Arcanum Theory

Alright. I'm looking into this more, and going to add onto this post with every correlation I can come up with, but at the moment, I think that Arcanum is actually a mockery of the History of the Computer. I know that Gilbert Bates is a mockery of Bill Gates... and I think that the bad guy (the necromancer) at the very end of the game is some-how connected to Apple... so far our list consists of:

1.Gilbert Bates = Bill Gates


Anyone else got ideas?

 

2. Appleby is the crazy rival of "Bill Gates" = Steve Jobs? Or Linus Torvalds or even Paul Allen?

3. In Falcon's Ache you can tell these humans that Bates (who has monopoly in steam engine business) is going to move into logging business = Parody about releasing of Xbox?

 

Appleby is Apple. Maybe Bill Gates payed Troika Games for mocking of Apple. And it's well said that Gilbert Bates is Bill Gates, I thought about this years ago. And maybe necromancer is metaphoric "end of petroleum" that will bring death to everyone, even Bill Gates (Gilbert Bates). And Thanatos is the desert, where "inventor of Windows" lives (Nasrudin). Maybe Arcanum is connected with life like this: Arronax is Osama ben Laden (Talibans were raised by USA government, but then rebelled in terroristic acts - ruins of Vendigroth- 11 september 2001; Arronax was raised by Nasrudin - metaphoric USA)

 

Good theories, Sofokl, that proves Tim Cain is one of the main talibans too, his beard made me suspect it long ago. Arcanum was used just to inform the taliban terrorists that they should fly into WTC excactly 21 days after Arcanum was released on 21st August.

 

Great, Mathboy! I didn't know date of releasing of Arcanum. Maybe if I knew, I would have made the same conclusions. 21 and 21? Maybe it's not a mystery ? :roll:

 

What I find interesting is that Appelby has higher Intelligence than Bates. Perhaps because he has legitimetly tried to understand the steam engine from scratch where-as Bates had a complete engine to look at first? The both have positive alignments though. Personally, I suspect Appleby is actually a better inventor than Bates. Just that he is learning everything the hard way, he's earning it for himself. Personally, I liked my IMac better than my current PC, just you can't get any good games for it.

 

Dude that is not cool. :thumbdown:

 

Wait, if the irish are orcs, then what are the negros? Anywho, I think you're right about the jews.

 

We've gone over this many times in the past. Look at the date on Arcanum. 1885. The end of industrialization in America. The Jews run the banks and businesses, the Irish work in their factories. Clear enough analogy for you? Even look at the medicines and ingredients in the game, they're obvious spin offs of the random shit that was being peddled in late 1800s America by what qualified as pharmacists back then.

There are hundreds of those relationships.

 

Yeah, but who are the negros? That's all I wanna know. 'Cus I've always thought of the orcs as rl's negros.

 

The half-ogres, maybe? You know, better stamina, considered aggressive, keeping them together in places... Or maybe *gasp* the makers decided to create a world they considered perfect and well-balanced and they decided to leave out black people!
(Just like they decided to show the soon-to-be extinction of fair-haired people.)

 

why is everyone pulling on this from an AMERICAN perspective? it is possible that gates wanted to get in a few in-jokes about apple, ok, but the game itself is victorianesque... why not look at it through an english point of view? or more preciesly, britain in the late 1800s.

(i'm not going to explain everything in detail, it would take WAY too long, so it requires a bit of historical knowledge)
then it becomes this;
tarant is the hyperpowerised english empire, which following the napoleonic wars had 1/4 world population AND 1/3 the land space.
make roseborough america, with a gateway to a new world, and awestriking powers....
slavery is being greatly reduced around the world, leading to such subjects as orcish equality (donn trogg = tupac, the REAL tupac, not the rapper!). despite that, what draws the actual parody of negroid slavery is the black mountain clan.

