Game Skyrim Forum

What is your opinion of the lore in TES: Arena - as small and far-between as it is?

I'd say there's some inconsistencies. Although it was a game that was originally supposed to be an arena gladiator simulator, the RPG aspects and lore came after, so it makes sense that there'd be some oddities in TES: Arena lore.

xD maybe you can give an example of an 'oddities'?

I dunno, I'm tired af lol. There's inconsistencies in the intro texts and that's all I can really think of for now haha

I believe that these inconsistencies are nothing more than simple typos, but OK xD

You go get some sleep, friend.

The story and lore are a bit iffy.

But some of the travel time and building style and what not, totally inacurrate.

I seem to be one of the few who will stump for Arena on these forums, and while there is a lot in Arena that is tentative to the rest of the series I believe that a good chunk of it is not explicitly contradicted.

Obviously, there are many things that have changed. Some examples:

-Solstheim doesn't appear because it wasn't even a concept at that point. Solstheim first appeared in the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind.

-The vast majority of the cities aren't anything even remotely like how they appeared in the game. Of course, technology was a huge factor, and so procedural generation had to be done. But since the lore was in its infancy I think that was part of it too. Falinesti wasn't conceived of as a walking tree city at that point, for example.

-I think some Bethesda developers may have actually had an explanation for it that I can't remember at the moment, but Red Mountain was originally called Dagoth-Ur.

-Cyrodiil was only called The Imperial Province at that point, and the only city there was the Imperial City for whatever reason.

-Imperials did not exist, and IIRC it was originally the Nords who ruled the Empire.

-Oblivion wasn't called Oblivion. I believe it was just called the Nether World.

The main questline--the Eternal Champion retrieving the 8 pieces of the Staff of Chaos (or rather 9 because of the Jewel of Fire) to defeat Jagar Tharn and rescue Uriel Septim VII--is canon. I would imagine the process of doing so is also canon, but maybe that isn't entirely the case. All of the cities, towns, villages, and main quest dungeons that appeared still exist, even though some of them don't appear in subsequent games for various reasons (e.g. Fortress of Ice does not appear in TESV: Skyrim).

Some things that are perhaps still tentative:

-The rulers of some of the cities, towns, and villages may have been changed, although AFAIK none of these are contradicted by later games.

-Some of the distances between locations may have changed a bit (regardless of any scaling-down of the worlds of the later games).

-The existence of some of the gods in Arena (the Aedra and Daedra were not concepts at that point).

-The existence of a few of the factions named in Arena (e.g. the Wharf Rats, which were sort of like the Thieves Guild but were rivals, and they are never mentioned in any other game).

-A few of the enemy NPCs may not actually exist now, like the Lizard Men.

I really appreciate that ESO has used some stuff from the game as well, like Selene and Selene's Web. I personally think there is still a lot that can be done with what Arena gave us, and I would love if Bethesda incorporated some more stuff from it into TESVI and beyond.

Last time I played Arena, I kept an in-character journal, partly to track quests, but I also just like writing. I remember having my character comment on how he could, when inside the city walls, hardly tell that Falinesti was in a tree.

Most geographical inconsistencies seem to be technology-related: Whiterun isn't on a hill, nor is Solitude on a giant stone arch, because that would've been a [censored] to render in a game engine that isn't even fully 3D. However, the in-game map depicts Skyrim being snowy all the way south to the Jeralls, with the Reach being the greenest region (not exactly consistent with later games).

The names of some towns have changed, too, but that can usually be explained. Stonewood is called Balmora in TES III (but that's the Dunmeri translation, I gather), and Falcrenth became Falkreath in TES V (although, given 200 years and low literacy rates, that's not entirely unreasonable). Markarth Side is depicted as a tiny village some hundred kilometres northeast of where Markarth appears in TES V, and this I can't explain. Does anyone in TES V tell us when the Nords settled in Nchuand-Zel?

Argonians also have very different names in TES I compared to later games, http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Argonian_Names#Arena. (If Arena's procedurally-generated names are canon, that means there's an Argonian named Julius Caesar running around somewhere.)

Last one I can think of: the palace guards in Arena's Skyrim look like they belong in Hammerfell (they look like Redguards, and wear Redguard-style clothing). This could just be an error in the procedural generation of cities, or perhaps Skyrim was employing Redguard mercenaries at the time (although the former seems more likely).