The Elder Scrolls: Arena reimplementation gets combat AI, thieving and levelling

OpenTESArena has reached another major milestone. The new update adds enemy combat AI, experience and levelling, NPC conversations, thieving, expanded shop services and a long list of smaller systems that make the project feel much closer to the original The Elder Scrolls: Arena. This isn’t just a visual update. A lot of the new work affects the way the game actually plays. Enemies can attack you properly, defeated opponents drop loot, experience points matter, equipment can be worn or discarded, townspeople can give directions and shopkeepers now provide several useful services. OpenTESArena still isn’t finished, but the new update connects far more of the original game’s systems together.

Enemies can finally fight back properly

Enemy combat AI is the biggest addition. Hostile creatures can now attack the player instead of simply existing as moving targets. Combat also uses Arena’s level-based hit calculations, which means character level has a more meaningful effect during fights.

Some enemies can cause disease or paralysis. Disease isn’t just a temporary status effect either. If your character is sick, fast travel can potentially kill them before they reach their destination. Ranged combat has moved forward too. Bows can fire arrows, taking damage creates a visible screen effect and character movement now responds to both the speed attribute and the amount of weight you’re carrying. Those might sound like small details on their own. Together, they change the feel of the game quite a bit.

Experience and levelling now have a purpose

Combat now feeds into character progression. Players can earn experience from defeated enemies and level their characters, while random enemy encounters take the player’s level into account. Loot generation is also working, so winning a fight can lead to something useful rather than simply clearing another enemy from the screen.

Equipment has become more practical as well. Items can be equipped, removed and dropped. The update also adds several character-specific rules from the original game. Swimming and climbing speeds can change depending on race and class, while sorcerers follow Arena’s unusual restriction that prevents them from restoring spell points simply by resting.

Door bashing has also been adjusted. Try smashing a door with your bare hands and your character can hurt themselves. Fair enough.

Towns are becoming much more useful

The changes aren’t limited to combat. Players can now talk to citizens and ask for directions. When an NPC gives you useful information, the location can appear directly on the automap. That’s a small interface feature, but it makes exploring Arena’s large towns much easier. Thieving has arrived too.

You can attempt to pick pockets or interact with locked areas, although getting caught can attract the attention of guards. The same applies if you decide to attack a civilian. Shopkeepers now handle buying and selling, room rental, healing and disease treatment. Some services from the original game are still missing, including bartering, repairs and spellmaking, but shops are starting to work more like actual parts of the RPG instead of simple placeholders.

Camping is another new addition. You can rest for a chosen amount of time or keep camping until your character has recovered. Even taverns have a little more going on. Drink too much and your character can become drunk, complete with changes to the interface. The game’s visual feedback can also react to low health and disease.

The Elder Scrolls started here

The original The Elder Scrolls: Arena arrived for MS-DOS in 1994. It was the first game in the series that would later produce Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Many ideas that became closely associated with The Elder Scrolls were already present, even if they appeared in much rougher form.

You explored the world from a first-person perspective, fought enemies in real time, developed a character, collected equipment, cast spells and travelled between towns, wilderness areas and dungeons.

The game takes place across Tamriel. Its main story follows the imprisonment of Emperor Uriel Septim VII after the battlemage Jagar Tharn takes control of the Empire. For a game released in 1994, Arena was huge. It was also very much a product of DOS-era PC gaming, with controls, interfaces and technical limitations that can feel awkward on a modern machine. That’s where OpenTESArena comes in.

A new engine instead of a simple remaster

OpenTESArena isn’t a remaster in the usual sense. The developers are building a new engine from scratch that can reproduce the original game’s behaviour on modern systems. You’ll still need data from the original Arena. The project doesn’t simply bundle Bethesda’s assets.

The new update also makes several technical changes under the hood. Vulkan is now the default graphics renderer, Steam installation detection has been improved and Windows users get support for detecting GOG installations.

Audio support has received work too, while Jolt Physics and WildMIDI have been updated. The Raspberry Pi build now targets the Raspberry Pi 5. Not every change is immediately visible, but they matter if the goal is to make the game run cleanly on current hardware.

There’s still plenty left to build

OpenTESArena isn’t ready to replace the original game completely. Quests remain unfinished. Spell systems still need work. Potions and other usable items aren’t fully implemented, some equipment properties are missing and saving and loading still aren’t complete.

Human enemies also don’t yet show the weapons they’re carrying, while shop inventories don’t completely match the original game. So this new update isn’t the finish line.

What it does offer is a much more complete slice of Arena. Combat, levelling, NPC interaction, shops, thieving and character status systems now work together in ways they simply didn’t before. For anyone following the project, that’s the real story of this update. OpenTESArena is starting to behave less like an engine demonstration and more like an actual RPG.