Hey hey people, Seth here. Today, I'll be covering an older CRPG which still has its own faithful cult following. A game where you can greatly expand on your English lexicon, promote Marxism among the impoverished, working class orc, and, of course, have cheap carnal relations with sheep. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura This episode is brought to you by RPG Codex and Bad Dragon both great gaming websites, thoroughly recommended.
(NOTE: both GREAT gaming websites) Arcanum takes place in the world of Arcanum. (thanks.) In this fantasy setting, the civilized world is undergoing an industrial revolution which parallels closely to the industrialization that took place in the eighteenth century. complete with orc sweatshops, child labor, and lung cancer for everyone. What a great time to be alive, provided you're not a working class peon with a limited life expectancy. However, there's a problem. This world has magic, and magic doesn't exactly coexist well with technology. Technology, In Arcanum, is just a broad term for utilization of the natural sciences to do stuff, while magic relies on the violation of these natural principles. Put them together in a system, and everything fucks up. Toss a magical artifact too close to a steam engine, you'll loosen and displace the gears, make the engine run too fast, or make the fuel chamber over-pressurize and explode. So, mixing the two is generally a bad idea. And while a lot of people benefit from the increase in tech, some are extremely salty about it. Spells and shit don't work near industrial cities. Healing and resurrecting people by waving your hands no longer does anything, you instead have to rely on barbaric practices, like medicine and surgery. Maybe they'll even start demanding you to be a licensed professional, whatever that means. Back in Uganda, you could freely practice sorcery and trepanning with just an associate's degree in witchcraft. Everything about this changing world comes together over the course of the story in which you can play a single fully customized character there's a huge variety of options for designing your own character Which are determined by race in no particular order. These are Humans: proud, noble, and forward thinking when it comes to tech. Elves: proud, noble, but regressive luddites that hate tech. They live in the forests and chew on bamboo. Dwarves: similar to elves, just shorter, with fatter cocks. Half elves: products of rape. Half orcs: products of rape. Half ogres: products of systemic rape. And of course gnomes: the products of poligamy, incestuous breeding and coprophilia. It is no exageration or hyperbole that all evils of the world are endorsed and committed by gnomes. A gnome feels no empathy, nor remorse no common humanity that separates us from simple beasts. The only love a gnome can feel, if you dare describe it so is that for money. A gnome would sooner sell his own mother for a pouch of silvers than do a single good deed in his entire gaping hole of an existance. You also select your background and upbringing. Which can range from voluptiously lewd and beautiful, to being born to being born as a mentally stunted, special needs child. The story goes that you board the first zeppelin ever made in this world: The IFS Zephyr, on its maiden voyage across the continent which gets shot down by orcs flying fighter planes, who are later identified as brothers Jihaad al-Noori, and Husaam al-Moradi. The orcs aren't very good at flying so the attack turns into a suicide bombing, or as we refer to it in Arcanum: "an isolated incident". Anyway, these orcs commit two "isolated incidents" which result in the zeppelin exploding, and killing everyone aboard, except you, you live. Then a gnome, dying in the wreckage Asks you to deliver a ring back to its rightful owner But your only clue being the manufacturing signature of the company that made it. This sets off a chain of events and a unfolding conspiracy against not only the modernized world but the entire living world itself The first time played this game many years back, I had no idea what I was doing, but it turns out, I knew *exactly* what I was doing. Arcanum is one of the rare games out there Where playing a pure charisma build is not only viable, It's optimal! With every three points of charisma your character can recruit an additional NPC into the party. By endgame, I did not have a party. I had a fucking army! And because my charisma was so high, I pretty much talked my way out of any encounter. So, I got to the end of the game, met the final antagonist, and I was ready to beat him with my squad of goons. Except, that didn't happen. In the end, you and the final antagonist talk it out. He explains his philosophy, that he views life as unnatural, and that the very act of living, and existence, is in and of itself suffering. That he'd rather eliminate it out of mercy to prevent further suffering from being born into this world. You then make the argument that life and existence does have merit; that his personal experience and confinement have poisoned his worldview, and made him jaded. And remarkably, he agrees! But he also states that his mind is so warped with hatred that you can't just leave him alive. So, you offer him an alternative: Voluntary Suicide. And... He takes it! Arcanum: The Game