"; we'll let that go) on the highest mountain in the Finsterkamm range, and he built the forge we've already visited in Finterkoppen Pit. His son, Thiondasch, in an effort to surpass him, stole ore from the elves, for which the god Ingerimm punished him by imprisoning his soul in the golem that we fought there.

• Meanwhile, the god of trickery, Phex, made some kind of a deal with Ingerimm that he could keep the first thing that Thiondasch forged with the stolen ore. Ingerimm agreed, not knowing that there was only enough ore to forge one item. So he told Thiondasch to make Star Trail, a throwing axe, knowing that (for reasons I don't understand) it would be useless to Phex.

• This story prompted me to ask about Star Trail at the Temple of Phex. "You should ask again in Tiefhusen," the priestess said. "Everybody does if they are looking for Star Trail." I see it on the map pretty far to the northwest. 

      

How many people are we talking about?

      

• I got options to buy magic amulets two more times from strangers. I said yes to both of them, and both turned out to be authentic. 

• If you haven't found the Salamander Stone after seven days, a party member speaks up—which would have been my clue that Vindaria's stone wasn't the "real" one (if I didn't just assume the game was bugged). If another four days pass without the party recovering the stone, a scripted death screen appears.

     

If it depended on a stone, it was never there to begin with.

       

• The spell "Respondami" prompts NPC companions to tell the truth about their intentions.

      

In fairness, that's what we planned to do to him.

       

• I got lucky when I broke into the Exhibition Hall the first time. The game rolls skill checks for various stealth and thieving skills behind the scenes, and there are several places where bad rolls can summon the guards and see the party tossed in prison, with a corresponding loss of health and items. 

• In addition to helping with Gavron and getting out of town, Dragan Escht will offer what he knows about the Salamander Stone, where to find food, and where to find lodging. He has a different mini-quest for each favor that the party asks. 

• I mentioned last time that one of the buildings has a note that says, "Eat more cheese toast." Reader M. N. sent me an email alerting me to a podcast in which developer Guido Henkel explained that while the game was in production, the developers were so poor that they subsisted mostly on cheese toast. One of them bucked this trend and brought mostly salads for lunch, but his salads started to disappear. He angrily admonished the others to "eat more cheese toast and leave my salad alone!" 

       

Having finished the city for the second time, I again approached the Order of the Grey Wands, reshuffled some inventory, left Toliman and Lyra behind with both Salamander Stones (I don't even know which is which), and headed into the Netherswamps. As we did, the game asked if we wanted to sacrifice anything to our patrons. I had Mahasim sacrifice 5 gold. I'm curious how we did that. Toss it into the river?

          

I'm getting very familiar with this tunnel.

         

We weren't in the swamps for more than a few steps before we were attacked by half a dozen apelike creatures called "swamp rantzies." The battle left the party rather battered. 

    

I began circling the rather large map, which featured a lot of boardwalks through squares of mire that the party is otherwise unable to step on. The map also has a lot of water squares, requiring swimming to get to various areas, and here Lilii Borea was a constant liability. Her "Swim" skill of 3, compared to 4-6 for the rest of the party, was just low enough that she occasionally took damage and drowned, forcing me to save and reload frequently.

    

This kept happening. I guess I could have split her off from the party, but I needed every person I had in combat.

      

There was sort of a field in the middle of the swamp and an area of weird walls to the southwest. My exploration pattern (following the rightmost "wall") led me to explore the outer edges before the middle. I ran into multiple battles with orcs and goblins, so many that I just started letting the computer fight. Gnomon leveled up.

        

This battle wasn't as hard as it looks.

       

Various encounters:

      

• A building where no one answers the door. 

• A chest buried in the mire that the game wouldn't acknowledge.

      

I'd like to know what this is all about.

       

• At least one exit on each "wall" of the swamp. 

• A single swamp rantzy sitting in a corner, holding something in its paw that glittered. He didn't act in combat, so I just had everyone retreat.

• A tower in the middle of a lake in the northwest corner. It was magically locked.

      

No, Star Trail is the name of the game.

       

• A gulmond bush that the game said we pulled out of the ground.

     

But why?

     

• Some salamander creatures living in some earthen mounds in the middle of the swamps. They said we were unwelcome, but they didn't attack. They told us to go to the "ruins" to the west if we wanted to rest.

