Elder Scrolls was my inspiration to make my own fantasy world I am writing a comic within. I really love this series and seeing how it developed mirroring my own world's development feels comforting and whimsical.
Kirkbride has talked about how he wanted to change the provinces names. One of the ideas was to have Hammerfell split into two kingdoms, one of Crowns and Forebears, each having a more african sounding name. One of the more rad ideas was to have the Bosmer call a wild hunt during the Oblivion Crisis and have the province name changed to Ghul-Mora, meaning "monster wood". Also the change to Elsweyr ended up happening, being split by the Thalmor during the Great War.
They changed Summerset to "Alinor". But just like Elsweyr's "name change" due to 2 kingdoms: Nobody in the universe cares and just uses the old name still. Agreed with Ceedott too. No reason to change it at this point.
You're one of the few TES channels that truly deep dives, you can tell by the resource pulls you throw in that had to have taken an era to find. Amazing work as always, i chilled so nicely with this vid
Thank you for the kind words as always! Very honestly, I’m really not the person who discovered these, I got a lot of this info from sources in the description and from there it wasn’t too hard to find an associated resource, credit really goes to those people. Really should leave more disclaimers to read the description, but thank you regardless!
Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion all came out within 12 years (1994-2006). It's been nearly 13 years since Skyrim came out and ES6 is still nowhere in sight.
games are very different to make nowadays, though it doesn't necessarily have to be, Bethesda is also quite happy to coast on Skyrim rereleases for a long ass time, and Fallout 4 will probably join it as a game that gets revamped every few years.
This was well done and your research is very thorough; a lot of these facts are pretty interesting. Thanks for the video -- lots of work went into it! Happy 30th (belated) Birthday, Arena 🎂💖
As for the French version of the manual: In Morrowind there's a few books in the French version that differ because they were translated from earlier versions. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case for Arena manual being an earlier version of the story. The daughter *could* be brought back into canon by simply having her killed during Tharn's reign (if he disliked her, why not arrange for an "accident"?): All listings for Uriel's children after Arena are his *living* (or recently dead) ones. The size of Tamriel was retconned in PGTE1. That gives a distance between Amalexia and Dagoth Ur's peek. Maps vary enough the results won't be consistent, but they're all way smaller. A few more random Arena facts: Books in later games reference artifacts abandoning their user. This refers to Arena (and unpatched Daggerfall) gameplay where you can't repair artifacts and they disappear upon reaching 0 durability. You can only hold one artifact at a time, but you never actually hold the Oghma Infinium so you can get it multiple times. Beware the game has no fatalsafe for the player not being able to assign attributes since their stats were all capped. MP costs decrease with character level. This *can* take it to zero. IIRC non-casting classes can cast spells if their cost is zero. This is vital if you actually want to play one since there's a bunch of mandatory utility spells (light, levitation, fire protection).
I mean, they’re pretty much the same as the Thieves Guild so I guess they didn’t see the point in including them down the line but I guess it would’ve been interesting. Your Daggerfall vids are great btw, listen to them when I’m working on other stuff lol
@@ceedott true, I simply love this archetype of coastal smuggler's guild. my ttrpg setting has a couple of rival gangs that I love--the Low Tide Boys and the Sea Urchins--so hearing about the Wharf Rats really resonated lol. And thanks for the love! I'm glad the DF vids have made for nice background music, as that's my favorite kind of content to consume.
One correction, Some of the painted art you used, David Lee Anderson painted them, myself and Ken Mayfeild drew the initial sketches. Love the dive you did.
21:21 To be fair... Xarses was an Altmeri high priest that achieved apotheosis... Which is partly why Altmer wanting to ban the worship of Talos, another being that achieved apotheosis, as severely hypocritical.
I went down the exact same release date rabbit hole a few months ago, after watching a video about the exact same subject on Daggerfall. I had to dig up a ton of old stuff only to find out the release date was wrong.
