Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura: Difference between revisions

[[File:arcanum_cover_copy.jpg|frame|''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Exactly what it says in the subtitle...]]'']]

 

 

 

The ''[[Zeppelins from Another World|IFS Zephyr]]'' has just begun her maiden voyage, a marvelous, high-society venture through the clouds. Aboard, the cream of high society enjoys the flight, playing chess, sipping fine wine, etc. Sadly, nothing gold can last forever -- and, out of the blue, the airship is attacked by a group of ogres on fighter planes. Within moments, the vessel goes down in flames.

There's only one survivor, the player character -- and, as they crawl out of the wreckage, a dying gnome begs them to take [[MacGuffin|his ring]] to "the boy". The player character soon meets a man named Virgil, who claims to have found the reincarnation of a long lost prophet... and that's where the story properly takes off.

 

 

 

 

A sequel -- titled ''Journey to the Centre of Arcanum'' and using ''[[Half Life]]'''s Source engine -- [[What Could Have Been|was in its initial planning stages]], but Sierra and Valve had disagreements, and Troika's dissolution sealed the game's fate.

** Though as with most RPGs, the aesop could just as easily be "no scheme is safe from a band of adventurers and their dog".

** The other Aesop is "even when life is suffering, it's still worth living".

*** <small>"Nothing will ever raise my comrades from the dust. They will live on... without voice, without dreams, without vision..."</small>

** {{spoiler|Arronax has spent the last 2000 years imprisoned in a magical shell, as punishment for attempting to destroy Kerghan when he was first banished to the void.}}

** [[Artificial Stupidity]]: You can use the AI's proactive behavior against it, though. If an NPC spots a piece of equipment sitting around unattended, they might pick it up for themselves... and if it looks better than what they're currently using, they might equip it. Even if it's actually a cursed chainmail shirt that continually poisons its wearer. There is also a guard captain whose patrol route occasionally takes him right through a campfire. Left to his own devices, he'll walk through that fire until his platemail melts right off his back.

*** There is still no justification for picking up large, massive objects that greatly encumber the character. Like big boulders.

** St. Mannox was believed to have done this. {{spoiler|He was actually murdered, making this a subversion.}}

** {{spoiler|In some of the [[Multiple Endings]], the PC can do this.}}

** {{spoiler|Virgil was a thief and gambling addict until his brother was killed to collect on his debts. He claims that he himself was "an evil man" when Virgil tells the PC this.}}

** A bigger one is {{spoiler|Arronax, who can be recruited during the final part of the game, tells you about how much he regrets the horrible crimes he committed in his youth, and how having 2000 years to stand in a single spot and think about it has that effect on you.}}

** Even extremely weak character builds can generally eliminate the initial [[Beef Gate]] gang with careful exploration - the town is full of various items [[Kleptomaniac Hero|ripe for the taking]], including at least one bundle of dynamite and two stun grenades.

* [[Better Than It Sounds Video Games]]

* [[Bomb Throwing Anarchist]]: Subverted. Donn Throgg's resistance movement resembles some of the more militant socialist movements from the mid-to-late 19th century, but Throgg isn't really a bad guy, and he saw violence as the only way to change the hideous working conditions in the factories of Tarant. He can be persuaded to pursue his goals in a peaceful manner. {{spoiler|This ends up with him becoming the future president of the Unified Kingdom, and judging from the art style on his posters, he's running a socialist platform.}}

* [[Bonus Boss]]: Stringy Pete and his crew are significantly harder to beat than the final boss. You can, however, give yourself an advantage by using your accumulated Fate Points to Critical Success Pickpocket all his gear before the fight.

** The very first side quest that can be found involves a spirit stuck on the mortal plain, in pain every moment. {{spoiler|While said spirit very much deserves this fate, the fact that the mortal world is "painful" is the big bad's motivation.}}

** And another variation. Plot of the game starts when someone escapes Void (although you are not involved in it). It ends when you do the same thing.

** The first spell of the Black Necromancy college, Harm, does decent damage with little Fatigue consumption.

** There's also the humble Balanced Sword and Featherweight Axe, a pair of simple and easily-obtainable melee weapons that are easy to use, extremely powerful, light, and fast, and so will usually be a technological melee fighter's primary armament for most of the game.

* [[Breakable Weapons]]: A sword is not a proper tool for opening stubborn doors and chests. Neither are your fists, and it will hurt like hell to boot. Bring an ax. [[BFG|Or an elephant gun.]]

