Question for Beamdog staff. Topic: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Hello. I wanted to bring to attention another (in my opinion) classic game which is Arcanum. Here is the question:
Beamdog would it be possible to make enchanced edition of this classic but underrated game? Baldur's Gate, IWD, Planescape Torment and Neverwinter Nights got it. It is one of those games that I think belongs to the holy classic rpgs. I do not know how is the copyright thing working so I will leave my very small "petition" here. I would be glad to get an answer from You. I am after all a big fan of before mentioned games and also very grateful for remastering and making expansion: Siege of Dragonspear. That is all.
Beamdog would it be possible to make enchanced edition of this classic but underrated game? Baldur's Gate, IWD, Planescape Torment and Neverwinter Nights got it. It is one of those games that I think belongs to the holy classic rpgs. I do not know how is the copyright thing working so I will leave my very small "petition" here. I would be glad to get an answer from You. I am after all a big fan of before mentioned games and also very grateful for remastering and making expansion: Siege of Dragonspear. That is all.
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Comments
Arcanum is great when it comes to character creation, quest options, and dialogue options, but the gameplay is clunky (especially when walking around areas), the story is a snore fest (it starts out alright but becomes super uninspiring by the time you get to like Dernholm), the characters in the game are forgettable, and the combat is a mess. I get why the game gets the praise that it does but as video games go it has some pretty heft negative attributes.
While I think there are a lot of positives and negatives that game developers can learn from the game, I also think that for the amount of time that would be required to enhance the game (including fixing its numerous bugs and getting licensing approval to make it) I think studios would be better off at looking to make their own game. Especially since the modding community for it is much smaller (compared to the infinity engine games), so there isn't as much talent to draw from to make it, and its not even clear what engine the game even runs on (it looks like it's own). Also the company that made it went bankrupt so getting access to source material after almost 20 years is unlikely.
But that all aside, the reality is even for its time it didn't have great sales, its current sales on Steam (at a price of like $6 US) are only between 100,000 and 200,000 units, and besides a few vocal people online there really isn't a whole lot of evidence that the demand for the product is there. Which is supported by the fact that OpenArcanum's patreon only has 5 backers that give a support of $22/month.
Ohh and to be clear I'm not knocking their work, I think it's great to see people showing support for the game after all these years. I'm only pointing out that if there is support in the community for this project it hasn't tangibly materialized in a way that would support a viable business venture.
The combat is clunky and unbalanced? (If you have high dex and potions of speed does not really matter what you choose, you will win). Yes.
Worldbuilding, plot, dialogue choices, character creation options, thieving mechanics, exploration, skill usage and crafting creation, magic vs technology mechanics, companions (Most of them have more backstory than some characters of the original BG game: Virgil, Magnus, Gar, Raven, Geoffrey Tallerond-Ashe...) are far better than most games.
You gotta love a game you can talk your way out of the final boss with the proper persuasion skills and dialogue choices.
If not a EE, make a sequel or a mod for NWN2 for this. Not much steampunk games and many of them are survival or dystopic future type, which is good but also tiresome.