    

The accumulation of combats got to be a problem, and we used up all of our healing potions. I made the amateur mistake of using only one saved game while in the swamps, and I made the further mistake of saving after Gnomon got bitten by a snake. His face didn't register poison until about a dozen moves after the event, so I didn't notice that he was, in fact, poisoned. I was unable to cure it through any means, and he inevitably died within a few more moves. 

      

Summer's treason.

         

I thus had to reload from back in Lowangen, where I resolved to take a character with better "Swim" ability, check into buying some more potions, and perhaps spend as much time at the inn in New Lowangen as necessary to fully heal the party before entering the swamps again. 

        

The reload was beneficial in at least one way: While re-exploring some parts of Lowangen, I realized I'd missed an armorer. This is the one place in town where you can buy and sell weapons and armor. I didn't really need to buy any armaments, but thanks to the battle at Ailian's, boy did I have a lot to sell. And with the inflated prices caused by the siege, I made a killing. I soon had more than 600 gold pieces, about 10 times what I had when I started. Even with all this money, however, I couldn't bring myself to pay the inflated prices for more than a few healing potions.

     

I did stop in New Lowangen on the way out and tried to generate a couple of new characters named "Pack" and "Mule" to join the party, but the game pulled the rug out from under me and said that I would have to go all the way back to Kvirasim to add them to my party. I assume this is true of all temples. So this was never really an option.

            

Why not just say "all characters"?

       

A few minutes later, I was back in the Netherswamp again. This time, I sacrificed even more money to my gods on the way in, and I think it may have made a difference. Gnomon identified and killed a couple of snakes before they bit him, and some of the battles seemed to have fewer monsters. 

           

Ha! Take that, you little bastard. (And yes, I realize that comment clashes with something I say later.)

        

I adopted a different exploration pattern on my second visit, following the left path instead of the right. This time I brought Toliman, whose "Swim" skill of 6 didn't cause as many problems in the water, so I was able to go to places that I ignored when I had Lilii. Some findings:

   

• An overturned cart with 10 ration packets, 3 water skins, 20 arrows, a short bow, a long bow, and 15 gold pieces. Because of the armor I'd found at Ailian's, my characters were near their weight limits, and I had to do quite a bit of shuffling around to grab everything.

• An herb garden with one of every herb in the game. See the second sentence in the previous bullet point.

      

I guess I could do that herb/potion analysis now, but I think I'll wait until I have more than one of each.

        

• An old witch living in a house. We told her we were looking for a missing soldier. She said she'd help me if I would retrieve a crystal ball from a sorcerer living on the island in the northwest lake.

     

It has to be #1. #2 is a lie (we've never heard of her), and #3 is just rude.

        

• We spoke to the salamander men again but chose different dialogue options, and this time they asked us to kill a "big monsssster" living in the swamp to the east. 

          

Okay, are they lizard men or salamanders? There's a fairly significant difference.

      

When we got back to the tower in the lake, the door let us in. The subsequent encounter was weird from an interface perspective. The game switched to a combat perspective, but no battle followed. Instead, there was a scripted encounter in which the old wizard, sitting on a throne, figured out who had sent us (he called the witch "Sabrina," which—my apologies, Irene—I have always felt is the most enticing female name), and summoned some kind of fire-shrouded demon to deal with us.

        

Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks, sleeking her soft alluring locks.

      

The demon was unhappy. "Who dares to pull me from my dimension and disrupt my services to Hesinde?" Maybe he wasn't a demon. The wizard shouted that he was losing control. "Proclaim  your supplication with appropriate humility then," the demon said, "for someone here shall become the target of my divine wrath."

      

While the wizard kept shouting at the demon to destroy us, we had the opportunity to type three words into three successive dialogue boxes. If the demon liked what we said, he said something positive about it, and if he didn't, he said something negative. If we didn't get at least two positive reactions, he destroyed us. If we got at least two out of three, he destroyed the wizard.

