Arcanum Canceled Arcanum mobile sequel

[Abu Antar]

This project was cancelled, because Bobby Kotick caught wind of it, and was disgusted. His love for Arcanum would not let anyone sully its name like this.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Taking an IP only recognized by the groggiest of grognards and trying to repackage it to zoomers is a hell of a move.

It is basically what happened every single time in the global hystory of RPGs.

 

[shamroxor]

I want to hear Tim Cain's thoughts on this... thing

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I don't think most Arcanum fans have switched to the smartphone yet. This is a bit before its time.

 

[Serus]

I don't think most Arcanum fans have switched to the smartphone yet. This is a bit before its time.

I didn't.

 

[PlanHex]

I just want to know the exact mad libs they used to come up with this.

[Unused Activision-owned IP] mobile [genre] aimed at [audience]!

Arcanum mobile adventure game aimed at pre-teens!
King's Quest mobile casino game aimed at 65+ women!
Etc

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

The art is actually kinda nice.
But yeah, age 10+ is a stupid idea. Arcanum isn't for kids. And Mobile sequel for a PC game sounds stupid as hell.
Kerghann pulling a "Palpatine" is also goofy as fuck, could have been an original villain. Through honestly, if I did an Arcanum sequel, I would make the Big Bad technological, like some sort of Steampunk Cyborg turning everything into Victorian hellscape industry.

Not to say that a mobile game for kids Arcanum isn't stupid but this plot summary is just speculation based on file names. For all we know Kerghan would just stay in Virgil's flashbacks.

I do like your Steamborg idea. Make him a Saruman-type figure and have him organizing orcs to "sieze the means of production." PC will begin by being all "oh my poor oppresssed orksies, let's build communism together." Only to then realize you've been duped and it's time to grind Cyber-Stalin into scrap. Feels quite fitting for Arcanum. Not that in Current Year we can get a piece of media with gommunists as the bad guys, but a man can dream.

Oooh that's a good idea, essentially Russian Revolution in Arcanum, with an added racial tone. The Saruman-Stalin parallel is brilliant, especially when you consider how Arronax in the original game is sold as pretty much Arcanum's Sauron/Dark Lord figure. Could be a Robespierre or Napoleon-esque figure as well.

The villain of the original game was an ancient wizard who used technology as a tool to bypass Magic Wards and punch a door through dimensions, using tech to ultimately serve his mystical goals. The opposite would be either a full-tech villain, or a techie using magic as a mean to attack his rivals' technology, hmmmm...

I remember the original Arcanum said that Orcs were made from Elves through magic (like in LOTR), and therefore Orcs actually have immense magickal potential, they just fail to use it because they are dumb (then again, Arcanum implies at times that Orcs aren't actually stupid, they're deliberately kept savage and ignorant). The original concept of a Gnomish bodyguard was a elven-orcish hybrid, but they only managed to make one and it was a failure. Maybe Cyber-Stalin somehow manages to harness the raw magickal potential of Orcs and uses it to attack his rivals' machines? Maybe some sort of "Magickal Luddite Revolt" - Act I antagonists? This would serve to cause chaos and havoc, preparing the ground for the Revolution.

Could even bring back Donn Throgg as a rival of "Cyber-Stalin Saruman" - gradual reformist vs revolution.

Guys, please stop. You're hyping me for a game that will never exist.

 

[Serus]

I just want to know the exact mad libs they used to come up with this.

[Unused Activision-owned IP] mobile [genre] aimed at [audience]!

Arcanum mobile adventure game aimed at pre-teens!
King's Quest mobile casino game aimed at 65+ women!
Etc

I think the 2nd one has better chances to succeed commercially.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Guys, please stop. You're hyping me for a game that will never exist.

It doesn't exist... yet. Be the change you want to be.

Honestly, it's crazy that the only Arcanum spiritual successors so far are ARPG tripe. No one wants that, except maybe "Journey to the Center of Arcanum" dreamers.

With Turn-based being popular again, I think something like Arcanum hooked with Divinity: Original Sin-esque turn-based combat would be a great success. Here are the ingredients:
- Deep, tabletop-esque systems. Give players lot of options
- Divinity: Original Sin-esque Turn-Based Combat
- Co-Op Multiplayer, for maximum tabletop-esque experience
- Good, tight writing. Need to make sure not a single writer is a woke SJW.
- Good modability (if you're not accounting for modability today you might as well be knee-capping yourself)
- Victorian-esque Orchestral and lyrical OST

 

[luj1]

Arcanum just needs a balance patch, game is broken and magic is too OP

Playing technology is fantastic tho

 

[PlanHex]

If only drog was here, in some kind of alternernate form, I bet he would tell us what to do

 

[Morality Games]

There are only a few acceptable concepts for an Arcanum sequel, most of them based on Jules Verne novels. "Around Arcanum in 80 Days," "Journey to the Center of Arcanum," "Twenty Thousand Arcanums Under the Seas", "The Timarcanum", etc.

