Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Pros • Allows for an insane level of character diversity, with equally diverse gameplay. • Unique and cool implementation of technology and science into a fantasy RPG. • Excellent story and dialogue, and plot twists that work. • Multiplayer supported, and scenario editor included. • Enough gameplay options to kill a moose.	Cons • Dated graphics.
Bottom Line The most diverse and open-ended RPG to date. Original ideas are followed through with wicked execution. This. Game. Kicks. Ass. If Arcanum doesn't become a long-running RPG franchise like Ultima I will leap in front of a bus. There's been a lot of debate about what is and isn't an RPG. Was System Shock 2 an RPG with action elements or an action game with RPG elements? It might sound silly, but I remember such arguments, to say nothing of the occasional "Is Diablo an RPG?" discussions that spring up now and again. To me, role-playing is about assuming a role, and then acting it out in a manner consistent with that role, no matter what happens; even if it would be advantageous to "break character." I remember a pen and paper session with a character that would not ever back down from a combat challenge, no matter how ridiculous it was. If the entire US Marine Corps dared him to step outside, he'd go, much to the dismay of us, his comrades. But give the person who played him credit--he stayed in character, even when certain death loomed large over him. This behavior is hard enough to maintain in pen and paper RPGs, where the action is limited only to the imagination of the participants, and very hard in CRPGs, which are limited by technology and game design. Rare are CRPGs that will give you a choice of truly different roles, and let you stay in those roles, like an actor. This is why I am so in love with Arcanum. Here is a game that lets you be an incredibly large range of characters (or roles, if you will) in an enormous, diverse world. Every time you go through the game, the experience is different. Sometimes a little different, sometimes a lot different. But whatever kind of character you end up making, you can still make it all the way through the game.

The premise behind Arcanum is that you are in a fantasy world with the usual trappings--orcs, dwarves, undead, swords and sorcery. As usual, a major force threatens the stability of this world, and you're caught up in the thick of it. But, in addition to this, the world is at the start of an industrial revolution, with electric lights illuminating the streets, trains connecting the cities, and city guards are just as likely to be armed with guns as they are with swords. Picture Middle-earth if Tolkein had fast-forwarded to its equivalent of 1860.

Magick and technology co-exist in an oil-and-water sort of way, with practitioners of one field being suspicious and/or scornful of practitioners of the other. In this world you can encounter wizards, gunslingers, inventors, thieves, all manner of people...or play one such person yourself. As a wizard you can explore magickal colleges that will let you raise the dead, control the elements, or even play around with time. Or you can be a technologist, and build everything from simple healing salves to explosives to steam-powered robots.

The new technological aspects of Arcanum are really what interested me at first, as I was getting a little tired of the usual magick and melee routine. You can study fields of science such as Explosives, Chemistry, Electricity, and learn schematics that will allow you to build nifty gizmos when you find the right parts. You can also find schematics that combine fields, and build even more wicked stuff. You can be a dwarf running around with a flamethrower. I think this single sentence does wonders to describe the game’s overall appeal. You will eagerly look forward to gaining a level so you can learn the next level of schematic, and build some cool device. Finding schematics is even more fun, and your eyes will light up in that “I saw a naked person” way when you see some of the things you can build.

The "new" elements do not mean that the more traditional elements of fantasy RPGs are neglected. There are 16 colleges of magick, with five spells each, so that's 80 spells to play with. Many are as cool as some of the gadgets you can build. Not to mention the magickal weapons, armour, and items you can find. If you never go near the tech aspects of Arcanum, you can still make it through the game just fine, and still leave yourself lots to do. In fact, you can bypass the whole magick/tech question altogether, and simply make your character a powerful warrior or a master thief, a diplomat, or a combination of any of these and many other things. The game calls its system “classless,” and really, that’s accurate. You don’t choose a rigidly defined role at the start and follow it through. Your character will develop as you direct him/her through the course of the game. You could end up with an Elf Gunslinging Chemist, or an Ogre Necromancer Diplomat, if that’s what you wanted. There’s so much you can do, and all of it is backed by a very deep, efficient set of rules.

