Talk:Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Unofficial patch
Readded info about the unofficial patch. Nobody disputes the fact that it exists and it is documented on several relatively known gamesites. If we don't accept anything that isn't mentioned in the New York Times then we'll have to delete most of this wiki Jarwulf (talk) 01:36, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The issue is not whether or not it exists, it's whether it's notable. And without coverage by reliable, third-party sources, that criteria has not yet been met. What gaming sites have mentioned it? I wanna see if any of them are mentioned here. Eik Corell (talk) 02:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Type in arcanum unofficial patch and you'll see it mentioned by several sites like filefront and gamershell. Sure they're not Vanity Fair but they're not exactly shitkicker websites run out of some 17 year old's basement and they're relatively well known as far as PC gamers are concerned. Arcanum's many bugs and the unofficial fix was big news for Arcanum's fanbase so it would be remiss to not mention it if we're going to be writing about a game as obscure as Arcanum anyway. Besides there is plenty of precedent for mentioning unofficial mods that have made a big impact on the game's community such as Freespace and Bloodlines. Also there is no hard rule I'm aware of that all information that is ever written about games on wikipedia must come from that small list you presented. Jarwulf (talk) 04:17, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm looking through the sources now - Gamershell is listed as a reliable source, so that would do fine. I'm not sure about filefront, though, so I took a look at the name of the guy who wrote the article on there - Shawn Sines. He's a video-game writer who writes for 1UP as well as some other sites if I'm not totally mistaken. I think these two sources will do just fine, actually. Eik Corell (talk) 07:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Fallout references
Firstly i must say that this article is very well made. Good work to the creator. A couple of things though- I know the game was made by some people who previously made fallout but i think there a few too many references to fallout in the normal text. The references to fallout should be put in the trivia section with the other fallout references.

For example -

"While firearms are plentiful in the game, the situation is reversed from Fallout: the system seems to favor fast, light attacks from melee weapons over any other mode of attack. This has led to user-created patches to enhance the other weapons in the game.

The combat can become very violent as more powerful weapons are employed, resulting in graphic wounds, but it's a far cry from Fallout's melting skeletons, decapitated torsos and flaming corpses."

Obviously the creator of the article has a good knowledge of fallout, but the article should be for people who havnt played fallout aswell.

One thing i must comment about the combat system is that it is so fast. Although its been a while since I have played arcanum (i only visited this article because i recently bought it for old times sake) i remember that classes that involve melee combat with high armour seem to fare comabt better as the combat is so quick. Especally when you have characters attacking 3 times a second or other fast rates. This is just my opinion and probably has no place in the article unless several other players or critics have noticed this aswell.


 * What you say is true about melee being overpowered, but it has nothing to do really with how "combat is so quick"-- melee is still just as overpowered on the other slower (read: less crazy, easier to see) options (turnbased and fast turnbased). The problem is that Arcanum is an excellent game but because of all the interacting divisions (eg magic v.s. tech pointers, bow v.s. thrown weapon v.s. guns v.s. etc, magic armor v.s. tech armor, etc), there are a huge number of imbalances, the chief being melee-related, though there are others...

Playing again
Good coverage of the history and places of arcanum. Got me in the mood to play it again (except im annoyed because i stopped at the city or magic or someone pretty near the end of the game and starting a new character again will mean doing the same old quests but starting the old one will be bad because i have forgotten the story, pointless story...)

If anyone is up for a multiplayer game of this email me! Jesus On Wheels 15:54, 3 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Tech specialists get weapons like the tranquilizer gun, Tesla gun and concussion grenade. They get a few handy utility and healing items, too, like the Miracle Cure and, my personal favorite, the "Anesthetizer". They also get automatons. If you've got enough money, you can go camp outside the smith at the Wheel Clan tunnels buying dwarven steel and create an army of automatons - they don't take up party slots. A big ogre in a tin can with a gigantic two-handed sword might be able to deal and take a lot of damage, but he's nothing against a machined-plated dwarf toting a tranquilizer gun, a bandolier of concussion grenades and a platoon of automatons.