 

[cpmartins]

I'd be ok with it as long as the game was based around the gnome "conspiracy".

 

[SilentSeeker]

I remember the original Arcanum said that Orcs were made from Elves through magic (like in LOTR), and therefore Orcs actually have immense magickal potential, they just fail to use it because they are dumb (then again, Arcanum implies at times that Orcs aren't actually stupid, they're deliberately kept savage and ignorant). The original concept of a Gnomish bodyguard was a elven-orcish hybrid, but they only managed to make one and it was a failure. Maybe Cyber-Stalin somehow manages to harness the raw magickal potential of Orcs and uses it to attack his rivals' machines? Maybe some sort of "Magickal Luddite Revolt" - Act I antagonists? This would serve to cause chaos and havoc, preparing the ground for the Revolution.

Could even bring back Donn Throgg as a rival of "Cyber-Stalin Saruman" - gradual reformist vs revolution.

Not quite- what was put forth in the manual was a theory that proto-dwarves separated from humans via natural selection, and then speciated into gnomes, halflings, and modern dwarves, thus explaining the lack of interbreeding capability, while elves were separated from humans via supernatural selection, and then again into orcs- so we can interbreed.

It being a theory vs. established fact may seem like a meaningless quibble, but think about it: the different mechanisms would naturally lead into different viewpoints, and indeed different theories (Darwin and Lamarck weren't the only names, even in OUR world, just the biggest and most well-thought-out). You could base whole plots off the implications and how people would react to them. Hell, the Old Gods are still around, just less active; maybe even have THEM weigh in- and have different answers, stories, and memories. Hmm, maybe not; that's an interesting idea, but Arcanum isn't the right vehicle for it.

It could also push the game into a far, FAR darker place, but... Stalin had a man named Ilya Ivanov, who was his star biologist, because unlike Lysenko, he didn't cause mass famines. Ivanov perfected artificial insemination, and went from horses to zebras to donkeys, and then decided he'd try combining chimps and humans. Then the other great apes. It... well, you can probably guess how many chimp-men you'll get when you put human sperm in a chimp, so he decided to reverse the experiment, and actually found willing women to try it out- although this being Stalinist Russia, "willing" is rather a subjective term. It'd fit right with the X-files quest the first game had. Except that the real version ended in a much stupider way.

I'd go back further. Long before that thieving weinerhead Tolkien was born, Orcs (in the sense of cyclical incarnations of Luvah that gradually decay into Urizen at the end of each cycle) were well-established as their tragic Messianic selves; acting as incarnations of chaos in a positive sense would serve as a perfect allegory for Victorian steampunk's social aesthetics. It's SO much more in-depth than "old vs. new"- but even among the literary nerd population, few acknowledge that literature started before 1900.

As far as steampunk cyborgs turning everything into a mechanized hellscape- isn't that just Father Karras? Or did you mean one who DIDN'T sound like Droopy Dawg?

 

[Swartaz]

Lol this shit looks like AIDS ridden Torchlight (but I repeat myself), just compare this faggy garbage to concept art for the ONE AND ONLY Arcanum and it is truly a night and day difference.

 

[Cat Dude]

They turned it into Fable 3.5

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Stalin had a man named Ilya Ivanov, who was his star biologist, because unlike Lysenko, he didn't cause mass famines. Ivanov perfected artificial insemination, and went from horses to zebras to donkeys, and then decided he'd try combining chimps and humans. Then the other great apes. It... well, you can probably guess how many chimp-men you'll get when you put human sperm in a chimp, so he decided to reverse the experiment, and actually found willing women to try it out- although this being Stalinist Russia, "willing" is rather a subjective term.

It's hard to express in words how much retarded shit you've just written, all of it factually wrong. I'd guess Poland or Ukraine as your home country by the degree of clinical delirium.

To cut it short,..
- Ivanov, "Stalin's man" in your imagination, in fact wasn't permitted to experiment on human women as he wanted and was exiled to Kazakhstan for his troubles.

- He has indeed received a letter from a woman claiming to want a chimpanzee child, presumably mentally ill. She asked to redirect her to a foreign zoologist where she could get impregnated with a chimp if he didn't help.

- To claim that "Stalinist Russia" forced anything on women, when USSR was the first country to give women full suffrage, political rights, equal pay, paid maternity leave, access to higher education, etc, is a sign of a mental illness.

- The idea of cross breeding men and chimps belongs to Herman Moens of Netherlands, later supported by Ernst Haeckel of Germany, it wasn't born in some "sick stalinist-soviet mind" as you imagine.

- Lysenko understood nothing in biology, his critique of genetics was absurd, vernalization turned out wrong, he was mistaken in ideas of accelerated selection. That doesn't change the fact that he has solved a lot of practical problems, to which genetics had no answer at the time. Planting potatoes using only its "eyes" has saved the country thousands of tons of potatoes during wartime hunger, allowing the bulk of the tuber to be eaten. Another technique he advocated, "chasing" the cotton is still used today - it consists of pinching off of the main stem's bud, which stops the plant's vertical growth and redirect its energy into developing more cotton bolls, thus increasing the yield, thus increasing the production of gunpowder during wartime.

