TES I: Arena - A Complete Retrospective 

I hope you enjoy this look back at such a pivotal game (even if they didn't know it at the time). Thanks for watching, and thank you so much for your amazing support over the last year! There is 1 (one) stutter left in the final edit, extra points goes to those who can find it ;) (totally not left in by accident 🗿)

I was doing a permadeath run at some point, and I was poisoned by some rogue. After running around the town, trying to find a cure poison potion, I remembered that I found an enchanted item, then ran to the Mage's Guild to identify it, in a last ditch effort, and once it was identified, it was a Holy Tome that cured poison.

I love how with the retcons taken into account it means the protagonist in arena waltzed into the red mountain, didn’t see dagoth ur or the second Numidium, grabbed an ancient artifact that assumedly not even dagoth ur himself knew about and then just left

Pretty neat that names from the first game persisted and developed more in other games. For instance: I love that there's Dagoth-Ur, the god, living in Dagoth-Ur, the building, which is located in Dagoth-Ur, the mountain.

Love how the character creation section ends every point with 'But a mage can just use a spell for that so they can ignore it'. Wish some of this utility was brought back in the series.

Being able to skip entire dungeons through the use of Destroy Wall and Open Lock was a highlight of the game for me. Another was... losing an entire character to getting the Plague and not being able to leave a dungeon. Always carry a Potion of Cure Disease, kids. Arena was a huge surprise to me. Sure, its old and clunky, but it oozes SOUL. The dialogue, the art, the freaking RIDDLES, its such a fun game. I really want to encourage that anyone with an interest in Arena tries it. There are maps and extra resources in UESP for those who need it, but Arena is way easier to get into than it seems.

It's important to remember that at the time, the box art was so embarrassing that some of us couldn't ask our parents to buy it for us.

I'm 35 and from DC - my dad and I actually went to the Bethesda building to pick the game up when it came out. I remember it being fairly popular in the area; I had a couple friends who played it, and we'd talk about it at school or pour over the strategy guide it came with, the Codex Scientia. I'm not really a huge Elder Scrolls fan, but I have very fond memories of Arena and Daggerfall, largely because my friends and I played them together, running out of the room shrieking when we heard scary monster sound effects. One thing we really loved to do was run around buildings and cast Passwall on walls, playing the game like it was Minecraft but 20 years earlier. Arena is only one thing, and that's a dungeon crawler. Every other element of the game exists to facilitate dungeon crawling; dungeon crawling is the only thing the game does, and in that regard it is probably the best in the series. The dungeons are huge, fun, mostly sensical, challenging. They also play somewhat differently depending on the kind of character you're using. They're not sprawling monstrosities like Daggerfall, tiny, interconnected rooms like Morrowind or linear corridors like Skyrim. They're simple, sometimes monotonous, but they offer real exploration. Later games in the series add a lot - guilds, quests, characters. It's fun to do guild quests or play dress up or do whatever in these games, but they don't fundamentally change or enhance the dungeons. So I guess, overall, Arena is my favorite game in the series. It doesn't overextend itself, it doesn't branch out into things that ultimately amount to very little, it doesn't distract you. It has dungeons, that's it, and it does them well. Oh, brief addendum. At 2:14:00, you say it doesn't matter what size room you get, but it actually does. If you're doing an escort quest and get a single bed, guys will try to break into your room and beat you up. No idea why. This idea stuck with me as a kid and made me think that hotels were some kind of lawless murder zone.

You know with Tharn... I kind of like the story implications as is that he just wanted to sit on the throne, hookers and blackjack, and basically hedonistically live it up with what he thought he deserved. Didn't need to be some deeper plot about Dagon's constant attempts to invade Tamriel or doomsday plotline in general. In fact it's honestly kind of refreshing in retrospect. As most of the other games do lean on those a bit too much. The idea that the original villain stands out because "He's some asshole who wanted power and all the trappings of it"... and not being revealed to be part of some millennia old conspiracy and apocalyptic cult and such? Yeah. That's nice.

