This game has incredible cult following.

Not to ruin anybody's day or anything, but all this discussion on sequels inspired me to go look up what Tim Cain is doing. Turns out, he's working for NCSoft. At first I thought "Wow, he sold out. He's responsible for making generic MMOs now?"

Then I found Carbine's website, where they don't tell anybody what they do. Then I found this article, an interview with some of the head honchos at the company.

A budget of $50-70 million? Well, that's great, Tim Cain will be able to do great things. Not just Tim Cain, but famed designers from all over-

Wait a second. Bringing together all of the world's best and brightest for one project that will revolutionize the way we think about the world in general? Where have I seen something like this before?

Oh yeah.






Tim Cain is designing a massive squid to kill us all.

 

Technically, it's more an engineered creature that releases a massive psychic shockwave when killed than just a massive squid.

Oh, and artificial teleportation not made properly by a man-god kills teleported organisms.

 

All the folks who keep mentioning sequels or prequels to Arcanum seem to be overlooking the idea you could have multiple adventures running concurrently in the same time frame and never have them intersect.
The key locations are already constructed. All we need now is some fresh actors and a new story to go with it.

[/2 cents worth]

 

Play as Chadwick Moore or Franklin Payne, Esq.?

I'm up for it!

Hell, I'd even love a game set in the times before Vendigroth's destruction.

 

Hey, I like that. The tension between the realms of magick and technology were just as strong during the Age of Legends, and there's a lot of fresh meat to slap on the burner. New characters, cities, plot points, a totally fresh slate, but with a similar feel and the core elements that made the first game enjoyable to begin with.

You're not the first to propose that by any means, but for some reason the way you said made it sound a mess more appealing.

 

I'd rather see the extremist group on one side or another, to be honest.

The one vs the other where one is slightly 'dominant' (as per technology in arcanum), has been done and I don't see the point in flogging a dead horse. Well, not that much point anyway.

Apart from that, having a small group of extremists forces the player to make a decision that isn't traditionally good vs evil which is massively overdone already.

And now I might have something to do over the holidays

 

Next Arcanum should take place 2,000 years in the future, in space, on a ship that is damaged when the last remaining mage goes on board and causes it to warp into the Delta Quadrant. The crew must then embark on a seven year voyage home.

 

I'd like that. The current Arcanum date shows magic waning and technology rising, but in the Age of Legend magick was powerful, and Vendigrothian technology reigned supreme in a small area. However, I would really like to see just a remake keeping the original story, style, even art. Just increase the variations on item options, toss in some decent clothing sprites, more schematics, add more cities, flesh out the current ones even more, and increase the number of quests. I wouldn't mind seeing a political aspect tossed in as well. It'd be interesting if you could take your posistion as Ambassador to different angles of intrigue, or becoming a Master Mage of Tulla actually had quests related to having such responsibility.

 

You, sir, are an evil bastard who needs to die a horrible, violent death for this suggestion.

I'm so proud of you!

 

I guess the biggest problem with a chonrological sequel is continuity, though. You can't say for certain whether vendigroth has been rebuilt or the iron clan reestablished and so on. Sure, you could dump them in there anyway but then you have to be careful about adding too much lore that might comprimise a player of the original's idea of what happened.

I guess you could read in their saves and check for the same flags that the end-game cinematic sequence does but doing so would require a whole heap of extra content. Which may or may not involve just changing some dialogue and locations around.

In that way a prequel is easier. I still want a sequel, though.

 

I must admit that I would as well. The fact that a prequel is ten times more likely to exist (still a fraction of a percentage, but still far more possible), as well as one hundred times more likely to be worth a damn, stops my hopes from grinding together too greasily.

Fuck yes fuck yes fuck yes, but story is where you lose me. The original story was original and flidding magickal, but an equally well-made story that actually expands the lore in a respectable and sensible manner would be preferred. Too bad it will never happen. Yours is the safest bet, I guess, even though it's equally unlikely.

