Realism

I have been recently comparing Fallout and Arcanum. They were made by some of the same crew, and you can clearly see how some things got advanced, with Arcanum being a more complex game than Fallout when it comes to some of the possibilities and features. Than again, it's horrible how most of the worlds realism, so impressing in Fallout, vanished in Arcanum into thin air. And I'm not thinking about fire elementals living in pits or anything like that. It's all more trivial and "If Arcanum was real that would never happen".

A few examples:

• Shit. Where do people go to take a dump? Even Gilbert Bates with all of his wealth doesn't have a single toilet in his mansion, and since he can't go outside, I figure the trap corridor to the mansion surely has lots of traps. That's sick. It's a large step back when compared to Fallout where the designers made it sure, that there were logical numbers of toilets and bathrooms, private or public.
• Food. I figure people eat bark, cookie's and Caladon importet sugar, since there isn't any reasonable food around. No kite-on-a-stick or even a single restaurant. The hell? Mom from the Den would be so sad about this. I figure that digestic systems of Arcanum folk can work on alcohol alone, since taverns are a completely different matter.
• Hi, I'm Albert Leek, the prowling master. I wrote in the last of my notes that I can be found in the Sobbing Onion so I spend 24h a day there, drinking and doing nothing, waiting a whole eternity till *maybe* someone appears to get trained, which is not to likely to happen, since if the Living One chooses to do so, he'll be the first one. Get yourself a house you moron!
• Oh hai, I'm Nasrudin. I'm on an island for 1k years doing exactly nothing and I haven't yet died of boredom. Well, I build a little house, I did. Quite an acomplishment, considering how little time I had to do so.
• My name is Preator, I'm recently quite an important fellow down in Dernholm. I have a big castle, however due to the crisis of my country, I haven't got any stairs to go to the upper levels of it. Quite a pitty. Neither do I have a toilet.
• Yo nigga, Godmund's the name, Orebender's my fame. I live in a little cave. I have been filling a corridor, the only entrance to that cave with traps for several dozens of years, imprisoning myself inside as a result. How did I not get bored to death with all this constructing is a minor problem, but how come did I not run out of materials or die of starvations is clearly beneth me.
• Tarant is a really big city, which makes it bizarre that it has such a little cementary and that one dwarf can make a living only by making thombstones.
• Mazzerin's mystery. Sure, it's simple once you did the Gods quest, and quite troublesome when we first encounter it. But for Cthulhu's sake, they have a bunch of proffesors at the university, the intellectual elite, and no one has ever even had a clue how to solve it? Fuck yeah, realism.
• Arcanum like's to consider old times or places as "ancient", yet when you think about it, a normal elven life (without additional help of magic) lasts for a thousand years. 2k years back means two elven lifetimes. Therefore I really don't get why everyone, including the elves, think about the age of legends as ancient times.
• No one exept the elves know where Quintarra lies? It has been there for houndreds of years or more, an elven guide took Terwillinger to it when paid properly. In all of that time there would be enough travelers, elven guides and elves that don't give a shit about a secret that everyone would know it's exact location.
• Even though thousand of years has past since Vendigroth was destroyed, it's nearly untouched, with schematics and unique items all over the place, guarded by some inferior arachnid mutants. If it was real life, it would be plundered to the ground.
• Quintarra is the oldest and biggest elven city, place of origin to all elves. You it lies only on few tries and has several "houses" for one person each. How dissapointing.
• Liam Cameron really had to had too much time on his hands, and a skilled one he was, since he had the patience and possibility to make a rough path from his house to the portal without being killed (later events don't count).
• Going to the isle of Despair: It's quite a lot of land, yet our ship lands in a random place which is just meters from the camp. How lucky!
  Half-ogre Island: Big island, yet our ship land's accidentely meters from the factory. Double lucky!
  Thanatos: Our ship lands on a random place which happens to be meters from a camp with a map. Mu-mu-mu-multi lucky!
• Fact: The Wheel Clan can only be entered when having cathorn spectacles and only Wheel Clan dwarves have them. Conclusion: no one not being a Wheel Clan member doesn't get into their caves. The living one being an exception that happens propably once in a houndred years. Sooo why are there so many guards all over the place, when there is practically no possibility of an intruder? OK, the Dredge, you say. Either blow up the entrance or keep all of the guards close to the it, instead of them being scattered all over the damn place.
• The Void exiles had thousands of years to do nothing. How come they didn't kill all of those pesty arrayas and void lizards? Having all of that time, they had to do something to entertain themselves. Or to just stop the annoyance. Actually, I'm pretty sure that they wuold all get loony and kill each other really quick, and the winner would commit harakiri not a long time later. Also, it's a really great success to have over 2k years to wander several Island's and NOT find the Kryggird's Falchion. Yes Bane, I'm talking to you, you imcompetent dumbass.
• BMC. It has been abandoned for quite some time, yet it was earlier a fully functional community. So where did all those golems come from?! It's also amusing how half of a legion of Molochean Hand foot soldiers got into the deepest parts of the clan tunnels without having to kill all of the golems/rats/kites/whateva.
• We, the Molochean Hand are high level assasins, yet we send a level two cowardly weakling to check if no one survived the blimp crash, when we should have sent 3 robed ones and go to T'sen Ang to collect our reward in no time.
• We here in Tulla don't let evil people in. Somehow we didn't have a problem with giving education to Goeffrey. And we have a dark necromancy master. Dark necromancy, people. There isn't too much good about it. And the fire master seems a little arsonistic. Propably burned a lot of good folk and laught. So what? You have evil masters because magic is beyond good and evil, let evil mages in, you bestards.
• Propably legions of tourists go in and out Bellerogrim's cave, yet no one found that just walking down the stairs leads to a cavarn full of dragon-like creatures. Some people. Most importantly, some archeologists. Or did they find out and thought "hey, let's put these boxes here, that is surely enough to protect tourists from the dragons and make this cave an open exposition". Dumbasses. Or maybe not, since in the game it really is enough to keep the dragons down. Dumbass dragons.
• Hello, I'm Charles Dunston, menager of Tarantian water and power plant. I sealed the entrances to the old sewers. I'm the most competent person when it goes to sewers in the city, I surely have my own copy of the plans, yet I'm too stupid to notice, that there is not one, not two but three entrances to the old sewers which I am not aware of.
• Knowing, that dr Edmund Craig is the backstab master, hiding somewhere after commiting a murder and knowing that he's a half-orc (from the Tarantian) isn't IMHO enough information required to enter a random house with a random half-orc in it in Roseberough and say "My o my, you are a half-orc and I heared that the new guy in town is mean (no one said it was you though), you must be dr Craig! Train me, train me!"

