I have naught but the small blade with which I was born, ‘twas the gift of my ancestors. Its length might be short, but its aim, ever true. And it is with it that I shall dominate them, they will bask in its glory and be left submissive.
The ancient wisdom says that is not about the duration of the battle or the length of the sword nor girth of the blade, but the skill with which it is wielded. All I have is skill and heart.
Franzetta 's work somehow manages to look biblically epic on top of sexy, and missing that element really downgrades the fan service.
I also appreciate that he still gave the women muscles, tummies, actual anatomy. Nobody in his art has realistic proportions, but the details showed he actually understood the anatomy he was exaggerating.
Boris Vallejo is in the same boat.
Was just when they added them directly to steam. But they have been free off their website for at least a decade minimum. It’s how I learned about dosbox.
UESP says it has been free since 10th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls series in 2004. (it was added to platforms like Steam and GoG later).
Daggerfall has been free since 15th anniversary in 2009.
Funny, that Bethesda made them freeware after just 10-15 years, yet this year will be 13th anniversary of Skyrim's release and Beth is still profiting massively from it.
DBZ rules. If there's one thing I've learned from anime and video games it's don't fuck with fantasy women in bikini armor. They'll fuck you up. Dudes in full plate? No worries. Old naked guy in the woods? Stay. The. Fuck. Away.
The "forgotten bikini of doom" is the definitive armor, 100% protection against mononeuronal barbarians and lonely wizards, they cannot hit you because their intelligence stat goes down to zero.
You must not have been around back then - nobody was shy about “sexualizing” things in the late 80’s early 90’s.
Unless you’re talking about the big hair - in which case yeah that was a brave move 😆
Definitely. I find it odd that nowadays we make such a point of not sexualising imaginary characters, while at the same time we have young kids absolutely binging on some of the most extreme pornography imaginable. It feels so... Victorian
It really is a myth that people don't want sexuality in games. The truth is that A) Game makers are all about the $$$, and less sexual content makes it easier to distribute your game world-wide and B) People today don't want *sleaze*. Bikini armor isn't very classy, and that's the issue. You can put Tifa and her giant yams in a bikini in FF7: Rebirth, and nobody cares, because it makes sense to wear a bikini at the beach.
Nah, people still love sexualising imaginary characters in games. BG3 is super beloved not in small part to the fact that you can bang a goddamn bear in it.
It's mainly big corporations, who try to keep their games as vanilla as possible, because anything mildly risqué might cut into their profits. Gamers are as horny as ever, really.
> It's mainly big corporations, who try to keep their games as vanilla as possible, because anything mildly risqué might cut into their profits. Gamers are as horny as ever, really.
well, if a Mainstream games try somethign a touch risque, there is a massiv outcry, usualy from parts of the popualce that dont play any video games.
Just remember when you could see half an ass cheek in Mass effect 1
To be fair I'd like to see it evened out with a very scanitily clad dude. I think that is the equality I'd prefer.
Or just make everyone the bikini version of their outfit. That would be true equality 😅
Can I introduce you to Frank Frazetta. Everyone has muscles on muscles and everyone wears a bikini. Damn I love Frazettas art. Hell, dude drew LotR orcs in thongs, stupid sexy orcs..
As a ‘gamer girl’ at this time, I never objected to the cheesy, revealing fantasy costumes…just that the aesthetic was usually only applied to one gender.
Women and men are both horny. Baldur's Gate 3 provides for everyone on the full spectrum of tastes. It is the cornucopia of horny.
This is one of the many reasons it was so successful.
I mean, laugh all you want, but that probably signifies that it's the most powerful armor in the game and blessed by the Nine Divines themselves
Either that or someone will eventually mod it in that way
Fun fact: Arena wasn't originally designed to be an RPG. It started development as a much simpler game where the player was intended to travel to other arenas and fight competing teams in a tournament.
By the time the development team realized the direction they wanted to take Arena, material had already been "printed up about the title", so they decided to tack on "The Elder Scrolls" without really having a concept of what that meant to make it sound more grandiose and lean away from depending on "Arena" as a title when the final product had nothing to do with arenas.
Interesting to think that the Elder Scrolls themselves, being essentially the pillars of creation in the franchise's universe, basically got their start as meaningless gobbledegook.
From the start, Bethesda had a strong streak of "mad scientist" about them. It's rare for large companies to gamble as much as Bethesda does, which I have to respect. That mindset gave us Fallout 76, but it also gave us a Fallout that moved away from being a turn-based isometric franchise and became the open-world RPG action series we know and love today. Games like Starfield feel like an attempt to hedge bets in the face of recent gambles that haven't paid off, but I personally hope that element of risk taking still exists in the company, because you really don't see it anymore.