   

I have no idea how we were supposed to know what to say to him. At first, I tried looking up Hesinde's portfolio, and I saw that she's the god of wisdom, knowledge, magic, and art. I tried each of those words, but I got nowhere. (There was a lot of reloading during this phase.) I went back and looked at his dialogue and saw that he asked for "supplication with appropriate humility," and I think I got my first positive reaction with PLEASE HELP. For a while, I couldn't get a second positive reaction until for some reason I started trying the virtues of the Avatar. Surprisingly, he responded positively to COMPASSION, VALOR, and I think JUSTICE. That was enough to win the encounter and take the crystal ball off the wizard's corpse. The wizard also had some kind of magic transformation spell that requires heather.

          

Sure, that's what I'm doing.

         

I had expected the tower to be more of a dungeon, so I was surprised by the brevity of the encounter and the odd interface that it used. I wonder if I wasn't supposed to find the demon's preferred keywords somewhere else.

        

All my characters leveled when we left the tower. Mahasim failed so many of my attempts to increase his skills that I ended up reloading. I wouldn't normally save scum this way, but five fails in a row on a single skill seems excessive.

     

Strangely, not the most infuriating part of this session.

      

You can't fast-travel in the swamp—the game thinks of it as a dungeon. As I slow-traveled, I noticed a weird thing: my party members stopped gaining hit points and spell points from rest. I'm not sure why. They had blankets, food, and water.

  

While exploring the rest of the map, we found a dinosaur-looking creature called an "engulfer." I didn't know it at the time, but I guess this was the salamanders' "big monster." Their reward, when I returned, was just to tell me about Sabrina. I went through some other keywords with the leader. On TRAVEL, he told me that a human male who recently came to the area is "still alive, though he doesn't exist anymore" (I'm leaving out the extra s's). Something clicked at this point, and I realized that the "swamp rantzy" who hadn't fought back earlier was probably the missing solider, transmogrified, and the wizard's spell was a way to reverse the effect. I'm glad I reloaded after killing him.

      

It's like a t-rex if a t-rex were human-sized.

   

I returned to Sabrina's house, where she took the crystal ball, but then decided that I was also an enemy for killing her animals. I don't know whether she was referring to the snakes, the swamp rantzies, or the engulfer. Either way, she attacked with a dire wolf companion. I had to reload a few times, mostly because the lack of restoration during sleeping meant that I was fighting the pair with no magic points. Also, she always went first and managed to take someone out of the equation with a fear or petrification spell. Finally, I think she could only be damaged by a magic weapon, and only Mahasim had one. We got absolutely nothing from the encounter when we finally killed her.

     

I went back to where I had found the swamp rantzy and tried using my net in combat. It worked and—after one of the most horrible role-playing choices in history—we got the swamp rantzy into our inventory. I still didn't know how to turn him back into a man. The document I'd found with the wizard suggested that I needed heather, but that was one plant that I hadn't found in the earlier cache.

        

What the hell, Star Trail?

          

I decided to bring the rantzy back to Lowangen to see if Master Eolan would accept him as-is or if I could find some heather at one of the shops in town. I exited the way I came in, and naturally found  myself far to the west of the swamp instead of the original entry point. When I finally made my way back to Lowangen, I had no option to re-enter the city through the secret passage and instead had to enter through the orc camp again, losing all of our stuff, including the captured rantzy.

     

I think I'm about done with this game.

   

Time so far: 33 hours 

 

Game 572: The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994)

 

The title screen has "Chapter One" in the title and a "The" before "Arena," but the game box and manual do not. My policy is to go with any two of those sources that agree.

         

The Elder Scrolls: Arena

United States 

Bethesda Softworks (developer and publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 9 March 2026

         

It is with a little trepidation that I begin Arena, the first entry in the RPG series that I would likely choose if some psychopath told me I could only play one RPG series for the rest of my life. And probably the only reason I'd hesitate is because of another (now) Bethesda series: Fallout. It's not so much that I think Bethesda makes superlative RPGs but rather that I think they make superlative games that happen to have RPG elements. I am addicted to RPGs, yes. I hope the "Game 572" part proves that without further elaboration. But in addition to RPGs, I'm addicted to open-world, sandbox games full of histories, mysteries, and lore. That's why when I'm not playing Morrowind or Skyrim or Fallout 4 on my console, there's a good chance I'm playing Red Dead Redemption or Far Cry or Assassin's Creed. Put them together, and I don't need the RPG part to be perfect. I just need another obscure tome speculating on the inhabitants of Akavir, a battered journal with notes on the disappearance of the dwarves, or an NPC waxing about the true nature of Sheogorath.

