The title screen is actually the first pane of the intro cinematic, and it pans up through some starting text which was unfortunately skipped. I saw nothing of character creation, because it was just loaded straight into a demo version which had your character as a wizard. It cuts to a storybook scene of a caravan going through some ruins and having to stop because you feel sick. The wagon breaks for camp, and the caravan master sends people on odd jobs. You can talk to the people around the camp, and they're doing things and walking paths and firing idle animations, and in that instant I was right back in college playing planescape for the first time and seeing everyone bustling around the markets. Ropekid says we can talk with everyone, but he only talks with the shopkeeper. In a more in-universe version of Arcanum's opening, we're allowed to switch out our starting gear for "Nearly whatever starting gear you like" he says, which I assume must mean that all the starting equipment for each class buys and sells for a silver or something.
We get sent off to harvest some local herbs that will stop our fever, though I admit I was disappointed you weren't at all weakened or down a few HP at the start. I suppose hobbling the player right out the gate isn't the best idea, but I'd have liked some representation that we're kind of messed up enough that it necessitated stopping the entire caravan in hostile territory. We get a tagalong companion, whose name I forget, but she's good with a blade apparently. On our way to find the herbs we need, we pass the guy assigned to get water, and he's having a smoke break just outside camp. Again, we could talk to him, but Sawyer's on a mission, so he just zips past the guy. It was weird to see an NPC en route to a task just taking a smoke break, for some reason. Maybe just the mundane plausibility of it, that instead of needing a key or a bridge lever switched or whatever, he's just a lazy sot who would rather smoke. I guess it is weird, given how far up themselves so many RPGs are these days, but it feels like it shouldn't be.
Anyways, a little ways to the west, and hey, we have our first real fight, with some wolves. Josh even chuckled a little bit when he said it, much in the same way a crate was the first thing you saw in Half Life 2, embracing the cliche' either as an act of defiance or, as Gabe Newell said, "Throwing ourselves on the mercy of the court." In any case, the fight was over quickly as he demonstrated the defender ability the girl had. After the fight, the companion start up a conversation praising your skills somewhat and asking how you got them. Answers ranged from being in the war, being a mercenary, being a person bodyguard, an adventurer, a thrill seeker, or just telling her to mind her own damn business.
We head back to camp and see smoker-dude's waterskin just left on the ground and figure he's just off being a loser somewhere, so we pick it up and head for the river, where another storybook scene plays, showing us getting the water, seeing jerkoff stumble into view, and him falling over with an arrow in his back. There's sound effects, music, and a teeny bit of animation, but it still seems very cinematic and pitch-perfect in tone with everything else. We're the immediately ambushed, and this was an interesting bit: Just like D&D flanking rules, with enemies on both sides the warrior girl couldn't use her "defender" power. Ropekid had his wizard cast some sort of paralysis spell on one of the mooks to crowd control, and then cast his Arcane Veil spell to help him take hits. And let me tell you, that thing's not a long spell. Like, if you know you're about to be in trouble, you pause and fire that thing up. It's not a spell you start as soon as combat begins and expect to coast through on its buff.
So that small combat over, they race back to camp and find nearly everyone dead by the hostile people everyone knew was there buy you just had to stop because you couldn't keep your orifices corked overnight. Way to go, hero, you whiny little bitch.
They've got someone held hostage, and here's where one of the first "Big" dialogue choices of the game happens. There were like ten different dialogue choices to resolve it, or at least progress it, including lore, athletics, might, and others. Nearly all of them had some sort of reputation modifier, from a "Cruel" one for saying "Go ahead and gut him so long as you let us go", to a "diplomatic" one for calling them by their proper tribal name and trying to explain yourselves. One thing I noticed was that some of the checks were really low- you only needed one "Lore" skill to know their tribal name- whereas some were really high, like a 14 might needed to intimidate them. I don't know how feasible such a score is when you've just started at level 1, or if there's some sort of New Game + option, but given the numbers I was seeing on the rest of the skillcheck options it seemed very, very high compared to other skills.
Ropekid picked an "Athletics" skillcheck, which wasn't my first thought for a wizard, and I didn't actually catch the number or the text afterward (
![[IMG]](http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-argh.gif)
) but it worked enough for the hostage, a rogue-type, to not get his throat slit. It
wasn'tenough, however, to let him escape injury altogether. A fight broke out with the rogue on our side, and he started with a "wound", which I think was a little green downward-pointing triangle. I'll be honest, I was so rapt on the visuals and mechanics I barely was cognizant of the UI. I noticed portraits with bars next to them, like in Planescape, and that was fine for me. I remembered seeing dots and bars and circles, but I honestly couldn't tell you anything about them with any sort of clarity.
Anyways, once they're dead we're treated to a combo of storybook pages and in-engine cinematics, when something he called a "Soul Wind" races through the camp and literally rips the souls out of everything dead and dying. You rush for the shelter of a nearby cave, but something snags the rogue, and you're left with the first multiple choice storybook page, of "Run back to save him" or "Help open the ruins and trust he'll make it free." Super spoilers, if you leave him to it he dies right there. An interesting thing, though, is that the "Save him" choice was specifically "Hurl a bolt of energy at the creature", which seems pretty wizard-specific. I'm wondering if there will be any other risks involved if you've got a warrior or rogue there instead of a ranged-combat class.
SO you get inside, and a few steps in you've got another conversation, this time involving both the rogue and the warrioress. The rogue, obviously, would like to take a breather owing to his wound. The warrior, on the other hand, wants to keep goign right away, wound or not, and if you side with the rogue the warrior just says "Peace out" and heads ahead on her own. If you continue on with her, the rogue bitches, but he at least stays in the party.
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