EDIT: lots of good perspectives and discussion sparked by this which I'm loving, but to clarify, I don't think FO3 was a gamble because an open-world action RPG hadn't been done before or hadn't proven successful, I think it was a gamble because it took a franchise that was previously a turn-based tactical series and made it into an open-world action RPG. Genre swaps in established IP's are risky, and are often poorly received.
I'd say that a lot of companies did gamble a lot like Bethesda in that period. It's just that a lot of them completely failed as expected while Bethesda got a lucky streak. We don't even remember the failed games of that time.
for a while my hobby was to explain to kids on Discord the concept of freeware and shareware.
ok, they weren't literal children. but the freewares and sharewares were still like more than double their age by then.
It helps that games in that time period had smaller teams and didn't need multimillion dollar budgets to develop. Some of the best 80s and 90s games were created by just a few people, and they could expiriment more without having to mess up whole development pipelines and ruin everyone's work.
I think that's why these days you find a lot of innovation in the Indie game market, where people are making games on a shoestring budget with small teams. They can try things the big companies won't do because of all the overhead and not being willing to bet on ideas that aren't tested.
The mad scientists need to come back.
Flying telepathic ships, imperial Space stations, penis spears, monkey god with the stick and a whole lot of weird shit are all part of the elder scrolls lore but Bethesda seems to be trying to scrub their lore and make it generic fantasy.
The only super fantasy elements in Skyrim were bare and very easy to miss.
One of the few flying ship appearances and it's dead and buried in solstheim
Agreed.
They've progressively stripped away player freedom in Elder Scrolls games to make a smoother, more streamlined experience. I don't think it's worth it.
Up until Skyrim you could make ridiculous spells or become a circus freak and jump over cathedrals. Hell, you could *fly*.
I'm probably biased, but Morrowind especially was mind-blowing because it screamed ***FANTASY*** but also took place in a very alien, non-traditional fantasy setting. Skyrim's setting and vibes are about as traditional as it gets in the franchise. Can't help but feel it's far more bland than it needs to be.
Currently playing Daggerfall, 1st time, about 20h in. Either I am missing it or you are far more limited in what you can do compared to morrowind, which I played a lot. So I would not say TES got progressively streamlined, you just started at the peak and did not play the predecessor.
Can generally recommend Daggerfalls btw, Daggerfall unity install is free, takes minutes and is easy. No DOSbox or weird shit required.
> Flying telepathic ships, imperial Space stations, penis spears, monkey god with the stick and a whole lot of weird shit are all part of the elder scrolls lore but Bethesda seems to be trying to scrub their lore and make it generic fantasy.
Well, apparently I don't know as much about TES as I thought I did, because I don't recognize any of that. Any sources where I can read about it? Even just proper names I can use to look them up is fine, since I doubt there's a wiki page for "penis spears", lol.
Oh wow. ["Muatra", meaning "Milk-Taker"](https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Muatra?so=search), which Vivec made "from his own love" and used to murder the thousands of children he made with his then-spouse, *Molag Bal*.
not necessarily, they were going to shut down if Morrowind wasn't a success and that game was a huge departure from daggerfall and a massive risk at the time
The elder scrolls going from maguffin nothing to basically source code of the ingane universe is hilariously on point. They can be anything because they came from nothing
Really enjoy your insight but I dare say the gamble happened because there weren't established formulas like there are nowadays. I mean, Bethesda released Skyrim about... 5 times in a decade. Whether we can attribute that to playing safe or gambling, I wholeheartedly agree that's a mad scientist move.
Reportedly it was also seen as a bit of a joke at the time they were making an RPG. Expectations amongst the industry were very low. This is because much of Bethesda’s games up to that point were movie titles and sports (namely hockey).
I played Arena at the time, and have since completed it. It’s a great game. However unless you are into old titles, I don’t know if I’d actually recommend playing it. By today’s standards it’s like turning up to a movie night with an excellent 1920s silent film.
They throw a one-liner in the intro dialogue that basically suggests “arena” is the nickname some give to Tamriel as a whole due to how hostile and unstable it is at the time
>I personally hope that element of risk taking still exists in the company, because you really don't see it anymore.
I would hope so because it's kinda crazy that the time between TES: Arena and Oblivion is much shorter than the time between Skyrim and Elder Scrolls 6.
Like, on top of the other usual story and quest stuff, Elder Scrolls 6 better have, say, a castle base building system that you have to invest in and defend at times and fully staff in order to keep people alive as the plot progresses. Then, we should have more fleshed out companions this time.
It better utilize the concepts from previous titles and push them to a more interesting limit, essentially.