      

I have tempered my expectations and don't expect to find much of this in Arena. I know the game takes place across the entirety of Tamriel, but my guess is that it's pretty shallow. (Even still, I nearly squealed when I opened the game map and found that the geography and names of the provinces were all established here in 1994.) I'm guessing that much that I like about the series' mythology will be absent, underdeveloped, or contradictory. I will try to focus on it as its own game rather than the beginning of a series. But a part of me can't wait to see what bits of lore—like those province names—that were established right here at the beginning. 

     

A map of the world from the character creation screen. It is essentially unchanged 32 years later. 

        

The name most associated with the Elder Scrolls, Todd Howard, wasn't present for this first outing. He wasn't hired until several months after it hit the shelves, in time to spend some time playtesting the CD-ROM version released later that year, but not to contribute to any of its story and mechanics. Most of the credit goes to developers Ted Peterson, Vijay Lakshman, and Julian LeFay (what a great name for someone developing fantasy worlds), who started with the intention to create a game about traveling gladiators who would fight in—you guessed it—arenas. Somewhere along the line, an idea developed to let the gladiators engage in RPG-style side quests in between gladiatorial matches. Then the side quests took over the game (apparently too late to print new boxes and marketing materials). The developers were longtime fans of tabletop RPGs as well as Synthetic Dimensions' Legends of Valour (1992), so perhaps the change was somewhat inevitable. 

 

This quote comes after the title screen and seems more appropriate to the original vision for the game.

        

(Lakshman left the company after Arena, LeFay after Daggerfall, and Peterson after Oblivion, but the trio reunited in 2019 to form OnceLost Games and to announce The Wayward Realms, a "spiritual sequel" to Daggerfall. LeFay died of cancer in July 2025, but the game is still reported to be in development.)

         

It was Bethesda's first role-playing game. The company was eight years old by then, having been started by Christopher Weaver in his Bethesda, Maryland kitchen, funded by a cash infusion from the profits of his engineering and media consulting firm. In between contracts, Weaver and his employee, Ed Fletcher, began messing around with a football simulator that they later sold as Gridiron (1986). For the next eight years, they specialized primarily in sports games (Wayne Gretzky Hockey; NCAA: Road to the Final Four) and action movie tie-ins (Home Alone; The Terminator). In fact, their Terminator series featured smooth continuous-movement and a three-dimensional perspective during the same year that Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima Underworld were getting all of the accolades.

             

The start of the backstory. I didn't realize Tiber Septim was canon from the beginning.

      

It was a bit thrilling to experience the opening cinematic and read the opening paragraphs of the manual, full of names, places, and terms that would become as familiar in the mouth as household words: Gaiden Shinji, Tiber Septim, Uriel Septim, Tamriel, the Amulet of Kings, "Last Seed." The backstory awkwardly explains the title of the game: During the wars that unified the empire under Tiber Septim, the land became so violent, existence so much of a struggle, that the people forgot the world's original name, Tamriel, and began calling it "the Arena."

      

It is now 492 years later, and Emperor Uriel Septim VII (whose death will later kick off the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) is betrayed by his own Imperial Battlemage, Jagar Tharn. Tharn imprisons the emperor in another dimension, where time passes much more slowly than on Tamriel. (Why doesn't he just kill the emperor? Because the Amulet of Kings serves as some kind of alarm that would alert the High Council that the emperor was dead.) Tharn has also killed his own apprentice, Ria Silmane, to prevent her from warning the High Council. Adopting the emperor's guise, Tharn sits on the throne and begins his malevolent rule.

        

Me: "Who's this Talin doofus?"

      

I was surprised to see that the player character has a canonical name and backstory: He is Talin, leader of the imperial guards. Tharn has Talin thrown into the imperial prison after the opening events. He is awakened (here we shift from the opening cinematic to the manual) by the ghost of Ria Silmane, who tells Talin what has transpired, conjures a key to the cell door, and tells the bewildered guard to escape through a magical gate in the southwest corner, which will take him to another city. ("Teleportation between cities is common enough," Silmane says. I was about to object to this, but I then remembered the Mage Guild's teleportation chambers in Morrowind. They were gone by Skyrim, but then, so was the Mage's Guild.) Talin steels himself and opens the door. I suppose if you create something other than a male named "Talin," you can imagine that Talin immediately died, and Ria Silmane moved on to the next cell.

