Notes on the late-game dialogue bug fix (Spoilers)

Please do not move this to the mapmaking/scripting forum again, since it won't really be of any use to anyone there. Sorry for posting this again, but I feel like people really need to know what my dialogue fix does, since it had no attached readme file (my mistake).

For those few of you who STILL haven't finished the game, be wary of spoilers.

I should have done this months ago when the 1074 patch came out, but I was busy doing other things at the time.

I felt that maybe the dialogue fix was a bit enigmatic and I'm posting this to give more information on the dialogue fix for those who want to know. It's available now at http://www.terra-arcanum.com/council/ar ... srudin.dlg (thanks to Calis). Put it in your C:SierraArcanumdatadlg directory, create it if it doesn't exist. Substitute C:SierraArcanum with whatever directory you installed Arcanum to. Now, the next time you talk to Nasrudin at Thanatos for the first time, you should see (and hear, it even has the voice over) the missing dialogue right before it plays the movie.

I made this fix months ago, when I was playing the game and before the second patch (1074) came out. I e-mailed it to one of the programmers at Troika, who said it was going to be put into the patch. It wasn't (I finally checked on this a week ago). I e-mailed him back and this is what he said:

"I want to thank you for the help in this - I fixed it right after you sent
it to me originally - your thoroughness made it extremely simple to fix. The
problem is that the patch had already been finished, and Sierra doesn't seem
to have any interest in putting out another patch. We are not able to
legally put out any patches for Arcanum without Sierra's consent...and I'll
just leave it at that. So the answer is that it is fixed, but the fix will
probably never see the light of day. I appreciate your dedication to
Arcanum, and wish we could do more for you and all our other dedicated fans.

Thanks, leon"

So Terra Arcanum was my best recourse. Thanks again to Calis for putting it up on this site.

Detailed Bug Description (warning, long, ignore if you want):
This pertains to one of the major dialogues in the game - your FIRST talk with Nasrudin in the main plot on Thanatos. There is a major hole in this dialogue (when you first talk to him in his house on Thanatos). He never mentions what Arronox's crime was (that is, what happens to Vendigroth). The initial dialogue progresses fairly linearly to this point:

"Sometime during all this heroic carnage, my son came of age. I quickly ushered him into the council, amidst some of the others' protest about his young age and inexperience. And then it all came crashing down upon me. [He pauses.] Look, are you certain you really want to hear all of this self pitying drivel?"

After you respond in the affirmative (and you have no other options), it just launches the movie (02112.bik), which begins at:

"He felt himself betrayed when the Council condemned his actions. He showed no remorse. In his arrogance, he was sure he would be vindicated. I cast the deciding vote to banish my own son. "If I must die, I will be
the last!' He screamed, as he hurled the spell that brought an end to the Council, the Age of Legends, and my will to live..." It never explains what his "actions" were. I know this for certain because I checked out the dialogue file for this(01108Nasrudin.dlg) and followed the broken "links" in the file and scrolled down to the end. Starting at entry 1505, it says:

"He had taken it upon himself to "keep the balance", as he termed it. He believed that being a member of the Council validated any course of action he chose to pursue. This meant attacking anything he saw as a threat, such as a city that had begun building advanced technological devices. Vendigroth, it was called.

"He warned them to cease their "destructive behavior" and destroyed one of their factories to underscore his point. Justifiably afraid for their very lives, they swiftly constructed a device that could destroy even the most powerful wizard. He responded by calling on forces that few of us had ever seen, and wiping not just the city, but the whole province of Vendigroth from the face of Arcanum with one blow."

[This is where the movie begins, that I quoted above]
"He felt himself betrayed when the Council condemned his actions. He showed no remorse. In his arrogance, he was sure he would be vindicated. I cast the deciding vote..."

Obviously, this is the dialogue text that was supposed to precede the movie, or possibly, it may have been part of the movie itself that was somehow lost by the developers. Either way, I checked out the dialogue file and corresponding script files thoroughly (as well as playing it out in the game), and this is the ONLY way the programming allows it to happen - you can't get the missing dialogue by any dialogue choices. The only way to get around it is with this fixed dialogue. It's been confirmed by Leon at Troika.

It's really the only point in the game (on the good path, at least) that directly explains what Vendigroth IS, what happened to it, and what Arronox's big crime was. A few things later in the game only allude to what happened. Plus, the entire Nasrudin movie didn't make much sense (it was disjointed) since it was missing two introductory paragraphs.

 

Thanks for that! I was wondering where Arronax's crime was going to be discussed - I've finished the game several times, but nowhere was Arronax's whole story mentioned.

 

I'm hoping that my fix worked in-game for you? Even though I tested it thoroughly, I haven't had anyone else confirm that it actually worked for them.

 

Okay, when I get to Nasrudin again, I'll confirm whether or not it works. Don't know when I'll get to him again though...