Digitized wolf howls and the sound of shuffling zombies brought a real sense of atmosphere and anticipation. The game sounded simply amazing on a Sound Blaster 16/Wave Blaster configuration, with General MIDI support and stereo-panning effects heightening the experience considerably. 'Expect to find yourself whirling around in your chair to see if a nasty is creeping up behind you.'Īrena's sound effects and music are up to the task as well. Puddles on rain-soaked streets reflect lightning bolts in the distance fog, snow, and mist impair your vision as you move through the countryside you can discern caverns lit by firelight in the distance, and peek through keyholes before entering potentially dangerous rooms. While Arena's graphics engine isn't quite as sophisticated as Ultima Underoworld's (you can't look up or down, for example), it's still mighty impressive.īethesda has created a true virtual world, using light-sourcing and shadows to magnificent effect. There's an entire world to explore here, with myriad villages, cities, and dungeons (of course) awaiting you, all rendered in jaw-dropping 3D graphics. Like Origin's Ultima Underworld series, Arena is a single-player fantasy role-playing game featuring smoothly scrolling 3D graphics, presented from a first-person point of view unlike Ultima Underworld, Arena doesn't limit your explorations to subterranean settings. The company that brought us three Terminator games has unveiled its debut FRP, The Elder Scrolls, Volume 1: Arena-and it's simply stunning. The time is ripe for an upstart, and Bethesda Softworks is ready for the job. And Stonekeep, Interplay's gorgeous 3D first-person dungeon crawl, seems to be perpetually hanging around the corner, just out of reach. Dynamix's Thief of Dreams, the sequel to the mesmerizing Betrayal at Krondor, is in limbo, and SSI will soon no longer be developing TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games. Twin Dolphin Games' Forgotten Castle, which looked incredibly promising, is both dead and forgotten. This genre, which looked to be undergoing something of a renaissance after last summer's CES in Chicago, is in a limbo of sorts.

Oh, how fast things can change-especially when it comes to fantasy role-playing games (FRP's). _Bethesda's first fantasy role-playing game is a graphic tour de force *** The Elder Scrolls, Volume 1: Arena review A lot has changed since 1994, but so much has stayed the same. My favorite thing about this 20-year-old review is how it approaches gestating fantasy game tropes with fresh eyes, exclaiming that you can complete the game as an assassin character (!), but also finds familiar criticisms, such as the lifelessness of NPCs, which is something that hasn't improved as much as I'd have expected after 20 years of character scripting, animation, and voice acting.

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