** Certain monsters and objects are hard (metal doors, machines, golems) or hot (fire elementals, normal fires) enough to destroy most melee weapons on contact, even axes. The exception to this is similarly damaging or extremely powerful weapons (the pyrotechnic axe and arcane weapon variants, for example, can smash anything).

* [[The Chosen One]]: Almost from the moment the game begins you're told that you're the reincarnation of Nasrudin, a messianic figure. Later subverted when {{spoiler|you actually meet Nasrudin, who's still alive and living in seclusion}}. Or possibly played straight, since {{spoiler|the exact wording of the prophecy says that the ''spirit'' of Nasrudin will be reborn, rather than the guy himself. Since Nasrudin was a force of order and righter of wrongs in his time, and you can become one too, it could be argued that you revived that spirit alright.}}

** Subverted in some of the ending choices.

* [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]]: {{spoiler|The Master instructor of Backstabbing}} will stab you in the back, figuratively and literally.

* [[Cowboy Cop]]: Doc Roberts. Even though he isn't an actual cop. {{spoiler|He'll take the job from the useless sheriff if you save the town and help him stop the bank robbery, though.}}

** But then again, so is the player, especially if you use the patch to remove the level cap. The game even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this: {{spoiler|if you side with Kerghan, the two of you kill every living thing in Arcanum together, after which he'll try to kill you and you end up defeating him}}. And of course, earlier in the game an evil character can do a quest to depopulate the entire town of Stillwater by him/herself...

* [[Disadvantageous Disintegration]]: The Disintegrate spell handily destroys your enemy's loot, as well.

** An in-game character called Gil Bates. Considered the inventor of <s>MS-DOS</s> steam engines, {{spoiler|actually turns out he stole the idea from the dwarves}}. Reminds you of any old, debunked conspiracy theories? He even has a pissed-off, borderline incompetent competitor named Cedric ''Apple''by.

** Also, the first NPC character that can join your party and act as your early guide to the world of Arcanum is a man called [[Divine Comedy|Virgil]]. Possibly doubles as a nice [[Shout-Out]].

** Elves and dwarves have traditionally gotten along fairly well -- the recent industrial revolution has, in fact, caused both civilizations to dislike humans far more than each other, though elves are still a bit bitter about the dwarves letting Gilbert Bates get his hands on the steam engine. {{spoiler|However, a faction of racial supremacist elves manipulates the dwarven king by threatening war between elves and dwarves unless he banishes one of his own clans as punishment for elevating humans. Years later, the king realizes that it was not, in fact, the elves' doing.}}

** King Thunderstone points out that the two races don't get along (but are civil about it) because [[Blue and Orange Morality|their moral and ethical philosophies differ too much]] for them to understand each other properly. Ironically, if you consider the philosophies, they are actually very similar.

** Trellian, known as The First Assassin, severs an alliance between the assassins' guild he leads, The Molochean Hand, and the Derian-Ka, a cult of necromancers, when he learns of the atrocities committed by the cult's founder, Kerghan, and leads the Hand in a war to purge the Derian-Ka from existence. {{spoiler|In the present day, The Hand's current leader, Gideon Laiar, will do the same to the Dark Elves of T'Sen Ang if you tell him they want to bring back their leader-in-exile Arronax.}}

** {{spoiler|Vollinger, a Hand assassin who you can recruit as a follower, supposedly gets sickened if you take him to a vivisection laboratory/factory farm which the gnomes of Tarant used to [[Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil|force-breed]] Half-Ogres.}}

* [[Fake Balance]]: Of the "everything is cheap" type, with most builds having access to abilities that can destroy everything in their path. The exception is guns, most of which are woefully underpowered; on the other hand, the [[BFG|Elephant Gun]] is one of the most damaging weapons in the game.

** Archery is another exception. Archers lack any high-end weapon and the skill has no particularly special use.

** Everyone looks down on orcs. Elves and dwarves simply hate them; humans and gnomes use them for slave labor in a [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|direct allegory]] of black slavery. The book series "The Orcish Question", found in the Tarant library, goes into a lot of detail about both sides of the debate, including some contributions by Orcs themselves. There are many almost-explicit comparisons to Africans and to Jews in the discourse, which neatly lampshades the trope: unlike in real world racism, Orcs ''actually'' tend to have lower intelligence and a more violent nature than the authors. Odd thing, though -- if you play a ''half''-orc they have the same base intelligence stat, and a lot of the orcs you can talk to don't really seem stupid or violent at all, just uneducated and underprivileged. [[Blatant Lies|As for the manual entry...]]