Im very excited for this one! I remember when I saw the Daggerfall retrospective. It had like only a few thousand views, and now its 4 million! It was nice watching your channel grow, keep it up!

Dragonstrike is one of the greatest things ever made. That was my introduction to D&D. I watched that VHS religiously as a kid. Ended up using it as a module for my homebrew D&D campaign, and no one (all my players are 10 years my senior) recognized what it was, hilariously enough, and they're all nerds.

Once in a while, you can run into a higher-level enemy during randomly generated quests. I somehow got a rescue quest somewhere between levels 5 and 10 that required me to go to a vampire's lair. The vampire was the only enemy in the dungeon, but, obviously, that's more than enough to deal with, especially at a low level. I eventually managed to kill it by using Passwall and bob-and-weaving around the corner I made while using Fire Dart over and over. It was definitely the hardest fight I've ever had in an Elder Scrolls game

Not many people can make a video essay longer than the fellowship of the ring and have people watch the whole thing. Damn good job.

Oh man seeing Todd Howard in that Photon laser tag helmet hit me with so much 80's nostalgia. I had that set and played with it constantly. I almost forgot what a scuzzball he is.

I hope this one does as well as Daggerfall retrospective did; it was brilliant and listening it during work made it not only bearable but almost pleasant. Thank you for this!

I first played Arena on a PC so old it had a monochromatic screen, it was almost 6 months before i borrowed a color monitor from a friend and i was completely blown away by how amazing the graphics looked. I blame Area for my crippling addiction to cheesy video games.

It’s funny, I remember my friend and his dad showing me Skyrim for the first time. They were in Whiterun, look up to at the Throat of the World and said you could climb the mountain if you wanted to. That the main quest even took you up this mountain in particular. Then they turned to then west, towards the mountains surrounding the Reach. “If you see it, you can explore it.” I had played Fallout 3 and New Vegas before this, but neither of them captured this feeling of…freedom? That’s not quite the right word but I can’t think of a better way to describe it

Man I love the style of Arena and Daggerfall, the pixelated dungeons and wilderness

Regarding the "Placeholder Names" you mentioned as existing the Elder Scrolls to this day, I've actually been working on something of a list of where the province names have been borrowed from: Summerset Isles: As you mentioned, borrowed from Summerset, England. Valenwood: I think this one is from "valenwood trees", giant trees that people built cities within in the Dragonlance campaign setting, present in the earliest modules. Elsweyr: Shares the name (down to the same spelling) with a far-off country mentioned in the Elric of Melnibone stories by Michael Moorcock. Morrowind: One of the most blatant, this comes from the Shannara series by Terry Brooks, where there is a volcanic island populated by elves named "Morrowindl". Bretony: Like the Summerset Isles, this one's also a real location. Argonia: Along with the name of the Argonian race, I suspect this might have come from the infamously bad novel "the Eye of Argon", based on the fact one of the early games that was planned (but never made) was to be titled "Eye of Argonia". The only wholly original province names appear to be: Skyrim, Hammerfell, High Rock, Black Marsh, and the Imperial Province. And three of those are incredibly generic anyways, and the alternate names for two are borrowed from elsewhere.

One town in each province? Go to Dragonstar, then go to Sentinel. Or go to Riverwood, then to Winterhold. Dragonstar, and other Eastern Hammerfell towns are green and lush. In the western part of the province it's a brown desert. Likewise, in Southern portions of Skyrim are green Forest, and Northern parts snow even in summer. I didn't even notice this until recently. I just happened to spawn in Northwestern High Rock, and noticed it was snowing in early Autumn, went to Daggerfall and was green and warm. So I started testing different locations in places I knew had vastly different climates in lore. I forgot about comparing central Elsweyr to the southern coast. I think I'll check that now, actually.

I'm in awe of the scale and leg-work/research you've put into this. I'm a Morrowboomer that has had a lot of trouble getting into Arena and Daggerfall, but it's nice to digest videos like this and your Daggerfall video to get a sense of the history and development of this series I love so much. Cheers friend.