4:29 wow! Anyone else love this image? The rolling fields in the background and the kinda hobbit hole style door with sod roof. Then a mysterious sign with a moon giving ya the 🌝
Edit: fun to see the origin of the infamous sweet roll gag🍞🍪 Thanks for bringing up usenet. By the time I first got in internet it was in aol era so I've not had any experience with it
As a owner of the "Game of the year" edition with the map I can say that they seem to keep the name "Dagoth Ur" for red mountain for a long time as the red Mountains core is named "dagoth Ur" on the map.
7:42 Apparently Bethesda has never heard of "retconning" and I guess would prefer to take the more complicated route when not necessary, but hey, you do you 🤷♂️
I’ve heard that Skyrim is supposedly the flipped version of Middle Earth. Sky being the opposite of earth and rim being the opposite of middle. That would be pretty cool if it’s true.
It’s incredible how player reactions to these games don’t change - The Usenet post from 1994 reviewing the game mentions how breathtaking the graphics, showing just how much good framing and imagination can do, and appropriately how buggy the game is
One thing I could actually see Bethesda doing if they ever want to print money and don't want to release another new version of Skyrim is creating a Soul Calibur-style fighting game similar (in concept) to Arena. You could have 20 playable characters, with one male and one female from each race, and maybe have Daedra as unlockable players (a male Dremora and a female Golden Saint and Dark Seducer, probably). Maybe the final boss is either Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal. Have it be like Soul Calibur, where you have RPG elements and a world tour thing going in story mode. You could even set it during the events of Arena.
I still haven't played arena yet but i really should. I recently went back and started playing daggerfall though and it's fantastic I'll probably do arena sometime
@vegamineral207 yeah that's what I heard. I've actually been slowly working through daggerfall since I left that original comment and I'm almost at the end I think so I might try arena after a while
6:08 The reality of many fantasy worlds and most likely D&D included is that they take inspiration from other works, you can call it "Copy" but no one cares because it is a constant of all Original works. Everyone takes inspiration from everyone, it's basically how it works to write a story and much more an entire universe.
I must have missed why you started calling the protagonist the 'Eternal Champion'. Is the implication that the protagonist in Arena is another incarnation of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion?
Everything in the elder scrolls is based on other fantasy series. Hammerfell and Morrowind are names of places in other fantasy series that I can't remember. None of it is an original idea
Almost every roleplaying game was influenced by dungeons and dragons. which in itself is pretty much just a ripoff of lords of the rings (Tolkien did what he set off to do - created mythology that enthrals)... but yes from wasteland and consequently actual fallout (you know 1 and 2), Diablo, Darkstone, shard of spring or ultima (which looks dangerously simillar to dungeons siege to a point where i am guessing its pretty much DS0),to even likes of Pathfinder or Might and Magic (or its spinoff series Heroes of might and magic). they all use varriation of some of the Dungeons and dragons rules. it is SO much of a fundation that i do not think you can do system of roleplaying game without having to partialy base it on AD&D or the whitebox. (those being the most formational era for PC RPGs). It must have been quite the era for developers - 90s DOS times, graphics were getting there, extended mode was just in and suddenly there was a lot more fun stuff they could do. huge explosion in faux 3D and eventualy real 3D, Westwood's Dune II, Wolf 3D engine (or proto one from Catacombs 3D) powered games, Doom, Quake, TTDL, whole lot of RPG games i've completly forgotten.... and to have your entire game "bible" guess written thorrowly by someone who cared and knew what they were doing to a point when decades later it all still makes enough cohesive sense is impressive.
Not entirely fair to boil D&D down to just a LOTR rip off, it has inspiration from all over, it was a lot of different nerds involved, a lot of creature designs were based off really odd looking miniatures they'd get from a local hobby store, for example.
@@fretzil *sigh* the whole whitebox was taking lore from LOTR is the point. yes there are neuances NOW but there were not when it begain. like a good portion of many entertaiment things it had to start from common ground (actualy this happened with plenty vehicle manufacturers - Suzuki, Honda both owe great deal of debt to their licensing deals with European car/bike makers WV was basicaly stealing Tatra dessigns because its not like Czechoslovakians were in any position to argue against it during the WWII etc. ettc.)
