History VideoGame / ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura

* AwesomeButImpractical: Being a Technologist is one of the more tragic examples of this. Compared to mages, they have to invest almost twice as many points to get the good stuff. Want to make lightning guns, steampunk power armor, or any of the things in the AwesomeButPractical section? Great! Except that you're going to suck at using any of these things. Getting enough intelligence to learn how to make these things and then filling two of the technology skill trees will cost you 24 points. This is more than a third of the total points you can earn before reaching the cap. It is ''just'' possible to manage a full build (two tech trees, full weapon and dodge) if you go melee and viciously exploit every attribute bonus in the game. Gun uses are pretty much screwed. Investing a measly 15 points in willpower and force magic gets you the ability to cast a spell that kills all but three [=NPCs=] in the game instantly with no save allowed.

''Arcanum'' has a level cap of 50, which encourages players to specialize in very specific types of magic or technology. (However, a no-CD-patch combined with a level cap remover patch can quickly fix that.) Uniquely, knowledge of technology in ''Arcanum'' disables magical aptitude, and vice versa, so that the player will always have to choose between the two and (eventually) be shunned by the other branch.

* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: Virtually any problem can be solved with the right application of force. Locked door? Beat it down. Guy holding an item you like? Kill him. Interdimensional portal releasing demon hoards upon the land? Whack it closed. Note that while this method may work, it is not exactly the most ''subtle'' way of doing things.

** Archery lacks a true high-end weapon.

* PurelyAestheticGender: Averted. Females of any race (where applicable) get gain one point of Endurance and lose one point of Strength. The maximum possible value for a stat is 12 added to the starting value from race and background, and hitting 20 in a status gives you bonus (for example, doubling damage for strength) on top of normal effects for increasing stats. Thus, a human female would fall short one point unless another factor modified the base values. Gender also affects dialog, though there's only a few times this is more then just sir/ma'am pronouns etc, such as the Gentleman's Club in Tarrant.

* DumpStat: Beauty. It only really helps to keep people from being hostile on sight and resolving a ''small'' few situations without combat. You can get by with a 6.

** Elves and dwarves have traditionally gotten along fairly well -- the recent industrial revolution has, in fact, caused both civilizations to dislike humans far more than each other. [[spoiler:However, a faction of racial supremacist elves manipulates the dwarven king by threatening war between elves and dwarves unless he banishes one of his own clans as punishment for elevating humans. Years later, the king realizes that the elves were only bluffing.]]

** There's also the humble Balanced Sword and Featherweight Axe, a pair of simple and easily-obtainable melee weapons that are easy to use, extremely powerful, light, and fast, and so will usually be a melee-oriented player's primary armament for most of the game, despite their complete lack of magical enchantments or fancy technological gizmos.

* MurderTheHypotenuse: Inverted by [[spoiler:Wrath, Sharpe and Ivory: [[MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning Wrath commits suicide with a glass of poisoned wine, in the hopes that Sharpe will take the blame for his murder]]]], the [[XanatosSucker PC can help it along if they don't explore the quest well]].

** The blessing from the All-Father. You have to make blessings at the alters in a certain order, some of which have to be repeated at least once, then find the final alter buried in Vendigroth. Oh, and if you're a technologist, you better have one of your followers carry a tech-based resurrect. The All-Father kills you in the process of blessing you, then casts Resurrect to bring you back... except a 100 tech-aligned character will block the spell, thus leaving you dead if your party can't bring you back.

* HalfHumanHybrids: Now in three flavours: Half-elves, half-orcs and half-ogres. Unusually for the genre, the writers have an in-game explanation for why halfbreeds are even biologically possible (Pre-release marketing material in the form of a fake newspaper suggests that humans and elves are really just distantly related races rather than separate species, half-ogres [[spoiler: are a eugenics experiment that has gone though countless non-viable offspring until a breeding population was produced]] while Orcs are suggested to be [[spoiler:humans that have undergone some form of mutation or deformity]], and why only those three variants exist.

* [=~I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin~=]: Slightly subverted. [[spoiler:You'd expect the ring given by the dying "gnome" to be either magical or at least the key to unlocking some ancient horror. However, the signet ring is merely a clue to figuring out the identity of "the boy", and it's fully possible to identify, locate him and acquire his aid even if you let the ring be stolen within 5 minutes of obtaining it. Keeping it only allows you to sell it back to the owner for a small sum.]]

* ReligionIsMagic: Making offer to gods whose altars a scattered around Arcanum gives you very real stat boosts.