2:24:07 Iron Golems are one of the iconic D&D monsters, so it makes sense that they'd take it. Interestingly, they changed the thing Iron Golems are actually known for. in D&D, it's fire damage that they heal from. This is mainly notable because the signature big damage spell in D&D is fireball.

You are a legend my friend, so proud and happy for you that this behemoth is complete!!!

Weird how nostalgic the Arena tune makes me feel, even though this game is almost twice as old as I am.

you made me start my TES anthology. Always had problems starting playing Arena, now I have 20h in. And I still have 5 pieces of the staff. this game is amazing

3:57:45 The Champion getting drunk off his ass before charging into the Imperial Palace sounds like an incredibly funny scenario.

Thank you for the Rockville shout-out. I was born and raised there. It always seemed strange to see a building with the name of the wrong city on it (before I got in on oblivion).

Do you think after Uriel got out he was like "Fuck me, it took him ten years? If something this big happens again I need to make sure it's dealt with in a few months at most"? I think he did.

I'm glad you mentioned the dungeons being unique and interesting. I found that, while most other parts were not very good, the dungeons were better designed than any of the other games. They really feel like a big dungeon you have to explore and find things within (unlike later games where they were just straight shots) which makes sense in the world why other people couldn't just grab what is within. They are varied as well and have their own flavor which later games basically abandoned too.

So dagoth ur has always existed. I can't believe they'd discard it after morrowind. Is this how they treat the 6th house unmourned?

Just like how Bethesda mastered immersion with The Elders Scrolls, Your videos have done the same for me. Very well done and presented!

Just a minor note since you didn't mention it in the video but it's worth keeping in mind if you plan on playing Arena: do *NOT* chose Knight as your class if you intend to acquire all the artifacts, since their ability to automatically repair their weapons/armor effectively prevents you from using the blacksmith exploit.

The retrospective on Daggerfall was absolutely amazing and even taught me things I never noticed while playing it, and tbh after hearing you say that you were gonna do a video on arena it compelled me to revisit the game and its story since. I can't wait to see everything you've found and put in this masterpiece, love these vids its great to see the old elder scrolls getting attention!

Before your series I only had the LGR reviews of the elder scrolls to go off of. But thanks to you I’ve started playing daggerfall unity and I’m having a blast (and realizing why I gotta find a levitation mod for skyrim). Thank you for all your hard work!

I played the game but what I remember most was the HOURS I spent on the original demo. There was no save and it was brutally difficult. I kept playing just trying to survive as long as possible. I loved loved the passwall spell, disintegrating dungeon walls to make shortcuts and escape enemies. If there was an actual end or exit to that dungeon I never made it that far.

You can't ask for much more than this, an extremely long, very high quality, well edited and well researched video. Keep up the great work

Fantastic work as always, thanks for all you do!

Recently, I finished my journey of playing through every TES game, and I mean all of them. Including spinoffs, and the mobile ones, Shadowkey, Dawnstar, Stormhold etc. I must say with arena, despite games like Skyrim dominating the series obviously, there's something very very cosy about it. The soundtrack is simple yet blissful, walking through Winterhold in the snow with that lovely theme playing. Crawling through every uniquely designed dungeon and being absolutely tacken back by the attention to detail at the time, and the overwhelming amount of rooms and hidden chambers to explore, seeing random paintings on the wall, finding secret chests, and having to actually tactically plan and retreat when fighting monsters. Then that sense of relief when you finally find the dungeon item after scrambling around 4 whole floors, and sprinting your way back to the entrance to get to an inn as soon as possible just to realised you were diseased. The immersion of having to repair your gear, buying drinks and renting rooms at inns, being able to explore each individual building in each individual town and being welcomed with flavor text each time, asking NPCs for directions etc. Like most I started out with Skyrim, but If you like the lore, it's so interesting going back and seeing early concepts of things you recognise in the later games. I always said I'd never try arena, but now I'm addicted and go back to it at least once a year, each time finding new things I hadn't known about before. I can't recommend it enough

The amount of work at each of your videos must be insane ! Your retrospective are the best ! Thanks from France !