** Elves and dwarves don't especially like humans, though this is justified by the fact that humans have been making a mess of things recently. Gnomes, for some reason, are not nearly as disliked by either. Everyone likes halflings, more or less, and racism towards half-ogres is limited by the fact that it's [[Too Dumb to Live|a bad idea to tick off something that big and strong.]]

*** Racism against half-ogres is usually too subtle for them to notice. The one you meet on the Island of Despair (who was unusually intelligent, as well) didn't realize he was a factory slave until years afterwards, when he'd gotten an education and time to think about it.

** Subverted by the half-elves who are almost universally liked and admired (and tend to become diplomats, merchants and... trophy wives because of it), except for the almost universally ''disliked'' half-orcs, who loathe them.

** The Unified Kingdom, [[Subverted Trope|which actually has no monarch]] and is run by a cabal of gnomish capitalists, is obviously modelled on late [[Victorian Britain]]. The fantasy races are mostly Tolkienian stereotypes.

** Before the release of the game, the official site carried several front pages for a fictional newspaper from the gameworld. One article had an amusing account of a fantasy version of the historical controversy concerning Darwinism. The gist of it was that the Elves consider themselves the oldest race on Arcanum, and are rather irritated at recent discoveries that seem to indicate that the humans and dwarves evolved first and that elves and some other races branched off from them the due to the influence of magic.

*** Talking about that, one of the in-game texts was a journal of local Archaeological Society. It turns out they are very unhappy about "heroes" [[Dungeon Crawl|raiding ancient tombs and ruined temples for magical treasures and ancient lore]], without any reverence for scientific methodology. It could be a [[Shout-Out]] to Heinrich Schliemann's methods -- but it's a fantasy role-playing game, and we all know what the characters in every fantasy role-playing game ever excel at.

* [[Fantasy Gun Control]]: Averted in a big way--and arguably played straight at the same time. Guns are considered technology, and therefore magic interferes with them. Thus, the archetypal mage cannot use a gun without it exploding in his hands.

** After you visit the Isle of Despair, but before you reach the Wheel Clan, {{spoiler|Kerghan posing as}} Arronax appears before you as a phantom, taunts you and uses a spell which knocks you and all your followers unconscious.

** More of a "Final Mook Preview," but one quest in Blackroot involves shutting down a portal {{spoiler|to the Void, the game's final dungeon}}. During it, you fight monsters normally not seen till the final dungeon. When you kill them, more spawn, changing to different monsters after you've dealt with enough of one type. Though they run out eventually, [[Peninsula of Power Leveling|leveling here is pretty quick]], enough to get you near the top in one go.

* [[Heroic Spirit]] / [[Heroic Willpower]]: {{spoiler|Raven}} is the first character where the evil strategy of 1) murder 2) cast Conjure Spirit - doesn't seem to work. {{spoiler|Her}} ghost doesn't feel any pain from the summoning, and actively mocks the PC's attempts at interrogation.

* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]: The Elven Council went around righting wrongs and doing hero stuff in the Age of Legends, but [[Can't Argue with Elves|their heads got pretty swollen from all of the heroic carnage]], until {{spoiler|Arronax finally went over the edge and nuked Vendigroth in the name of the Council}}.

** Virgil is [[The Batman]] as well as [[Sailor Moon|Tuxedo Mask]], The Silver Lady is [[DCAU|Poison Ivy]], Gilbert Bates is [[Star Wars|The Emperor]]'s voice in all appearances outside of the movies.

** The Silver Lady is also Adalon in Baldur's Gate 2, while Nick Jameson (the guy who voiced Gilbert Bates) has done a lot of roles, a small handful of which include [[Psychonauts|Dr. Loboto]], [[Baldur's Gate|Rumar]] and [[Final Fantasy XII|King Raminas]].

* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: {{spoiler|The Vendigroth device}} exploits the unstable relationship between magick and technology to turn a mage's powers against them.

* [[Humans Are Bastards]]: Dwarven technology in human hands has propelled Arcanum into an industrial revolution, which has led to the destruction of Morbihan Forest and rendered Tarant the world's most polluted city. Dwarves in particular invoke this trope, and attempt to justify it; humans, being so short-lived compared to the non-human races, must be motivated by the fear of impending death (in other words, they want their life to mean something), driving them to greater and greater heights of progress. They rarely live long enough to see the destructive consequences of their actions.