It is a fact that every Elder Scrolls Entry is a blown up Background Story for Arena Teams.
Elder Scrolls was my inspiration to make my own fantasy world I am writing a comic within. I really love this series and seeing how it developed mirroring my own world's development feels comforting and whimsical.
Name of your comic??
Release when????
@@ecksdee1149 It will release under the title The Young Parchments, the first volume will be subtitled "Coliseum".
@@ecksdee1149title: "Sporadic self-absorbed thrusts of creativity"
Release: never
Episode 1: the flight of fancy
@romko4496 sooooomeone sounds a bit bitter....
Kirkbride has talked about how he wanted to change the provinces names. One of the ideas was to have Hammerfell split into two kingdoms, one of Crowns and Forebears, each having a more african sounding name. One of the more rad ideas was to have the Bosmer call a wild hunt during the Oblivion Crisis and have the province name changed to Ghul-Mora, meaning "monster wood". Also the change to Elsweyr ended up happening, being split by the Thalmor during the Great War.
didn’t know about that, interesting. yeah the names are a bit uncreative lol but they’re iconic at this point, no need to change them up
They changed Summerset to "Alinor". But just like Elsweyr's "name change" due to 2 kingdoms: Nobody in the universe cares and just uses the old name still.
Agreed with Ceedott too. No reason to change it at this point.
You're one of the few TES channels that truly deep dives, you can tell by the resource pulls you throw in that had to have taken an era to find. Amazing work as always, i chilled so nicely with this vid
Thank you for the kind words as always!
Very honestly, I’m really not the person who discovered these, I got a lot of this info from sources in the description and from there it wasn’t too hard to find an associated resource, credit really goes to those people. Really should leave more disclaimers to read the description, but thank you regardless!
Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion all came out within 12 years (1994-2006). It's been nearly 13 years since Skyrim came out and ES6 is still nowhere in sight.
games are very different to make nowadays, though it doesn't necessarily have to be, Bethesda is also quite happy to coast on Skyrim rereleases for a long ass time, and Fallout 4 will probably join it as a game that gets revamped every few years.
it'll come out this decade that's for sure 😢
This was well done and your research is very thorough; a lot of these facts are pretty interesting. Thanks for the video -- lots of work went into it!
Happy 30th (belated) Birthday, Arena 🎂💖
Now we only need to wait another 30 years before TES 6...
Also please read the description for sources!
One person's useless is another's "babe wake up I'm gonna watch a long video about a game you have not heard of"
As for the French version of the manual: In Morrowind there's a few books in the French version that differ because they were translated from earlier versions. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case for Arena manual being an earlier version of the story. The daughter *could* be brought back into canon by simply having her killed during Tharn's reign (if he disliked her, why not arrange for an "accident"?): All listings for Uriel's children after Arena are his *living* (or recently dead) ones.
The size of Tamriel was retconned in PGTE1. That gives a distance between Amalexia and Dagoth Ur's peek. Maps vary enough the results won't be consistent, but they're all way smaller.
A few more random Arena facts:
Books in later games reference artifacts abandoning their user. This refers to Arena (and unpatched Daggerfall) gameplay where you can't repair artifacts and they disappear upon reaching 0 durability.
You can only hold one artifact at a time, but you never actually hold the Oghma Infinium so you can get it multiple times. Beware the game has no fatalsafe for the player not being able to assign attributes since their stats were all capped.
MP costs decrease with character level. This *can* take it to zero.
IIRC non-casting classes can cast spells if their cost is zero. This is vital if you actually want to play one since there's a bunch of mandatory utility spells (light, levitation, fire protection).
Can't believe there's no Wharf Rats guild in later titles, such a missed opportunity 🤦
I mean, they’re pretty much the same as the Thieves Guild so I guess they didn’t see the point in including them down the line but I guess it would’ve been interesting.
