Preview: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Developer: Troika Games
Publisher: Sierra Studios
Projected Release Date: February 2001
Platform:

By Mike Schwab

Picture this–as a wizard on a quest to find a holy relic, you decide to invoke a lightning bolt spell on one of your unfortunate foes. However, in a sad turn of events, a bullet from his assault rifle suddenly cuts you down. You drop to the ground–and as you gaze over at the dark, ominous castle nearby, you see a steam train race off into the distance.

Not exactly your typical adventure scenario, is it? That’s exactly what Troika Games has in mind for its inaugural title, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Bucking the traditional RPG setting, Troika is creating a fascinating world where high fantasy meets the industrial age and magic collides with technology. This really isn’t surprising–this title comes from the minds of the designers that created the groundbreaking, postapocalyptic RPGs Fallout and Fallout 2.

Details on the story remain mostly under wraps so far. The days of legendary battles with dragons are over. With the advent of good conquering evil, people have had time to focus on science, thus producing a sort of industrial or mechanical age. The mages and the wizards are, of course, opposed to this, as they prefer to rely on their magical skills. In any case, your find your character en route to a well-deserved vacation one day (via a zeppelin) when you crash and are suddenly thrust into the position of having to save the world of Arcanum. That’s pretty vague, but Troika insists on keeping it that way to avoid giving away the story ahead of time.

We do know that there will be a large number of main quests to complete (all with multiple paths to victory), as well as what could be up to 100 secondary quests. While embarking on your journey across the gigantic land of Arcanum (which might take you 20 game days to walk from one end to the other), you may run across up to 280 different types of monsters. As impressive as that are the 300 or so distinctive characters (or NPCs) you can potentially interact with amidst the dozens of towns and dungeons scattered throughout the land.

Of course, any RPG worth its salt leans heavily toward character creation, and Arcanum doesn’t disappoint. The game implements an extremely detailed stats structure that provides great freedom in creating your own personal hero. Much like Fallout, it works on a classless system. After picking your race and gender, the possibilities are endless. There are dozens of skills, spells, degrees and disciplines to learn and choose from, providing unlimited replay potential. Conversely, a nice alternative for the nongeek types are the many preset profiles you can choose from in case you want to skip the prologue and get right to the action.

The world of Arcanum is displayed in the classic up-and-away isometric view, a la Diablo or Baldur’s Gate. The graphics look quite impressive with great detail and vivid colors. One feature the crew at Troika is talking up is the accurate shadow and lighting effects, which vary depending on the time of day inside the game. These true night and day cycles serve a greater purpose than just being pretty pictures to gawk at–they directly affect the difficulty of some skills within the game. For instance, fighting might be easier during the day, but your chances of thieving increase at night after the sun goes down.

Arcanum is remarkably full-featured. Fans of both turn-based and real-time action will be pleased to know that both modes are available throughout the game. In addition, there are multiplayer capabilities and a comprehensive editor that allows the creation of whole new worlds and campaigns. While the game seems extremely striking and packed full of features, the only concern is whether Troika is trying to tackle too many areas at once. However, given their track record, I’m confident the talented folks that created Fallout can make Arcanum a winner.

Minimum System Requirements: Windows 95/98
Pentium 200 (Pentium 266 or higher preferred)
32 MB RAM (64 MB RAM preferred)
500 MB HD space
4x CD-ROM drive (8x preferred)
DirectX certified video card with at least 4 MB of video RAM (8 MB preferred)
16-bit DirectX(R) compatible Soundcard
IPX and TCP/IP LA, or Modem TCP/IP Internet Connection (optional/preferred)