Arcanum vs Planescape: Torment

[BethesdaLove]

- You kill Kerghan with your normal followers.
- You kill Kerghan with the Void followers.

oh boy, its like the holy grail or something

 

[Black]

Or you don't kill him.
Or you join him.

 

[Comrade Hamster]

...Fallout 3...second coming...

I'm surprised it wasn't. There was plenty enough wailing and gnashing of teeth.

 

[poocolator]

Hello Mr. BethesdaLove who has never played Arcanum. You can beat the game without even doing any part of the quest chain, and still get a proper ending slide. You don't even have to go to The Void. You don't have to go to BMC mines, you don't have to go to the Isle of Despair, you don't have to do any of it. Please, don't compare the c&c between Arcanum and PST, because they are not even on the same fucking scale.

Amount of endings in Arcanum: (Spoilarz!!)

- You destroy Arcanum with Kerghan
- You destroy Arcanum alone, without going to The Void
- You free the Bane of Kree from the Void and he starts a war killing millions of people. After he is finally killed you are held accountable for freeing him.
- You kill Kerghan with your normal followers.
- You kill Kerghan with the Void followers.
- You dissuade Kerghan from his plan.
- Others I can't remember.

Huge options that affect the ending slides:

- Join the Dark Elves
- Don't Join them
- Align Caladon and Tarant
- Return Maximillian to his rightful place as King
- Convince Praetor to have Cumbria swallowed into the Union
- Stop crime in Tarant, or don't.
- Allow the brigands in SH to run free.
- Killing off the Bedokaan or not.
- Aligning the Bedokaan with the Elves.
- Return Arronax to Vendigroth or not.
- Side with magick or technology, and that affects the slides as well.
- Others I can't remember.

Small changes that affect your ending:

- Way too many to even fucking try and list.

I think there was one based off of a quest where (if your intelligence and charisma are high enough) you get mandated on the behalf of Tarant, to discuss a trade/tariff agreement with Caledon. My char was a ladykiller of a gunslinger so he was intelligent and charismatic enough to do so successfully. The tarant councilor responsible for giving you this quest gave you an outline of concessions Tarant would be willing to make and you had to do your best to barter for the better deal. It was an amazing fucking non-combat oriented quest and I hold it in high regard to this day. Bethesda for example, would never, ever be able to accomplish something of this quality, lacking insight and intelligence on the part of their "writers".

 

[poocolator]

Trust me guys, regarding the game world in Arcanum, it took sheer brilliance to occupy it with such amazing quests, memorable NPCs, and what-have-you. I'm not going to pick which game is better though, because I'm still reeling from the shock of how the shitty FO3 was accepted by the masses so openly and so expensively.

 

[poocolator]

that's what i meant on the list 'Align Caladon and Tarant' yea..that quest was really enjoyable. the likes of it we shall never see again :'(

Ah, that's what I suspected. Oh well, at least I still have my porn.

 

[jiujitsu]

I voted PS:T. Both games are great and have different strengths. I love the dialogue, the story and the attention to detail in Torment. I love the history and vastness of the world in Arcanum. Combat wise I think Torment is just a little bit better than Arcanum, but both are not that good.

Arcanum is better with leveling up, but character development means more to me than stats. All the things the Nameless One can do to improve himself goes far beyond leveling up or getting items. Not to mention his development over the course of the story, in terms of learning about his past and his personality, far outweighs that of the PC in Arcanum.

Both are great games that play to different strengths and I agree with prior posts in saying that these games can't be compared. Apples and oranges and all that. There's nothing wrong with having a favorite, though.

 

[Black]

39 votes
73 votes
We have that many Codexers?
I thought it was 10 guys max.

 

[The Vanished One]

Kingcomrade's alts.

 

[Thrasher]

Lots of lurkers. It's hurd werk to be consistently witty.

 

[Erebus]

I sort of understand the rest, although I don't necessarily agree with it. But you can't seriously tell me you think Arcanum's extremely forgettable main plot is superior to Torment's story.