         

Right. "Captured."

      

The next pages of the manual explain that the main quest is to rescue the Emperor by recovering the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos. But after introducing this fact, it spends a couple of pages encouraging the player to ignore the main quest if he or she wants to. These paragraphs are the father of the Bethesda "open world" approach:

   

If you wish to become a thief who robs innocent nobles, fine. If you wish to play a warrior who makes it his mission in life to kill these thieves, that's fine, too. All we did is give the computer all the parameters of the Land, from NPCs and their motivations, to monsters and their treasures, to nobles and their quests. The rest is up to you.

         

The Elder Scrolls games that I'm familiar with, Morrowind through Skyrim, make this kind of ignore-the-main-quest freedom a real possibility with meaningful side content and interesting mechanics and graphics. I'm curious if Arena does the same. 

       

Is this a daedroth?

       

Back in the game, we enter character creation. The game offers 18 character classes, a list that will remain mostly unchanged until Skyrim: acrobat, archer, assassin, barbarian, bard, battlemage, burglar, healer, knight, mage, monk, nightblade, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, spellsword, thief, and warrior. (Morrowind changes burglars to "agents" and rangers to "scouts" and adds "crusader," "pilgrim," and "witchhunter.") I enjoy the deft blend of classic RPG classes (e.g., warriors, thieves, mages) with some interesting archetypes we see rarely if ever, particularly the acrobat, burglar, nightblade, and spellsword.

     

You can choose the class through one of two ways: just picking it directly or going through an Ultima IV-style questionnaire. I thought I'd do the latter and see the result.

   

Your father delights in telling you stories of his travels in his youth. In one memorable tale, he tells you about a primitive island he visited where a young child was sacrificed once a year to appease Arius, the God of Fire. Whenever the natives neglected the sacrifice, the island volcano would erupt, killing hundreds of villagers. You immediately tell your father:

 

a) You do not believe in any such volcano God. Civilized men should intervene, find the nature cause behind the eruptions, and stop the sacrifices.

 

b) The God Arius must be evil to demand child sacrifice. The villagers should find some way to combat this god, instead of just giving in to his demands.

 

c) It is tragic, but the death of one small child is preferable to that of many villagers. If it works, they should keep the tradition. Gods are not to be toyed with.

   

My answer would be (A) in the real world, but in a fantasy world in which some kinds of supernatural powers exist, I have to go with (B). Deontology! 

     

One month after Tales and Tallows, you look at the horde of treats you have collected and find lots of brandied plums, a treat you particularly dislike. You know your younger sister likes them. Do you:

       

a) Give her all your brandied plums?

      

b) Trade the brandied plums for something she does not really like but you do? 

     

c) Pretend that they are excellent brandied plums and see if she will give up something really good in exchange? 

 

I like to be generous. I go with (A), but I'll accept a trade if she offers it. Honestly, though, I think I would really enjoy brandied plums.

     

You and your best friend buy your first daggers together, a matched pair. You loan him the amount since he doesn't have enough gold, and he agrees to pay you back later. After leaving the shop you and he sit down to marvel at your new weapons. To your dismay you notice that there is a small notch on the blade of the dagger you selected. Your friend asks you to please watch his weapon for him while he runs an errand. Do you:

 

a) Wait for your friend's return then point out the flaw in your dagger and return to the weapons shop to demand a refund.

      

b) Switch the daggers, rationalizing that since you paid for them you should get the first choice, and that if your friend ever notices the notch, you could always take him back to the weapon shop and get a refund?

      

c) Keep his dagger safe until his return, then switch the daggers with your best friend's knowledge, justifying it with the fact that you paid for them, and then offer to accompany him back to the weapons shop?

      

Which friend? Corey's the only one I know who would like a dagger, and he never pays me back for anything. Screw Corey. But I'm not going to be surreptitious about it: I'm going to switch the daggers while looking him right in the eyes. (C). 

           

I didn't take many screenshots of these questions. Here's one.