Those of you who like the social interaction aspects of RPGs will be especially pleased with Arcanum. In fact, it's probably one of my favorite parts. Mountains of dialogue and text have been written for this game. There are all sorts of elements to social interaction, including your race, reputation, intelligence, alignment, and even the clothes you wear can change how the people in the game perceive you. You might get an entirely different conversation just because of one aspect of your character, let alone different dialogue choices. Being a social animal is quite addictive. I loved playing the game Diplomat style (high Charisma and high Persuasion score), where I would try to con information and items out of people. Equally enjoyable is playing through the game as a complete idiot. Conversations are hysterical.

With all the sidequests and different kinds of characters you can make, this is a game of choices. Many, many, many choices. How you play the game is 95 percent in the hands of the gamer. If you just want to be antisocial and just beat up on things, you can do it. If you want to talk to lots of people and learn lots of facts, you can do that too. The game is not so open-ended that you will never have to talk to someone or never have to fight someone, and there are key things you must do to drive the main story along, but it is structured so that you spend most of the time doing what you want to do--explore, fight, talk... Even the "game critical" events can be arrived at through different means. If you need to learn information from a particular person to advance the story, one character might simply talk to this person and ask him for it. Another might hit him over the head and take his diary from his corpse.

The game is so damn open-ended that you might forget what the main quest is (there's a journal to remind you). You have a continent to explore, with places that will reveal themselves if you get close enough, or if you’re told about their location from an NPC or a map. Some of these places are relatively straightforward fixed encounters, others will turn out to be towns, or deep dungeons with a lot going on.

If you know where to look, or are fortunate enough to stumble upon the right places, almost every point in the game is accessible right from the start, the final area being the big exception (there are other, smaller ones). That's how non-linear it is. Certain areas are more dangerous obviously, and you'd be crazy to go into some areas unprepared, but a level 1 character, if he or she was stubborn enough, could conceivably barge into an area you'd explore late in the game if you stuck to the main plot thread. It's as if the developers said "here is our game, here are the rules of our game, now get to the end of it whenever and however you want."

Non-linearity can mean the story becomes disjointed or weak in some games, but this ain't one such instance. I am a big advocate of story in computer games, and to be honest I underestimated the plot of Arcanum. The story starts off with talk of you being some kind of chosen one, which had me rolling my eyes at first. But as the game progresses and the underlying story emerges, it's obvious that this was done to play with your expectations. There are plot twists that a) make sense, and b) you will not see coming. It might sound like your standard RPG plot initially, but it soon breaks free of that.

And that's the main story. If you decide to see what else is going on around here, you will find that sidequests are both plentiful and imaginative. Many break away from the ol' "Go here, talk to Buddy, bring back the thingamabob" quests that RPGers refer to as "Fedex missions." There is one quest that requires you to do nothing more than run up and down a street. That's all. A level 1 character with a broken leg could do it. But the consequences of doing so will stick with you for the rest of the game. You can also find yourself experimenting with photography, interfering in someone’s nuptials, cheating on someone’s exam, and there are the more traditional contract killing-style quests too.

Some of those sidequests are large enough that on another day they could have become the focus of the game. I'm thinking in particular of a quest where you search for a missing civilization and redeem the soul of an evil spirit, and there is another quest where you try to whistle blow on an X-Files-style conspiracy. Remember how months after playing the Fallout games you’d read about a quest or a device you’d never even heard of? Expect lots of that with Arcanum.

And now comes the part where we determine if Jason, who eagerly followed this game's development for a very long time, can be unbiased. As much as I like Arcanum, it's got its faults.