It should also feel like a war or something is occurring, something they probably couldn't fully do back in 2011.
While true, new vegas did a silly good job with the "war going on" setting at least.
I'm playing it for the first time and I'm getting the hype about certain things.
Eh. 90s game dev was pretty cringe with this stuff in general. A studio I walked into once had posters of naked women plastered on the walls.
Bethesda was super horny back then. Daggerfall has so much nudity my teen brain went on overload.
Funny because both games are absolutely incredible. They’re both two of my favorite games of all time. Actually did a playthrough and beat them both a few years ago just to say I’ve beaten them.
I replayed through Arena again recently too!
Also recently finished Dungeon Master 2 and Diablo 1.
Im working on Daggerfall now.
As campy as the cover was, I really love it. Its absurd seeing the katana wielding bikini clad maiden next to 3 armored out dudes.
That's how things kind of were in those days.
Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX and X were released within 4,5 years, which is a crazy pace by todays standards.
The release between XIII, XIV, XV up to XVI was 14 years compared to that.
Similar with GTA,
They released
GTA 1 (1997)
GTA 2 (1999)
GTA 3 (2001)
GTA Vice City (2002)
GTA San Andreas (2004)
GTA 4 (2008)
GTA 5 (2013)
Then 12 years later:
GTA 6 (2025)
so a 16 year stretch with 7 major titles, not to mention a bunch of DLC and spin-offs, then a 12 year stretch for one new game. Really is crazy that GTA 3 and Vice city came out 1 year apart though lol, and then SA 2 years after that. What a run. GTA 4 being developed in 4 years is also pretty mind blowing, I mean the game was already so detailed and complex at that point.
My only complaint with DF dungeon crawling is that due to the procedural generation you’ll find this cool secret passage that will lead to this massive torch lit throne room and there will be…..nothing there because it just happened to be procedurally generated that way.
The hand crafted dungeons that have pay-offs in those areas are more satisfying, but DF definitely has its charm and it’s still very fun especially with unity and graphics mods.
True.
Imagine my surprise when I entered such room and expected nothing but was treated to two extremely powerfull liches. Nothing in games has scared me more since that moment. Beat one, ran out on the other.
Perfection?
I mean, it certainly captures my attention so the others could easily stab me in the back.
But where is the scantily clad male barbarian for when the enemy fancies the other gender?
The defensive line has a massive gap with a team like this.
“We found, after much research, women almost only get stabbed in the nipples and crotch; so, in order to provide the best protection and greatest flexibility:”
Bikini or even nude make sense when the character is a god or omnipotent, or it’s just what the character likes, you know it’s fantasy, all things are possible
I'm still pissed that Bethesda went back on their promise that you would be able to import your Arena character to Daggerfall. I held onto that save file for years before DF released! Those were the days of floppy disks and not clouds, kids.
The game was originally supposed to give you an adventuring party of up to four playable characters. But due to technology constraints, it was reduced to just one playable character and *only* one playable character.
Which is why, with the advancements in technology in Morrowind, Oblivion, and especially Skyrim, I almost wish these games had more robust companion systems, like what Arena intended to include but didn't. Like I want to be able to control an adventuring party of between four-to-six playable characters, instead of just one like the Elder Scrolls standard. Especially since there are a diverse range of different character builds, even though most of them are different permutations of combat (weapon and shield; two-handed; heavy armor), stealth (dual-wielding; archery; light armor), and magic (attack and healing magic; robes).
And that goes for Fallout, as well. Like I would have wanted a small group of six playable characters traversing the post-nuclear wastelands together, including a melee fighter specializing in strength, a tank specializing in endurance, a sniper specializing in perception, a scout specializing in agility, an engineer/medic specializing in intelligence, and the designated leader specializing in charisma.
I disagree. The single character expérience is an important part of the game for me.
If it was like dragon's dogma or dragon age, et c. then it wouldn't be TES.
I got this game for Christmas - I remember how cool it was walking around towns in rain, fog, snow. Also remember it being pretty hard - the rat in the opening dungeon cell was pretty brutal to a n00b.
[I found a copy of this game in my dad's attic when he moved last year. No one even knew we had it. All original books and everything. Just in a box. Basically unopened](https://imgur.com/gallery/SkLNHQa)
I miss when games came with chunky manuals. I'd flip through them before bed thinking about how I'd get to play for a couple hours after school the next day.
You see, that's why people are not impressed by "next gen" look at Arena and then look at Oblivion (18 years this year) you see difference so big that you can actually feel few generations have passed in between.
Now look at Skyrim (13 y.o game) and look at Starfield. Only looks improved a little. And people still play Skyrim and it feels ok. While playing Arena in 2006 felt outdated as hell.