Holy crap... How did this get so long? I only wanted to mention the toilet and restaurant thing. Geez, well, I'm ready to get flamed with TLDR flamed, as well as having multiple grammar/spelling problems pointed out. Yet I hope some will enjoy reading it after all.

EDIT:
OK, so I found some patience to reread my own post and suffered great pain seeing all the stupid grammar and spelling errors which occured during the spontatous writing. A great shame it was. I hope I corrected most of them.

EDIT 22.09.09:
Note, that that was merely part one of the list.
PART TWO
PART THREE (well, actually a continuation of Part Two)

 

My god, that list is so full of shit that I don't really know what to begin with. Realism is good, yes, but some details are just unnecessary. Like the toilets and the food. Arcanum is an adventure oriented roleplaying game, not The fucking Sims. Why spend time adding useless little rooms filled with nothing but shit-stools when you could spend it constructing intruiging locations? Who gives a damn anyway; I didn't buy Arcanum to visit the bloody toilet in-game.

Your rant about several of the characters, like Orebender, Nasrudin, Bates, etc, is crap as well. How can you judge any of those NPC's backgrounds and occupations when you know so little of them and the world they live in? Bringing it up in the first place is moronic at best.

I've already written more than I originally intended to, so I'll just summarize the rest of your rant as pish-posh. The details you describe can be solved with a teensy bit of imagination, and are thus never really a problem at all to the average John. If you're going to critizice a game, then point out it's real flaws and not random shit like this.

