So Arcanum is a pretty fun game...

Thirith

I'd agree with Deaderinred: as far as I'm concerned, Mask of the Betrayer is the best ever entry in the NWN series, and possibly the best D&D game since Planescape Torment, at least IMO.

Fuga

so how bugged is this with all the patches? i want to try but if something fucks up and I'll have to restart halfway through the game I'd rather not waste my time.

TrippyJing

I can upload Drog Black Tooth's unofficial patch and his resolution patch. I know I still have it somewhere. The game works much better with those.

Silpheed

Thirith wrote: »

Sorenson wrote: »

I'd actually love to see Bioware take a spin with the concept, especially if they did it in the vein of a virtual tabletop ala Neverwinter Nights. Just keep any potential sequals away from Obsidian, thank you very much.

I have to say that if I have to choose between perfectly polished but increasingly generic fare (Bioware) and something that has oodles of bugs but great writing as well as boatloads of character and imagination (Obsidian), I opt for the latter - admittedly in the hope that fans will come up with the ultimate fan patch. :P

Deebaser

Dyscord wrote: »

the idea of this game sounds awesome

the implementation is less so

we can only hope that bethesda acquires this IP next

Judging by Fallout 3, that would be horrible. The story telling fell way short of expectations and the NPC interactions were largely trivial.

A new arcanum game would need a massive script and sparse if any voice acting.

Silpheed

So, who holds the right for Arcanum now?

Axen

Well I don't quite think there is anything wrong with full voice acting. The problem lies in quality. Although that seems to be one of Bethesda's weak points.

edit- Though I do think Fallout 3's voice acting was an improvement over Oblivion.


This is off topic, but I would love to have a Shadowrun game in the vein of Silent Storm. Wherein you recruit/create your team, take on missions, use your various skills to accomplish the missions, and then use the money to upgrade gear and such. With fully destructible environments of course. :P

Clevinger

You know what'd be neat? Bethesda getting the license and then hiring Obsidian like with New Vegas. Not going to happen, but oh well.

I wish Troika had gotten to make that Source, Vampire: Bloodlines-esque sequel to Arcanum they were planning to do before shutting its doors.

Toxic Pickle

Y'know, I don't find that full voice acting is entirely necessary in an RPG. In many ways, full voice acting can limit story telling, and it sure as hell limits the quality of fan-made stuff in comparison. I kinda liked the way NWN did it, with characters voicing maybe their intro or the first page of text, with the rest being left to read.

Not that I don't enjoy voice acting when it's well done (Dragon Age, as a prime example) but I don't think every RPG needs to aspire to that. I'd much rather they tell an epic tale and give the player a bit of choice in how things develop.

Thirith

I think that you could count the RPGs with well-implemented full voice acting on one hand... Two if you're generous. Most of them feature okay speeches but crap dialogues - they do conversations that consist of alternating monologues.

While I'm not the biggest fan of Mass Effect (I thought it was quite good but by no means amazing), I think they did pretty well with the overlapping dialogues (when you skip to the next conversational turn) - it's a small thing, but it already makes the dialogues sound a lot more like spoken language rather than written language. It helps them come alive.

Deebaser

Axen wrote: »

Well I don't quite think there is anything wrong with full voice acting. The problem lies in quality. Although that seems to be one of Bethesda's weak points.

edit- Though I do think Fallout 3's voice acting was an improvement over Oblivion.

Well there is nothing inherently bad with voice acting, but the problem is that it greatly limits your options and the overall depth of the story. Voice acting takes up a lot more space on the disk than text and requires an actor to read the lines, a studio to read them in, a sound engineer to make sure everything is quality, in addition to the dude that has to type in the subtitles and what not. This is a shitload more expensive than just typing in the text.

Deebaser

Clevinger wrote: »

I wish Troika had gotten to make that Source, Vampire: Bloodlines-esque sequel to Arcanum they were planning to do before shutting its doors.

I want this so hard.

Dracula

Once I was playing this and my gunslinger chick was getting drunk in a bar. When I stumbled outside the town's mayor ran into me and said, "Hey, you're a great hero, help us settle a dispute over this statue we want to erect." Deciding to help out, I drunkenly stumbled to the town hall, and while I was usually the master of eloquence, the drunken stupor I found myself in greatly impeded my oratory abilities. Thus, I was only able to speak in simple, moronic sentences, and the only imput I could give was that of a drunken baffoon. Suffice to say, I think I ruined the mayor's reputation and the entire town hated me.