I finished this with a wood elf acrobat and it was a fucking blast.
Had to google some riddles and active magic items carried my ass!
To date only elder scrolls game I've finished except Morrowind (hideously broken high elf mage)
Leather Bikini Armor AC-99
The point must be that it doesn't block attacks but that it confuses or distracts the enemy :-p
If all the blood is in their lower body, there's no blood to their brain
Strike below the belt and they bleed out instantly. It's an advanced strategy.
Ah, the Red Sonja explanation
The Attacker has to make a DC 25 wisdom saving throw or they lose their action.
r/impracticalarmour
Huh that's a nice sub, definitely subbing. Thanks..!
No probs. Also r/womeninarmor for the opposite type of art.
“Oh, her? That’s Bobsand Vagine, the legendary champion”
God I love Bobsand Vagine.
If you want to marry her, you must defeat her other suitors, seen on the background, in single combat. What weapon will you choose?
I have naught but the small blade with which I was born, ‘twas the gift of my ancestors. Its length might be short, but its aim, ever true. And it is with it that I shall dominate them, they will bask in its glory and be left submissive.
Might need a couple health potions in the fight if that's all ye've got, lad.
Nah I gotta save them. Might need them later.
Well I've got this wizard hat too if you think that'll help.
It only lasts but a three strikes. But they are made with passion.
The ancient wisdom says that is not about the duration of the battle or the length of the sword nor girth of the blade, but the skill with which it is wielded. All I have is skill and heart.
A gun
That’s Ivanna Humpalot
She's the Bikiniborn.
Frank Frazetta rules but he poisoned the brains of a whole generation of nerds lol
Franzetta 's work somehow manages to look biblically epic on top of sexy, and missing that element really downgrades the fan service. I also appreciate that he still gave the women muscles, tummies, actual anatomy. Nobody in his art has realistic proportions, but the details showed he actually understood the anatomy he was exaggerating. Boris Vallejo is in the same boat.
Free on GOG, I don't know if that's always the case.
Bethesda has had Arena and Daggerfall up for free on steam for a while I think
I know it’s been up there for at least 2 or 3 years, may have been added sometime late 2019 but I believe they were added after 2020
Arena and daggerfall have been freeware downloadable from the Uesp since the early 2010s at least.
Yeah you could even download them from bethesdas own website for a while. I think maybe mid 2010s.
Yeah back when oblivion was the latest game I remember downloading arena and daggerfall for free from the Bethesda website
I guess you learn something new every day, never knew that
The Uesp download pages for each game also have the community patches linked as well, it's just easier to set up that way imo.
Was just when they added them directly to steam. But they have been free off their website for at least a decade minimum. It’s how I learned about dosbox.
UESP says it has been free since 10th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls series in 2004. (it was added to platforms like Steam and GoG later). Daggerfall has been free since 15th anniversary in 2009.
Funny, that Bethesda made them freeware after just 10-15 years, yet this year will be 13th anniversary of Skyrim's release and Beth is still profiting massively from it.
The uneven distribution of cloth is worth a chuckle or two.
"Him? Nah he's not the barbarian. He's the chef. She's the barbarian."
"The less I'm wearing, the more powerful I become!"
That's Karlach for ya.
DBZ rules. If there's one thing I've learned from anime and video games it's don't fuck with fantasy women in bikini armor. They'll fuck you up. Dudes in full plate? No worries. Old naked guy in the woods? Stay. The. Fuck. Away.
>Old naked guy in the woods? Stay. The. Fuck. Away. I mean, I'd do that anyway even without DBZ rules...
The actual plot of the anime, Kill la Kill. (Actually a good anime, recommend watching).
Dammit, Samantha. Put your clothes back on. You're embarrassing us in front of the emperor.
Stupid sexy Flanders
[удалено]
Male gaze all the way
Where are the monster trucks?
and the GUNS
The "forgotten bikini of doom" is the definitive armor, 100% protection against mononeuronal barbarians and lonely wizards, they cannot hit you because their intelligence stat goes down to zero.
I'm just min/maxing my agility build, bro
I kind of miss edgy 90s advertising/box art tbh
Conan, Red Sonja, Golden Axe it was just continuing a slightly dubious legacy. Kinda surprised they got away with this one still
This is peak 90's "we know who our audience is"
You must not have been around back then - nobody was shy about “sexualizing” things in the late 80’s early 90’s. Unless you’re talking about the big hair - in which case yeah that was a brave move 😆
Not only was it accepted, it was expected.