 

I could possibly also think that the toilet and food is stupid, if I haven't played Fallout earlier. on my first way through the Fallout games I though "Come on, food? Bars? Toilets? Who needs that crap, you don't even notice it, it was a waste of game designers time".
However when going through Fallout with my n'th character I thought "Hey, how much detail was put in this game. SOmeone really wanted this world to make as much sense as possible. There is really so much possibility to roleplay and/or *feel* the place." Such unimportant details make a good game epic. This doesn't turn the game into Sims or GTA:SA, you don't have to do eat to keep living. The dangerous line between "can" and "must" isn't crossed. When you must, it gets irritating. But when you know that you just can do it any time, it make the game more real, thus improving the game's spirit and depth.
If you wan't only action and adventure, you play a hack'n'slash. But you play Arcanum when you want roleplay, a tale in a form of a computer game, philosophy, a piece of art. And IMHO such details stand between Arcanum and perfection in it's category.

My judgments are only made by observation. By what is said in the game and what can be seen. And it isn't little ifnormation. Most of those characters are actually pretty straightforward in the rutines. I try to patch the holes in logic with my imagination whenever I can, but sometimes it's just not to be done.

• Orebender? He says that all he does now is make his traps, and I don't think he's lying. And after a few moments of talk with the Living One, his first conversation in decades, he says something like "Go away, I must return to my traps". He really doesn't seem to do anything else. Even if he can get past his traps and actually get out of that cave, I don't see how would he sneak pass all of those kite's at it's end. They are alive, therefore I assume that he doesn't go though them, and there's no other way. So, he stays in the cave and he's alive, even though I don't see any grocery store there, nor a warehouse full of trap engredients for dozens of years of pure joy.
• Nasrudin? He just doesn't care about anything. He states himself that he doesn't leave the island, and the only way north from his house is blocked with a forest tunnel filled with not too friendly animals. They are alive, which means, that Nasrudin does not go through it. He's propably staying safe in his house, hiding from the weak Bogaroth, even though he IS the great Nasrudin. Bloody hell, even if he would wander the whole island back and forth, there isn't anything on it. Not a living soul. Not too much entertainment for a thousand years of self exile.No matter how strong his will would be, he would either leave the island, die of boredom, kill himself or allow the Bogaroth to do the job for him.
• Gilbert Bates? He doesn't get out because he can't, his mansion is his prison, all the assasins, Appleby pawns, Molocheans, Living Ones and such. He just sits there, creating blueprints for new steam engine modifications, and thinking about bussiness problems and his past with the dwarves. That's pretty much all of his life.

Fantasy is nice, but when you can see big holes in it's logic layer it becomes stupid. The more coherent a fantasy world, the better it is. In Arcanum it isn't right when "Why did the Whell Clan associate with elves and banish the BMC to the Isle of Despair?" is actually a less troublesome to answer question than "How did Godmund find the patience to construct traps non-stop for decades? Where does he get the raw materials? What does he eat? Walls? Or, well, maybe he's just a step in a computer game, which the designers didn't care to make realistic, because they didn't think I will use my brain when playing". That's quite killing for the epic atmosphere, a little detail which makes it a little harder to sink into the game. But there are plenty of such details.

 

That's some quality shit right there. The material was entertaining to read, if taken in good humour.

 

I agree with Garfbarf. It was an intriguing read. I don't agree with all of it, but I'm content to let it go, since a) I was entertained and b) it's your opinion, and for once I don't feel like arguing on it. Very nice post.

 

MuroLightning: Oh wow. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or horrified... That is seriously weird. And on the Subject of Nasrudin, I think he's put himself in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere (if you hear Banjos, cast Invisibility and leg it) because he's ashamed and just wants to be left the fuck alone. People have done stupider shit over shame.

Dark Elf: Ew!!! Bad mental image! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW! *choke*

 

It's MAGIC!

 

Big teepee for sleepee. Little teepee for peepee.

 

Granted, none of these inconsistencies pose a problem for me or disctract from the atmosphere of Arcanum, but I can't imagine that added realism could harm the experience..

Perhaps it's merely the difference between a great game and a flawless game.

 

I find that in any great work of fiction a certain initial sense of disbelief is always accepted.

For example, in any superhero movie/comic one simply accepts at face value something fantastic (like flying, spider-powers, cosmic rays, whatever). However, it is the realistic interaction that the rest of the world reacts to this simple world-alteration that makes any story compelling.

One of the reasons the Lord of the Rings movie series was so goddamn awesome was the attention to detail and the immersion factor. Seeing all the little details like authentic wardrobe/props/etc. come together really increases the immersion. It draws you into the movie and creates a better experience. It's like having good special effects: they are at their best when you don't even realize they are there.

