Overview

Developer: Troika Games
Publisher: Sierra
Arcanum official page: http://sierrastudios.com/games/arcanum/
More Arcanum resources

A Quick Recap

A group of travelers are crossing a cold, hostile mountain range. They are strangers are brought together not by friendship, but convenience. Our travelers have banded together out of necessity - they all want to cross the mountains but after that each traveler has his or her own destiny to fulfill.

Choose your poison

Your boy, Virgil

One is fated for great things - he is a tool of fate, ignorant as yet of his dramatic role in the future of the world. His reason for crossing the mountains is innocent and natural enough to him and anyone else - he's unaware of the invisible hand guiding his actions.

Just as they are about to emerge from the treacherous range, our travelers are set upon by evil ogres. The ogres charge down and slay the group (dying in the process themselves). The protagonist, however, miraculously survives. Ah yes, sounds like a typical fantasy scene, doesn't it?

What are you doing in this neck of the woods?

Shrines, they remind me of Diablo.

Not quite. We left out a couple facts. The travelers are crossing over the mountain range in an airship - and they are attacked by ogres flying pre/early World War I era style fighter craft. The airship is defenseless and quickly succumbs to the fiendish ogre assault.

Fortunately for our hero, ogres aren't the brightest bunch in the world - their knowledge of the finer points of piloting is non-existent. Both crash and die in fiery infernos. The hero encounters a monk (of sorts) who is aware of the prophecy foretelling the hero's coming and is quite a handy healer. The world is not empty of magic and sorcery.

World map

Lookin' studly

The budding sequel

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, is being developed by Troika Games and published by Sierra. If you didn't know already, Troika games was founded by three leading members of the Fallout team - Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson. They were later joined by seven others who were involved with Fallout, or at least worked at Interplay.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Arcanum shares many traits with Fallout. Everything from the dark, brooding nature of the game to its skill-based character system has shades of Fallout.

Kill the snob!

Dumb ogres