I wanted to play The Elder Scrolls: Arena, but I did not want to fight through a DOSBox setup every time I launched it. Between the tedious setup, the original game’s bugs and rough edges, and the general friction of playing a game released before I was born on modern hardware, it was not the experience I was looking for.
That is what started Arena Rebuilt. I am preparing to rebuild the entire game in Unity, taking inspiration from Daggerfall Unity while keeping Arena itself at the center of the project. My goal is to preserve the original adventure and make it feel at home on a modern computer with modern controls, support for all major resolutions and aspect ratios, and full mod support when the reconstruction is complete.
Before I begin physically building the world, I am starting by breaking down the static tables that define how the original game behaves. I want to understand those rules clearly before I reproduce them so the remake is built on a solid foundation instead of guesswork.
Once I understand the game’s behavior well enough, I will build the first dungeon as a proof of concept. From there, I plan to create an importer for Arena’s maps and dungeons so I do not have to rebuild every location by hand. After that foundation is working, I will move into NPC behavior, then the wider gameplay systems and feature set, and finally quests, dialogue, and the full campaign.
There is a long road ahead and no public build yet, but this is the starting point: understand Arena, rebuild it faithfully, and make it a much better experience on modern hardware.