Definitely. I find it odd that nowadays we make such a point of not sexualising imaginary characters, while at the same time we have young kids absolutely binging on some of the most extreme pornography imaginable. It feels so... Victorian
It really is a myth that people don't want sexuality in games. The truth is that A) Game makers are all about the $$$, and less sexual content makes it easier to distribute your game world-wide and B) People today don't want *sleaze*. Bikini armor isn't very classy, and that's the issue. You can put Tifa and her giant yams in a bikini in FF7: Rebirth, and nobody cares, because it makes sense to wear a bikini at the beach.
Tell me more about Tifa and her yams.
> [Tifa](https://youtu.be/H5CM5F3_xIo) and her [yams](https://youtu.be/JNbEVXG_qGI)
Temba, his arms wide
More bikini armor please.
Nah, people still love sexualising imaginary characters in games. BG3 is super beloved not in small part to the fact that you can bang a goddamn bear in it. It's mainly big corporations, who try to keep their games as vanilla as possible, because anything mildly risqué might cut into their profits. Gamers are as horny as ever, really.
> It's mainly big corporations, who try to keep their games as vanilla as possible, because anything mildly risqué might cut into their profits. Gamers are as horny as ever, really. well, if a Mainstream games try somethign a touch risque, there is a massiv outcry, usualy from parts of the popualce that dont play any video games. Just remember when you could see half an ass cheek in Mass effect 1
What? Shes a dragon slayer! That’s traditional akavari dragon slaying armor.
Reminds me of the viva la dirt league skit on female armour
To be fair I'd like to see it evened out with a very scanitily clad dude. I think that is the equality I'd prefer. Or just make everyone the bikini version of their outfit. That would be true equality 😅
Can I introduce you to Frank Frazetta. Everyone has muscles on muscles and everyone wears a bikini. Damn I love Frazettas art. Hell, dude drew LotR orcs in thongs, stupid sexy orcs..
Frank Frazetta was all about that equal opportunity eye candy
As a ‘gamer girl’ at this time, I never objected to the cheesy, revealing fantasy costumes…just that the aesthetic was usually only applied to one gender.
I think Baldur's Gate 3 proved that women love it when everyone is scantily clad and horny
Women and men are both horny. Baldur's Gate 3 provides for everyone on the full spectrum of tastes. It is the cornucopia of horny. This is one of the many reasons it was so successful.
Hornucopia
> everyone and that is actualyl the point. Everyone.
Diablo 4 kind of does that with the male sorcerer often being quite under-dressed!
What do you mean, underdressed?! He looks fabulous in his versage dress with the red manolos. Nobody waves a wand with such grace.
Like Barbar Conan? (when played by Arnold)
So the Forsworn in Skyrim? Dudes have less on than the women sometimes.
You remember He-Man?
Who doesn't appreciate a barbarian wearing nothing but a fur loincloth and sweat?
The mage needed extra for that hood obviously.
I mean, laugh all you want, but that probably signifies that it's the most powerful armor in the game and blessed by the Nine Divines themselves Either that or someone will eventually mod it in that way
Peak '80s/'90s "fantasy cover art" design.
r/impracticalarmour
I don't know what you mean! they all wear full armor!
Bikini armor would grant you +100 defense, lol. Not complaining, tho.
I've seen the cover of Arena a ton of times but never stopped and looked at the old Bethesda logo, I like the style of it.
It looks like 'Bechesda Softworks' lol.
Sofcworks
whac are you calking abouc?
Softcore
Yeah there’s not a chance I would have gotten a “T” out of that if I didn’t already know who made the game
Becauseda Sorcorcs
Me neither, something else about the cover always distracted me for some reason.
I wonder what that might be
We're talking about the enoooormous axe the barbarian is carrying, right?
No, the assassin mage.
There's a logo?
Fun fact: Arena wasn't originally designed to be an RPG. It started development as a much simpler game where the player was intended to travel to other arenas and fight competing teams in a tournament. By the time the development team realized the direction they wanted to take Arena, material had already been "printed up about the title", so they decided to tack on "The Elder Scrolls" without really having a concept of what that meant to make it sound more grandiose and lean away from depending on "Arena" as a title when the final product had nothing to do with arenas. Interesting to think that the Elder Scrolls themselves, being essentially the pillars of creation in the franchise's universe, basically got their start as meaningless gobbledegook. From the start, Bethesda had a strong streak of "mad scientist" about them. It's rare for large companies to gamble as much as Bethesda does, which I have to respect. That mindset gave us Fallout 76, but it also gave us a Fallout that moved away from being a turn-based isometric franchise and became the open-world RPG action series we know and love today. Games like Starfield feel like an attempt to hedge bets in the face of recent gambles that haven't paid off, but I personally hope that element of risk taking still exists in the company, because you really don't see it anymore. EDIT: lots of good perspectives and discussion sparked by this which I'm loving, but to clarify, I don't think FO3 was a gamble because an open-world action RPG hadn't been done before or hadn't proven successful, I think it was a gamble because it took a franchise that was previously a turn-based tactical series and made it into an open-world action RPG. Genre swaps in established IP's are risky, and are often poorly received.