the penal colony is australia, obviously, and that gets a bit funny if you know anything about the english nobilty ON australia at the time (i.e. whats-his-face, the dwarf that was there)

in arcanum, as technology's growth is exactly on par with the invention of the steam engine, and the second industrial revolution being sprung by the invention of the steam engine, which demolished some countries, and greatened the power of others. that makes dernholm= china, and caladon=russia. this becomes even funnier if you know anything about russo-chinese affairs from the late 1800s-early 1900s (i.e. the affair between prince whos-it and princess whats-her-face!)

so doesn't that make black root into india, with the great game between tarant (england) and dernolm (russia)?

if you want to get REALLY hilarious, you could name shrouded hills NORWAY. there is, after all, a continuous set of in-jokes about its alignment with tarant (and freedom from sweden). it shows up for the first time in a high-ranking persuasuion guy's conversation with the lion head importers about the mine (i only found it with a 5-rank master in persusion and 20 in charisma, but then, that's the only character i've ever HAD whom i bothered with persuasion and charisma)

here's what got me onto this tangent in the first place... London Underground = Thieves Undergoround! i was trying to figure out where organised crime tied in to it all. hey, no story is complete without a good mafia! then, lower class london becomes the Boil, and, what do you know! leading social and political figures in central London become Maug and Pollock, and it fits perfectly if you know a bit about london history.

of course, stringy pete is the Barbary pirates, up to the stealing of his boat. heh.
and vormantown is the republicanisation of italy, including the annexation of the vatican, from what i see.

my biggest problem is i've never actually FINISHED the game *tear* due to a series of wierd shit that always occurs when i get close. i have never been to the void, thanatos, or the vendigroth wastees. i ave a few funny stories to that regard... so there's some guesswork that's developed from reading, but i THINK your destiny, as nasrudin's incarnate... make that america's so-called 'manifest destiny' during the 1800s/late 1800s. remember how i said that roseborough was america?

and of course, there's an infidum of stuff i have no clue about BECAUSE i've never finished

someone who HAS, work on this, please. lol...

 

You could do all that. Or you could go with the very well established American analogy. And you can't really be surprised at Americanized viewpoints when the game was made by, well, Americans.

As a minor criticism to your analogy, the reason some analogies are so strong are because of the feel of the game. The entirety of the world 'feels' steampunk American or English. Not Chinese. With the possible exception of Tulla none of the cities have any sort of Eastern feel.

Perhaps this is a spoiler, but no, Roseborough does not start taking over countries.

 

I should kick you right in the mummy-daddy button for that jab at Australia. Except that it's still pretty fucked up, so why bother?

 

Wait... there's a button?

 

lol. Despite the astronomical circumstance of you actually being CORRECT about them, judging mainstream America by your own ignorance will get you nowhere.

Grammatically fallible, situationally inept, and extrordinarily ignorant... You climb my Darwin's scale by the minute (people turning back into frogs).

Nor did i say anything like this. with your pro-anglican views, you think it would be your native language
Unless, that is, you're referring to America's increasing 'peacekeeping' views, an idea in which I find a severe lack of credence. Having read as many of your posts as I have, i find doubt in the matter of you being able to PRONOUNCE the term 'peacekeeping.'

 

Why do I somehow think I'm going to have to kill you for being so ridiculously pretentious?

 

Before anyone wastes their thesis on Arcanum, we should remember that it is not a historical simulation. So some things are in it simply because the designers thought "That's cool!" or "We have a spare NPC graphic, someone think up a quest for a green halfling".

I think the orcs are partly Irish (labour union revolts), partly negro slaves and partly any downtrodden race e.g. Jews "The Orcish Question". How can they be all of these things at once? Because it's a game!

Does anyone else find it odd that there are no humans with dark skin? In WorldEd there are white, pink, green, red, purple, etc NPC variants but no dark colours. Perhaps a limitation of the murky graphics system or perhaps the KKK got their hands on the design document?

 

I just gotta say that I like KNJoe's analogy a lot, but lets just calm down and listen to TONGS.