* SheatheYourSword: There's a side-quest where you have to get these human prospectors off of elven holy ground. The ground is cursed/blessed so that anyone who acts violently while on it is killed instantly. You have basically two options; talk/trick the humans into leaving, or goad them into attacking you thus getting them killed. If you're going for the latter option, [[GuideDangIt make sure you have Automatic Combat switched to ''"off."'']]

* GuideDangIt: Recruiting the dog can be quite the hassle unless you know ''exactly'' what you're doing.
* GuileHero / MagneticHero: One of the possible builds is someone who is smoothly charismatic and can convince anyone to do almost anything. This may not be so handy in combat situations, but one of the side-benefits of having lots of Charisma is that you have a larger party size, so you can just have everyone else do the fighting for you.

** The fortune teller sidequest. To elaborate, Tarant has two fortune tellers. Once you speak to the uptown one (the lower town one will send you to her if you haven't yet met), she'll ask you to steal her counterpart's crystal ball. Upon arrival, the fortune teller will know why you've come and demand you choose a side. If you choose her side, you get the ball with no conflict and give it to the uptown one, who dies upon touching it. You get a decent blessing (stat boost) for the trouble. Side against her, though, and you get hit with an equal curse (stat reduction), while the other fortune teller rewards you with nothing worthwhile. No sane person ever sides with the uptown fortune teller.

The player can join up with a large amount of playable characters. Although their personalities are often not as well-defined as those of some non-playable characters in the game, many of them are (very nicely) voiced, and they all contribute to the plot and interact with each other. Many of them are hidden, and many of them require very specific aligment and charisma stats before they even suggest joining the party. Similarly, the player often needs to meet very specific aptitude requirements before certain quests are even mentioned, meaning that no two playthroughs are the same and that each new player character will have a unique experience.

''Arcanum'' is an expansive and very open-ended RolePlayingGame where Tolkienian HighFantasy meets Vernian SteamPunk, courtesy of the designers behind the first two ''{{Fallout}}'' games. Much of ''Arcanum'' deals with ItemCrafting and character building -- almost everything the player finds can be customized, and TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything. It contains a very detailed setting and a well-designed scenario, as well as vast amounts of political backstory in the game's libraries, newspapers and legends. The game retains a cult following similar to its cousin ''{{Fallout}}'', and is additionally often very favorably compared to ''BaldursGateII'' and ''PlanescapeTorment'', although ''Arcanum'''s detail focuses more on its setting's history and mechanisms than on its individual characters.

*** Talking about that, some in-game text was about local Archeological Society complaining about "heroes" raiding ancient tombs and ruined temples in search of magical treasures and ancient lore (that is, doing just what main characters of a fantasy role-playing game excel at) without any reverence for scientific methodology.

** Everyone looks down on orcs. Elves and dwarves simply hate them; humans and gnomes use them for slave labor in a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything direct allegory]] of black slavery. The book series "The Orcish Question", found in th Tarant library, goes into a lot of detail about both sides of the debate, including some contributions by Orcs themselves. There are many almost-explicit comparisons to Africans and to Jews in the discourse, which neatly lampshades the trope: unlike in real world racism, Orcs ''actually'' tend to have lower intelligence and a more violent nature than the authors. Odd thing, though -- if you play a ''half''-orc they have the same base intelligence stat, and a lot of the orcs you can talk to don't really seem stupid or violent at all, just uneducated and underprivileged. [[BlatantLies As for the manual entry...]]

** Everyone looks down on orcs. Elves and dwarves simply hate them; humans and gnomes use them for slave labor in a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything direct allegory]] of black slavery. The book series "The Orcish Question", found in th Tarant library, goes into a lot of detail about both sides of the debate, including some contributions by Orcs themselves. There are many almost-explicit comparisons to Africans and to Jews in the discourse, which neatly lampshades the trope: unline in human racism, Orcs ''actually'' tend to have lower intelligence and a violent nature than the authors. Odd thing, though -- if you play a ''half''-orc they have the same base intelligence stat, and a lot of the orcs you can talk to don't really seem stupid or violent at all, just uneducated and underprivileged. [[BlatantLies As for the manual entry...]]

** Everyone looks down on orcs. Elves and dwarves simply hate them; humans and gnomes use them for slave labor in a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything direct allegory]] of black slavery. [[FantasticAesop Of course, real Africans weren't of subhuman intelligence and inherently predisposed towards violence.]] Odd thing, though--if you play a *half*-orc they have the same base intelligence stat, and a lot of the orcs you can talk to don't really seem stupid or violent at all, just uneducated and underprivileged. [[BlatantLies As for the manual entry...]]