I'm set on the Age of Legends in my personal fantasies, but with a similar situation to that which Xiao references (switching the places of magick and technology, naturally, and on a larger scale).

The idea of a subdominant group of extremists in an unstability-saturated environment makes it all sound very intriguing. All kinds of opportunities for betrayal, shades of grey, a live-with-your-fuck-ups sort of story progression, and complicated, adaptable characters.

Ahh... there we are. Want your tissue back now, Archmage?

 

Will someone please just port this to the iPhone so I can get my Arcanum fix anywhere? :lol:

 

Next Arcanum game should be set 10,000 years into the future in post apocalyptic America. As with Charonte's concept, it would be the first time a game just says this is what happens in the lore, even though you may of played it differently, its like winning warcraft 2 was orcs even though warcraft 3 states the humans win.

 

That would be reassuring if not for the fact, that we don't really ban members merely because they are clones of FrostyMixi, seeing how the original is still somewhere around here.

Here you go.

Firstly, I still think that by "raise Vendigroth" we should understant "rebuild and repopulate it", not "poof! Everything and everyone is back from the dead just like that (what is this, Dragon Ball?)".

Secondly, the Freuhoff's device is useful only againt mages hiding in their regenarative shells. I'm not sure a single mage even in Tulla is capable of maintaining one. But even if so, the Masters would have to be massively injured before the device would be used, it wouldn't be a tool of massive antimagical destruction just by itself.

I wonder if I'm the only one who thought that you posted a colorful anus'n'vagina monster.

 

Well, fuck. I had a couple of paragraph typed here but deleted them accidentally. It was about The Device, speculating about its potential, how it functions, similar weapons that could be made for more general use by modifying the same basic principles, and how that would impact a theoretical Tulla v. Vendigroth scenario.

Now you all have the pleasure of not reading it. You're welcome.

 

I think Arronax has the old 8 powered magic schools, so he can raise it. Also, it isn't worth anything if Vendigrothans can't be resurrected, as you know, they are the old keepers of their knowledge. Vendigroth isn't Vendigroth without Vendigrothans.

Oh, by the way, screw the specifics on the device (they can improve it, you know) and think of the Fallout 2-esque possibilities

 

There is this possibility that even though Arronax and Kerghan may have the, like you called it, old 8 powered magic schools, it is so only because they learned it before magic in Aranum was weakened and they kept the spells because they're in the Void, a place far away from Arcanum high-tech aura. The moment they return they can very well lose a lot of their powers. Boy would they be surprised.

I agree that rebuilding Vendigroth without Vendigrothans would not be a true reconstruction, but frankly I never liked that ending and always refused to accept it, no matter how would I interpret it. Resurrection is known for bringing back someone who's body is pretty much still warm. But in Vendigroth's case, the bodies are either two thousand year bones and ashes lying in the ruins or - in most cases, I believe - they don't exist anymore, since they were pulverised when Arronax destroyed the whole surface part of Vendigroth. Another thing is that from what I observed, even a 100 MA mage still can't read the aura of a destroyed automaton, because its tech aura is too great. It is also well known that magic destroys technology, it bends clockwork, twists mechanisms, crushes gears and so on. Therefore I can see now way how by incredibly powerful magical means one would reconstruct an incredibly technological city. Logic would suggest that that magic would only destroy whatever is left.

Long thing short, I find the Arronax/Vendigroth ending one of the more far-fetched happy endings I've ever encountered. I wanted to expand that opinion by saying something about the holocaust and Hitler, Godwin's Law almost got me.

...a steampunk nuke?

 

Great punchline of Fallout is that it actually just takes place in the Arcanum world circa 1950, and the nukes never actually killed anybody, just turned off all the magic. California was a desert all along.

 

Just some ideas, but would it be cool:

1) That someone wants to resurrect the older Gods, who are more into Evil, and Destruction, then people has thought.

2) That it is set in the times of a World War.