The game is not as innovative graphically as in other aspects of its designs. Aesthetically there's some great artwork, most of it based around a kind of 1800s theme (love those trains and advertisements), but the detail of the top-down engine isn't very intense. You might argue that there's only so much that a top-down engine can offer, but Fallout Tactics showed that it can offer more. I've also encountered a few instances where lines appear on the screen if I do a lot of scrolling. Developer Troika recently announced that they have been at work on a patch that would “make better use of video memory, especially on cards with larger caches.” Perhaps this will help with these problems somewhat.

I was also a little disappointed to see that gadgets are not as widespread with the general population. Enemies will use guns and the more common, basic tech items, but you never seem to encounter enemies with the full range of options you do. You can, for example, make the Arcanum equivalent of a sniper rifle, but I didn't find places where you could be attacked by someone with one, or other advanced items. I guess this was done to make gamers work with schematics, as opposed to just killing people and taking their gizmos. I wish I could fight someone who drew from an arsenal like mine more often.

The game is pretty stable, and relatively glitch-free, though there are a few instances of quest stages popping up out of order, and a few items where the description is missing (look at the eye glasses). Still, on the whole, the game is far more together than Fallout 2 when it shipped (remember the famous half-car glitch?) or Daggerfall, but it is still an enormous game, with all sorts of things to do. Troika also said the upcoming patch will be correcting issues like the ones I've mentioned. I’ve never had the game crash or lock-up altogether, and I’ve been playing the final for quite a while.

Some people might have issue with the NPC system, but that's really a matter of preference. Like many RPGs, you can pick up NPCs over the course of your journey, but you do not control your party directly. During combat they will make their own moves, but you can issue simple commands during combat that will have them stay close, back up, stop fighting, etc. They will spend their experience points according to a pre-determined scheme when they level up.

NPCs for the most part are reasonably smart, a cut above most AI companions we’ve seen over the years. Though occasionally they do get in over their heads and get killed, or accidentally nail another party member in the back, causing an intra-party brawl (friendly fire is not often tolerated). Overall I liked them better than most AI-controlled friends. They will do things such as equip themselves without your help, even going so far as to pick up valuable items they notice lying on the ground. I like that. Occasionally they find stuff I miss. You can access their inventories if you want to give them specific equipment (or take it way), and you can even ask them to cast specific spells or make specific tech items, if they have the know-how and parts.

One particularly cool aspect of the NPCs is that several major ones even have a story of their own, which you can pursue or not. Some will stop you on your quest and offer you advice or question you, or argue with other NPCs in your party. It's a pretty colourful lot you can hang out with.

Multiplayer is supported, although you can’t go through the main game with human partners. There is a multiplayer-specific scenario called “Vormantown” (which can also be played solo, if you like). Also, the tools used to make the game shipped with Arcanum, so hopefully we’ll see lots of fan-created scenarios soon. This toolset is easier to use than say, a 3D shooter’s level editor, but it’s probably still a little too tricky for a layperson. With any luck interested parties can find support and tips through the Arcanum community.

There are many RPGs that I like, but have not been tempted to replay because the experience would not be significantly different. Okay, so I play through as a Druid instead of a Wizard. It means that my character fires off a slightly different coloured ray from his fingertips. In Arcanum, this is not true in the slightest. Here is a game that is so diverse, has so many things you can do, that two gamers might end up liking it for two completely different reasons.
Characters can have radically different experiences. If you know me and you've read the gameplay journal, you know that I have played Arcanum in so many ways and you probably think I am good and sick of this game by now. You're wrong. I'm going back to make a character who is pure, total evil, who goes out of the way to do the wrong thing and wants to kill everybody, no matter how important they are to the game. I want to see how far I get. I bet that it will be a tough play, but it will work.

When I write a review for a game I feel is excellent, I usually find that I write quite a lot, but feel that I’ve barely started on all the reasons why the game is so damn good. I felt that way for Fallout 2, Baldur’s Gate II, and now I feel the same way about Arcanum. Let’s trim it down to a single conclusion: if you like RPGs, get this game. Right now.

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