Lord Chambers
Erudite
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2006
- Messages
- 1,018
!Here be spoilers!
I have followed two games during development ever. One was Oblivion, because it promised so much. The other was Arcanum, which looking back I can't really explain. It had a refreshing setting, but other than that I don't know what my attraction was. I didn't know who Troika was, I never played Fallout or Fallout 2, and I thought Final Fantasy meant RPG. Nonetheless I avidly read the official forums, preordered the game, and played it furiously in the summer of 2002. Then when school began I put it down and played it off and on for 5 years, never making it farther than discovering the dark elf city location.
How could such a vivid gameworld not draw me in? What could possibly be more entertaining than Arcanum? Why didn't I finish the "greatest crpg of all time?"
The tyranny of choices. Yes, I am that person who, knowing there is a theif solution, and a diplomat solution, and a good solution, and an evil solution, to each quest, cannot continue without doing a breadth search of the consequence tree. It kills me to develop a character in one direction, because the manual and forums make me well educated into the opportunity costs of not developing in another direction. You sprinted through the Black Mountain Clan caves because you die in one hit? I spent a day looting the whole place, selling everything in town, and broke the game with my 70,000 gold pieces. You convinced the Loghaire to sit on the throne again? Fuck, I just slaughtered shit in his dungeon because that's what my character does. Wait, you can kill him, then raise his soul to get the information anywhay? All my guy does is shoot his shitty gun once per turn while Virgil passes out trying to heal him.
And so forth.
So rather than plunge deep into the story and becoming hooked, I played 4-8 characters at the same time to exploit the different development niches/character concepts and never really got past Tarant with any of them. Too much work, not enough fun. Finally I settled on a paladin archtype that I was comfortable with from my mostly console RPG experience, and diced everything in my way to Qintarra, then lost the spark.
I have a PhD on Shrouded Hills though.
But this most recent playthrough I found I have a much more practical goal in mind. I'm not trying to enjoy the game anymore, or find some pleasure from it, I'm trying to beat it, get the most I can out of one playthrough, and then be done with running from threads which might spoil some future playthrough. I played a master diplomat, abusing harm early on for a little exp boost but essentially not participating in combat for the entirety of the game, a charlatan’s protégé maxing persuasion, then Charisma, then intelligence for the one or two places where that affects your dialogue choices, and left the rest of my character points to sit for some fateful day when my character needed to do something other than click dialogue links. I choose an elf because I like elves, not a gnome because they're slightly better suited for the party leader role. I wore a smoking jacket through the whole game. I didn't bother fucking around with side quests that seemed lame because, this time I'm not trying to roleplay a character, nor am I developmentally challenged because I'm using firearms or some shit that are character point desperate. I just blew through the game in 8 hours or so. I returned the mine to Sarah Toone. I talked the thieves off the bridge, Loghaire onto the throne, and helped the orcs unionize. I had sex with Min Gorat, made Raven cook me dinner, then lost Virgil for the rest of the game. I became an honorary diplomat to Caladon, then allied Blackroot with Cumbria because I could. My pack of banshees ripped through every combat the game had to offer except for the Cursed Paladin and Paladin Slaves protecting the Bangalorian Scourge, and in that fight only lost the Dark elf bitch who wouldn't cast any spells to save her life. Chukka, Sogg, and Gar with Katanas (Killed Magus on accident trying to make a deal with the Schulyers, then broke the balanced swords on Golems), Dog, then Raven/Virgil healing while me and the lockpicker outside the Vendigroth Wastes run around in circles in realtime distracting the enemy meant nothing could even hurt me except the huge guards in Khergans castle, at which point I started disintegrating them for kicks.
And I had fun. The game is really great. I learned a lot about the back story by playing a talker, since you can ask for explanations from important characters. I never unraveled the Half-Ogre issue since I didn't give a shit and I know from being spoiled that Gnomes are breeding them. I never could figure out how to uncover Saint Mannox and the Panarii shit, but didn't really care since I was so close to the end. I never found Virgil again or elder Joaquin, but don't care.
Most of all, how do you get the dwarves to burn Tarant to the ground? Can you talk Khergan out of being a fucknut or do you just choose between good ending or bad ending? I liked that after reloading a save and playing out the consequence of siding with him, I recruited all the banished guys, brought them back, killed Khergan and still got the "you sided with Kerghan" ending. Also, does anyone find it funny how weak the banished guys are? The Bane of Kree almost dies fighting the tentacle things around the void gates. I recruited the Gorgawhatever guy and he died before he could make it through a single portal.
And what's the deal with the portal Liam opened up?