I seem to recall that I suggested "LOOK AT THAT SHEEP!" be the quote engraved on the base of the statue.

piL

Cardboard Tube wrote: »

mrhoohex wrote: »

do you guys realize how awesome this game sounds

Prepare to be surprised

Well it does have a pretty good soundtrack, so it actually does sound pretty awesome.

admanb

so how bugged is this with all the patches? i want to try but if something fucks up and I'll have to restart halfway through the game I'd rather not waste my time.

With the unofficial fan patches it's not buggy at all.

Thirith wrote: »

Sorenson wrote: »

I'd actually love to see Bioware take a spin with the concept, especially if they did it in the vein of a virtual tabletop ala Neverwinter Nights. Just keep any potential sequals away from Obsidian, thank you very much.

I have to say that if I have to choose between perfectly polished but increasingly generic fare (Bioware) and something that has oodles of bugs but great writing as well as boatloads of character and imagination (Obsidian), I opt for the latter - admittedly in the hope that fans will come up with the ultimate fan patch. :P

Yes. Fuck Bioware, fuck Bethesda. Obsidian 4 lyfe.

Tube

If I enjoy something, it stands to reason that things I don't enjoy as much are stupid!

Deaderinred

how dare you have personal opinions!

Tube

That's not really what I was saying but GO TEAM.

Barbaric_Monkey

Woohoo! I love seeing discussion on this game pop up, it was my first RPG that I just completely devoured.

The loot for most of the chests is randomly generated, based on character's name, background, race, and gender.

I forget the background, but for a character named Violett Morningstar, half-orc female, the magical chest in the blimp crash site contains an Arcane Platemail and one of those crazy magic-swords. All the loot you'll need for the rest of the game.

TekDragon

Barbaric_Monkey wrote: »

The loot for most of the chests is randomly generated, based on character's name, background, race, and gender.

I thought that was only true of the first chest.

Toxic Pickle

Barbaric_Monkey wrote: »

The loot for most of the chests is randomly generated, based on character's name, background, race, and gender.

That is the greatest and most terrible idea of all time.

Stolls

I must say that the thought of what the Elder Scrolls modding community could do with Arcanum is indeed awesome. Do note that I'm not using 'awesome' as a wholly positive statement, merely that what they've done with Oblivion and Fallout 3 is, quite literally, awe inspiring. As in "holy fucking shit someone actually did all this work for this." Writing wouldn't be the same, no, but I'd be lying if I said I haven't wandered back into TES games just to see what other crazy shit the modders have come up with.

Hell, I'd put up with having to sift through a ton of junk mods if it meant one good 'Guns Desuckified' megamod.

Edith Upwards

Yes, and that would be totally awesome if Beth wasn't trying it's hardest to, with every successive game, pare down modding functionality to the bare-minimum level.

Silpheed

Erich Zahn wrote: »

Yes, and that would be totally awesome if Beth wasn't trying it's hardest to, with every successive game, pare down modding functionality to the bare-minimum level.

My problem with Bethesda is that their writing has been going down the drain since Daggerfall and Morrowind. There are some good stuff to be found in Oblivion and Fallout 3 but those are quite few and far between. Which is a damn shame, considering what a whore I am for sandbox RPG's.

Tube

This thread is not about bethesda

Thirith

While I like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, I always felt that its world felt pretty small. Unless Troika had been able to create a huge, living world in the Source engine, I'm not sure I could imagine a VtM: Bloodlines-style sequel to Arcanum. Something like a spin-off-type Arcanum Adventures, though? Definitely.

Clevinger

I could. They could just set it in one detailed city. It would be awesome.

august

This game is pretty awesome but there are some pretty bad thing about it. Like the ui. It will take you about five minutes to repair everyone's shit at a smith if you have a party of any size.

EDIT: in reading the thread I see that the ui problems have already been addressed. It really is shockingly bad. I never figured out how to use a lockpick.

Barbaric_Monkey

To use a lockpick, drag it onto your quick action bar. Then select it. Then select a door. I never had too big a problem with it, but maybe you didn't realize you needed actual lockpicks?

Viola. Or Voila. Whichever is right.

Sorenson

Clevinger wrote: »

I could. They could just set it in one detailed city. It would be awesome.