* [[I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin]]: Slightly subverted. {{spoiler|You'd expect the ring given by the dying "gnome" to be either magical or at least the key to unlocking some ancient horror. However, the signet ring is merely a clue to figuring out the identity of "the boy", and it's fully possible to identify, locate him and acquire his aid even if you let the ring be stolen within 5 minutes of obtaining it. Keeping it only allows you to sell it back to the owner for a small sum.}}

* [[Inventory Management Puzzle]]: Characters can only carry a certain amount of weight in a certain amount of space. Objects like guns and bows, though not overly heavy, can take up about a twelfth of your inventory space, while things like potions only take up a single square. Crates, chests and such can hold a much larger number of items, and have no weight penalty, but still have a space limit.

* [[Item Crafting]]: Make a suit of plate armour with only two items and some theoretical knowledge! No tools needed! Results in literally no time at all! Or, for that matter, a sentient super dangerous attack spider from only a steam engine and a cogwheel. Oh, the marvels of modern science!

** The summoning spell for the Nature magick college, at full power, will summon an ordinary-looking white rabbit called the "Vorpal Bunny".

** Also, the blue rabbit that is allegedly the shapeshifted Stillwater Giant. You ''do'' find it in a cave filled with bones, after all...

** [[Highly-Visible Ninja]]: Played straight and averted. Unless you pickpocket every person (barring [[Random Encounters]], who are quite open about their intentions) you talk to, you don't know who's in, but they are easily identified by the necklace once you do.

* [[Murder the Hypotenuse]]: Inverted by {{spoiler|Wrath, Sharpe and Ivory: [[My Death Is Just the Beginning|Wrath commits suicide with a glass of poisoned wine, in the hopes that Sharpe will take the blame for his murder]]}}, the [[Unwitting Pawn|PC can help it along if they don't explore the quest well]].

* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: If you have the Bane of Kree in your party at the end of the game and gave him the [[Infinity+1 Sword]] you found in the same area, an ending sequence has him waging war upon all of Arcanum, for which you are blamed. While it would seem obvious what effect bringing him back would have, there's no real dialogue or even a hint as to how to trigger this unless you have a specific follower in your party. Contrast with the half-man, half-dragon Kraka-Tur, who will explicitly threaten to do this should you release him yet won't (no doubt being a coward dissuaded him from causing trouble with you around).

* [[Noble Demon]]: Z'an Alurin is supposedly Alignment -30, and won't work with good [[Player Character|PCs]] unless they have Master Persuasion, but nothing in her actions or dialogue besides this point backs this up; {{spoiler|in fact, she's the one who gives Loghaire Thunder Stone a massive [[What the Hell, Hero?]] later in the game if you bring her to meet him.}}

** [[Invoked Trope|Attempted invocation]] by {{spoiler|Magnus, who's so ashamed to be a city dwarf, he makes every attempt to be More The Same like he imagines ''real'' dwarves should be. Even when he doesn't exactly know the customs he should be following, he'll make them up as he goes along.}}

** Also subverted by {{spoiler|Preston Radcliffe, the dying 'gnome' at the game's intro. He's actually a dwarf who shaved his beard to disguise himself. To the rest of his clan, this is an unthinkable disgrace only partly forgiven by the severity of the situation. The player, if a dwarf, can lampshade this by saying, "We dwarves would rather cut our throats then cut off our beards."}}

** [[Technical Pacifist]] Runs are a bit easier: just build up your Charisma until you can sign up a bunch of henchmen to do your fighting for you.

* [[Physical God]]: Anyone of sufficient personal power is effectively a deity. Nasrudin and Arronax are even worshipped as such, {{spoiler|and they're hardly the most powerful beings in the setting. In the ending, you can declare yourself a god, and given that you just took Kerghan apart, it's really more of a [[Lampshade Hanging]] than anything}}.

* [[Point Build System]]: ''Arcanum'' has one of the most flexible character creation systems in all of gaming.

* [[Protagonist Without a Past]]: Of course, if you take the trait "child of a hero", the game claims that everyone knows your father is famous, but no one will acknowledge it (although they will tend to react more positively to you).

* [[Psycho for Hire]]: Sebastian, Vollinger, and Chukka.

* [[Purely Aesthetic Gender]]: Averted. Females of any race (where applicable) get gain one point of Endurance and lose one point of Strength. The maximum possible value for a stat is 12 added to the starting value from race and background, and hitting 20 in a status gives you bonus (for example, doubling damage for strength) on top of normal effects for increasing stats, so females can't get that bonus without an artificial boost. Gender also affects dialog, though there's only a few times this is more then just sir/ma'am pronouns etc, such as the Gentleman's Club in Tarrant.

** Half-Orcs are subject to a lot of [[Fantastic Racism]], partly because most people assume that at some point in their ancestry, a male orc violated an unwilling human woman.