Your Daggerfall vids are great btw, listen to them when I’m working on other stuff lol
@@ceedott true, I simply love this archetype of coastal smuggler's guild. my ttrpg setting has a couple of rival gangs that I love--the Low Tide Boys and the Sea Urchins--so hearing about the Wharf Rats really resonated lol.
And thanks for the love! I'm glad the DF vids have made for nice background music, as that's my favorite kind of content to consume.
The virgin tunnel snakes vs the chad Wharf Rats.
One correction, Some of the painted art you used, David Lee Anderson painted them, myself and Ken Mayfeild drew the initial sketches. Love the dive you did.
The lore is crazy now like someone will have fun rewriting this
Yeah it’s crazy how much things changed over time, the lore is cool today but it’s nice to look back to when it was much more simple
21:21 To be fair... Xarses was an Altmeri high priest that achieved apotheosis...
Which is partly why Altmer wanting to ban the worship of Talos, another being that achieved apotheosis, as severely hypocritical.
great video man! And a very happy birthday to Arena!
I went down the exact same release date rabbit hole a few months ago, after watching a video about the exact same subject on Daggerfall. I had to dig up a ton of old stuff only to find out the release date was wrong.
Yeah I really wonder why they chose March 25th when it was clearly out for distribution way earlier. Todd’s ways are strange and unknowable…
@@ceedott Everything is Todd's fault (even when he wasn't in charge of the company)
4:29 wow! Anyone else love this image? The rolling fields in the background and the kinda hobbit hole style door with sod roof. Then a mysterious sign with a moon giving ya the 🌝
It's the concept art for the Elden Grove dungeon, really not sure why they made it look so cozy and charming 😅
@@ceedott lmao
@@ceedott i just looked up gameplay and it's all dark stone corridors and a dank, flooded area. That just makes the artwork more amusing
I imagined Talin, being in the Imperial Guard, was thrown in jail when JT took over and replaced the guard with monsters.
Edit: fun to see the origin of the infamous sweet roll gag🍞🍪
Thanks for bringing up usenet. By the time I first got in internet it was in aol era so I've not had any experience with it
As a owner of the "Game of the year" edition with the map I can say that they seem to keep the name "Dagoth Ur" for red mountain for a long time as the red Mountains core is named "dagoth Ur" on the map.
7:42 Apparently Bethesda has never heard of "retconning" and I guess would prefer to take the more complicated route when not necessary, but hey, you do you 🤷♂️
10:40 tbf, there are still prostitutes, they just made it less obvious.
*You hear your phone's ring tone go off. Its a new Ceedott video* (Open the video instantly)
To think Arena wasn't even 20 years old yet when Skyrim released.. it was 17.. and it came out in the early 90s. Just weird to think about.
Great video, really enjoyed watching this and I actually never knew about the Talon name and Breton default idea!
So the arena quest got cut twice, it can't catch a break.
I’ve heard that Skyrim is supposedly the flipped version of Middle Earth. Sky being the opposite of earth and rim being the opposite of middle. That would be pretty cool if it’s true.
Lord of the rims
@@lordlittletoeq8537 😂
It’s incredible how player reactions to these games don’t change - The Usenet post from 1994 reviewing the game mentions how breathtaking the graphics, showing just how much good framing and imagination can do, and appropriately how buggy the game is
One thing I could actually see Bethesda doing if they ever want to print money and don't want to release another new version of Skyrim is creating a Soul Calibur-style fighting game similar (in concept) to Arena. You could have 20 playable characters, with one male and one female from each race, and maybe have Daedra as unlockable players (a male Dremora and a female Golden Saint and Dark Seducer, probably). Maybe the final boss is either Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal. Have it be like Soul Calibur, where you have RPG elements and a world tour thing going in story mode. You could even set it during the events of Arena.
Why is the bartender at 11:15 polishing the glass like a smiling friends character
Because he was staring at that prostitute from the last scene transition and it got him a lil' excited.
lol
Might be set to cpu cycle.
Love it, the older TES games don't get enough attention imo.
