The Elder Scrolls was originally Bethesda's take on a digital Dungeons and Dragons. If you read Arena's manual, it'll explain that they wanted a game that steers you into one dirrection, but if you want to say "fuck it" and go the other way, the story should support that. Similar to a DnD session where players don't do what the Dungeon Master planned so he has to make up sonething else on the spot.

To this day, that's why the main storyline is relatively short. But a storyline for alternative ways of life than "the hero who saved the world" exist, no matter if you're a warrior, mage, thief, or assassin.

Arena's manual also explains all calculations with oddly numbered dices to link further to DnD, by explaining calculated chances with D[number] for a change of one in [number]. Many of those "dices" don't exist in real life however.

Another funfact is that it was the first open world RPG, inventing the genre. Originally, Arena was meant to be an arena fighting game. But the developers went a bit wild with the area's in between the arenas resulting in the game that was released in 1994.

Now, the game is most infamous for proving chainmail bikini's are lore-friendly.