Oh man, I haven't thought about "warez" groups in decades! Thank you for this trip down memory lane, friend. The rest of the video is incredible, of course, just like your Daggerfall epic, but this one might be even better. Cheers, mate!

4 and a half hours later and I now know everything about Arena. Incredible.

I couldn't be happier to watch this, as a fan of the new games it's wonderful to see where it all started with such depth without having to suffer through an old game that i have no patience to play myself, thank you very much!!

I was really really hoping jwlar was gonna make this video but I wasn't sure if he was, doesn't seem like a game a ton of people enjoy but jwlar's passion makes them very enjoyable

Good job. I loved your Daggerfall video and this was just as good. I’ve suggested it to several content creators, but I think a video with this level of depth deconstructing The Elder Scrolls Online would be super interesting and doesn’t exist anywhere online to my knowledge. Just something to consider. Thank you for all of your hard work.

20:48 the Beholder is one of the few D&D specific concepts that is under individual copyright. Like any fantasy game can use their version of halflings and orcs, character classes, D20s and Vancian casting etc, but a few SPECIFIC things are under (at the time TSR but now WotC) copyright and Beholders is one of them so I'm betting that would be why they had to remove it.

1:00:56 This difference is even less important if you just grab the Oghma Infinium a few times to max out all your stats.

Wake up honey, new 4 hour video essay about an old Bethesda game just dropped

Honestly if you do a retrospective on Ultima or Might and Magic that would be amazing too.

I started watching this video a few minutes after it launched, but I took some breaks and only just now finished this more ambitious sequel video about the preceding game to the preceding video about the more ambitious sequel. So excited for what's next! The Daggerfall video is something I especially love to rewatch, although the Alone In The Dark one I keep coming back to frequently as well.

I am so happy to see someone finally wanting to look at battlespire. I am not sure why but ever since I heard it's main theme I have been mildly obsessed but unable to get it to run properly

The static npcs do provide unique dialogue. You even show some of the thug right when you say that. The jesters have reams of unique dialogue.

Fantastic retrospective. I remember playing through as a spellsword and having some trouble at the start, but by the end when I got a firm grasp on the spellbuilder I laughed at how fast I took down Jagar Tharn, and since I had the shadow key I walked right in and finished. Anticlimactic, but deep down I loved the game.

This is such a high quality and comprehensive video on Arena. Kudos and props to you Jwlar.

An excellent essay on one of the most important games ever made. I remember well buying it when it came out, having to uninstall games from my whopping 40MB hard drive in order to have room to install this one, then having to create a new boot floppy to reconfigure the RAM because the game required a RAM format different from my computer's default. But, it was most definitely worth it. Arena was a huge leap forward in RPGs, and that's speaking as a veteran of the Ultima's, Wizardry!'s, and SSI gold box games. Interesting side note, when EverQuest first came out, I had friends and co-workers trying to get me to play it. I resisted them for a few months until I happened to be at a friend's place while he was playing it. He turned in a quest and I heard the familiar Arena level up fanfare and suddenly I was interested. Bought EQ the next day. So, Arena is ultimately responsible for my longtime MMO addiction.

I got this game in late 94 and spent a good 300-400 hours playing my Dark Elf Spellsword, and I'm pretty sure I only ever collected like 5 of the Staff of Chaos pieces. Had too much fun creating spells and grinding random dungeons for loot. Great video, I haven't thought about this classic game in years!

3:29:48 lol the cheek of teasing the devs about "throbbing", then minutes later stumbling into "touching the jewel"

Appreciate all the time and work you put in to capturing the history of these games; I can still remember that Arena box just boldly standing out from everything else on the shelf.

This Vid was expected to be released at november 2022, but Bethesda push it forward to Q1 2023 due to Jwlar Quality concerns.