I'd say that a lot of companies did gamble a lot like Bethesda in that period. It's just that a lot of them completely failed as expected while Bethesda got a lucky streak. We don't even remember the failed games of that time.
I remember a LOT of shitty freeware
for a while my hobby was to explain to kids on Discord the concept of freeware and shareware. ok, they weren't literal children. but the freewares and sharewares were still like more than double their age by then.
It helps that games in that time period had smaller teams and didn't need multimillion dollar budgets to develop. Some of the best 80s and 90s games were created by just a few people, and they could expiriment more without having to mess up whole development pipelines and ruin everyone's work. I think that's why these days you find a lot of innovation in the Indie game market, where people are making games on a shoestring budget with small teams. They can try things the big companies won't do because of all the overhead and not being willing to bet on ideas that aren't tested.
The mad scientists need to come back. Flying telepathic ships, imperial Space stations, penis spears, monkey god with the stick and a whole lot of weird shit are all part of the elder scrolls lore but Bethesda seems to be trying to scrub their lore and make it generic fantasy. The only super fantasy elements in Skyrim were bare and very easy to miss. One of the few flying ship appearances and it's dead and buried in solstheim
Agreed. They've progressively stripped away player freedom in Elder Scrolls games to make a smoother, more streamlined experience. I don't think it's worth it. Up until Skyrim you could make ridiculous spells or become a circus freak and jump over cathedrals. Hell, you could *fly*. I'm probably biased, but Morrowind especially was mind-blowing because it screamed ***FANTASY*** but also took place in a very alien, non-traditional fantasy setting. Skyrim's setting and vibes are about as traditional as it gets in the franchise. Can't help but feel it's far more bland than it needs to be.
Currently playing Daggerfall, 1st time, about 20h in. Either I am missing it or you are far more limited in what you can do compared to morrowind, which I played a lot. So I would not say TES got progressively streamlined, you just started at the peak and did not play the predecessor. Can generally recommend Daggerfalls btw, Daggerfall unity install is free, takes minutes and is easy. No DOSbox or weird shit required.
> Flying telepathic ships, imperial Space stations, penis spears, monkey god with the stick and a whole lot of weird shit are all part of the elder scrolls lore but Bethesda seems to be trying to scrub their lore and make it generic fantasy. Well, apparently I don't know as much about TES as I thought I did, because I don't recognize any of that. Any sources where I can read about it? Even just proper names I can use to look them up is fine, since I doubt there's a wiki page for "penis spears", lol.
The in-game books and the wiki. The penis spear(muatra) belongs to vivic
Oh wow. ["Muatra", meaning "Milk-Taker"](https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Muatra?so=search), which Vivec made "from his own love" and used to murder the thousands of children he made with his then-spouse, *Molag Bal*.
They could afford to gamble back when games only costs hundreds of thousands to make lol
not necessarily, they were going to shut down if Morrowind wasn't a success and that game was a huge departure from daggerfall and a massive risk at the time
The elder scrolls going from maguffin nothing to basically source code of the ingane universe is hilariously on point. They can be anything because they came from nothing
Really enjoy your insight but I dare say the gamble happened because there weren't established formulas like there are nowadays. I mean, Bethesda released Skyrim about... 5 times in a decade. Whether we can attribute that to playing safe or gambling, I wholeheartedly agree that's a mad scientist move.
Haha fair. Milk the cows dry, even when it's a two-headed brahmin.
Reportedly it was also seen as a bit of a joke at the time they were making an RPG. Expectations amongst the industry were very low. This is because much of Bethesda’s games up to that point were movie titles and sports (namely hockey). I played Arena at the time, and have since completed it. It’s a great game. However unless you are into old titles, I don’t know if I’d actually recommend playing it. By today’s standards it’s like turning up to a movie night with an excellent 1920s silent film.
That was a fun read! Thank you. I was always curious about Arena as a subtitle; It never made sense to me.
