Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Developer(s)	Troika Games
Publisher(s)	Sierra Entertainment
Designer(s)	Jason D. Anderson, Leonard Boyarsky, Timothy Cain[1]
Engine	Arcanum engine
Version	1.0.7.4
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	NA 21 August, 2001 EU 24 August, 2001
Genre(s)	Steampunk, Fantasy, Computer role-playing
Mode(s)	Single player, LAN multiplayer
Rating(s)	ELSPA: 11+ ESRB: M (Mature) PEGI: 12+ OFLC: MA15+ USK: 12+
Media	2 CD-ROMs
System requirements	200 MHz Intel Pentium CPU, 32 MB RAM, 8 MB video card VGA card (minimum 4 MB RAM), 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX 7.0, 16-bit Directx compatible sound card, 1.2 GB available hard disk space, Windows 95
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (aka Arcanum) is a single player computer role-playing game developed by Troika Games and published by Sierra Entertainment. It was released in North America and Europe in August, 2001 for Microsoft Windows. Debuting at fourth position on NPD Intelect's best-seller list,^[2] it was Troika's best-selling title with 234,000 copies sold and with takings of $8.8 million.^[3]

Despite the large number of bugs in the game, a problem common to all of Troika's titles,^[4] reviews have been mostly positive, with IGN scoring it 8.7 and conferring the IGN Editors' Choice Award on 24 August 2001.^[5] PC Gamer and GameZone awarded Arcanum 90 out of 100,^[6] with the latter also conferring its Editors' Choice accolade.^[7] The Electric Playground awarded the game 9 out of 10, calling it "the most diverse and open-ended RPG to date".^[8] The game currently holds an average review score of 79% on GameRankings^[9] and 81% on Metacritic.^[10]

The story takes place on the continent of Arcanum, which despite its initial fantasy setting has just started going through an industrial revolution.^[11] The story begins with the crash of the zeppelin IFS Zephyr, of which the protagonist is the only survivor, which leads him throughout the land in search of answers.^[12] The game employs an isometric perspective and features an open game world where the protagonist can travel unhindered.

Contents 1 Gameplay 1.1 Character creation 1.2 Combat 1.3 Open-world design 2 Story 3 Setting 4 Development & reception 4.1 Unofficial patch 5 Sequel 6 Soundtrack 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Gameplay

Gameplay in Arcanum consists of travelling through the game world, visiting locations and interacting with the local inhabitants, typically in real-time. Occasionally, inhabitants will require the player's assistance in various tasks, which the player may choose to solve in order to acquire special items, experience points or new followers. Many quests offer multiple solutions for the player, depending on his playing style, which may consist of combat, persuasion, thievery or bribery.^[13] Ultimately, players will encounter hostile opponents (if such encounters are not avoided using stealth or diplomacy), in which case they and the player will engage in combat, which can be real-time or turn-based.

[edit] Character creation

Arcanum begins with the player creating their character, choosing from a large variety of races, attributes, technological skills, magical aptitudes and background traits or the player may choose a predefined character. Over the course of the game, the character may improve his or her skills by gaining experience through completing quests or defeating opponents in combat.^[14] Every time the player gains a level he can spend one skill point to improve any attribute, weapon skill, technological discipline, school of magic, thievery skill or social skill. Every five levels one additional skill point is awarded, (every 5 levels 6 skill points are awarded) the leveling is capped at level 50, for a maximum of 60 skill points.^[15] The player can only control one character directly, but may recruit additional followers during the game depending on his aptitudes and alignment.

Player characters have the choice of specialising in a technological path which emphasizes constructing weapons, ammunition and items from various components, a magical path which emphasizes spellcasting or a neutral path, learning both magic and technology skills, which allows the most flexibility. The game uses a meter to show how biased towards magic or technology the player is: any skill points spent on a technological discipline move it towards the technology side and any points spent on spells move it towards the magical side. Skill points spent on attributes or any other skills do not alter the aptitude metre.^[16][17]

[edit] Combat

Three combat modes were included in the final release of the game: real-time, turn-based and a faster version of turn-based. Arcanum's combat design has received criticism, with reviews stating that it is poorly balanced and frantic^[18] and overly simplified. The player's combat capabilities are in large part governed by the character's combat skills and weapons. Attacking is performed automatically by clicking on a hostile NPC provided that he is in range of the attack. Real-time combat resembles action RPGs such as Diablo and the turn-based mode is in the same vein as the Fallout games.^[19]

Combat skills that the player character can choose from include melee weapons (with an optional back stabbing skill for stealth-oriented players), thrown weapons, archery, firearms and certain damage-inflicting spells from some schools of magic. Deciding whether or not to use violence in the game sometimes carries consequences for the player's party. Some AI-controlled followers the player makes will find their character's conduct morally objectionable, and leave, or even attack the player.^[20]

[edit] Open-world design

Arcanum's large, free-form world bears many similarities to Fallout with regards to the scarcity of towns, cities or other locations of interest, however Arcanum's map is much larger than Fallout's due to the fact that it takes place on an entire continent rather than a limited stretch of coastline. The travel system however has some things in common with the Elder Scrolls series in that the world can be travelled across in-game, without the use of the world map, and that the game doesn't rush the player into pursuing the main quest.^[21]