Where You Can Convince the Final Antagonist to Kill Himself Out of Love for a World He Hates. There's very few other RPGS with a plot as strong as Arcanum's. And it changes depending on your character. This time around, I played an autistic dwarf. While previously, everyone was quite friendly to me as a well-spoken human, most townspeople now tell me that manlets aren't welcome in these parts. Even renting a bed was suddenly more expensive, as the innkeeper remarks that he'll probably have to spend more time cleaning out the lice and dingleberries left by my filthy, unshaven body. A good example of just how intricate Arcanum's dialogue can be is booking a ticket for the railways. It's a three-step process of declaring whether or not you have: Magical artefacts; Practiced wizardry; Or possess elementals in your company that could dangerously accelerate and derail the steam locomotive. If you're clean of the supernatural, you get to ride first class, close to the machinery. While wizards, to put it bluntly, ride the back of the bus, for "everyone's safety." And if you lie about it, the conductor will find out and your paid tickets will be null and void. The gameplay itself, though? A mixed bag. Combat's not exactly thrilling. They also introduced 'Critical Failure' as a fun gameplay mechanic. Just in case you were planning to accidentally decapitate yourself with your own elephant gun. You can choose between real-time and turn-based combat depending on which of those you can better exploit. Casting spells in real-time is based on how fast you can click the mouse. Ranged attacks also become insanely fucking fast in real-time. But, this is more lethal to you than your adversaries. If you meet an enemy archer later in the game, he can kill your entire party before you even see him. There's also enemies out there that damage your weapons when you hit them, but damage your armor when they hit you. Thanks, Troika. For this reason, the best companion in the game is a stray dog, which you find after saving it from being kicked to death by a gnome. And by "saving" I mean: gutting the gnome like a fish. The authorities won't even care! They might even thank you for making the streets safer at night. I learned that a dog's teeth can somehow survive biting rocks and crystals, while the highest quality steel gets shattered from smacking windows and furniture. The AI in this game is fantastic; NPCs can't establish causality between events. Amazingly, NPCs will be more alarmed to see you prowling around than hearing a set of dynamite charges detonate in their bedroom. Sneaking is completely broken. Even with mastery, you can be spotted miles away. So, if you want to break into someone's house, a safer way to do it is: break their windows
(while they're not looking) with a stealthy weapon,
(such as a shotgun) And then, wait for them to sleep. NPCs are very deep sleepers. And they don't give a shit how much noise you're making, clunking around in full plate mail, looting all their belongings. Stealing from them is completely risk-free. You can even use their own gold to finance purchases from their own store. The game has a very interesting color palette of gray and brown, and sometimes green, if you're lucky enough to be in a forest. The UI is also gray and brown. It's not ugly, by any means. I'm just saying that if Arcanum was a woman, it would be a very plain, dog-faced woman. But, you're already married to her, so you learn to accept it and move on. It doesn't help that Arcanum's soundtrack is quite moody and melancholic. If I could describe it, it would be like the mental orchestra that plays inside a child worker's head, as he attempts to carefully dislodge cotton from running machines, hoping and praying that his hand doesn't get amputated while reaching between the spinning gears. So, usually, I just turn off the music, and switch it with something more soothing from another RPG. Ah! Much better. Travelling through the world map is done by plotting waypoints, and it works exactly the same as Fallout 1 and 2. Luckily, there's no urgency to meeting your objectives, so you don't have to worry about racing across the map to finish the main quest. You're very free to travel and encounter quests in any order. Arcanum also lets you plot waypoints inside of the map as well, which is really handy to help you navigate huge cities, and reduce the pain of backtracking. You could also just be a mage and learn how to teleport. There's a lot of schools of magic, and they're not essentially all equal. And that's because the Necromancy school exists. At level 1, it lets you cast Harm, and Harm is the strongest spell in the game, but it will fuck up your index finger real fast. Power comes at a price. More interestingly, you can also get Conjure Spirit from the same tree. What if I told you someone decided it was a great idea to write a fuckton of dialogue around a single spell? Because that's exactly what they did! Conjure Spirit lets you summon the souls of minor and major plot characters as long as you can find their body. And then you can interrogate them for clues, advice and information that normally you'd never get. I talk a bunch about magic; what about technology? Well, with technology, you get schematics that you can craft and manufacture if you've got the scientific aptitude. And that's about it! You can make anything from: Molotovs, Dynamite,
