Duck and Cover

Arcanum was a great game. But I want moooore! Troika has neither confirmed nor denied that thye will be doing a sequel.

Didn't you steal that avatar from a guy who posted here about 2 years ago?

Uh, I think that's still the same guy. His previous title was "Ravenclaw" if I remember correct... check out the text under the guy's name.

Or am I wrong?

You're right! Your'e so smart, Kashluk! *hug!*
Well, anyway, could we keep to the topic?

Well, apparently, Arcanum wasn't as popular as the games who usually give birth to sequels...
So I guess there's no more Arcanum for us, Ooe. It's a unique snowflake and stuff like that.

sierra owns the rights to arcanum. if there's going to be a sequel it has to come from them. personally i'd rather see something new. either a new take on pa like those concept arts. If they do make anoter arcanum it would be interesting to see how they handle it. I would definitely scream bloody murder if vendigroth wasn't showcased. That end game still was such a tease, was tonnes more interesting to me than anything I'd seen in the game. Don't know why, it looked like Tarant++. They definitely need to improve the skill system. Perhaps change up the way magic works. Give tech guys a better chance in the fight. Mechanical Hires were kind of cool I thought. Too bad they were so farking slow/heavy.

Not to mention the ugliness.... Eck.
Personally I'm not so enthusiastic about seeing Arcanum II. Especially *because* of Vendigroth - it seems like the same deal as with Fallout 1 -> Fallout 2. Too much advancing between the games. In Fallouts it meant the loss of empty wasteland feeling, in Arcanum it'll propably be the same as if an author suddenly changed from 19th century romance to 23rd century sci-fi.

i don't see how you could say that when vendigroth is pretty much vernes-esque sci fi which is the direction the world of arcanum was headed for. its not as big of a leap as shady sands --- > NCR which was a HUGE leap. All of a sudden they had all the technology of the brotherhood and then some. With the mutants, deathclaws and raiders reaching epidemic proportions there should never have been tribals or small communities. rather it should have looked a lot more like junktown, the hub, etc. but we're getting off track here. Suffice to say, its not fair to compare the leap from arcanum -> vendigroth to fallout -> fallout 2. Throughout all of Arcanum you were hammered with the idea of technology seeping in and replacing the old world of magic. Meanwhile Fallout looks to be a world thats very fragile and on the rebound. The mutant threat takes it to the brink and you'd imagine it even more decimated. Fallout 2 comes around and you have a car, force fields for cities, automatic sentry guns, even helicopters. It was just too much, too sudden and without a hint to take your mind in that direction.

Well, for what I learned from Vendigroth while wandering in it's ruins, it was pretty much the same as NCR -> immunity to magic, ability to "cage/destroy" magic users, flying cars, reanimating the dead... That would be too much of a blow to the magic people in Arcanum, considering how weak they were after *Tarant* and it's steam engine technology.

yet still strong enough to destroy the entire city.. bizarre. Personally I didn't like the whole mech weakens tech and vice versa bit. Thought it was kind of lame, perhaps arcanum's 2 great achievement will be some way of the two coexisting without one destroying the other.

... if I remember correct, Vendigroth was destroyed waaaay back before other, "normal", humans discovered technology (ie. stealing it from the dwarves) ....

So yes, I'm still right.

I screwed myself over in arcanum. I was a gunsmith and i hit the maximum level right before I got the plans for the ultimate gun, so I couldnt use it. So there was no way I could kill the last guy.

Kashluk wrote:... if I remember correct, Vendigroth was destroyed waaaay back before other, "normal", humans discovered technology (ie. stealing it from the dwarves) ....

So yes, I'm still right.

you're still not getting it. if the technology was there (in arcanum) it existed in the world and you know it existed because it was there in the first installment of the game. The Enclave and their vertibirds were not even alluded to in Fallout 1. The "good" ending for Arcanum includes a mass revive for Vendigroth, the leap would be huge BUT not unexpected or nearly as unnatural as Fallout -> Fallout 2. If in Fallout your good ending for Shady Sands would have had something along the lines of smaller communities forming around it, people flocking to it for the egalitarian lifestyle it was sporting then maybe NCR would be somewhat expected. This wasn't the case.

So you're saying that... if it had been mentioned in Fallout 1's ending that Shady Shands was going to turn into a huge metropolis, it wouldn't been such a huge leap at all???

It still doesn't change the fact that the whole enviroment in Fo2 had changed, no matter how well it would've been warned in Fo1's ending. Does it? No, I guess I don't get it at all.

Kashluk wrote:So you're saying that... if it had been mentioned in Fallout 1's ending that Shady Shands was going to turn into a huge metropolis, it wouldn't been such a huge leap at all???

It still doesn't change the fact that the whole enviroment in Fo2 had changed, no matter how well it would've been warned in Fo1's ending. Does it? No, I guess I don't get it at all.

no, its not at all like shady sands turning into a huge metropolis because a) the infrastructure wasn't there as it is in the case of vendigroth, b) arcanum's whole story is about the world being in a state of rapid changes. You mentioned earlier in this thread how the humans had stolen the dwarven tech and applied it so vigorously. With this new breed of inventors tooling about in Arcanum already what could they do if the path to vendigroth was reopened and the information started pouring out. In Fallout the thing of it is the only place where you had tech was the BOS and as mentioned in the game they were very tight knit/reclusive. Tech in Arcanum, everywhere... growing... blossoming. The fundamental difference is that Arcanum's world is one on the rise (technologically speaking) while Fallout's (by all indications) was on the decline.

True... true. Damn that was a fine explination.
I guess you're right.

But I *still* wouldn't want to see Vendigroth up & well. Somehow the flying cars and stuff sickens me. I prefer the "lower level" struggle between tech & magic, in 19th century style.

That's only a matter of taste, though.

See, I hated the 19th century style of things and thought the techies were way too weak.

Hehe, I should've guessed.

The 19th century atmosphere is the way to go. Smoking jackets, revolvers, and steamwork... those things get me all hot.

Yeah, me too... In my opinion it was the main "juice" running in Arcanum's imaginery veins. Without all those elements you describe, atoga, Arcanum wouldn't be Arcanum.