Eh, I always thought part of the great thing about Arcanum was how you could zip around and you'd have all these different locales and such, you'd go from ye standard mining town to Faux London to decrepit mine to backwards midieval shithole to country getaway to Hippie Tree City to Evil Hippie Tree City to Australia-esque penal colony to ancient civilization ruins and how the shit tied together or contrasted one another. One big city can only have so much variation, y'dig?

Though with all this talk about sequals I can't help but wonder if the Steampunk thing can even hold out for another game without it feeling samey, there'd have to be some kind of progress since the last game. Something modeled after the roaring 20s would be rather neat, methinks, Dwarven industrialists and robber barons and Elf communists and Gnome/Halfling moonshiners and mobsters and flappers and Orc/Ogre sufferagists and trustbusting and reform and all that good stuff.

EDIT: Or Disintegrate!

Jasconius

To pick a lock, just punch the fucking door down.

There are few things in this game that can be solved with a lock that can't be solved with explosions and/or smashings.

Thirith

Sorenson wrote: »

Though with all this talk about sequals I can't help but wonder if the Steampunk thing can even hold out for another game without it feeling samey, there'd have to be some kind of progress since the last game. Something modeled after the roaring 20s would be rather neat, methinks, Dwarven industrialists and robber barons and Elf communists and Gnome/Halfling moonshiners and mobsters and flappers and Orc/Ogre sufferagists and trustbusting and reform and all that good stuff.

That sounds really good, actually! The whole thing could be modelled on the run-up to WW1, with a plot on a royal couple that would trigger a massive war, with several cities and races pushing for this war.

Quaz and Wally

I remember having fun in this game, even though I think the only way I got by near the beginning as a gun/tech guy was by putting a stick of dynamite on the ground and changing the game from turn based to real time and trying over and over and over again to get baddies clearly out of my league to get blown up for massive exp or to simply progress the game.

TychoCelchuuu

Thirith wrote: »

While I like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, I always felt that its world felt pretty small. Unless Troika had been able to create a huge, living world in the Source engine, I'm not sure I could imagine a VtM: Bloodlines-style sequel to Arcanum. Something like a spin-off-type Arcanum Adventures, though? Definitely.

It was subtitled "journey to the center of the world" or something so maybe you would have spent most of your time in Dwarven ruins and gas-lit steampunk caverns and dank caves infested with all sorts of monsters and mines worked by slaves and automatons and stuff.

BUT THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN NOW.

august

Barbaric_Monkey wrote: »

To use a lockpick, drag it onto your quick action bar. Then select it. Then select a door. I never had too big a problem with it, but maybe you didn't realize you needed actual lockpicks?

Viola. Or Voila. Whichever is right.

Yeah I dunno.

I do remember last time I installed a few months back I tried dropping healing potions on the character portraits (or maybe the actual character models) of my teammates. Whichever way I did it, the game decided that I was attempting to hurl healing potions at my so-called friends in order to kill them with dangerous, heavy glass objects. Of course, my party members had no choice but to put me down quickly in a tragic act of self-defense that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

thank you Arcanum

august

In addition, who can forget the breathtaking scene where at the behest of my party I was privileged enough to 1) have to make room in my inventory to hold a full suit of armor and weapons in addition to my own, 2) go through a dialogue screen with each character to access their inventory and remove the necessary items, 3) go through a dialog screen with the smith to get the shit repaired, 4) go through a dialogue screen again to access their inventory again to re-equip it and then 5) do it all again like four more fucking times or whatever for every party member each time I got back from a fight.

Fiaryn

Man I really don't remember repairing gear being that much of an issue except like when you were fighting fire elementals or golems.

Everything else did pretty negligible damage to your gear.

august

Everything did damage to year gear over time. It effected it's usefulness a la Elder Scrolls games if I recall.

You just remember the fire elementals and golems because it was the only time where you went from having gear during fight to being naked during a fight in about three seconds.

Also why the fuck is golem not in Firefox's spellcheck what the hell.

Axen

But you don't have to go through a dialogue screen to access their inventory. . . .

You just right-click their character portrait.

august

Axen wrote: »

But you don't have to go through a dialogue screen to access their inventory. . . .

You just right-click their character portrait.

Yeah I just remembered that.

That's one less step!

You still can't get shit repaired without having it your own inventory.