      

You are at weapons practice with Armsmaster Festil. He is very old now, but takes his teaching very seriously. In fact you have heard him comment that it is all he has left in life. Today he has ceaselessly taunted you at every mistake. Finally he asks you to attack him with the same technique you just did, in an effort to show you the proper execution. Do you:
     

a) Do the technique just fast enough so that he can block it, knowing that it is more important to allow the master to retain dignity, regardless of your personal feelings?

      

b) Attack him at full speed, knowing that you could probably score the hit and justify his unfair treatment of you by showing the class that you were actually doing it right?

      

c) Refuse and leave practice, unable to compromise your anger with his dignity, and realizing that whatever course you choose would cause you to lose respect for either him or for yourself?

     

This feels like a toxic relationship. Best just to walk away. (C). 

           

Your mother is terribly ill and you have been sent with a few gold pieces to buy some rare, medicinal herbs for her. As you reach the door to the apothecary's, you realize there is a hole in your purse and all the gold has fallen out. Do you:
      

a) Enter the store, tell the apothecary your dilemma, and promise on your honor to pay him back for the herbs your mother so desperately needs.

      

b) Attempt to steal the herbs from the apothecary's. You know the old man who works in the store will not be able to catch you, and your mother lies sick. 

      

c) Run back home and admit the loss, hoping that your father will have more gold. You know you'll be punished, but you will neither be in debt to the apothecary, nor will you be a thief. 

    

Jeez, Arena. Way to hit close to home. I'll trust the apothecary and I can come to some kind of arrangement and choose (A). There's no follow-up question to ask what I'd do if the apothecary said no. 

    

Your parents are having a party for several relatives. While helping around the house, you see your cousin slip into a darkened room. Curious, you follow and discover him slipping a silver candlestick into his jacket. He is an honorable boy, but you know his family has suffered some recent financial hardship. He has not seen you yet, do you:
      
a) Clear your throat and tell him to put the candlestick back, reassuring him that your parents can help him if his family is in trouble, but he should not resort to stealing.
     
b) Close the door behind you and say nothing. Your family can live without the candlestick, but your cousin's family obviously cannot.
       
c) Treat him like any other burglar. Lock him in the room and call for your father. If he chooses to be merciful because of your cousin's poverty, that is his decision. It is your father's candlestick, after all.

    

I can already hear my reaction: "Come on, man. If you need money, just say so. What you're doing is just pathetic." (A). 

     

The senior student in your weapons class has trounced you unmercifully for the past several years. Today is the Tournament of Students and you find with dismay that you are paired against him for your first match. As you prepare your friend approaches and offers to tell you of an injury the senior student suffered in yesterday's sparring class, which you missed. Do you:
      

a) Accept the offer, knowing that it would allow you to concentrate on the injured area and greatly increase your chances of beating him?

      

b) Refuse the offer, knowing that win or lose you would rather do it through your own skill and not some extra knowledge in what should be a fair and honorable fight?

      

c) Accept the offer, reasoning that it is better to have the knowledge in case you need it, and realizing that having the knowledge does not necessarily mean using it?

    

In order, I would rather a) win honorably; b) win; c) lose honorably. Thus, (C) seems like a good option. Plus, the other guy's probably collected lots of intelligence on me. 

       

Armsmaster Festil introduces a new student to the class: a small, awkward boy named Tys who does not seem to have any natural talent at all. The class is divided into two sides for a mock battle and, as one of the "generals," you are to assign your soldiers to positions. Tys is one of your men. You decide to:
      

a) Put Tys at the frontline with the other fighters, rationalizing that in any realistic battle, he would probably be a casualty anyway, and that there must be some sacrifices. 

       

b) Use Tys as a scout, rationalizing that because of his small size he would probably be good at sneaking in and gathering information on the enemy. 

      

c) Assign Tys to several posts during the course of the battle, staying near and helping him so he can gain valuable experience and improve.

        

The character begins the game alone in a dungeon cell.

      

It's funny that all these scenarios could fit within the life of a single person. I'm starting to get a picture of him: upper-middle class, parents probably involved in professional positions at court in some way, trained and tutored from a young age, generally privileged. There's a version of these questions that go: "You have a slice of bread and a dead rat; which, if either, do you feed to your little sister?" But I'll keep working in this paradigm. In this case, answer (B) comes to mind before I even read the answers, so that's what I go with.

