- "As long as man has been, and before man, there has been other species in space, struggling to overrule the other. One race, however, is not interested in it's power to rule, but instead it's lust to see who is deserving, or rather to spectate the elite veteran species in the games of the gladiators. The testing grounds are known as the Arenas.""Every gladiator is a force captured to kill. All you must ask yourself, which one are you?"— Opening text of some episodes.
Arenas
is a Web Video series based on the Idverse, especially in Quake III: Arena, created by Tritin Multimedia, and directed by Joe Goss, in 2008. It follows the story of Doom, the character, although not in his classic Space Marine suit, as he's selected by the Vadrigar and taken to the Quake tournament.
The characters appearing in this series are Doom, Ranger, Grunt, Mynx, Sarge, Visor, Gorre and Xaero.
The episodes can be watched here.
There were currently plans for a second season. Sadly, it won't happen because the project budget couldn't be achieved.
This web animation provides examples of:
- Adaptational Protagonist: The original Quake III: Arena has no clear protagonist —the Decoy Protagonist Sarge turns out to be the very first boss of the game and the protagonists of Quake and Quake II —respectively Ranger and Bitterman— are just made into regular fighters. Meanwhile, the the Doom Marine is just another combatant. This web animation, by contrast, Arenas is entirely focused on Doom's trials and tribulations during the whole thing.
- Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Ranger gives his amulet to Doom in "The Amulet", so he can teleport. He explains that it's done from the same technology the Vadrigar used for their teleporters.
- Ascended Extra: Pretty much the entirety of the cast, which in the source, were just selectable characters for the player.
- A-Team Firing: Doom wastes a lot of ammunition. Few shots actually hit the opponent. Case in point: "Doom's Deathmatch Birth", his first frag against Visor.
- Big Bad: The Vadrigar.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Sarge appears to save Doom in "Worthy".
- In "REBELLION!", Doom uses Ranger's rune in order to access the operations area of the Vadrigar. Then, he summons each one of the warriors. When they can't defeat the Vadrigar, Doom goes again to said room and summons Gorre, who takes care of the Vadrigar. Cue the Sequel Hook.
- Chainsaw Good: Doom uses one in "Chosen By The Vadrigar". And, of course, there's the Gauntlet.
- Composite Character:
- Doom's pre-Arena story is depicted as a mixture of both Doom 3's visual aesthetic and backstory, with that design for the Doomguy, most demons, and the Soul Cube, and Doom 1's levels and main storyline.
- Visor is a mix of his III self and Gorre, with the latter serving as his Superpowered Evil Side.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Visor as both him and as Gorre, justified as he's a Strogg.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- The introduction of both Ranger and Grunt, in "Warriors of Slipgate". There's no Doom in here.
- Also, the story of Sarge. In "Last Stand", Doom and Visor are talking about him in the resting area, while Sarge's regenerating. Cue flashback scenes about Sarge and Visor's previous fights in the Human-Strogg war.
- The S2E1 reel finally shows Bitterman.
- Death Is Not Permanent: It's shown repeatedly that mortally wounded warriors who fall within the arenas are sent to a reconstruction chamber where they're pieced anew.
- Demonic Possession: In "Chosen By The Vadrigar", after Doom's rescue, he gets to hear the plans of his superiors, his eyes turns red and he rebels. It seems like something possessed him. Which thing? We don't know.
- The Faceless: Visor as both him and as Gorre.
- Flipping the Bird: From Doom to his superior in "Chosen By The Vadrigar".
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Doom, frequently.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Visor eats the dust off-screen after being defeated by Xaero. He's later turned into Gorre.
- Gun Fu: Although in the source material only the Gauntlet served as a melee weapon, here the warriors use all of the available weapons (all of them ranged, except the aforementioned Gauntlet) as melee weapons at some point.
- Lights Off, Somebody Dies: In the beginning of "Chosen By The Vadrigar", Doom is watching a movie, then the lights goes off and many of his companions bite the dust.
- Mythology Gag: Considering the Idverse as a whole, there're plenty of these:
- Some shots can be teleported and the jumppads can send the projectiles up, as a nod to Quake IV's multiplayer, which allows this.
- The final part of Sarge's flashback in "Last Stand" is a throwback to the intro cutscene of Quake III: Arena, where Sarge is decimating thousands of monsters with his chaingun.
- The aftermath of the match between Doom and Xaero in "REBELLION!" it's a throwback to the ending of the same game.
- The amulet Ranger gives to Doom in "The Amulet" has the shape of the Quake logo.
- At one point in "Chosen by the Vadrigar", Doom accesses a computer screen to see how many things came through the teleporter. Upon viewing the data for Phobos, the map screen that appears between levels in episode 1 of Doom shows up on the screen.
- The S2E1 reel "The Search for Bitterman" has a lot of nods to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Quake IV.
- Fans of the Id games may recognize many stages, aside of those which came with the game itself:
- "Chosen By The Vadrigar" takes place in a remixed version of the first map of Doom.
- "Doom's Deathmatch Birth" takes place in Temple of Retribution. (q3dm7)
- "No Backing Down" takes place in Proving Grounds. (q3tourney2)
- "Warriors of Slipgate" (both parts) takes place in The Longest Yard. (q3dm17)
- "Scrimmage" takes place in Wicked. (q3jdm8)
- "REBELLION!" takes place in The Camping Grounds. (q3dm6)
- Neck Lift: Xaero in "DeFrag" and Gorre in "Worthy" both of them does this to Doom.
- Oh, Crap!: The first Cacodemon in "Chosen by the Vadrigar"'s green eye opens as far as it can upon hearing Doom revving the chainsaw. Hard to think a demon which is basically just a red ball of flesh would be capable of expressing this, but it does.
- Quad Damage: Appears as an item that empowers the characters' attacks, much like its source series.
- Rocket Jump: As a Quake-inspired Fanfic, this was expected. At least one warrior do this in each episode, outside of "Chosen By The Vadrigar" and "Last Stand", for obvious reasons.
- Sequel Hook:Vadrigar: You may have me pissed now, but our war hasn't even started. You may end me, but they won't kill me.
- The Smurfette Principle: Mynx is the only woman in the first season.
- SNK Boss:
- A rare non-videogame example played in-universe. Xaero can teleport while the other warriors can't, and has even more stamina and strength than any of the other warriors.
- Gorre is meant to be this, acting as a Beef Gate between Xaero and Doom by simply having too much health and armor than is reasonable for any one fighter.
- Take My Hand!: In "No Backing Down", before Sarge falls to the pit, Doom takes his hand. By virtue of the Demonic Possession, he later releases his hand, with Sarge falling to the pit.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Doom, most of the time.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Doom's companions in the pilot episode.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Although the hand-to-hand combat seems out of place in a fanfic based on an old-school First-Person Shooter, there're plenty of moments where the warriors do throws and holds to their opponents.