Conversely, it is when these omissions are noticeable that they detract from their experience. Fallout is great because the world is so complete that I rarely stop to think that I'm playing a false, non-real world at times. Once you realize these little things in Arcanum, their existence rattles in the back of your mind and can detract from the play experience for some people.

 

You never saw Super-Man use the loo.

 

Perhaps he is dumping it in the telephone booth.

 

Dark Elf! That made my day.

 

Newfoundland: Ferry drops you off in the primary settlement. ULTRA LUCKY!!

 

Hey, just registered to offer a few critical thoughts on your list. Most of it hits the more ridiculous parts of Arcanum quite well, but there are a few things I think you haven't though of.

He's mad with grief, has been effectively transported to a world that is totally unlike his, and would have to dodge people worshiping him as a God. And of course, extreme amounts of meditation is his thing, since he's all elveny and such.

You may have noticed that he's absolutely insane. That kind of takes care of boredom, as for food and materials, I think it's pretty obvious that he's taking care of the garden on the fourth floor, and materials are just lying around.

Usually I don't like that much conservation of detail, but here it's essential. Tarant is implied to be London sized, so it's going to have not just one large graveyard, but hundreds.

Mostly agreed. They should at least have figured out the system, and maybe personally completed the first circle. but after that, the altars are all located in places that tend to kill curious professors, armed guard or no.

Absolutely agreed. That' not even taking into account various shady half-elves that might have been told by there parents

In the third and second case, that's presumably because they circles the island looking for signs of habitation. In the third case, I honestly never encountered that map. I just went straight to the south end.

The golems are kind of unexplained, especially as they seem more like elementals than magical robots. However, as far as getting down there goes, that's what prowl ranks are for.

Two of those entrances were presumably either made by the crime lords in the Boil, or was dug up and unsealed. Same goes for the one in the city proper. They were wither thought to be sealed, or weren't part of the original structure. It's pretty clear Dunston doesn't send men down there unless he has to. Besides, even if he knew about it, would you rat on a crime boss who sould send thugs through the city silently?

 

Well that's grand. I spend over 1,5h writing some new ideas in the matter of Arcanum realism which were bothering me recently. I wanted to preview, but in the meantime I was logged out, and after loging in everything got lost. Lost, damnit. I hate such painful lessons.
I will wright those things eventually, but propably not too soon. It's hard to find the time, and now the motivation to write all of that once again. -_-
Well, for now I would like to answer to some of the ideas that showed up while I was gone.

First of all, welcome in the House of Lords, Connington. I'm flattered that I pushed an Acanum player into registering with my post.

True. And I'm one of those people. All those details didn't bother me too much on my first or second walkthrough, but after years of playing and thinking about Arcanum all those details made Arcanum's realism layer hollow like a spider web in my view, which makes it difficult to fully sink into the world in recent walkthroughs.

Yes yes, I am aware of why he did exile himself from the world. The thing that bothers me is how long he is able to have the will to live in such state. I could understand if he was like the Silver Lady. Hell, her mind wanders through worlds making her high 24h a day. I'm sure she could live forever in such state and never feel bored. But Nasrudin doesn't seem to wander outside of his own mind. I know than no one can literally die of boredom, but I'm just doubtful that any mind would be strong enough to not be pushed into suicide in his situation. 1000 years is a lot of time. He could simply be afraid to die, but after such a lot of time he propably would really care anymore. He could even try to fight Bogaroth to the death, if suicide would harm his honor. Of course I try to rationalise that he's an elf, that 1000 years isn't an inimaginable amount of time for him, that he likes to meditate, etc. But still, it isn't that easy. But it's still nothing compared to Arronax. Hell, how didn't he get 100% insane when being traped in a 2 meter square shell for 2000 years is simply beyond me. I would expect his mind to fall apart and leave a body being nothing more that a vegetable in such of a situation. Just look what 50 years has done with Godmund and make it 40 times longer. Arronax doesn't seem to give a damn actually.

I don't think that the garden needs taking care of, it can just live by itself. As for Godmund, perhaps indeed his insanity makes him immume to boredom, yet when hearing his dialogue I also thing that it makes him too paranoid to leave his cave and be outside of his corridor of traps. He propably believes that the corridor is the only thing which protects him from all of the evil mind-eating elves which are waiting just outside of it. Which makes him dig further into the caves and leave traps behind him. It's climatic, untill the food & material problem arises.