        

Entering town you find that you are witness to a very well dressed man running from a crowd. He screams to you for help. The crowd behind him seems very angry. Do you:
      
a) Rush to the man's aid immediately, despite your lack of knowledge of the circumstances?
     

b) Rush to the town's aid immediately, despite your lack of knowledge of the circumstances?
      

c) Stand aside and allow the man and mob to pass, realizing that it is probably best not to get involved?  

         

I don't like any of these. I agree that acting without knowing the circumstances is a bad idea (C), but that doesn't mean I have to stand aside. I'd put myself between them, demand in a loud voice that everyone calm the hell down, point to someone, and ask him to explain what's happening. Lacking that option, I guess one guy needs defending more than a crowd. (A). 

       

You are told that a young man has been caught by the village guards and accused of murder. Apparently, his brother was killed by a group of four ruffians in a local tavern, and in his grief, the young man tracked each of them down and murdered them. Upon reflection, you believe that:
     
a) The young man acted honorably in avenging his brother's death. The village lord should let him go free. 

    

b) Even as you sympathize with the young man, vigilante law cannot be tolerated if there is to be peace.

      

c) The young man's only mistake was getting caught while exacting vengeance. For that, he now must accept whatever fate has in store for him.

    

Twenty-First Century developed world: You let the police handle it. "The Arena":  I'm impressed by the man's initiative. (A). Let me note here how thankful I am that Bethesda went with "you are" rather than "thou art" (or "thou durst," as the author of Ring of Elanor might have said).

     

Finally, the game tells me that I would do best as a battlemage, a balance between a mage and a warrior, with very little thieving ability. Consulting the manual, I see that battlemages can use any weapons, some shields, and only leather armor. They specialize in offensive spells. I worry about how I'll get doors open, but it otherwise sounds good to me. Incidentally, the materials are inconsistent as to whether it's "battle mage" or "battlemage." I prefer the latter, so that's how I'll render it.

          

It's also inconsistent as to whether the class should be capitalized.

        

There is an extent to which Arena is doing nothing more than the recently-completed Dark Designs: Passage to Oblivion by offering a long list of classes that are basically just combinations of the core classes. For instance, a nightblade is something of a mage-thief, while a spellsword is a warrior-mage. The answers to the questions above are aspected to the three "core" classes: warrior, mage, thief. If you overwhelmingly favor one, the game assigns you to that pure class. Every other class is based on combinations. I became a battlemage by offering six "mage" responses and four "warrior" responses. If I had done the opposite, I would have been (oddly enough) a barbarian. Six mage responses and four thief responses would have made me a nightblade. An even spread would have made me a monk (3,3,4), spellsword (3,4,3), or acrobat (4,3,3). You can find all the combinations at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages.

      

These formulas do not quite mean, however, that each class is purely defined as a combination of mechanics from its constituent classes. Although there are no skills in the first outing (characters in Arena gain levels through traditional experience), each character class does have different starting attribute ranges, rates of experience gain, levels of health and mana, and types of weapons, armor, and shields they can use. I think some classes get bonuses on certain types of activities; for instance, thief-derived classes gain a bonus when using the "pilfer" action. 

       

The next options are name, sex, and race. Looking for a slightly more dignified name than my real one, I go with "Rochester." I make the character male. The race takes me a little while. The same races that all Elder Scrolls fans are familiar with are all here, except for orcs and imperials. (The Imperial Province exists, but you cannot click on it to choose your race.) Khajiit and Wood Elves are natural thieves; Nords and Redguards are natural warriors; Bretons and High Elves are natural mages. Argonians blend magic and stealth while Dark Elves blend magic and weapons. The manual details specific bonuses that the races receive; for instance, Nords take half-damage from cold attacks, and High Elves are immune to paralysis. As with later games, it's hard to beat the Breton's 50% immunity to all magic, with a further chance of shrugging it off entirely.

     

The game's description of Bretons.

     

It's worth noting that the beast races are very different here than in later Elder Scrolls games. Khajiit are not cats, but rather humans with cat ancestry who sometimes paint their faces to look like cats. Argonians have scaly skin but also hair, and they don't seem to have tails or tridactyl feet. 

       

An Argonian (left) and a Khajiit (right), the latter of which looks like a superhero named Cat Man.