 * Charisma characters are also a lot of fun, and very viable.. Who needs muscles or pretty light shows when I have two very large men with huge swords and thick armor, two immensely powerful mages and a machine gun-wielding big game hunter at my beck and call? My elven persuasion specialist had a hard time starting out, but once I started adding party members, I found his niche. He rarely ever directly engaged the enemy - he'd just stay back and cast the few offensive and utility spells he knew while his many allies pummeled the baddies to the ground.


 * There are a lot of options - half-ogres with long-swords and full plate will take you through the game, but so will a pistoleer-chemist or a silver-tongued gambler. Troika did a good job. It's too bad there is unlikely to be a sequel. TaintedMustard 16:02, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * It suffered from Troika's trademark "LOTS OF BUGS" feature. CABAL 10:55, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * To which bugs are you referring? ToEE and Bloodlines were MUCH worse. Arcanum is by far their cleanest game. The automaton army is really the worst game balance bug I've seen. TaintedMustard 19:05, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The bug which prevents the medical arachnid from deploying correctly; the bug which prevents the Explosive Decoy from working properly; the bug that causes the machined platemail to not give you a STR bonus; the bug that prevents Nasrudin from explanining that his son destroyed Vendigroth; among other things. But yes, it is by far their cleanest game. CABAL 19:18, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

IP connections
Does Arcanum support direct IP connections? CABAL 15:26, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * it's strictly single player in any event.Zebulin (talk) 17:32, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The conspiracy
This is a nice looking article, it's almost shame that I went and tacked that section on on the end.

Unfortunately, it's been a while since I played, so the conspiracy details aren't complete.

The conspiracy section could probably be cleaned-up/merged into another section, I just wanted to provide those base details.


 * Adding such a great deal of information on one sub-plot is excessive for an article of this type. I'm not going to remove it (yet), but it should be trimmed down if it's included at all, and it shouldn't be given its own section. For now, I'm going to add a spoiler warning, which should have been included in the first place. TaintedMustard 09:28, 29 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Any way of including it as part of some kind of section on "notable quests"? It is one of the more well-known quests in the game and I think it'd be a pity to lose it. I suppose one could create another page listing all the quests in the game and include it there but I'm not sure if that's an appropriate article to have in wikipedia. 203.166.27.228 23:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

No, it should stay there. It's one of Arcanum's most distinguishing(and controversial) features from other RPG games, a disturbing quest that ends unresolvable.

Good article
I remember playing this brilliant game a number of times some years ago, the article is quite detailed unlike alot of other game entries. Like alot of critically acclaimed games it would have to have sold more to make a sequel realistic.

Missing Locations
I have looked at the list of the different towns and cities and have noticed that Shrowded Hills and Still Water is missing. Please sort this out. Kensai Feon, 10:12, 26 April 2006

Monty Python?
"You can encounter the white rabbit that can only be killed by "The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when you travel outside cities."

I don't remember meeting this creature, nor has it been mentioned. Same goes to the grenade.

I do remember the "Vorpal Bunny" which was super-powerful, and the Stillwater Giant which was a purple bunny that changed into a giant monster.

I've not deleted it (yet), but methinks someone should explain this entry.Crimson Shadow 17:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I've encountered one or to bunnys but nothing like the white rabbit or the grenade either. Kensai Feon 10:30 12 May 2006

I've removed the point then. Crimson Shadow 23:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Copy Right
I have noticed that this article has been copied from a licensed website, which does technicaly mean that it is in breach of the 'Copy Right Act' since I see no owners consent on this page. Kensai Feon 15:52 12 May 2006


 * Which licensed website is this article a copy from? Given the content and the number of edits, I also highly doubt it's a complete copy. In that case, can you point out which parts of the article you feel violate copyright? Yay unto the Chicken 09:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

More trivia...
The story of Gilbert Bates's "inventing" the 1st steam engine is similar to the story of Bill Gate's "inventing" the MS-DOS operation system, which was actually reworked from CP/M operation system for 8-bit computers (Digital Research company product).