Why didn't this come to my Sub Box, youtube!? I can't be missing these uploads!

Another amazing video Jwler! Your retrospectives are of exceedingly high quality, and your covering games like Daggerfall and Arena that are kinda' forgotten gems is really great, and important in that they are incredibly influential games. I personally just recently started playing Daggerfall Unity with a bunch of mod from your mod list, and I'm really enjoying it man. Keep up the great work.

Your videos are the reason that I checked out the older series. Thank you for making these ultimate videos for the video game. I don't think I could have gone through the tutorial of daggerfall without this video😅.

I cant wait for another in depth analysis. You did a great job and are very talented on doing a critique/playthrough like perspective.

What an incredible retrospective! I love how thoroughly you covered both the gameplay and it's development! Definitely earned a new subscriber, and deserve many more!

I absolutely love arena, thanks for giving it the best review it could have. Without it, a big stepping stone would be missing, daggerfall plays the same role, albeit a much larger scope.

Thank you for this. Arena is one of my favourites but it still comes behind Underworld. I played nearly every RPG back in the day. Knightmare is a very honourable mention also. So many great games with epic size quests and areas. Loved every other Elder scrolls from daggerfall (although dungeon maps a nightmare) and onwards also the MMO. Don't know how many times I have redone Skyrim. Check out the Nolvus 5 mod pack and auto mass mod updater to Skyrim. Yes I have started again. Love this video. TY again.

There is an incredible amount of detail in this retrospective. Rewatched it a good few times already, fantastic work!

this is such perfect timing on your end, i just discovered your daggerfall retrospective and now we get 4 more hours of high quality analysis

I just binge watched both this video and Daggerfall and man this is so well made and quite the undertaking. I look forward to seeing any more of these deep dives and this really renewed my love for the elder scrolls and wanting to jump back into it despite its age, Arena does have its own charm for sure and it really can become whatever you want it to be. I thought the ideas behind the game even if slightly upscaled and presented today as an open world rogue like would become quite a cult classic in it's own right. All it needs is fun and a since of completion for every dungeon you come across. I find myself going around the wilderness and writing my own notes about locations dotted around that in-house generated terrain. Anyway, keep doing what you are doing man, you definitely have the gift of keeping the viewer's interest with how you display the information and how you pace and structure the whole thing.

Literally have been hunting for an in-depth look at Arena, so thank you for this absolute classic. Fantastic video and I'm sure ill be watching again soon

Dude your content is so well-made! Big props! Very entertaining and informative video ^^ I'm a huge Morrowind nerd and it's fun to now see such an in-depth look at the first Elder Scrolls :)

Absolutely amazing video. Four hours of your voice talking about the details of an old game like Arena is amazing, you make a great narrator. Can't wait for your next big video!

this was a crazy effort on your behalf, mad props. i really enjoyed having this one while working on my own projects :) thank you!

I wish games still had awesome box art like that. I remember when I was little I would copy Frazetta, San Julian, Enric Torres stuff over and over, it was so inspiring and really made my sparked my imagination. Where as now days most artists are to scared to show half their stuff because someone, somewhere will take offense, it's really sad.

Great video. Thx. I bought this game and played it a lot. I loved it. The atmosphere in the cities as the snow fell was amazing. The best part of the game was that you could write notes on your map. I wish more games would use that function. But in the end the game felt too big and I felt lost after some time. The game was massive but awesome.

Absolutely adored your Daggerfall video! Thank you so much for the amazing work you do with these videos! Can’t imagine the amount of editing.

Fantastic video! I loved the details from contemporary reviews and dev interviews, that really made the quality of the essay stand out. I've only played an hour or so of Arena, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was. I'm closely following the progress of OpenTESArena. Very excited for a playable release of that!