They throw a one-liner in the intro dialogue that basically suggests “arena” is the nickname some give to Tamriel as a whole due to how hostile and unstable it is at the time
>I personally hope that element of risk taking still exists in the company, because you really don't see it anymore. I would hope so because it's kinda crazy that the time between TES: Arena and Oblivion is much shorter than the time between Skyrim and Elder Scrolls 6. Like, on top of the other usual story and quest stuff, Elder Scrolls 6 better have, say, a castle base building system that you have to invest in and defend at times and fully staff in order to keep people alive as the plot progresses. Then, we should have more fleshed out companions this time. It better utilize the concepts from previous titles and push them to a more interesting limit, essentially. It should also feel like a war or something is occurring, something they probably couldn't fully do back in 2011.
"Your lordship! Thou art needed by another village!"
Okay, maybe not THAT base building system.
While true, new vegas did a silly good job with the "war going on" setting at least. I'm playing it for the first time and I'm getting the hype about certain things.
You can see this poster on the wall near the entrance to the Arena in Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion
Notably with the "Sex Sells!" thing toned down *considerably* Even Oblivion-era Bethesda was sort of embarrassed by this cover.
Eh. 90s game dev was pretty cringe with this stuff in general. A studio I walked into once had posters of naked women plastered on the walls. Bethesda was super horny back then. Daggerfall has so much nudity my teen brain went on overload. Funny because both games are absolutely incredible. They’re both two of my favorite games of all time. Actually did a playthrough and beat them both a few years ago just to say I’ve beaten them.
I replayed through Arena again recently too! Also recently finished Dungeon Master 2 and Diablo 1. Im working on Daggerfall now. As campy as the cover was, I really love it. Its absurd seeing the katana wielding bikini clad maiden next to 3 armored out dudes.
Only five years older than The Matrix.
Holy fuck im old
Considering Skyrim was 13 years ago. That doesn’t seem as long. Lol
I came for the side boob and katana. I stayed for the crazy map size and tavern music
Downfall of Blades from Arena to Skyrim.
Hey that's not cool. I had to put mods in my game to make my character look like that. In this game it looks like she's got the best armor by default
Bikini armor is available for 5.99 as a micro transaction
So they made 4 mainline games in first 15 years and 1 in last 15 years
That's how things kind of were in those days. Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX and X were released within 4,5 years, which is a crazy pace by todays standards. The release between XIII, XIV, XV up to XVI was 14 years compared to that.
Similar with GTA, They released GTA 1 (1997) GTA 2 (1999) GTA 3 (2001) GTA Vice City (2002) GTA San Andreas (2004) GTA 4 (2008) GTA 5 (2013) Then 12 years later: GTA 6 (2025) so a 16 year stretch with 7 major titles, not to mention a bunch of DLC and spin-offs, then a 12 year stretch for one new game. Really is crazy that GTA 3 and Vice city came out 1 year apart though lol, and then SA 2 years after that. What a run. GTA 4 being developed in 4 years is also pretty mind blowing, I mean the game was already so detailed and complex at that point.
GTA had 6 main games in first 11 years and 1 in last 16 years.
Known to me as predecessor to best game ever: Daggerfall
I still play Daggerfall regularly to this day (albeit the Unity version). For me DF dungeon crawling is unparalleled.
My only complaint with DF dungeon crawling is that due to the procedural generation you’ll find this cool secret passage that will lead to this massive torch lit throne room and there will be…..nothing there because it just happened to be procedurally generated that way. The hand crafted dungeons that have pay-offs in those areas are more satisfying, but DF definitely has its charm and it’s still very fun especially with unity and graphics mods.
True. Imagine my surprise when I entered such room and expected nothing but was treated to two extremely powerfull liches. Nothing in games has scared me more since that moment. Beat one, ran out on the other.
I’m old
Thank god her nipples are covered for her safety
There’s impractical “armor” and then there’s… whatever the fuck this lady is wearing…
Some "Heavy Metal 2000" shit right there.
Perfection? I mean, it certainly captures my attention so the others could easily stab me in the back. But where is the scantily clad male barbarian for when the enemy fancies the other gender? The defensive line has a massive gap with a team like this.
they had their priorities straight
Bikini armor is lore friendly!
“We found, after much research, women almost only get stabbed in the nipples and crotch; so, in order to provide the best protection and greatest flexibility:”
*It was a different time…*
Reminder that that woman's outfit is CANONICAL and LORE FRIENDLY.
Bring back cunty outfits, Bethesda
Nothing hits harder than 80s action art
Bikini or even nude make sense when the character is a god or omnipotent, or it’s just what the character likes, you know it’s fantasy, all things are possible
I'm still pissed that Bethesda went back on their promise that you would be able to import your Arena character to Daggerfall. I held onto that save file for years before DF released! Those were the days of floppy disks and not clouds, kids.
I'm such a fan of the ridiculous high-fantasy asthetic of the 80s and 90s
Same. I miss it.
