#arcanum: of steamworks and magic obscurra

[thelivingone]

Part 0 - Meet Clara Tremaine

As in every video game, character creation is one of the most vital parts. This is where the player decides not only who they want to be within the game but also how they want to play it. Like a lot of games, Arcanum offers three basic approaches:

               A Diplomatic Playthrough with a heavy focus on talking your way out of situations.

               A Melee Playthrough which is based on hitting and destroying your enemies.

               A Mixture of Both which mean we can talk our way out of situations but we don’t have to.

In this very playthrough we will play a character I have already welcomed into my heart: Clara Tremaine, a half-orc debutante with a gift for magic. How is a character in Arcanum created? Well, by four simple choices: A portrait, a gender, a race and an optional background.

Let’s start with the race which will have the most influence for our gaming experience. Races in Arcanum each come with their own benefits and flaws, giving the game a nice re-playability factor. The playable races include humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, elves, half-elves, half-ogres and half-orcs. Each of these raises influence the player character’s stats, the reaction of the people around them and even our dialogue options. As we will encounter NPCs and companions coming from each of these races, I will offer a bit more background information to them in separate parts – because, yep, we have that.

Arcanum comes with a wonderful manual that offers ‘in-game’ literature, such as how certain races developed and why they are liked or disliked.

The last time I played Arcanum as the wonderful Jeanne Walker, I was a super boring human. Humans are great when you want to get to know a game because they are usually in a comparable position to real-life and a great variety when it comes to builds. I did not want to be this socially accepted in this playthrough so I choose the most unpopular race in-game: the half-orcs.

You have probably read it by now, but yep, apparently, our Clara is ugly, bad-tempered and a child of rape. We get to hit things a lot better than other people though. People will not like Clara at first sight. People will not trust her, even be hostile. Half-orcs are usually found in criminal parts of cities, they are in the underground and it is very hard for them to be treated with respect by others, especially humans and elves.

Personally, this background is a bit risky for me. Rape is nothing to joke about. Nor is a whole race that is going to be discriminated against. However, I have heard we can call other characters out for their behaviour which I am looking forward to. In tumblr terms – the half-orc race is problematic in gaming. I am not sure if it would be kept like this, if Arcanum would ever get a reboot. It is one of the questions I want to find an answer to in this Let’s Play as I have never played this race before.

This puts her reaction modifier at -18, something I corrected up at -7 due to my choice of background. “Spoiler”: People still hate her.

Can I be a girl in this game? Is one of the first questions I ask myself when I want to buy something new. I am a woman and I am very happy when the game lets me be just that, a woman.

Gender, just like races, bring different stat-changes. In Clara’s case this means less strength but more constitution, giving us a slightly better healing rate. I’m not really a fan of gender-based stat changes, however, the races and backgrounds help us to even this out a little.

Well…there is a small problem with that, though.

Arcanum allows me to choose from eight races when I want to be a man. Which I don’t, so it cuts my choices down to four – humans, elves, half-elves and half-orcs. The manual gives us a few lore-related excuses for it, which gets Arcanum a gold star from me.

I was a bit disappointed when I found out I could not be a female dwarf. If the game ever gets a remake, I’d love this to be different. Some character you encounter, simple NPCs, no companions or anything, even are female dwarves and gnomes. There are, therefore, character models of the races already – just portraits and probably some armour animations are missing. Maybe, with a bit more time, Troika would have been able to create playable female dwarves, too… sadly, due to their bankruptcy, we’ll never know.

So far, we had a very pro-melee built buut…well…well, okay, I am sorry but I love being diplomatic and I don’t like the violent stereotype surrounding half-orcs at all. Therefore, I choose the debutante background which brings us a much more basic start – we get rid of our melee and dodging advantages by the debutants disadvantages, but also get a bonus in Charisma, my favourite stat.

Also, I am a fan of playing against type – a daughter of a very influential family in the continent? Does this mean Clara will get to wear fancy dresses? Will people be forced to be nice to me despite my race? I can’t wait for people recognizing me and forcing themselves to be polite.

Sadly, our background is just there to change our stats. People will not comment on it, there are just a few exceptions – those that put our intelligence below 4, resulting in our speech options to be grammatically less correct.

It’s kind of sad, because I would have loved at least a few dialogue options using the knowledge our character would have acquired before the game. Pillars Of Eternity, for example, manages to do just that- your character will be able to use a bit of their background knowledge in conversations with their companions.