8:20 Crypt of Farts gotta be one of my top 10 ES dungeons for sure
16:57 Martin the Blade you say? No relation to a certain bastard child of Uriel VII?
Is this how we honor the 6th house and the Tribe unmourned?
Wasn’t expecting Shannara to be mentioned.
Phynaster... my brain keeps hearing Thigh Master.
I still haven't played arena yet but i really should. I recently went back and started playing daggerfall though and it's fantastic I'll probably do arena sometime
They may both be dungeon crawlers but Arena and Daggerfall are 2 totally different ballgames
@vegamineral207 yeah that's what I heard. I've actually been slowly working through daggerfall since I left that original comment and I'm almost at the end I think so I might try arena after a while
6:08 The reality of many fantasy worlds and most likely D&D included is that they take inspiration from other works, you can call it "Copy" but no one cares because it is a constant of all Original works. Everyone takes inspiration from everyone, it's basically how it works to write a story and much more an entire universe.
For 20 minutes of useless facts, this video is amazing!
It's glade you like 20 minutes, cuz i'm gonna diddlier you that amount of time, drizzy
@@dinosaurioporextinguir8080 Bounce on it
@@DrakeLK yes, you will
Another ceedot certified classic
Nearly half of those 30 years don’t have a game release in them lol skyrim was 2011
great video
I must have missed why you started calling the protagonist the 'Eternal Champion'.
Is the implication that the protagonist in Arena is another incarnation of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion?
Everything in the elder scrolls is based on other fantasy series. Hammerfell and Morrowind are names of places in other fantasy series that I can't remember. None of it is an original idea
Only one complaint: the audio quality.
Its fine
@Hero_Of_Old - it's like your high school report card. A D is still a passing grade.
Good video
>The team from hammerfell was supposed to be called the "black casters"
Yikes.
Now this is my kind of content
5:12 An Indian contributed to Elder Scrolls. YESSIR INDIA
these are the useless facts that i like
Almost every roleplaying game was influenced by dungeons and dragons.
which in itself is pretty much just a ripoff of lords of the rings (Tolkien did what he set off to do - created mythology that enthrals)... but yes from wasteland and consequently actual fallout (you know 1 and 2), Diablo, Darkstone, shard of spring or ultima (which looks dangerously simillar to dungeons siege to a point where i am guessing its pretty much DS0),to even likes of Pathfinder or Might and Magic (or its spinoff series Heroes of might and magic). they all use varriation of some of the Dungeons and dragons rules. it is SO much of a fundation that i do not think you can do system of roleplaying game without having to partialy base it on AD&D or the whitebox. (those being the most formational era for PC RPGs).
It must have been quite the era for developers - 90s DOS times, graphics were getting there, extended mode was just in and suddenly there was a lot more fun stuff they could do. huge explosion in faux 3D and eventualy real 3D, Westwood's Dune II, Wolf 3D engine (or proto one from Catacombs 3D) powered games, Doom, Quake, TTDL, whole lot of RPG games i've completly forgotten.... and to have your entire game "bible" guess written thorrowly by someone who cared and knew what they were doing to a point when decades later it all still makes enough cohesive sense is impressive.
D&D was more inspired by Sword and Sorcery than Tolkein though
Not entirely fair to boil D&D down to just a LOTR rip off, it has inspiration from all over, it was a lot of different nerds involved, a lot of creature designs were based off really odd looking miniatures they'd get from a local hobby store, for example.
@@fretzil *sigh* the whole whitebox was taking lore from LOTR is the point.
yes there are neuances NOW but there were not when it begain. like a good portion of many entertaiment things it had to start from common ground (actualy this happened with plenty vehicle manufacturers - Suzuki, Honda both owe great deal of debt to their licensing deals with European car/bike makers WV was basicaly stealing Tatra dessigns because its not like Czechoslovakians were in any position to argue against it during the WWII etc. ettc.)
press f4 to not have the pixel menus
You content is really good but every time you pronounce and s a loud painful whistle is exited which ruins the video for me I can't listen to it.
Interesting.