After Fallout and Fallout 2, ambitious designers Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson quit Interplay to start up Troika Games. Its first offering, Arcanum, is due out towards the end of this year, and yes - it's an isometric RPG - and yes - it does look very similar to the Fallouts, but since when did aesthetics tell the full story?

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Troika has veered off rather wildly from its usual post-apocalyptic synopsis and delved instead into the realms of pure fantasy, replete with gnomes, elves, ogres and halflings. There are magic items galore, subplots, and a multitude of skills such as gambling, healing and lock picking. Oh, it's all very AD&D indeed, except for one thing: among the spells and magic lurk industrial weapons and machines. What we have in Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura (the game's catchy full title) is Jules Veme meets JRR Tolkien in a stylish potpourri of fantasy, technology, magic and machinery. In other words it's cyberpunk for the 1800s.

Divided We Stand

The crux of the game is deciding where your character stands on the whole magic versus technology debate. Regardless of which race you choose to be (human, dwarf, halfling, elf, half-elf, gnome or half-ogre), Arcanum will monitor your decisions with a balance meter. Success in either spell casting or technology is determined by how committed you are to a particular path.

I have been playing Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura for a bit and created this custom Portrait for myself. He is a half-elf Gunslinger at least thats what I'm trying to do. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura has obtained cult-classic status over the years due to some excellent worldbuilding and implementation of steampunk. For Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura on the PC, a GameFAQs message board topic titled 'Creating new portraits'.

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• Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura Imagine a place of wonder, where magick and technology coexist in an uneasy balance, and an adventurer might just as easily wield a flintlock pistol as a flaming sword.
• In Arcanum, it isn't efficient to manually walk through the relatively small screen that is fixed and zoomed in, especially when you are new to a town and don't know the way around. There are high resolution hacks, but these have the bad side effect of making your character, party, and enemies seem tiny, and making the interface tiny as well.

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The game's interface is extremely deep, providing huge incentives and rewards regardless of which route you decide to go down. Learning magic means you'll have to deal with 16 colleges, with five spells in each. Technological teachings are split into eight schools, with seven degrees parsec. The more degrees you learn, the easier it becomes to understand the complex schematic diagrams which allow you to create highly destructive inventions like mini-guns and giant mechanical spiders.

While experience is gained in the usual ways (killing monsters, casting spells, etc), you don't just go up a level. In Arcanum you can choose which statistic or skill you wish to increase. Mental attributes include intelligence, willpower, perception and charisma, while strength, constitution, dexterity and beauty make up the physical assets. Additional 'background' attributes are also available. For example, you can be raised by lions (thus increasing your bravery) or nurtured by snake-handlers (immunity to poison).

There's even an option to create your own background stories: we found that Stumpy the dwarfs exhausting days among nymphomaniac Amazons did wonders for his constitution.

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But when it comes to brains - well, the poor guy's an emotional wreck.Another benefit of having such diverse and interesting character attributes is the variation it brings to the multiplayer game. Up to eight people will be able to play specially designed ongoing quests, which can be played over the Internet or LAN.

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Ultimately, Arcanum should be one of the most open-ended RPGs ever devised. Multiple endings are already guaranteed due to the fact that either magic or technology can be the victor. Here in the office tiny-bearded folk are already polishing their funny-shaped dice in anticipation. Meanwhile, those who don't usually give a monkey's arse about that sort of thing have raised an eyebrow. How can i download a video from youtube to my mac. Could it be that the RPG is about to find a new audience? Let's hope so - it's about time.