from these games that the world of Tamriel was created. They were also fans of Looking Glass Studios' Ultima Underworld series, which became their main inspiration for Arena. The influence of Legends of Valour, a game Peterson describes as a "free-form first-person perspective game that took place in a single city", has also been noted. Asked for his overall comment on the game, he replied "It was certainly derivative ...". Aside from the fact that Bethesda had made Arena "Much, much bigger" than other titles on the market, Peterson held that the team "[wasn't] doing anything too new" in Arena. Design goals Initially, Arena was not to be an RPG at all. The player and a team of his fighters would travel about a world fighting other teams in their arenas until the player became "grand champion" in the world's capital, the Imperial City. Along the way, side quests of a more role-playing nature could be completed. As the process of development progressed, however, the tournaments became less important and the side quests more. Role-playing elements were added to the game, as the game expanded to include the cities outside the arenas, and dungeons beyond the cities. Eventually it was decided to drop the idea of tournaments altogether, and focus on quests and dungeons, making the game a "full-blown RPG". The original concept of arena combat never made it to the coding stage, so few artifacts from that era of development remain: the game's title, and a text file with the names of fighting teams from every large city in Tamriel, and a brief introduction for them. The concept of travelling teams was eventually left aside as well because the team's decision to produce a first-person RPG had made the system somewhat less fun. The game was going to have a team of up to four party members, but that feature was dropped and reduced to a single adventurer. Although the team had dropped all arena combat from the end game, because all the material had already been printed up with the title, the game went to market as The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The team came up with a lore-friendly explanation for this, being because the Empire of Tamriel was so violent, it had been nicknamed the Arena. It was Lakshman who came up with the idea of "The Elder Scrolls", and though, in the words of Peterson, "I don't