 * Gil Bates <=> Bill Gates... chrisboote (talk) 12:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)


 * There seem to be quite a few quirks like this laced throughout the game. Gil(bert) Bates obviously refers to Bill Gates.  There is also Bates' rival, whose exact name I forget, but has "Apple" somewhere in it, an obvious reference to Apple Macintosh.  The primary industrialized city is called "Tarant" and the primary magic city is called "Tula."  Put them together and you have "Tarantula."  I'm pretty sure there's a boat-load of pop culture references that I'm forgetting or that I missed. --TrevorBabcock (talk) 15:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Possible rewrite
I might have a go at rejigging some of this. It needs major revision. I dislike most of the Trivia section, and the game world/plot summary/politics stuff needs to be better ordered. On top of all that, there's the g/p brush-up.

I'll see what I can do in the next few weeks. I owe it to this ripper of a game to help get its page to GA/FA. Hide&amp;Reason 13:49, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Good luck! I personally recommend cutting the half-ogre conspiracy way down. Rarr 19:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'll see if I can knock a third or more outta that. Hide&amp;Reason 04:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC) Hope everyone likes what I've done so far. I'm still looking for references to verify the Races info, among other stuff. Hide&amp;Reason 12:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sceencap requests
I was wondering: would anyone be able to get me a cap of the breeding ward interior, on Half-orge Island? I'd do it myself but the hard drive I had Arcanum installed on crashed a week back. Thanks in advance! Hide&amp;Reason 08:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Soundtrack
The link to the bonus track for the Arcanum Sountrack was dead. I found a replacement in this forum, which links to a file in the Megaupload site. I downloaded the file and it is, in fact, the bonus track. Hopefully linking to sites like Megaupload is OK. If not, my apologies. Drakestail (talk) 01:14, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite, 4 realz
The article is in really bad shape right now, with lots of weirdly-phrased sentences, few sources, two Setting sections :)) and an almost complete lack of screenshots, and some of the stuff is written in a really in-universe perspective. I've started rewriting the article to try and fix these problems. I want to give it close to the same structure as the article on Morrowind because that article is FA-class, so if anything, it should be a role-model for how this article should look. A few pointers were taken from the Fallout article, but only a few because it's only a C-class.

I've already done the lead and the gameplay section, and in the next couple of weeks I'll probably get the whole thing done. It might be hard finding enough sources, but at least this thing will look a lot better to anyone reading it. Reject 666 6 (talk) 02:28, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Magic vs Magick
In the article the discussion about the in game phenomenon magick is always referred to as magick. This is what we usually talk about as magic and referring to it by its in-game name all the time is ugly and confusing to people that have not played the game. I've personally not played it and to me it just looked like a lot of spelling errors until I started looking into it.

I'm going to change all instances of magick to magic at least in the Setting section, and add an explanation on what magick is. That should look a lot cleaner. Valar (talk) 13:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Restructuring and sourcing
So I'm back at rewriting the article. I've already done some work on it, the only thing I haven't touched yet is the big, ugly Setting section. I'll try to improve it soon; I really don't know where to start with it, though. The thing could really use a couple of screenshots, but I don't have the game installed right now so any help with a few screenshots would be appreciated.