However, Arcanum is a fairly old game and Troika has always been a financially challenged studio. I like the variety of backgrounds to choose from – some give you new stats, some give you new equipment and all of them are great to read.  Not choosing a background is also a nice option, I did that with my first character and the game still was a very nice experience for me.

Clicking through the portraits, I am superficial and choose the prettiest one. Each race has different portraits to choose from and I love the very realistic art style and tend to use Arcanum Portraits in other games as well.

One of my main critic points of this game is, however, already right here.

Almost everyone is dark-haired and white. The picture above shows us companions - it does not get better. Sure, some people are green...ish. No one is black or brown, everyone is literally a white person. There are no other people in Arcanum – elves are white, humans are white, okay we have some green orcs, but that doesn’t count at all.

We can add custom portraits to Arcanum. Since I am white as well and have chosen an already highly problematic background, I will not do it for this Let’s Play. Not with a half-orc character, not knowing what kind of things I will do and most of all, not knowing what else I do not know.

However, it is not hard to find non-white developers nowadays. So, if Arcanum ever gets a reboot, my biggest wish would be a more diverse cast. I love the characters just like they are, I love them dearly, but please…add more diversity. I cannot imagine there would be a whole continent filled with just white people.

Getting back to business, we have successfully created the base for our character and are advancing forth to the skill screen.

Here, we get to see how many skill points we have, how close to the next level we are and that half-orc is considered as an adult at 15 years. They are mentally adults, but I was very squicked when I saw that age for the first time.

Trivia: The other starting ages are the following

               Human (20) which makes every action of drinking we can do in this game underage-drinking in America.

               Dwarf (100) which makes their tendency to hold grudges a lot scarier.

               Elves (200) which makes their tendency to hold grudges even MORE scarier.

               Half-Elves (35) which must suck for all those half-elves growing up in elven society because by the time they are considered adults, other elves probably join pre-school.

               Gnomes (90) making them the true ‘nineties bitches’.

               Halfling (50), but not really a surprise, aye, Mister Baggins?

               Half-Orge (20), meaning Half-Orge/Human couples get to grow old together. Awww.

The small clock we are witnessing on the side is our alignment meter. Certain companions we are going to meet on the way are only following us if our alignment is either good or evil. Clara will be a good character, but very snarky as well. It’s gonna be fun.

Before the game starts, we have the option to place 5 skill points anywhere we want: We can either raise our physical ( strength, constitution, dexterity, beauty) or mental (intelligence, willpower, perception, charisma) stats. Raising one of these over 20 gives us an additional bonus, for example strength above 20 means double damage. They also have on influence on the technological, basic or magical disciplines we can learn. Alternatively, we can also get more health points or more mana.

The Disciplines are were the overall story-game conflict begins to become real within gaming terms.

Arcanum is the story of magic vs technology and their in-ability to function together (something, that is actually questioned within the game, but we’ll get to that during the playthrough). The stronger the magic, the weaker the technology and vice versa. As the game is set during the Industrial Revolution, technology is reaching its highest peak while magic, prior strong and honoured, begins to fade.

In gaming terms, a character with high technological skills cannot use magic and magic cannot be used on them – no magic healing spells, no resurrection but later also no strong poison or curses. Character with high magical skills cannot use technological objects like guns, grenades or, sadly, public transport. While the game states you could even play a character with a mixed build, I do not advice that. You get a lot more bonus points for going one way.

We will go magic. Whoever has doubted Claras ability to be patient and focus will be disappointed – this woman knows magic and how to use it.

The basic skills have a wide range from combat (melee, dodging, archery ect.) over thievery to social skills. We will try to max Persuasion before raising any other stat and have our followers do the beating for us. As I said – I love playing against types.

We will put one point into a magical discipline however. A lady needs to be able to defend herself after all. Welcome to the school of black necromancy – the simple spell called ‘harm’ does enough damage for the start of the game. We will be able to defend us without being influenced by our negative combat skills and still be able to use all of the technological devices.

The Magi-Tech Meter at the right side of the screen helps us to keep track of where we stand. The higher our magic, the stronger our spells. Easy to follow, kids.

After spending our last points, we get the chance to purchase some items before officially starting the game. It’s the cheapest one in-game but I was stupid and remembered this only when it was too late. Still, Clara is ready for departure!

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