      

The last bit involved in character creation is to distribute a bonus pool of points to the eight attributes: strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, speed, endurance, personality, and luck—a list that will remain unchanged until Skyrim jettisons attributes completely 17 years later. (Let us now stop to contemplate a time in which Bethesda released five Elder Scrolls games in a period of 17 years.) You can reroll stats as many times as you like. The attributes are on a scale of 0 to 100, with plenty of room to grow. I re-rolled about 20 times just to get a sense of the range, and I never got a score lower than 36 (strength) or higher than 68 (intelligence). My combined attribute total, including bonus points, ranged from 406 to 434. I guess the Breton drags strength down a bit, so I put most of the bonus pool into that attribute.

       

The game suddenly gives me a "thou wilt" when it comes to changing the appearance. I got 10 possible heads for my Breton battlemage, none of which I liked. I finally went with the guy with an eyepatch.

             

Come on, Bethesda. Don't go down that road.

         

The game transitions into a cinematic of Ria Silmane speaking to me, relating substantially the same material as written in the manual. The full-motion video is accompanied by voice dialogue; reportedly, Bethesda programmer Jennifer Pratt played the character. (I have the CD-ROM version of the game from later in 1994; I'm not sure whether the voiceover accompanied the original or not.) When the narration finishes, the character is alone in his cell, and I can start playing.

         

What is this land, some kind of arena?

       

Some readers will want me to mention the music, which is more atmospheric than melodic. The title screen theme is almost all percussion, suggesting a march towards a perilous duty. Once the game begins, the score is characterized by long minor-mode chords, isolated notes, and distant rattles—very moody and appropriate to a dungeon. It feels very similar to something I've heard before. I turned it off, of course, but I promise that I listened for a good two or three minutes first. I'm a bit annoyed to find that it won't actually turn off; even at a volume level of 0, you can still faintly hear it.

    

The graphics appear to owe a lot to Ultima Underworld, as does basic movement. You can move and turn with the arrow keys or numberpad, or by  clicking on the edges of the visible screen. The rest of the interface is original enough, with buttons for brandishing weapons, viewing the automap, stealing, checking the date/time/location, casting a spell, viewing the journal, using an item, or camping. Controls are kept to a minimum (no redundant GTFO cluster) so as to maximize the exploration window, which is significantly larger than either Ultima Underworld or Legends of Valour. 

          

I'm sure I've seen that wall moss and blocky stone furniture before.

       

Most mouse commands have redundant keyboard shortcuts, with the sole (and important) exception of attacking, which must be done with the right mouse button. 

    

The world isn't quite as interactive as Ultima Underworld. For instance, when you see an item, you can double-click on it to take it, but you cannot drag it from one place to another. I'm not sure the engine supports pulling on chains, flipping switches, or otherwise manipulating puzzle mechanics.

   

I unlock the cell with my key and start exploring the world. Combat, which I will naturally cover in more detail later, comes upon me almost immediately, in the form of two goblins in the hallway outside my cell. The character attacks by brandishing a weapon and swiping with the right  mouse button, different gestures doing different attacks. He casts by clicking the spell icon, choosing a spell, and clicking the screen. Easy enough. Skyrim isn't so different. 

     

Killing my first goblin.

         

The automap is based entirely on Underworld, complete with a quill pen and the ability to write your own notes. It lacks an eraser, alas. There's also a logbook, but it's empty for my character.

      

Even the fonts are the same.

         

Over the next few minutes, I kill a few goblins and a few rats, I find pieces of armor that my battlemage cannot use, plus some gold, several castings of the "Mark" spell, and an elven longsword.

       

I was excited about this pile of treasure outside my cell door, which seemed to have a bit of everything. But it turns out that all treasure looks like this, regardless of what the pile actually contains.

        

To equip items, you go to a separate character window, accessed by double-clicking the character portrait. It has a "paperdoll" figure, but instead of dragging items to the doll, you double-click on them in the inventory.

    

     

I hit Level 2 and get five points to invest in my attributes. My hit points get  low, and while I'm trying to rest to restore them, a goblin shows up and finishes me off. 

         

Ria appears again when you die.

         

That's good enough for the first session. I'll hear everyone's opinions about character classes and restart fresh next time. Good start. The reason for the name would not have convinced me even as a teenager, though.

   

Time so far: 1 hour