(Boom Stick™) Cocaine,
(ruin your brain!) Flamethrowers,
(Burn-O-Matic™) Tranquilizer darts,
(Sleepy Bullets™) to even Mechanized Arachnids. There's a lot of schematics to purchase and obtain, and the crafting system is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, some of the components are extremely rare, and only spawn about 10% of the time at inventor shops, making it *very* difficult to build an army of steam powered robots. But, if you do somehow figure it out, tell me, because they don't count to your party limit. So, they're potentially infinite. Keybinding can't be remapped, and there's a lot of them. So, please, check the manual to see all the keys. Speaking of a manual, the Arcanum game manual is fantastic, and probably one of the best I've ever read. The whole thing is about 180 pages, explaining you the lore, the setting, and the races of this world, and illustrating the dilemma between magic and technology. It's even got a fucking banana bread recipe in there at the end! I tried it! It was pretty good. So, for once, please read the manual. It's great. My only word of warning: This game can't run on modern systems. So, if you install the Good Old Games copy, you'll have to run it using safe mode. FINAL SCORE: FINAL SCORE: GOOD FINAL SCORE: GOOD out of VERY Arcanum; it's a great game. Very dated by modern standards. But the writing, the plot, and the dialogue, keep it fresh. Buy it! Buy it! Play it. It's super cheap on sale. And you'll easily sink several dozen hours into it. And remember: a good gnome... And remember: a good gnome... is a DEAD gnome. Also, I now have another channel. This is a backup channel, just in case anything goes wrong. Please subscribe! You won't regret it. Long story short, it is the opinion of the Merchants' Guild that my channel is the target on an anti-Semitic attack by extremists who hate Israel, that are taking time to mass-flag each video. I know, it's annoying. But let's make the best of it. And as always, more content to come, so stay tuned. A warm thanks to the many members of the Merchants' Guild, generously funding and bankrolling these videos. You're all truly wonderful. Have a good one.
Arcanum is a game that allowed you to kill a guy for lying to you, then keep summoning his spirit (something very painful to spirits) back to the material world and threat him with summoning him over and over again until he tells you what you wanted him to hear.
Great game, funny writing, awesome possibilities.
This game had some of the best "idiot character" writing if you played with extremely low intelligence. But it also locked you out of many quests. One of my favorite builds was an orc with max strength and as little intelligence as possible.
This is my favorite game ever. The freedom game gives you is unbelievable. Game reacts almost everything you do. Try to talk with Nps invisible? They get scared. Shrink yourself. They make fun of you. Summon a demon with you. Get out of my store.
Another thing, there was no limit. You could kill every key npc and there was another solution.
Best part? Killing your party members, especially Raven (love interest) and summoning her soul, listening her talk. It was heartbreaking. So you resurrect her again, she still reacts to resurrection, killing her etc. This game was pure RPG.
I wish we had games like that now too.
Edit: I forgot to add, you can beat last boss by talking.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is a great game. The interface and certain aspects of the gameplay are very dated and it's horribly unbalanced, but the story and world-building are rock solid.
I'm not sure what Cotton Mill Reviews are typically all about, but beware of massive spoilers in this video.
This is one of those games I really really really wanted to play as a kid but my ultra conservative parents thought it would turn me into a devil worshiper.
It has a fantastic world setting where its in the middle of an industrial revolution and magic is fading away.
Magic and technology can't coexist as technology requires physics to function while magic warps it. This leads to having sufficient technology creating an anti magic field and vice versa.
Story wise, this leads to tech logical and magical characters being treated differently.
Arcanum is one of the greatest CRPGs to come out of the golden age of CRPGs. For me, it's up there along Fallout 1 and 2 although it didn't have the staying power or impact for me in my overall life that Fallout did. Unfortunately, it's usually the most overlooked RPG for other people too. I believe Troika tends to get credit more for Bloodlines (which was great) than recognition for Arcanum.
Given that 2/3rds of the designers (well, founders) of Arcanum from Troika are currently situated at Obsidian, I'd like to throw it out there that maaaaybe they should try to see who owns the rights now that Sierra is long gone, and buy them, and make another Arcanum. That would be amazing.
Great game. I played it ages ago, and the interface hasn't really aged well, but the story and whatnot is still solid. I wonder if I still have my saved games...
If you like this and Baldur's Gate style games you should also play NOX, it's a lot of fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlEKu-iK10U