[edit] Story

Arcanum begins with a cut scene of the IFS Zephyr, a luxury zeppelin, on her maiden voyage from Caladon to Tarant. Two monoplanes, piloted by Half-Ogre bandits, close in on the craft and commence attack runs, succeeding in shooting it down. A passenger aboard the Zephyr, an old gnome, now in his death throes under charred debris, tells the player to bring a silver ring to "the boy", and promptly dies. Being the only survivor of the crash, the main character is proclaimed as "The Living One," a holy reincarnate, by the only witness to the crash, Virgil. The story follows the player's path as he searches for the origin of the ring he has to deliver. Over the course of the game, the player uncovers more about the history of the continent, the motivation of the assassins out there to kill him and the identity of the one threatening to end all life on the land.^[22]

Arcanum is an example of a non-linear role-playing game. At various points throughout the game, players may take the story in different directions, sometimes permanently removing different paths of action. The game's central quest ultimately develops according to how players navigate its dichotomies, the most apparent being that of magic and technology. Many of the game's sidequests allow for more than one solution depending on the player character's specialisations and even certain portions of the main quest can be solved more easily through dialogue than through combat. The game's magic/technology and good/evil metres also influence what followers your character can attract throughout the game or how other NPCs will react to the player.^[23]

[edit] Setting

Arcanum is the name of the fantasy world in which the game unfolds. It consists of a continental mainland and three islands. The player is at liberty to explore the mainland, their coverage partly being governed by the quests they choose to undertake. The three islands, the Isle of Despair, Thanatos and Half Ogre Island, become available only upon initiating particular quests.^[24] The world is inhabited by various Tolkienesque races, namely Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, Orcs, Ogres and various wildlife. Players can choose from Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings and human hybrid races Half-Elves, Half-Orcs and Half-Ogres as playable races.^[25] It would take twenty game days to walk from one side of the continent to the other, which would be forty-eight hours in real time. Modes of transportation available to the player include trains, ships and magical means of teleportation. In the gameworld flying machines have been recently invented as well but they've never been implemented for the player due to their experimental nature.^[26]

The continent is divided between different political entities: The Unified Kingdom, its two cities being Tarant and Ashbury, a rapidly industrialising and technologically the most advanced kingdom; the Kingdom of Cumbria, which includes Dernholm and Black Root, a deteriorated kingdom ruled by an old conservative king and the Kingdom of Arland, comprised of Caladon and Roseborough, a small but thriving monarchy west of the Stonewall range. The Glimmering Forest, the largest in Arcanum, is home to the Elven city of Quintarra and the Dark Elven city of T'sen-Ang, and has been untouched by the technological advancements of the time. The Stonewall and Grey Mountain Ranges are home to the remaining Dwarven clans: the Black Mountain Clan, the Stonecutter Clan, The Wheel Clan and the Iron Clan. Other settlements include Shrouded Hills, a small agrarian town, Stillwater, a small, snow-covered town known for its quality swords and its local legend, the Stillwater Giant, and Tulla, a hidden town renowned for its magical colleges and for housing exceedingly powerful arcane artifacts. The gameworld also contains may ruins of past civilizations, the biggest of which being the ruins of Vendigroth, the most modernised city on Arcanum, which met a sudden and mysterious end.^[24][27]

An important in-game dynamic is the dichotomy of magic and technology in the world. Technology is explained to function by utilising physical law to produce a desired result, e.g. a bolt of electricity from a Tesla Gun would arc through the most conductive path to its target. Magic, on the other hand, is explained to manipulate physical law to make a lightning spell follow the shortest path to the target, instead of the natural path. The two are incompatible to the point that they overwhelm each other – technological devices will become inefficient or even permanently inoperative in the presence of powerful magic and vice versa. Much of the population has chosen to embrace technology for its efficiency, accessibility and permanent results, however the Elves, Dark Elves and some humans continue to practise magic exclusively. Magical items such as potions and spell scrolls have a certain failure rate when used by technologically-oriented characters, and technological items behave in the same fashion when used by magic users. This also affects interactions between different characters as well, as spells cast on technologists or firearms used against mages have a failure rate. Because of this gameplay mechanic it is better to form parties only with characters of the same aptitude as the player, or to adapt different strategies to cope with allies and enemies of opposing aptitudes.^[28]

Orcs and Ogres alike are looked down upon as savage, feral peoples by Arcanum's civilized folk, who own virtually all the industry of the major population centres. Half-breeds inhabit the world as a result of humanity reproducing with anything possible (and not always as willing participants). There is a great enmity between elves and dwarfs, the former being naturally inclined towards magically-defined society, the latter being forerunners of the technology race – and many of the former blame the latter for the rise of human technology. Scientists are unwelcome in magical societies like Qintarra or Tulla, but will be respected if they are righteous and good folk. Conversely, a mage would be admitted onto a steam train only on the provision that he take a third-class seat on the last caboose, so as not to cause interference with the engine (despite there being no in-game mechanic by which even the powerful mages can affect it). Powerful mages may be denied transport altogether.^[26][29]

