39,327
edits
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura: Difference between revisions
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (view source)
Revision as of 17:35, 25 January 2014
, 10 years agoMass update links
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (fixed bogus template) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 33:
** {{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.}}
* [[And Man Grew Proud]]
* [[And Your Reward Is Clothes]]: See [[Shout
* [[Anti-Villain]]: For most of the game, {{spoiler|Kerghan}} kills, tortures, and generally acts in an indisputably evil way. But when you are told his motivations for doing so, {{spoiler|particularly when Virgil confirms what he has to say}}, you can easily understand his point of view. {{spoiler|Which is kind of disturbing given that he's an [[Omnicidal Maniac]].}}
* [[Antiquated Linguistics]]: The manual is written like this. Mostly in an in-universe style.
Line 96:
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]:
** 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
* [[The Dog Bites Back]]
* [[Dummied Out]]: Characters in-game frequently mention the island of Cattan, a tropical touristic island. You can see it on the map, but you can't actually go there in-game without using glitches or cheats and it's completely empty anyways.
Line 116:
** 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
* [[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.
* [[Final Boss Preview]]:
Line 140:
* [[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}}.
* [[Hey, It's That Voice!]]:
** Virgil is [[The Batman (Animation)|The Batman]] as well as [[Sailor Moon (Manga)|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]], [[Baldurs Gate|Rumar]] and [[Final Fantasy XII (Video Game)|King Raminas]].
Line 149:
* [[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.
* [[Hundred
* [[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.
Line 199:
** [[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."}}
* [[Pacifist Run]]: Possible if you have a high Persuasion skill and one of the following: [[Stealth Run|High prowling skill]], [[Non
** [[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}}.
Line 218:
* [[RP Gs Equal Combat]]: Technically it's possible to complete the game without fighting and it isn't even hard, but it requires you to have a very specific character build. The non-combat gameplay parts are still better than those in most [[Western RPG|RPGs]] anyways.
* [[Scaled Up]]: Kraka-Tur, a human who transformed himself into a dragon using dragon's blood and a magic scroll. {{spoiler|Kerghan's necromantic experiments have also transformed him into a giant dragon creature.}}
* [[Schizo
* [[Science Destroys Magic]]: One late conversation mentions that the world goes through cycles of magic, uneasy balance, tech, etc., with the game taking place during the uneasy balance leading into an era of technology. There's an [[Unreliable Narrator]] at work, however, {{spoiler|and other indications (such as the state of the world in the Age of Legends) indicate that it's possible for high technology and high magick to exist simultaneously}}.
* [[Science Hero]]
* [[Shotguns Are Just Better]]: Averted. They're cheap, light, and compact but are still objectively one of the worst firearms in the game, with [[Short
* [[Sealed Evil in A Can]]: The Void fulfills this purpose. Arguably, {{spoiler|L'Anamelach counts as well.}}
* [[Selective Memory]]: Our hero was going from the second largest city on the continent to the largest one, but does not remember where these cities are located. All our hero has is a map which shows the major topographical features of the continent, but none of the settlements. The player character is supposedly from a different continent which makes their lack of geographical knowledge about Arcanum understandable.
Line 227:
* [[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?]]''
* [[Shout
** 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.
| |||