Apart from personal taste, think about it for a sec. It was a pretty good quest, and I quite enjoyed how it actually turned out, not to mention the twists and turns along the way. There must have been what? 3 or 4 total twists to the plot? And these were actually where your conceptions are totally turned upside down.

I won't say I remember everything about Arcanum's plot (I wasn't exaggerating when I said I found it to be very forgettable), but what I remember was nothing special. What happened at the beginning didn't inspire me with a lot of motivation to really try and "find the boy" (and it wouldn't have helped if I'd know how swiftly "the boy" would become irrelevant to the story). The main story is little fleshed-out. It's easy to forget about it for long periods of time, especially since you know next to nothing about what's going on (and informations about that are slow to come by).

As for the twists, I only remember the one concerning the identity of the true villain. To say it failed to impress me would be an understatement. 11th-hour villains are usually lame and this one is no exception.

 

[Cogar]

Lots of lurkers. It's hurd werk to be consistently witty.

I agree. Actually, if "constantly witty" means to be actually witty (as opposed to being the mental equivalent of a high school smartass), there is no one here that meets that description.

 

[Cogar]

it's more likely that planescapefags used multiple accounts to vote. -20 votes from PST when we do the final count because of the obvious cheating going on.

I suspect the scientifically precise number would be more like -40 votes from PST.

 

[Thrasher]

It's pointless anyway, everyone knows PST is a better RPG.

 

[Thrasher]

I'd wager that most of the Arcanum voters are English as a second (or teh hard) language people.

 

[Thrasher]

validated

EPIC FAIL

Intelligence is different from language abilities.

 

[KurtH]

I just finished arcanum for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed to me like the main plot itself was indivisible from the game world's history. That is, learning about the Derian Ka or the dark elves was actually a major chunk of the plot.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I refuse to vote on this matter. I was going to but it just unfair to even compare them, two very different games.

 

[poocolator]

I refuse to vote on this matter. I was going to but it just unfair to even compare them, two very different games.

I'm on par with that vein of thought, but in my version, I'm not comparing the two greats because we should instead be spending our energy criticizing the crap out of the newer "greats", ie. Failout 3. I'd love a world where the biggest concern to gamers was which of the two were better. Unite, brothers, and fight the common foe. Do not wage civil war on thine neighbour! Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

 

[Volourn]

"I'd wager that most of the Arcanum voters are English as a second (or teh hard) language people."

Idiot.

 

[Melcar]

English sucks ass as a language. That's why I have it as my second language.

 

[Kavax]

Isn't Planescape: Torment available in more languages than Arcanum? (PS: T is also available in Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Korean and Mandarin, while Arcanum has only a French, German, Spanish, and Russian translations)

 

[Thrasher]

I always wonder how well the translations are done though. Despite what the princess says, the feeling can get lost in the translation. Many have said that the Witcher was much better in its original Polish. I bet the same can be said for Torment in English.

There was no feeling in Arcanum so it doesn't apply there.

 

[Erebus]

I decided to play Arcanum once more to remind me of what it was like and... I've already given up, just before leaving for the Island of Despair. Playing through it once is quite enough. How can a world with both technology and magic be so bland ? Why can't a character use both and still be efficient ? And why are the NPCs so uninteresting ?

So many questions, but they could be summed up with the following : how could they botch so much such a nice idea ?

 

[poocolator]

I decided to play Arcanum once more to remind me of what it was like and... I've already given up, just before leaving for the Island of Despair. Playing through it once is quite enough. How can a world with both technology and magic be so bland ? Why can't a character use both and still be efficient ? And why are the NPCs so uninteresting ?

So many questions, but they could be summed up with the following : how could they botch so much such a nice idea ?

Umm... what are you smoking because you need to come off of it. For one, a world with both technology and magick not working to cancel each other out would be much, much more stale and uninteresting. The complications added because of how they implemented magick and technology in Arcanum adds to a) the believability of the game universe (ie, making it seem less ideal and more natural, as if real physics laws are in place) and b) how you have to change your gameplay style to fit the challenge. This from the top of my head.

I won't bother with any other concerns you have, but let me ask you this: what did you think of Fallout 3?