So crazy, I'm buying my first computer at the age of 29. Last night I was day dreaming about playing Oblivion and Marrowing. I was looking up Arena and Daggerfell. I didn't even know about Arena and I'm excited to see that it's free. Very serendipitous that i stumbled upon your video. 💞

arena was really fun to play. I only did a few radiant dungeons and focused on the main story dungeons. the combat is actually pretty sweet. I loved the mouse movement. Spell crafting is really broken. I created 2 spells that would max out all my stats for a really long time and it barely cost any mana. that's when I looked it up on the internet, thinking this was a bug lol.

I started the video late so I missed the chance to talk to you during the premiere, but I love this video! I actually like base Arena a little better than base Daggerfall (I think the Daggerfall Unity port is best though), you do a great job describing it. What reallly made a difference for me was what you describe as more coherent and fun dungeons. I agree that made a huge difference in the base game and is why I like it still. I started playing it again after your descriptions of how fun the magic can be - I actually only beat it as a Redguard Knight. I didn't think lacking magic was that bad with how common magic items were! But I've always favored mage classes, and redoing it as a Spellsword is almost a completely different game. Thanks for pointing out the unique class and race abilities, I didn't actually realize any of that existed despite having played it quite a bit! I suppose that's what I get for waiting for the digital age to get around to this one, Morrowind was my introduction to the series though Oblivion was the first one I really beat. Despite that, I think the first three feel like more immersive and powerful games to me than Skyrim or Oblivion, despite loving Skyrim and enjoying quite a bit of Oblivion. Battlespire is actually a fun game - but go in with the mindset of testing an unstable beta than experiencing a complete game. Figuring out what actually worked was a lot of the fun to me. I don't want to spoil much, but one thing I've seen screw over other people is Endurance. Endurance DEOS NOT increase health! It says it does, but it does not! The best way to manage your hp is to invest directly into your wounds from the start. How many wounds you gain with each level is based on what you start with - so if you start with the max wounds (20, I think?) you will get max health. Endurance ONLY effects swimming, of which you need around 30-40 to beat the game. If you want to know more about the bugs and misleading statements in the game let me know, I ran across quite a few trying to puzzle myself through that mess of a game. Despite that, I think there is a lot there to enjoy. That said, I wouldn't recommend it as a fun playthrough to your average gamer.

Had a good time watching this while playing Daggerfall and Oblivion. great to brush up on the history of TES while experiencing it.

Here's to another sleepless night watching Jwlar talk about one of my favorite video game series! But seriously, love your work man. Great stuff. You've got a bright future ahead, I'm sure of it! Keep it up!

1:01:10 In D&D, the balance to the game is that the Thief can perform functions like Open Locks, Find / Remove Traps, Move Silently, Hide In Shadows, Climb Walls, and Read Languages (all of which have a spell analogue) as often as he likes. Imagine a 3rd level Magic-User, with 5000 XP, vs. the Thief with the same XP at 4th level. Our first party has a Thief. The dungeon entrance is up a cliff face, which the Thief can climb with some effort (failure doesn't necessarily mean a fall to the death, just as far as your last piton). At the top, he pounds in a final piton and ties off his rope to it, allowing everyone to climb. The party comes upon a hallway with 3 locked doors spaced along its length. The Thief has about a 50% chance to pick each lock, depending on race and dexterity. He probably opens one, possibly all three, but unlikely to get none of them. He searches and might find a trap in the next room, disarming it, although only with a 40% chance of success so he might just set it off from a safe distance after finding it. Later he could sneak with a ~45% chance of success, and if doing so he could possibly get multiple free "surprise segments" of backstabs on the enemy before the party rushes in to battle. Now imagine a party with no Thief. The M-U has two 1st level spells and one 2nd level spell. If he knew Spider Climb, and had memorized it as a 1st level spell, he could have cast it to get to the top of the cliff. Then, Knock is a 2nd level spell, so if he knew it he could have used it in the hallway with locked doors to open just one of them. While the M-U can't learn Find Traps spell, as it's a 2nd level Cleric spell, the party's Cleric could have it - at the expense of not praying for some other spell in that slot. The M-U wouldn't be able to use Invisibility even if he knew it, because he cast Knock earlier, and he can only memorize one 2nd level spell at a time at this M-U level. By this point, the M-U probably wouldn't have any spells left to help in the fight. In the general melee that follows, the M-U has a worse Armor Class and is about 10% easier to hit because of it, compared to the Thief. The M-U has on average 7.5 Hit Points, while the Thief has 14. And the Thief can use better weapons, dealing 4.5 average damage on a hit with a longsword vs. the M-U's staff average of 3.5 (not including the difference in chance to hit vs. armor type because the staff sucks as a weapon and the longsword is pretty well optimized). Next, the Pick Pockets ability isn't something spellcasters get at all. Thieves can also speak and understand a secret language of thieves, called Thieves' Cant, which opens up some parleying possibilities the party would be without. Point is, the Thief is an excellent utility character that the spellcasters can technically replace if they use most of their spells doing it, but even then they can't really replace him in adventures with heavy use of his skills. They just can't match his repetition.

