Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

"Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura" DESERVES a remaster. WITHOUT changing the story to suit "modern audiences".

Saying Planescape: Torment has the greatest story ever told in an RPG is like saying water is wet. It's almost annoying to read at this point because it has been declared ad nauseam, but truly I can not go a week without thinking about the game narratively and thematically. The same thing for me applies to Arcanum here as well. It lead me to think about Role-Playing Games in regard to narrative itself. The recent gold-standard champion for so many being Baldur's Gate 3. I don't think Baldur's Gate 3's throughline narrative is ... well, I don't think it's amazing. It's fine. I think for most people, it serves as a backdrop to experience the real rich storytelling that comes through with your party. The insane production values combined with all the differing stories of each party member is where most of the ballyhoo comes from. Now admittedly, I'm not 'as' nuts over the characters and their stories as some are and have yacked about how I actually think Dragon Age: Origins (the BG3 of its era) character stories are more compelling to me personally, but where BG3 really hit for me was its mix of gameplay where its foundation is basically an isometric immersive sim crossed with classic RPG mechanics as well. That was dope. The actual narrative itself though? It's merely 'fine'. Thinking about this had me kind of evaluating what I value the most in the genre and it's certainly the big narrative and its themes and its world. Games like Arcanum or Planescape: Torment are loaded with a lot of parroting criticism over its mechanics/gameplay being awful, which I think is overblown. I don't think each games gameplay is amazing mind you, but I do think they're mostly 'fine'. It gets the job done. The plot/narrative and their themes and world though? Very few games contend to me. This applies entirely to Morrowind as well. Most fantasy RPG games tend to be written/built around 'preservation'. You know the classic ♥♥♥♥ of old ass kingdoms needing a hero to restore them to their former glory; the sacred traditions preserved and protected all formed around you defeating an evil dark lord and such. A genre where history is in decline: The old world was greater, its people more unified and spiritually more cohesive. The hero is here to save what remains of this world before evil conquers and it disappears forever. Arcanum is not that game. In fact, Arcanum is almost a near opposite of this often-imitated idea. In Arcanum, its world is not falling into ruin/collapse but accelerating drastically into 'modernity'. You have factories spread across its landscapes which were once happily dominated by forests or temples. Railroads connect cities/nations replacing what magic ever did. Industrial capital reshapes the political power at hand. Entire races become economically obsolete in this modern world. The core central theme is not that civilization is ending, but that civilization is transforming and evolving so rapidly that its people do not fully understand what is being lost in the process. Essentially it's the general tension between progress and the spiritual erosion that basically defines nearly every aspect of the games narrative / world. Coming into the game for the first time, any given player at first glance might see the game as a strange/unusual fusion of fantasy and steampunk (and it is as well): You have elves that exist alongside steam engines, dwarves live in their mountains or in cities but build firearms, magic users move about by streets lit with electricity etc etc. You soon understand the core idea in that magic and technology are fundamentally incompatible systems. Tech people become so rationally aligned with physical law that magical forces cease to function, while the spiritual and magically inclined folk disrupt machines simply by being even near them. Magic represents intuition, mysticism, spirituality and tradition; we have technology on the other end representing industrialization, rationalism, capitalism and mass production. A lesser game would make it clear which side is better, Arcanum will not fully romanticize either end of the spectrum and it is so much better for it. The magically inclined societies of this world are not some simple enlightened utopias. Elven culture is often depicted as aristocratic, stagnant and extremely hierarchical. As in the real world we live in now, tradition 'can' preserve wisdom, but without caution, can also preserve injustice as well. Meanwhile, industrial civilization can lead to some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ extraordinary innovation, yet it simultaneously creates exploitation and dehumanization. Arcanum understands industrial progress as a morally double-edged sword: Technological innovation improves lives while also reducing people into economic functions. Who would have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thought lmao. All of this sorta coalesces into the treatment of different races and labor. The games cities are filled with displaced workers and impoverished people, and nonhuman races marginalized and pushed to the side by modernization. You get shredded by Half-Ogre bandits aboard the zeppelin and crash killing everybody on board. Everybody but you. How in the world did these machines exist? From there, you follow a trail and investigation into hidden histories, lost civilizations and manipulated truths (it's crazy this and Morrowind came out only a few months apart lol). The deeper you dig into it all, the more unstable official history becomes. All these ancient myths contradict all the archaeological evidence you uncover. Political narratives fall apart; collapse under the weight of scrutiny. Religious truths reveal themselves as falsehoods, incomplete or distorted. It reinforces that history is often not objective memory but constructed or even fabricated mythology. All of this comes to a real head with the main narrative drive of the game: Nasrudin / Arronax / Kerghan. Kerghan is banished to the Void for defying the councils rule and before him, the same for Arronax as well. Nasrudin is then remembered and worshiped as the lands greatest hero. This narrative slowly unravels as you uncover that Arronax isn't as he seems, nor is Nasrudin and moreso that Kerghan is not your conventional fantasy villain bent on conquest or domination. Instead, he is almost a philosopher driven by profound despair about the nature of existence itself. Kerghan in many ways is the equal of sorts to Cain's previous games lead antagonist: The Master. Kerghan's view of the world comes about from witnessing the endless cycles of suffering throughout its history. A world where people repeatedly create war, exploitation, inequality and death. Progress for the sake of progress leading into suffering instead of eliminating it itself. From his perspective, existence is fundamentally cruel, and death becomes the only universal solution. His plan to extinguish life mirrors the same understood reasoning as what The Masters ideals were in Fallout. Naturally both are so fundamentally flawed, but both exist in a way that the player can sympathize with their problematic train of thought. Neither is cartoonishly evil. Kerghan, alongside The Master and The Transcendent One, manages to be a wholly more compelling antagonist than 'most' role-playing game antagonists ever manage. He does not merely appose the player on the grounds of being a simple evil bad guy, he challenges the moral foundations underlying civilization itself. The final confrontation is less Good vs Evil or Evil vs Evil, instead its more akin to debating nihilism. (Or contributing toward it lol). Steam is garbage and won't let me post my entire write-up so i'll leave the whole thing from my Backloggd here: https://backloggd.com/u/Joltzz/review/4676971/