Discuss Arcanum, all the cool things you did with characters you've played, and so forth.
I have followed two games during development ever. One was Oblivion, because it promised so much. The other was Arcanum, which looking back I can't really explain. It had a refreshing setting, but other than that I don't know what my attraction was. I didn't know who Troika was, I never played Fallout or Fallout 2, and I thought Final Fantasy meant RPG. Nonetheless I avidly read the official forums, preordered the game, and played it furiously in the summer of 2002. Then when school began I put it down and played it off and on for 5 years, never making it farther than discovering the dark elf city location.
How could such a vivid gameworld not draw me in? What could possibly be more entertaining than Arcanum? Why didn't I finish the "greatest crpg of all time?"
The tyranny of choices. Yes, I am that person who, knowing there is a theif solution, and a diplomat solution, and a good solution, and an evil solution, to each quest, cannot continue without doing a breadth search of the consequence tree. It kills me to develop a character in one direction, because the manual and forums make me well educated into the opportunity costs of not developing in another direction. You sprinted through the Black Mountain Clan caves because you die in one hit? I spent a day looting the whole place, selling everything in town, and broke the game with my 70,000 gold pieces. You convinced the Loghaire to sit on the throne again? Fuck, I just slaughtered shit in his dungeon because that's what my character does. Wait, you can kill him, then raise his soul to get the information anywhay? All my guy does is shoot his shitty gun once per turn while Virgil passes out trying to heal him.
And so forth.
So rather than plunge deep into the story and becoming hooked, I played 4-8 characters at the same time to exploit the different development niches/character concepts and never really got past Tarant with any of them. Too much work, not enough fun. Finally I settled on a paladin archtype that I was comfortable with from my mostly console RPG experience, and diced everything in my way to Qintarra, then lost the spark.
I have a PhD on Shrouded Hills though.
But this most recent playthrough I found I have a much more practical goal in mind. I'm not trying to enjoy the game anymore, or find some pleasure from it, I'm trying to beat it, get the most I can out of one playthrough, and then be done with running from threads which might spoil some future playthrough. I played a master diplomat, abusing harm early on for a little exp boost but essentially not participating in combat for the entirety of the game, a charlatan’s protégé maxing persuasion, then Charisma, then intelligence for the one or two places where that affects your dialogue choices, and left the rest of my character points to sit for some fateful day when my character needed to do something other than click dialogue links. I choose an elf because I like elves, not a gnome because they're slightly better suited for the party leader role. I wore a smoking jacket through the whole game. I didn't bother fucking around with side quests that seemed lame because, this time I'm not trying to roleplay a character, nor am I developmentally challenged because I'm using firearms or some shit that are character point desperate. I just blew through the game in 8 hours or so. I returned the mine to Sarah Toone. I talked the thieves off the bridge, Loghaire onto the throne, and helped the orcs unionize. I had sex with Min Gorat, made Raven cook me dinner, then lost Virgil for the rest of the game. I became an honorary diplomat to Caladon, then allied Blackroot with Cumbria because I could. My pack of banshees ripped through every combat the game had to offer except for the Cursed Paladin and Paladin Slaves protecting the Bangalorian Scourge, and in that fight only lost the Dark elf bitch who wouldn't cast any spells to save her life. Chukka, Sogg, and Gar with Katanas (Killed Magus on accident trying to make a deal with the Schulyers, then broke the balanced swords on Golems), Dog, then Raven/Virgil healing while me and the lockpicker outside the Vendigroth Wastes run around in circles in realtime distracting the enemy meant nothing could even hurt me except the huge guards in Khergans castle, at which point I started disintegrating them for kicks.
And I had fun. The game is really great. I learned a lot about the back story by playing a talker, since you can ask for explanations from important characters. I never unraveled the Half-Ogre issue since I didn't give a shit and I know from being spoiled that Gnomes are breeding them. I never could figure out how to uncover Saint Mannox and the Panarii shit, but didn't really care since I was so close to the end. I never found Virgil again or elder Joaquin, but don't care.
Most of all, how do you get the dwarves to burn Tarant to the ground? Can you talk Khergan out of being a fucknut or do you just choose between good ending or bad ending? I liked that after reloading a save and playing out the consequence of siding with him, I recruited all the banished guys, brought them back, killed Khergan and still got the "you sided with Kerghan" ending. Also, does anyone find it funny how weak the banished guys are? The Bane of Kree almost dies fighting the tentacle things around the void gates. I recruited the Gorgawhatever guy and he died before he could make it through a single portal.
And what's the deal with the portal Liam opened up?
Discuss Arcanum, all the cool things you did with characters you've played, and so forth.