I loved your daggerfall video, I've seen it (well heard it, as I listen to it when I work sometimes) many times. And I can see the improvements and hard work you put into this. This was a very solid essay on an overlooked... well, not gem, but something of the sort at least.

Amazing video! I'm glad someone like you gives the old Elder Scrolls games the respect they deserve.

This was a documentary! So in depth, I just loved everything about it. Would love to see one on Redguard!

Another video to slog through at the gym. Thank you, haven't finished the daggerfall one quite yet. _chef's kiss_

I really enjoyed this, thank you so much for sharing! You have a wonderful way of analysing games with nuance and honesty. I know others have done many hours on the more modern elder scrolls, but I would love your perspective as well. Your style in distinctly earnest. You address shortcomings, but always sound like you enjoyed the experience and want to understand the process of it coming to being. Keep on doing what you're doing, much love from Oregon!

2:26:22 The skeleton key can open doors in main quest dungeons that can't be lockpicket or opened with spells and would need a key or riddle.

What a journey. Leading to my favourite masterpieces Morrowind and Oblivion ❤

You put a lot of work in this video and it was obviously hard work because the video is good. I subscribed, anyone that takes that much time researching, recording and editing for a four hour video deserves some recognition.

Simply blown away by the research on this one. This is now the definitive history of the making of arena in my mind

Another work of master craftsmanship from a master craftsman. Thank you Jwlar!

having watched the daggerfall videos as they were releasing, this video made an otherwise displeasing day an absolute joy. thank you for reading us the scrolls jwlar :)

4:10 That's actually good. It's like getting an A.I. to design the map: Pseudorandom generation. Really make things feel alive. 8:20 Holy shit, King Bubba of Skyrim. 😂 54:10 It's amazing to see the races of TES already being pretty well-established. 1:05:00 So be a High Elf Mage, put points into Int, Agi. Got it. 2:43:00 Again: Hearing that Auriel's Bow, Volendrung and the Ebony Blade are older than my brother is a hell of a head trip.

Thank you so much for this amazing video. I was eagerly anticipating this video after watching your take on Daggerfall. Ever since I have been subscribed. I hope you know that now we all expect a retrospective for all the Elder Scrolls games, lol.

I have so many vivid memories playing this game, the scale of it was beyond belief.. being turned into a vampire and seeing my characters inventory appearance change freaked me out! Just groundbreaking! I could be wrong, but I believe some people involved in Arena are developing a similar game currently.. can't quite remember what it was though..

Amazing content as always, thank you! I love both of your retrospectives. Do you plan to make a Battlespire retrospective in the future?

This video is one hell of an achievement! It took me quite a while to be able to watch through it in the spurts I had between off time from work, but I reached the end. Fantastic job! I'm absolutely subbing for more ^^

I can't believe this dropped as I was on a elder scrolls retrospective binge. Just see it in my recommended "1 day ago."

Very nice and cool Video. Now make a retrospective of the lusty argonian maid.