[edit] Development & reception

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura Reviews
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	79[9]
Metacritic	81[10]
Review scores
Publication	Score
Game Revolution	B-[30]
GameSpot	7.3 of 10[25]
GameSpy	89 out of 100[31]
GameZone	90 out of 100[7]
IGN	8.7 out of 10[5]
PC Gamer US	90 out of 100[6]
RPGFan	86 out of 100[32]
Awards Entity Award IGN Editors' Choice GameZone Editors' Choice

Arcanum's public beta testing commenced in September 2000.^[33] It is the debut title of now-defunct development house Troika Games, which consisted of former Interplay Entertainment staff—most notably Tim Cain—responsible for 1997's critically acclaimed Fallout.^[34] On release, the game was found to be incompatible with some video cards such as Voodoo2, and drivers such as nVidia's Detonator3. Furthermore, the game's copy protection software, SecuROM, caused system-component conflicts with particular brands of sound cards and CD-ROM drives.^[35] Such bugs as well as the game's numerous gameplay bugs were one of the game's biggest criticisms.^[4][25][30]

Upon release, Arcanum had mostly positive review scores, receiving two Editor's Choice Awards from IGN^[5] and GameZone^[7] with scores of 8.7 out of 10 and 90 out of 100, respectively. The game also received praise from The Electric Playground, which awarded the game 9 out of 10 and calling it "the most diverse and open-ended RPG to date."^[8] Gamespot gave the game a rating of 7.3 out of 10, citing its poor combat, lacklustre graphics and unintuitive interface as the main criticisms.^[25] Game Informer rated the game as 63 out of 100, GamePro gave it 4 out of 5^[9] and Mygamer awarded the game 8 out of 10.^[36] The game currently holds an average review score of 79% based on 37 reviews on GameRankings^[9] and 81% based on 24 reviews on Metacritic.^[10]

The game comes packaged with an editor, allowing players to create their own maps, campaigns and NPCs, called WorldEdit. The program allows any game-world object to be input into existing and newly created environments via GUI menus. Editing can be done in either isometric or top-down views. Players have charge over the game's variables, such as the skill level required to pick a certain lock, or the precise time that an electric light will turn on. Players are also able to create brand new objects via the scenery creator.^[37]

[edit] Unofficial patch

The latest official patch, 1.0.7.4 was released in 2001 and leaves many bugs unfixed and a large portion of game content unused. In an attempt to resolve most of the issues in the game, several unofficial patches have been released by the community. The best known comprehensive fix package is Drog Black Tooth's "Unofficial Arcanum patch" series at RPG Codex, which fixes many of Arcanum's remaining issues without altering the game's balance. The mod also restores a substantial amount of lost content, including endings, audio, artwork and animations, as well as adding higher quality versions of location maps, and higher bit rate music files (created from the official soundtrack CD). One of the mod's most notable features is the removal of sprite mirroring, restoring more than 200 megabytes of previously unused animations to the game. Development on the patch last reached version 081229 as of the end of December 2008.^[38] In April 2009, the same author released the "Arcanum High Resolution Patch" which allowed the game to be playable at any resolution, standard or custom. The patch required extensive rewriting of game engine subroutines to allow it to cope with higher resolutions than the game was designed for.^[39]

[edit] Sequel

In a 2000 interview with Nextgame.it Tim Cain announced plans for an Arcanum sequel,^[40] but these plans would not come to pass – Troika Games filed for dissolution on September 30, 2005.^[41]

In September 2006, one of Arcanum's lead programmers and tri-founder of Troika, Leonard Boyarsky, divulged that the studio had originally commenced work on a sequel, going by the working title of Journey to the Centre of Arcanum, which would use Valve's Source Engine. Development was curtailed by disputes between Sierra and Valve, resulting ultimately in the project being shelved.^[42]

[edit] Soundtrack

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura Original Soundtrack
Soundtrack by Ben Houge
Released	21 August, 2001
Recorded	Studio X, Seattle
Producer	Ben Houge, Jeff Pobst

Composed by Ben Houge, Arcanum's soundtrack features an unusual instrumentation by avoiding the predominantly symphonic orchestration common to RPG soundtracks. Instead, it is scored almost entirely for string quartet. The songs follow the conventional RPG soundtrack format: short, impressionistic vignettes which are looped in-game, with each area using only one song, and an alternative song for combat. The soundtrack was produced by Ben Houge and Jeff Pobst, with Leonid Keylin on first violin, Kathy Stern on second violin, Vincent Comer on viola, Susan Williams on cello, Evan Buehler on marimba and Ben Houge on djembe, rainstick and synthesiser.^[43]

The soundtrack was not commercially released, but is available for free download.^[44] The sheet music is also provided.

All music composed by Ben Houge.

The track "In Memoriam" was unused in the game itself and was later released by Houge in an interview.^[45]

[edit] See also

• Computer role-playing game
• Black Isle Studios
• Fallout
• Tim Cain

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Archived official website
• Terra Arcanum

v • d • e Troika Games video games Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura · The Temple of Elemental Evil · Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines