Arcanum 2 on kickstarter project?

As I have heard wasteland 2 project, started when the fans contacted one of the old producers by demanding an sequel.
I wonder can't the same be done with arcanum by using a kickstarter project?
Maybe I am overly optimistic (and kinda clueless), but it could really succeed. But the problem is how can we get the project started, who should we contact and etc...

 

The thing they'd have to have to rights to the game first and be willing to make a sequel. That's why it works with the likes of Shadowrun Returns, but probably wouldn't with Arcanum - at least at the moment.

 

I think Activision-Blizzard own the rights at the moment, and getting any IP from them would be... Pricey.

 

Raising money for Arcanum on Kickstarter is - impossible. The game is not to well known, those who played it have got older and moved on and forgot, newer generation don't care (and why should they) and in general, Arcanum was not that big name anyway. And even if it was free to make sequel without getting a license from someone, who would be making the game and to whom would you channel your money?

An alternative could be if there were some indie studio enthusiastic enough to make the game and they could try and sell the story how they want to make it big by making steampunk game but nobody is giving them any chance. A sad story of great loss and struggle tossed in there could raise another $100 more.

Here's another alternative! Put it on Kickstarter and pray that some rich bastard with shitload of money and passion for Arcanum will see the project and pay for entire production costs.

 

I must disagree. Arcanum is well-known and a reference for RPG and steampunk universe. Its just getting old but, just like me, it is still the best game ever for a lot of people.

 

Arcanum was not that good of a game, to be honest. The setting is just a mishmash of popular fantasy ideas, the steampunk component is not that big, actually.

No idea why do you guys like it so much. As for me, it just was my first RPG, so I'm kinda nostalgic about it. But anyway, I stopped playing them video games now, so I don't give a shit.

 

Indeed it is best game for many of those who played it, but not that many people played it. It may be a reference for steampunk/magic universe, but there is not much competition in the field anyway.

To make it a success on Kickstarter, Arcanum needs a huge and active fanbase to start with.
I've seen some people from YouTube start Kickstarter project and they made it successful only because they had multimillion active fanbase. Freddiew comes to mind - he collected $270k and he has 3 million subscribers who are more or less pretty active since his videos got many views every week.
Now, if Arcanum was played by 3 million people - then we could speculate and have somewhat high hopes for 'something'. But it was not. Arcanum fanbase is constantly dwindling and let's be honest - this game won't be remembered in 10 years as some classics are nowadays.

Instead of Kickstarter, best chance of seeing Arcanum 2 is purely if it's fan-made. Unity 3D engine could be a nice platform to look into Click![/url]

 

I agree with with you. The fans of Arcanum probably just feel nostalgy nowdays and I also doubt a kickstarter project would have very few chances to work.

I played some really famous PRG games such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights and I find them pretty boring with an awful gameplay - I actually dislike D&D rules... So, when I see those millions of fans obsessed by Diablo 3 or the Old-New Edition of Baldur's Gate, I think Arcanum has much more to offer than these games in my opinion.

When you get into modding with Arcanum, with patience and time, you can do pretty much everything you want...

 

I've played my share of RPGs and I have no interest in picking up and completing Baldur's Gate or even playing Neverwinter Nights for the first time. When I decide to upgrade my computer, I will avoid the cost of an expensive OS for some free OS that can simply emulate Windows. Even a slow, emulated Windows environment will be fast enough on the upgraded hardware to play Arcanum again.

Arcanum is fascinating for its writing, setting, and flexibility. I'm sure the formula has been improved in recent years, but I don't care. Arcanum is that complete.

That's not the problem. It's kickstarter.com. Some bloke comes up with a project that we wants funded and away it goes. It isn't moneywall.com where losers with nothing better to do throw money at a wall and hope it gets scraped up by some bigger loser who wants to take up their cause. On KICKSTARTER, supply precedes demand. Nobody is offering Arcanum 2, so no.

You're French, right? Perhaps Arcanum is popular in France, but it is virtually unknown in The States.

Well I'm glad you were motivated to improve Arcanum while you were.

 

This is an amazing idea. With the Epic fail that Diablo 3 has been (sorry if any of you like Diablo 3) I am reminded of the Action RPGs which I have loved the most. Diablo 2 was one of my most favorite, but I don't think there is a single ARPG I enjoyed more than Arcanum. With the new technology and ease of accessibility for remakes, and the common demand and publicity that is being generated by GOG.com this is a project that I see a lot of potential to get kickstarted.

Edit: In reply to the people that say the game sucks and has no chance of getting kickstarted, I hope you are joking. Let me tell you what appealed about Arcanum to me. I am not saying that this has to be the case for you or anything else, I am just telling you what appealed to me:

1) The first thing that comes to mind is the amazing depth of dialogue responses. You know how people complain about TV and Movie productions that have bad writing? Well let me tell you that whoever was writing Arcanum did not have bad writing. There was never a sense that it felt forced or out of place. Not only the main story itself, but each individual interaction with each NPC felt like a completely unique and personalized experience in which there was a broad variety of things you could do.

Just in terms of continuing the discussion with an NPC there were three things you could almost always invariably do. You could continue the discussion, and get nowhere. You could end the discussion and get nowhere. Or if you talked to them just right, you could get them to say that one thing you wanted them to say. A fourth option is that they could kill you, or you could kill them. It always felt like between the two absolute ends to any conversation (life or death) there was a wide spectrum in between of choices you could make, which gave the user a very broad and free feeling to do what he wanted in the game and take the conversation where he wanted. But not only was there a free feeling associated with what you could do, there was a clever feeling too.

I loved how clever the responses were that you could make. It was like the team at Troika never ran out of good one-liners. It wasn't simply forced, cliche "I'm going to rip your head off" expressions, they were really creative. They actually had me falling out of my chair laughing most of the time. And it kind of caught you by surprise. You never expected to see them the way a conversation was going. You always expected the game to take YOU in some linear direction and not give you any choice, but time and time again the game proved you wrong in every dialogue, by giving you a choice to take the game in any direction that you want. It is this wide variety of choices in Arcanum that really made it fun to play. The world was so big and the individual chocies you could make were so vast, and there were so many ways to beat it. You weren't pigeon-holed or forced into one way of beating it. For example, if you killed an important quest NPC there was always another way to continue the storyline without them being alive. You couldn't screw yourself over by being a jack-tard (usually). So the dialogue was very alive and that was one of the things that added to the game.

2) You could do whatever you wanted without screwing yourself over. You had so much freedom, and yet you never could quite leave yourself without hope of beating the game. (Unless of course you pressed quick save instead of quick load after you died). It is truly this freedom and sense of large open world that gave Arcanum such a good feeling.

3) The main storyline was very good. It was actually very immersive (for me). The moment that *SPOILER* Kerghan met me on my way to the Wheel Clan was the moment I was hooked. I almost never get into stories because I am a very critical and stand-offish person. I scrutinize everything before I embrace it, which is one of my weaknesses. But this was not the case with the Arcanum story, and especially after Kerghan approached me. There was something about that dialogue, his voice, the writing that scared the shit out of me and also made me incredibly interested. The rest of the story flowed very well to the very end, and I could not put the game down. Kerghan's creepy speech still echoes throughout my head to this day. It was truly a good ending for the fantasy world that it was placed in. Kerghan's argument even sounded convincing, which was the strange thing. I wanted to join him at first. I felt the self-conflift within me as I tried to decide if there was something morally wrong with me for wanting to join with him. That is the sign of a good story that it makes you truly question yourself. If writing succeeds to do that, then it has succeeded at everything.

4) The sheer vastness of the world. I've already talked about the variety and vastness of choices, but now I want to talk about the physical vastness of it. The Arcanum world map puts World of Warcraft's Azeroth to shame. It is gigantic. And it is completely fully developed with different areas--forests, plains, mountains, etc. The fact that you could get stopped by bandits on the middle of the map, and be in an actual location (not just a randomly generated square of land) but an actual location on the world map where you could run off by foot if you wanted to, made it feel incredibly vast to me. Not to mention that they actually used the world map. From Cumbria, to Tarant, to Shrouded Hills and the mystical city of Qintarra (oh how I loved going to Qintarra) they used the map very well. Cities were placed in very spread-out locations from one another so that you had to use the world map. My favorite quest was the Ruby Glade. Getting that journal from the halfling and reading it, you felt what the father felt as his son was swallowed up by the hideous beast. It was like something straight out of a myth/fairy tale/children's story, it had that familiar tug on the human heart that identified with truths deeply ingrained into human consciousness through allegory, and it sucked you right in. Because of that depth, it was a thrill to see where the Ruby Glade was actually located, by the trundling sheep on the other side of the Grey Mountains, far far away. Immediately I was filled with a sense of intrigue. What could be in that far away land, considering how long it had taken me to get here. What could possibly be over there? Even when I got to the Ruby Glade, it was not the greatest thing ever, but my imagination had already done all the work and I knew I was in an awesome place. The game creators actually managed to get my imagination to come in to play, because so much was suggest by the vastness of the world that I created a bit of the game for myself.

5) Combat. I really enjoyed the combat. There was something very satisfying and fulfilling about it. Also, your success in combat felt earned. You never felt like the build was just given to you or it worked for you. Some skills sucked and some were great and you had to figure that out through trial and error.

6) Items. The items felt real, and it was exciting to get them. There was also such a vast variety of items that you just felt excited to get almost anything. (See a pattern here? Vast world, vast choices, vast items) You got excited when you found some soap in the trashcan. Then later you find out you can make a bomb out of it. Wow! What a great deal!


All in all, the game provided me with a positive, engaging, thorough, immersive, and fun experience. There are very, very few games that do that for me.

Now just so you all don't think I'm oblivious, I know there were bugs in the game. I know that some of the design was bad with regard to the combat system. Some people found those things to be really hard to look past. Me on the other hand, I found the game to be such a good game that all of that stuff was quite forgivable. The occasional bug in combat or spell tree with useless spells (air elemental anyone?) didn't matter to me.

So, for all of these reasons, I think Arcanum 2 could be a great kickstarter project. One of the things that has to happen for it is people with the original vision for the game make the sequel so that they can include the "feeling" and the things that people loved most about the first game, so that the second game is an equally positive experience, if not better than the first game. The vastness of the game in all areas (items, choices, dialogue, story direction, and builds) and the freedom that it offers the player to make unique decisions of his/her own without any coercion, plus the unique environment and world that is is placed in makes it a unique game unlike any other, with an experience to offer that is quite different from any other.

This will definitely make a great kickstarter project, if the fans rally together and raise support.

 

Bots are becoming more in-depth with their posts.

 

I for one appreciate the fresh enthusiasm put in the G-Man's post.
Almost labelled it with a TL;DR but I somehow got to read it all.
Made me want to replay Arcanum once again in fact.
One sentence per line because that's how I roll.

 

A gravedig + a wall of text reminds me of A Cask of Amontillado.

Constipation, you only contributed one true sentence in those four lines.

 

Because that's how I roll, baby.

 

Winning.

 

His idea was beneficial and while far more text than I was in the mood to read, was valid input.

 

the three founders of troika who made arcanum now each work: one for inxile, one for obsidian, one for blizzard...so...


it's possible that after wasteland 2, or after the project awakening kickstarter games finish up, if they do well... and if the devs want to then do a change of pace... they could do a generic industrial revolution isometric rpg... it's not even that far fetched at all!


arcanum doesn't really need it's IP specific features. sure they'd need a new map, new famous characters, new city names? but so what? if arcanum 2 wanted to keep things fresh they'd probably have changed the setting up a bit anyways.


really there are only two things getting in the way of such a project:

1) these major rpg kickstarter projects do poorly and don't sell well, and end up being bad games due to the low budgets and as a result the companies don't want to do more games like them.
2) these games do so amazingly well that more are made but the fans and developers don't think a magic meets industrial revolution setting would be a good pick for the next projects.

basically there is an important member of troika at each of two kickstarter doing companies... these companies can do a successful kickstarter, or possibly even make enough money off their first kickstarter to flat out pay for another game... there's no need to fund an arcanum rpg sequel with arcanum fans, we just need to convince obsidian or inxile to do the game, and then those companies will use their own much larger fan base to get the financing dealt with? personally I feel like obsidian is the clear choice.

in order to make such a game you need someone who would be good enough at making old school style rpg's to actually make the game. it doesn't matter who has what ip's or how popular a game is... all that matters is if there's a developer who could do it, and if that developer wants to do it! so.... in 2014 or something let's all rally and beg obsidian to make their project awakening kickstarter based RPG have a sequel which is loosely themed after the arcanum game/setting?

 

While I agree with that, It would feel kinda silly to have completely new Tolkien-esque steampunk-world similar to Arcanum, but I wouldn't care though. It would rock, but I believe some people might be turned down by similiarity. One needs to remember that it's not only steampunk fantasy that makes Arcanum's setting such an interesting deal, it's also Tolkien-like traditional fantasy that is rarely done in computer gaming outside pure Tolkien games (like ones based on LoTR). Also there is awesome stuff like "jewish" banking gnomes and orcish working classes that are unique to the setting and dropping them would make things definitely more generic in a bad way. There is also impressive amount of established and interesting, but fairly unexplored lore and history in Arcanum, dropping that out would be very sad indeed.

Though one could argue that Arcanum is already forgotten enough that it might just work to do faithful rehash of the setting under different name.

 

I wonder if the current owners of the Arcanum trademark are going to release something to keep it alive, or if they'll let it lapse so that it could be picked up by Obsidian in the future? As for avoiding the contents of the Arcanum copyright, wasn't the planned sequel supposed to be a journey to the centre of the Arcanum? That sounds like it would be all new areas, and play more like a linear expedition with choices and options along the way. Not as much fun, but perhaps the underground areas could be so vast that it'd mostly be like the way Arcanum already closes off a lot of areas before certain parts of the story, even though the main character should already have Caladon on the map since that's where they boarded the IFS Zephyr.

Personally I'm more into the freedom of Arcanum rather than the game setting. And that kind of stuff is more of a matter of how the game is designed rather than where it's set. So there would be no need to stick with the trademark or the copyrighted stuff to make me happy. Anyone could make a steampunk/magic journey to the centre of a world. But I guess I'd be missing Franklin Payne. :cry:

 

Is there an arcanum 2 project going on right now? If so is there a video or screenshots of some of the work they have been doing?