Free Game: Elder Scrolls: Arena

Just a little warning - don't expect too much. Arena is a great game, and in terms of size, it beats all the other Elder Scrolls games hands down (the whole Tamriel... take that, Morrowind!), but it's also somewhat repetitive in various aspects (inevitable - the task that the game designers set themselves could only be done through repetitiveness, which is presumably also why the later Elder Scrolls games gradually reduced their scope in order to increase their depth). That having been said, it really is worth trying. I have lots of fond memories of Arena... if dying of dysentery in some dungeon in the middle of nowhere can be considered a fond memory :p.
 
The character generation is very cool too, similar to Ultima 6. Are the other Elder’s Scrool games similar on this?
 
Yep, and while I haven't played Daggerfall, I can tell you Morrowind is pretty darn great, if you've got a few hundred hours to spare. That's really the only big criticism I have for the Elder Scrolls games - if you're short on spare time, you will find the size of the world and the amount of possibilities somewhat frustrating. Certainly, Standoff would have been much better off had Morrowind never existed ;).
 
Daggerfall is even better than Arena, IMHO. Morrowind really isn't too comparable anymore.
 
Lengthy game is it?

I like that fact about Morrowind. That it is so long. I'll admit I haven't played the others but I just love how non-linear it is and how can do anything you want whenever you want. Except of course if you're doing the main quests. And the best part is that you can kill anyone you want to. I'm starting to think lately that the best games are the ones where you are free to kill anybody anytime. Naturally there would be consequences. Such as if in Morrowind, if you kill a commoner, it only costs you about fifty bucks I think.

But anyway, how do I use this DOSbox to get the game working. Brain no friend me good.
 
Arena: The best TES game about all of the empire.

Daggerfall: The best TES game ever possible about all of that province, I forgot its name.

Morrowind: The best TES game ever possible about Vvardenfell and the surrounding regions.

Basically, BethSoft is all about letting the player get heavily submerged and deeply into the world, to the point that you could just get lost trying to do "everything," and you'd need at least three different characters to do it too. So each game is good in its own way: Arena lets you explore all the different places and really get to travel around, Daggerfall lets you change the fate of a whole province, and Morrowind lets you try to think about smelling the dirt while it's raining and, through furniture mods, arrange the details of your own little house as if you were Martha Stewart. All the way down to the cutthroat-ness!

PS: Has anyone ever looked at the water from the X-box version of Morrowind? My socks were knocked off the first time I went wading through a river!
 
Help again?

In the directions when it says to click start, then click run, then type command, I do that and no command prompt thing comes up like it says it will.
 
If you are in WinXp. Type cmd instead of command. You can also go in Accessories there's a shortcut to the command prompt too.
 
Hmm...

See now my problem is I'm in dos prompt and I type install and it says it cannot find that file even though it is clearly in the directory and I can see it. Maybe I installed it already while using Windows. Could you extend some more patience and help me again?
 
Ok, I managed to make it work. Here's what I did.
1. In Windows explorer, Double-click on Arena106.exe.
2. Selected the default path (C:\), but the game is installed in C:\arena
3. Launch DosBox (version 0.61) I skipped the install in command prompt because it didn't get my sound card config correctly. It doesn't install the game, it just allow you to change the sound settings.
4. In DosBox I typed:
mount c c:\
c:
cd\arena
install
5. Selected my sound card config, then exited the install.
6. Still in DosBox I typed:
arena
7. Use Ctrl+F11 and Ctrl+F12 to modify Cpu cycles.
 
Shipgate said:
I like that fact about Morrowind. That it is so long. I'll admit I haven't played the others but I just love how non-linear it is and how can do anything you want whenever you want. Except of course if you're doing the main quests.
Oh, definitely - Morrowind's length is as much a blessing as it is a curse. It's wonderful when you know that you can afford to spend your time playing it... but it's a bit worse when you know that the time you're spending on playing it should be used to write your master's thesis. And it's even worse when the thesis in question deals with computer games, allowing you to justify your Morrowind addiction as mere 'research' ;).

And the best part is that you can kill anyone you want to.
Hehe, now there's a statement that could be taken out of context ;). Yeah, I agree completely, the thing that really makes Morrowind such a great game is the freedom it offers (mainly because the freedom in question is linked to consequences; it would be no fun to go around killing everyone if this didn't change anything). It's interesting to see how greatly some fans were bothered by the one or two instances of unopenable doors (ie., locked doors that simply cannot be lockpicked or otherwise opened) that appeared in the add-ons.
 
I remember playing Arena when it first came out... those were the days. I might have to try it again. I didn't like Morrowind, though. Yeah, it was pretty. It was fun to go exploring. But it was flat. There were no characters that contained even the slightest hint of depth... personality... and ecch.
 
Toefur said:
I remember playing Arena when it first came out... those were the days. I might have to try it again. I didn't like Morrowind, though. Yeah, it was pretty. It was fun to go exploring. But it was flat. There were no characters that contained even the slightest hint of depth... personality... and ecch.
Yeah, there were times when I wished that certain dialogues from certain people had more....depth. Morrowind was definately lacking in the character developement department.

I still love the game though, aaah memories! :D
 
Don't put big pictures in your signature, please... In fact, let's just not put pictures in signatures at all.
 
Toefur said:
I remember playing Arena when it first came out... those were the days. I might have to try it again. I didn't like Morrowind, though. Yeah, it was pretty. It was fun to go exploring. But it was flat. There were no characters that contained even the slightest hint of depth... personality... and ecch.
Hehe, as opposed to the characters in Arena? :p
 
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