The Elder Scrolls: Arena

Gameplay
Arena is noted for its large environment, which is significantly larger than its sequels, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but smaller than that of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. This is due to the game's randomly generated areas, which allow for large numbers of different combinations for each area.

The game is played from a first-person perspective. Combat is performed by using the mouse and dragging the cursor across the screen to attack if a melee weapon is used.

Story
The Emperor, Uriel Septim VII has been imprisoned in another dimension (in a copy of the Black Horse Courier in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, this dimension is revealed to be Oblivion) 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.

Part of this story is found in Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion within the book series "The Real Barenziah".

The next game in the series is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, released in 1996.