I'm trying to base the structure off the Morrowind article, seeing as it was a featured article. Reject 666 6 (talk) 03:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I rewrote the Setting section and added sources, and I fixed up the soundtrack section as well. I'll put it up for re-assessment and in the meantime I might install it and take some screenshots. Reject 666 6 (talk) 20:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Assessment as of 2009-07-03
Remaining C-class. Not a bad article by any means, but there's some major issues. -First, sourcing structure. None of the ones listed really show the author (if it's listed as "Staff", "IGN Staff" etc just put "Staff" as the author) nor the date the referenced text was written. -Secondly, a lot of questionable sources in here, as well as a forum or two (which you should try to avoid using as sources). -All around you need to look at other B-class articles for insight. That and you can't go through that format to get GA for an article (that's a separate process).--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:39, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've started restructuring the sources to meet the requirements. So far I've done only the lead, so if you read this let me know if it's correct this time. About the questionable sources, which ones besides the forums are questionable so I can look into them? The majority are from reviews, from the Gamerankings page that shows review scores for various sites and the ones from terra-arcanum.com are from a repository of interviews by developers, not from the forums themselves. The actual forum links are more problematic, though. I'll try to replace them as soon as I find something acceptable. Reject 666 6 (talk) 18:59, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Best Seller?
I noticed the article very early on declares Arcanum to be Troika's "best seller." However, I believe this is erroneous. The link below contains a forum discussion with Leonard Boyarsky claiming Temple of Elemental Evil was the Troika's "best seller," though Arcanum had been out longer and might have sold more copies by virtue of time. Similarly, their title Bloodlines has been on sale on Direct2Drive and Steam for some time now, and may very well have surpassed both of the earlier games. Long story short, I'm removing the "best seller" descriptor, but I'll leave the sales number and what have you up.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=6612&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=100 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.189.246.84 (talk) 15:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Reviews table
There's a template just for this purpose: VG reviews. SharkD (talk) 04:39, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Reference material
While digging through the online print archive, I located the following print preview material for this game: One or more print reviews for this game may also be found in the archive. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 10:17, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Computer Games Magazine Preview
 * Computer Games Magazine Preview Part 1
 * Computer Games Magazine Preview Part 2
 * I also found these:
 * TechTV review
 * Computer Games Magazine review
 * PC Gamer US review
 * Computer Gaming World mention
 * Electric Playground development journal
 * Electric Playground interview with Tim Cain
 * RPGVault interview
 * Electric Playground review
 * Sharon Shellman interview
 * Interview with the three leads
 * Games Domain preview
 * Eurogamer preview
 * GameSpot UK preview
 * RPGVault beta preview
 * FiringSquad preview
 * GameSpot preview
 * IGN developer diaries
 * SharkyGames interview
 * IGN Behind the Scenes articles
 * Daily Radar interview
 * Daily Radar preview
 * Daily Radar preview
 * Gamecenter interview
 * http://web.archive.org/web/19990117092112/http://www.next-generation.com:80/jsmid/news/5177.html
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20010417085113/http://www.gamecenter.com:80/News/Item/0,3,0-4578,00.html
 * https://archive.org/stream/UneditedPCGamer_marktrade/PC_Gamer_069u#page/n75/mode/2up/
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20000424104711/http://pc.ign.com:80/news/5488.html
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20000505141746/http://pc.ign.com:80/news/5491.html
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20000815221254/http://rpgvault.ign.com:80/features/interviews/timcain.shtml
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20031117230746/http://elecplay.com:80/interview.html?article=6278
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20031117230241/http://elecplay.com:80/interview.html?article=6285
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20031117231750/http://elecplay.com:80/interview.html?article=5762
 * Hope these help. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 19:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

General gameplay and Story sections
I believe that description: "Many quests offer multiple solutions for the player...", which appears on two places on the page, is not sufficiently accurate. Personally I would say that all of the quests in the game offer at least two solutions. In every single case you can simply kill the NPC and you will still be able to finish every quest. Small exception to this is killing Nasrudin before you obtain the device. If this is enough to make "all of the quests" incorrect I would still suggest a word or phrase that represents "more" than many. Sorry for the expression, English is not my first language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daexx (talk • contribs) 10:55, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

It does have multiple gameplay options solutions to quests. Blow them up with dynamite or use your sword to hack them away.

but yes you are correct. I agree a change like that should be made. not sure how to phrase it thoughWitsBlomstein (talk) 01:42, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

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