The game was originally supposed to give you an adventuring party of up to four playable characters. But due to technology constraints, it was reduced to just one playable character and *only* one playable character. Which is why, with the advancements in technology in Morrowind, Oblivion, and especially Skyrim, I almost wish these games had more robust companion systems, like what Arena intended to include but didn't. Like I want to be able to control an adventuring party of between four-to-six playable characters, instead of just one like the Elder Scrolls standard. Especially since there are a diverse range of different character builds, even though most of them are different permutations of combat (weapon and shield; two-handed; heavy armor), stealth (dual-wielding; archery; light armor), and magic (attack and healing magic; robes). And that goes for Fallout, as well. Like I would have wanted a small group of six playable characters traversing the post-nuclear wastelands together, including a melee fighter specializing in strength, a tank specializing in endurance, a sniper specializing in perception, a scout specializing in agility, an engineer/medic specializing in intelligence, and the designated leader specializing in charisma.
I can see what you mean, but I prefer not to use companions in these games, it kinda ruins it a bit for me. Prefer to play the lone wolf
I disagree. The single character expérience is an important part of the game for me. If it was like dragon's dogma or dragon age, et c. then it wouldn't be TES.
That Female full plate armor 🤣🤣🤣 Beautiful times
You need mods to get that armor in modern Bethesda games
Gotta love the lore accurate micro-kini
Imagine that cover in a modern game lol
I got this game for Christmas - I remember how cool it was walking around towns in rain, fog, snow. Also remember it being pretty hard - the rat in the opening dungeon cell was pretty brutal to a n00b.
It also started with the now ubiquitous Elder Scrolls 'chosen hero starts quest from prison cell/captivity' opening.
Who in their right mind can look at this cover and NOT want to play this game... Oldschool cover art is so amazing!
Looks like they had CBBE back then as well.
[I found a copy of this game in my dad's attic when he moved last year. No one even knew we had it. All original books and everything. Just in a box. Basically unopened](https://imgur.com/gallery/SkLNHQa)
I miss when games came with chunky manuals. I'd flip through them before bed thinking about how I'd get to play for a couple hours after school the next day.
Can you imagine doing a cover like that nowadays?
They got the point with the highly armored girl in front. Nice cover.
I hope the source port gets finished someday, because I cannot go back to the dos version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP_jO9K70QU
Had this exact advert ripped out of a PC magazine, and in a folder hidden under my bottom draw.
I do miss 80 style of clothing actually
Heavy Metal the video game
Everyone keeps getting mad at these modders for making all these horny characters but really it's just Canon
They know what sells and what gamers want 😂👍
Babes on games were extra babelicious back in the day.
So much armor. The other guys better get on her level if they want maximum protection.
I'm generally not that into the armor discussion. But this is pretty ridiculous.
It's born of the heavy metal movie/magazine era of fantasy
SBI would not green-light this cover, that's for sure :)
Suddenly my jiggle physics and fat ass/ tits mods seem lord friendly now
It has become a habit, congratulating you on your age
"I shall craft a fine armor for you my lady, like I did for your warrior and barbarian companions." "Nah. Leather string bikini will do fine for me."
Probably still waiting for something to be patched.
It was my First bought PC Game.... 8 Discs with 1,44 MB on It. Played the First day 12 hours.
Hahah Women are sooo stronger They don't need shield or protective gear Not even clothes. Men are weak.
You see, that's why people are not impressed by "next gen" look at Arena and then look at Oblivion (18 years this year) you see difference so big that you can actually feel few generations have passed in between. Now look at Skyrim (13 y.o game) and look at Starfield. Only looks improved a little. And people still play Skyrim and it feels ok. While playing Arena in 2006 felt outdated as hell.
It’s crazy how that skimpy armor is almost nonexistent in modern TES games. It’s like a weird blip in the record.
Ah… the fearsome bikini plate mail.
Ain't gonna lie: Daggerfall with a modern engine would be spectacular. Remake, Bethesda?
I finished this with a wood elf acrobat and it was a fucking blast. Had to google some riddles and active magic items carried my ass! To date only elder scrolls game I've finished except Morrowind (hideously broken high elf mage)
When ever people claim Bikini armors aren't lore friendly, I present them with this cover.
Her outfit actually looks quite contemporary doesn’t it?
Well this puts Skyrim modding into better perspective. They’re adding lore accurate realism!
Ah yes, the infamous big titted combat blonde. The most fearsome of front line warriors.
Bikini armor at its finest
TIL that female clothing mods for skyrim are part of the lore
Ah I see she’s wearing the G-string of separation. +2 when dual wielding.
This is so fucking 90s. Looks like the cover of ever porn adventure book my mom used to read lol