''Arcanum'' is an expansive and very open-ended RolePlayingGame where Tolkienian HighFantasy meets Vernian SteamPunk, courtesy of the designers behind the first two ''{{Fallout}}'' games. Much of ''Arcanum'' deals with ItemCrafting and character building -- almost everything the player finds can be customized, and TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything. It contains a very detailed setting and a well-designed scenario, as well as vast amounts of backstory in the game's libraries, newspapers and legends. The game retains a cult following similar to its cousin ''{{Fallout}}'', and is additionally often very favorably compared to ''BaldursGateII'', although ''Arcanum'''s detail focuses more on its setting's history and mechanisms than on its individual characters.

''Arcanum'' is an expansive and very open-ended RolePlayingGame where Tolkienian HighFantasy meets Vernian SteamPunk, courtesy of the designers behind the first two ''{{Fallout}}'' games. Much of ''Arcanum'' deals with ItemCrafting and character building -- almost everything the player finds can be customized, and TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything. It contains a very detailed setting and a well-designed scenario, as well as vast amounts of backstory in the game's libraries, newspapers and legends. The game retains a cult following similar to its cousin ''{{Fallout}}'', and is additionally often very favorably compared to BaldursGateII, although ''Arcanum'''s detail focuses more on its setting's history and mechanisms than on its individual characters.

''Arcanum'' is an expansive and very open-ended RolePlayingGame where Tolkienian HighFantasy meets Vernian SteamPunk, courtesy of the designers behind the first two ''{{Fallout}}'' games. Much of ''Arcanum'' deals with ItemCrafting and character building -- almost everything the player finds can be customized. It contains a very detailed setting and a well-designed scenario, as well as vast amounts of backstory in the game's libraries, newspapers and legends. The game retains a cult following similar to its cousin ''{{Fallout}}'', and is additionally often very favorably compared to BaldursGateII, although ''Arcanum'''s detail focuses more on its setting's history and mechanisms than on its individual characters.

''Arcanum'' is an expansive and very open-ended RolePlayingGame where Tolkienian HighFantasy meets Vernian SteamPunk, courtesy of the designers behind the first two ''{{Fallout}}'' games. It contains a very detailed setting and a well-designed scenario, as well as vast amounts of backstory in the game's libraries, newspapers and legends. Much of ''Arcanum'' deals with ItemCrafting and character building -- almost everything the player finds can be customized. The game retains a cult following similar to its cousin ''{{Fallout}}'', and is additionally often very favorably compared to BaldursGateII, although ''Arcanum'''s detail focuses more on its setting's history and mechanisms than on its individual characters.

A sequel - titled ''Journey to the Centre of Arcanum'' and using ''HalfLife'''s Source engine - [[WhatCouldHaveBeen was in its initial planning stages]], but Sierra and Valve had disagreements, and Troika's dissolution sealed the game's fate.

''Arcanum'' is an expansive and very open-ended RolePlayingGame where Tolkienian HighFantasy meets Vernian SteamPunk, courtesy of the designers behind the first two ''{{Fallout}}'' games. It contains a very detailed setting and a well-designed scenario, as well as vast amounts of backstory in the game's libraries, newspapers and legends. The game retains a cult following similar to its cousin ''{{Fallout}}'', and is additionally often very favorably compared to BaldursGateII, although ''Arcanum'''s detail focuses more on its setting's history than on its individual characters.

The ''[[ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld IFS Zephyr]]'' has just begun her maiden voyage, a marvelous, high-society venture through the clouds. Aboard, the cream of high society enjoys the flight, playing chess, sipping fine wine, etc. Sadly, nothing gold can last forever - and, out of the blue, the airship is attacked by a group of ogres on fighter planes. Within moments, the vessel goes down in flames.

There's only one survivor, the player character - and, as they crawl out of the wreckage, a dying gnome begs them to take [[MacGuffin his ring]] to "the boy". And, well, that's just where it all begins...

An expansive and very open-ended RolePlayingGame where Tolkienian HighFantasy meets Vernian SteamPunk, courtesy of the designers behind the first two ''{{Fallout}}'' games. It contains a very intriguing setting and a fairly well-designed scenario, but was sadly somewhat marred by a clunky engine and inadequate play-testing. The game retains a cult following similar to its cousin ''{{Fallout}}''.

* ArtificialBrilliance: The AI's capable of some pretty complex interactions. If you kill a man in the street while no guards are watching, you might think you're off scot free -- but you'd better drag the body into an alley, because if a guard on patrol spots you standing next to a corpse he'll figure out you're the killer. Also, unlike in most [=RPGs=], if you take off your clothes and go running through the streets NPCs will actually react to your obscene behaviour.

*** It is explained. [[spoiler: The Gnomish Industrial council keeps all the females that result from their breeding program at their farms to breed more half-ogres.