The Elder Scrolls: Arena

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is the game that began Bethesda's enormous fantasy RPG series, offering players a vast first-person world to explore, filled with cities, dungeons, monsters, quests and treasures. Players create a character, develop skills, acquire equipment and travel across a large portion of Tamriel while becoming involved in an epic political and magical conflict. Its open-ended structure was remarkably ambitious for the time, allowing players considerable freedom in how they approached exploration and character development. The game's dungeons can be especially expansive, occasionally making 'finding the exit' feel like a quest worthy of its own questline. Arena established many of the ideas that would define The Elder Scrolls, providing the foundation for a series that would eventually make getting distracted by random caves a legitimate gaming lifestyle.