I enjoyed my time overall, but its hard to recommend Arcanum. I needed to download 2 different patches to get it running properly, and even then it would still crash or freeze sometimes. The start is also extremely rough and its very hard to find resources to figure out a functional build. Even if you do, the beginning is not intuitive and its very hard to know what to do or where to go, so its not surprising that most people just give up in the beginning. I would not recommend this game to anyone who isn't comfortable with installing mods and/or hasn't played other similarly old and complex CRPGs like Baldur's gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout 1-2 or Planescape torment. If this hasn't scared you off, use the steam guide to download and install the unofficial patch and look up "Arcanum Beginners guide" to get you out of the terrible game start. As much as I've said so many negative things, the game itself is extremely unique, big and interesting if you can actually get into the proper game. 7.5/10

the racism lore in this game is rich and complex.

Best 18.3 hours of my life. Incredibly immersive and the worldbuilding/writing is reminiscent of some French art gallery where you can only get in if you have like a million dollars or something. I was a mage my first playthrough and now I'm going to do a gunslinger build. I would eat this game for breakfast lunch and dinner for the rest of my sorry life.

This is the first game i ever put on lay-by in 2001 when KMart sold PC games on CD's. This is the first agme i kept going over to my friends house just to place this game. This is the first game i learnt how to save scum, not because of encounters, but because of a particular chest that set you up for the rest of the game. This is the first game i first learned how to edit your character, just so you could get that extra companion. This is the game i spent an hour repeatedly shaking down the same individual outside of a train station for 400 coins. This is the game that made me realise exactly how hard you had to work to own a boat without bugs. This is the game that made me realise that dynamite takes care of a bridge toll easily (with violence). This is the game that made me feel like a second class person being a mage.... before i picked up Teleport. To this day, im certain i still never found everything. To this day, i still have it installed. What do you mean my Magik doesn't work on that Automaton!? I will never know how much time I've spent playing this game.

My favorite Western RPG. Everyone says that it's famous for being a buggy mess, but I've rarely ever encountered bugs, certainly no more than any game from 2001. The combat is fairly basic, if you've played Fallout 1 or 2, you know what's up. The music is gorgeous, the world is massive, and the story is rich, with a fair number of twists. The best thing is the character creation. No classes, just do what you want.

You expect me to believe that you can power machinery by boiling a lot of water? Im sorry, but fantasy should be believable.

The real Fallout 2