- The famine of '32 wasn't caused by Lysenko (?!), but by a draught, and it hit Eastern Poland in equal measure.

My recommendation, after reading your post, is giving anti-schizo meds a try.

 

[Morgoth]

I want to hear Tim Cain's thoughts on this... thing

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

What a shame think of all the gacha mechanics we've missed.

 

[SharkClub]

Taking an IP only recognized by the groggiest of grognards and trying to repackage it to zoomers is a hell of a move.

It is basically what happened every single time in the global hystory of RPGs.

Yeah, I don't know why anyone would be surprised at this anymore. Even Thief is back with a VR title for Playstation audiences.

 

[udm]

Taking an IP only recognized by the groggiest of grognards and trying to repackage it to zoomers is a hell of a move.

Only works if you're a 1.68m manlet with the financial backing of a Jewish-owned multi-billion-dollar company. But mainly if you're a manlet.

 

[Konjad]

There are only a few acceptable concepts for an Arcanum sequel, most of them based on Jules Verne novels. "Around Arcanum in 80 Days," "Journey to the Center of Arcanum," "Twenty Thousand Arcanums Under the Seas", "The Timarcanum", etc.

At this point I'm certain no one could make a game similar to Arcanum. Not even a similar setting. That's why I hope nobody ever touches it and when the day comes it will be a depressive day.

. I'd guess Poland or Ukraine as your home country by the degree of clinical delirium.

Why the unironical hate?

 

[Ryzer]

Stalin had a man named Ilya Ivanov, who was his star biologist, because unlike Lysenko, he didn't cause mass famines. Ivanov perfected artificial insemination, and went from horses to zebras to donkeys, and then decided he'd try combining chimps and humans. Then the other great apes. It... well, you can probably guess how many chimp-men you'll get when you put human sperm in a chimp, so he decided to reverse the experiment, and actually found willing women to try it out- although this being Stalinist Russia, "willing" is rather a subjective term.

- The famine of '32 wasn't caused by Lysenko (?!), but by a draught, and it hit Eastern Poland in equal measure.

It was actually caused by stupid policies.

 

[SilentSeeker]

Stalin had a man named Ilya Ivanov, who was his star biologist, because unlike Lysenko, he didn't cause mass famines. Ivanov perfected artificial insemination, and went from horses to zebras to donkeys, and then decided he'd try combining chimps and humans. Then the other great apes. It... well, you can probably guess how many chimp-men you'll get when you put human sperm in a chimp, so he decided to reverse the experiment, and actually found willing women to try it out- although this being Stalinist Russia, "willing" is rather a subjective term.

It's hard to express in words how much retarded shit you've just written, all of it factually wrong. I'd guess Poland or Ukraine as your home country by the degree of clinical delirium.

To cut it short,..
- Ivanov, "Stalin's man" in your imagination, in fact wasn't permitted to experiment on human women as he wanted and was exiled to Kazakhstan for his troubles.

- He has indeed received a letter from a woman claiming to want a chimpanzee child, presumably mentally ill. She asked to redirect her to a foreign zoologist where she could get impregnated with a chimp if he didn't help.

- To claim that "Stalinist Russia" forced anything on women, when USSR was the first country to give women full suffrage, political rights, equal pay, paid maternity leave, access to higher education, etc, is a sign of a mental illness.

- The idea of cross breeding men and chimps belongs to Herman Moens of Netherlands, later supported by Ernst Haeckel of Germany, it wasn't born in some "sick stalinist-soviet mind" as you imagine.

- Lysenko understood nothing in biology, his critique of genetics was absurd, vernalization turned out wrong, he was mistaken in ideas of accelerated selection. That doesn't change the fact that he has solved a lot of practical problems, to which genetics had no answer at the time. Planting potatoes using only its "eyes" has saved the country thousands of tons of potatoes during wartime hunger, allowing the bulk of the tuber to be eaten. Another technique he advocated, "chasing" the cotton is still used today - it consists of pinching off of the main stem's bud, which stops the plant's vertical growth and redirect its energy into developing more cotton bolls, thus increasing the yield, thus increasing the production of gunpowder during wartime.

- The famine of '32 wasn't caused by Lysenko (?!), but by a draught, and it hit Eastern Poland in equal measure.

My recommendation, after reading your post, is giving anti-schizo meds a try.

So you dispute the accuracy of my claims, and rather than, say asking for evidence, you decide to... say that "asserting that Stalnist Russia forced people to do horrible things against their will is a sign of psychosis"? Even as an internet denizen, I find that level of brainwashing impressive.

I can't give you what you need, but... seek help. For your sake and that of those who care about you.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Ryzer

1932, New York, Ukrainian paper. A hunger in Gutsulshina. Gutsulshina wasn't USSR.

Good night and good luck. Ignored.