If it was Fallout, I would know that such things are simply game logic. That is the reason why for example NCR has only two council members (shoulb be propably 10-20) and a few dozens of inhabitants, while it is said that is has houndreds of them, etc. You just know, that beyond the map you can see there is a lot more, which you just have to imagine. But Arcanum tries to put everything that exists in it's world to actually be visible. You don't have to imagine the Tarant is huge. You can simply see how huge it is. Such attempt is a great task, but a hard one. I can for example rationalise and imagine, that Tarant has plenty of cementaries outside of the city itself, but such rationalisation is a hard thing when you consider the fact, that Tarant has one hotel, which has two rooms. It's obvious, that a city like that should have a hotel with plenty of rooms, even many hotels. But the absence of those is the result of both carelessness and game logic (because what would be more boring that a lot of space with empty rooms).

Yet, they could organise a armed expedition. Or instead of a proffesor, it could be a mage, who wouldn't have that much problem with fighting of the beasts and guardians. Anyway, as mentioned, they would at least figure out the system, and 3000 years is reeealy more than enough time for some party, ore many many parties to complete the task, step by step.

Absolutely agreed. That' not even taking into account various shady half-elves that might have been told by there parents[/quote]
This and many other possible ways. Finding where is Quintarra was fun in the game, but in a normal world it would be no secret, that's for sure.

Agreed, I didn't think about the fact, that the camp on the Isle and Despair and the Half-Ogre Factory could be visible from the ship. But the Thanatos map in a barell is still too much for being lucky.

As for the golems, I was thinking some time about it and came to a conclusion. Arcanum is after all a fantasy world, so what the hell, here's my theory. Maybe whole mountains in Arcanum are alive in an elemental meaning. And this alive mountain sometimes can make chunks of themselves become more lively, and detach from themselves, thus making golems. Think of it as spores, or clonal fragmentation. They can firstly be like small living rocks which assemble and form greater ones. Maybe communities of dwarves, living in the mountains have to get rid of those tiny living rocks on a daily basis, just like we do with dust. But when a mine is left for dozens of years without those organs of clearance, it is enough time for those small rockes to grow into golems and seething masses.
As for the Molocheans getting past all those enemies. I can see why they would both want and be able to get past the golems. But I don't think they would find it necessary to prowl between those little pesky kites.

The sewers under the Boil were there, indeed the entrances could be done by thr gangs. They don't use normal sewer entrances, they're more like hatches, which makes it sound even more logical. Of course the entrances could be there from the beggining, just Dunston didn't dare to enter the Boil to seal them, and is too proud to admit it to just any stranger who will ask him about it. But the forth entrance (near the gipsy) wouldn't be a problem to seal, so Dunston clearly doesn't know about it. So he either is imcopetent, or the entrance was made without his knowledge. Maybe the Underground is behind it. Well, now the thing about three entrances to the sewers forgotten by Dunston makes much more sense for me.

 

Slightly to one side of this conversation:
Speaking as a player and a modder - I'm glad Troika went with truncated versions of the cities. They added only what was needed to tell the story and let the player imagine the rest. It does stretch credibility to the max - but at the same time, reduces redundancy. Not only would you have a dozen or more graveyards, but dozens of the same shops selling the same goods as well.
If Tarant - and Caladon, for that matter, were built to true size, they would be absolutely massive.
For a better idea, here's a map of Calimport from a D&D module. It looks to be roughly the same size as as a Victorian London map I saw way back when. The red bars you see on the far right side is what I added to represent the size of in-game Tarant.

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o314/rroyo/City.jpg

 

How interesting. Muro has inadvertantly hit upon something I've been working on in my (exceedingly rare) spare time. Arronax should be at least halfway out of his freakin' mind. I cite the fact that time works differently in the Void as something of a mitigating factor, but I still reckon the poor sod is a helluva lot more broken than the game portrayed him.

(Part of my little theory is that his absolute worst nightmare after being freed would be the thought that his new-found freedom might all be a hallucination or a dream. I also think that, should the Living One show him anything approaching compassion or friendship, that he'd attach himself to them emotionally.)