Collective ideas for an Arcanum successor?

Arcanum 2 should not be a combat simulator, it should be a role playing game...

 

If you said that after reading that I would love to see a goup working on mod as a dummy on Mount and Blade 2, then you should know it actually is a very loose rpg game. There is a map you can mod how you want it, and put in locations and build those up. Also there is dialogs you can create/mod. Characters. I am not a modder myself, but so much has been moded however. I assume Mount and Blade 2 will be much the same. But as I said the combat is what that game is all about and its incredible.

Why cant I make post completely about combat? wow

 

Arcanum's combat system may have been a bit flawed, but I think most fans would agree that Mount and Blade is nothing like the combat expected of a successor.
Especially since most play on Turn-Based mode and alternate only a bit of the time when needed.

Personally, I believe an Arcanum 2 should be isometric perspective, with an improved combat system, but not take on the role of a simulator.
I thought Fallout 3/New-Vegas were VERY different games from the originals, all because of perspective and combat.

People play Mount and Blade, for Mount and Blade's combat.
People would play Arcanum 2, for Arcanum 2. It's really that simple, and all the fans would want.

 

I think Arcanums setting/story feel is incredible thats why I find out this forum and startet to write at it like 10 years after its date. However a newer game has to move from isometric, and create a combat system of its own. The first person/third person is simply a much more realistic/serious way of displaying a world. Arcanum had a story/setting that didnt need that, it was still awesome. But if someone would create a same feel, and include a such combat system it would reach the skies: )

Making a world from first person is hard as hell should be said: P All details, not to much still, balanced and well made. cities, clothing, monocels. Arcanum didnt display that many variations on characters displayed. (inventory sceen vs actual apreance when walkning around). Same bodies for everyone in a race. All that actully sucks. The portraits where really nice though. (End of the line: shouldent you want to speak with those portraits in first/third person?). Arcanum 1 is actually stiff. Still an amazing unic game in setting/story/characters.

 

Two generally anticipated upcoming RPGs, Obsidian's "Project Eternity" (influenced by and paying homage to Infinity Engine games) and inXile's "Torment: Tides of Numenera" (spiritual successor to "Planescape: Torment") will both be isometric.

 

My favorite idea is a kind of prequel. Set on another continent and model it after the United States in the last decade or so before civil war broke out. Frankly I think that time period would be a fascinating setting for an RPG with or without fantasy elements. The race-based slavery inspires in me lots of ideas for gameplay and RP. Of-course it would probably too controversial, especially if you actually had dark skinned humans as slaves and didn't just replace them with orcs or something (which would be more offensive?). (no natural inclination towards magick or technology but the effect of slavery would be big enough to alter their attributes and have them treated so differently from other humans that they'd basically work as an entirely separate race). Not that I want to open that can of worms.

The whole industrial revolution thing is a natural fit since in the real world it was one of the contributing causes to the conflict.

As it is set a few decades in the past on a faraway land it needn't have any effect on Arcanum the continent, thus there is still a lot of leeway with what can happen.

The main quest seems easy enough to figure out. Maybe start off with the President being assassinated (probably base it on the Lincoln and McKinely assassinations) with the player-character nearby. Maybe they are implicated or maybe they get targeted as a witness, having accidentally observed something crucial. Probably you'd have two groups of badguys that would need to be stopped: occultists attempting to revive some ancient native god to smite the industrialists and of-course war-mongering industrialists committed to setting off a violent war for profit. Good ending would involve finding a middle ground that avoids war and abolishes slavery, without allowing the capitalists to subvert the country's democracy.

Or maybe the game should be set just after, during the Reconstruction period.

Lot's of possibilities. What a shame.

 

Personally I've always thought a prequel done with a "Forrest Gump" philosophy would be hilarious. Especially if the lead character was some kind of savant or something.

You'd get a chance to see Arcanum in a more or less glorious light depending on the city and have the main character contribute directly or indirectly to the events that are reported to have happened as you play the original.

For example:

- opening (accidentaly) the Portal that lets the Caladon Demon into the world.

- giving Liam Cameron a book on science

- starting the war between Clan Maug and Clan Pollock who could have originally been one tight group.

- Accidentally got Cynthia Boggs arrested.

- Help Bates screw over Appleboy

- etc.