** {{spoiler|Arguably, one of the most disturbing and sickening parts of the game is visiting the factory farm where a large number of Half-Ogres were 'bred' by the Gnomish conspiracy.}}

* [[Sheathe Your Sword]]: There's a side-quest where you have to get these human prospectors off of elven holy ground. The ground is cursed/blessed so that anyone who acts violently while on it is killed instantly. You have basically two options; talk/trick the humans into leaving, or goad them into attacking you thus getting them killed. If you're going for the latter option, [[Guide Dang It|make sure you have Automatic Combat switched to "off."]]

** You can order Virgil to hold position somewhere nearby so that he can't reach the fight until everyone is already dead; the Resurrection spell, however, ''can be cast at long distance.'' [[Good Bad Bugs|If he casts it on you before combat ends, the game over screen doesn't appear.]] Really, who doesn't want to cheat their way out of a peaceful elven hippie curse using a combination of ''[[Murder Is the Best Solution|violent mayhem and necromancy?]]''

** Several to ''[[Fallout]]''. You find a power-armor-wearing man outside of the secret mage city. He was sent to find a water crystal but now they won't let him back in because he's been contaminated by the outside world.

** The entirety of Vendigroth Wastes - a huge desert littered by ruins of an ancient, technologically advanced civilization that vanished due to an unknown cataclysm.

* [[Sniper Rifle]]: One can be purchased (or built by characters exceptionally skilled in Gunsmithing). It has the longest range of any weapon, spell, or ability in the game, and can easily hit targets three or more screens away. The [[BFG|Elephant Gun]] can also serve in this role; it has slightly shorter range but deals much more damage.

* [[Space Jews]]: The gnomes are small people with large noses and exceptional prowess at handling the money who own a large part of the industry and banking. Moreover, they've been subject to much prejudice because of these.

* [[Spot of Tea]]: Debating the merits of green tea over earl grey is required to recruit a certain [[Cultured Badass]] as a follower.

* [[Stealth Expert]]: You may play as one, which is of particular importance for [[Pacifist Run|pacifists]] and [[For Massive Damage|backstabbers]]. Why, you can hide in an open field if you're good enough!

* [[Universal Ammunition]]: Pistol? Rifle? [[Hand Cannon]]? [[BFG|Elephant Gun?]] Same bullets.

* [[Vagueness Is Coming]]: The dying gnome at the start of the game helpfully informs you that "unimaginable evil" is coming to "destroy everyone and everything".

** Use [[Charm Person|Charm Beast]] to befriend a wild animal, like a wolf or bear. Walk to the nearest town. Have your animal friend enter an occupied house while you wait outside. Magelock the door shut. Then dispel Charm Beast. (You might want to magically seal the windows, too -- you don't want anyone to escape the wrath of [[Everything's Worse with Bears|Mr. Disoriented Grizzly.]]) Is also an effective means to assassinate someone without the guards finding out it was you (whereas if a cop NPC walks into a room and you're standing over a bloody corpse with a sword in your hand, they'll usually put two and two together and attack you).

** There's also the fact that there exists only 1 NPC in the game who can't be killed {{spoiler|(The Silver Lady)}}. Every major character can be murdered, then have their ghost summoned and interrogated. A true villain may kill the dwarf leader of the Isle of Despair, then raise his spirit just to tell him that you're going to travel to his home clan and kill everyone - oh, and that you'll drag the corpses into the daylight just to add insult to injury (sadly, you can't actually drag the corpses outside). There's almost no limit to how much cruelty you can inflict upon the populace of Arcanum.

** While most things in this game can just be killed to deal with them, there are two instances where the game will punish you severely for trying. The first instance is a quest Raven sends you on. The area in question is cursed so that if you or your party harms anything there, you all die automatically. The trick is to get your targets to do this to you. The second is dealing with Stringy Pete. You have to do three quests to get his boat. You might wonder why you can't just kill him instead. After all, he's just one high-level skeleton. He is just one high-level skeleton... armed with the best magical armor available, and summons six similarly high-level skeletons to back him up. While it is ''technically'' possible to win, it's very unlikely unless you bring a huge group and prepare for it. Too bad one of his quests is impossible to complete if you pick up the Torin stone before speaking to him and the priests. Or if you lose the stone. Then killing him is the only way to get to his ship.

** Killing the fat perverted Mr. Franklin who hires a female PC to sleep with him ([[Black Widow|while he is fast asleep from the sex]]) will result in the quest-giver attacking when going to pick up the payment. Can be averted by killing him ''after'' payment is received.