GDC 2001: Arcanum update

At the Game Developers Conference today, held in San Jose, Calif., Sierra showed us several of the games it's releasing, behind closed doors. Troika Games' Leonard Boyarsky was in attendance, and he was more than happy to run us through the latest build of Arcanum, his team's upcoming RPG. For those unfamiliar with the game, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura is a unique RPG set in a world in the midst of an industrial revolution. Assembly-lines and zeppelins exist alongside orcs and wizards in this unique world, granting it an altogether jarring, yet strangely familiar feel.

The demonstration began with the character generation system. Boyarsky ran us through the list of playable races: humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, half-orcs, and half-ogres. After highlighting each one's benefits and drawbacks, Boyarsky settled on a male half-ogre, and proceeded to select a special background for his character. For the sake of analogy, backgrounds are similar to the traits native to Fallout's character generation system--they're entirely optional, and provide both positive and negative effects. Boyarsky chose the "ran away with the circus" background for his male half-ogre, which provides him with bonuses to his physical attributes, with analogous penalties to his mental attributes. Then, it was time to tweak the character's attributes. Arcanum's system divides attributes into two main categories: physical, and mental. Since there are numerous ways to solve the game's many quests, a wide range of character types are possible, depending on how points are allocated to the attributes. The attributes are strength, dexterity, constitution, beauty, intelligence, perception, willpower, and charisma, and each has a bearing on certain skills. After allocating his initial attribute points, Boyarsky set up his character's skill set, and began the game.

We got to see the game's opening cinema, and the first few sequences of the game's initial encounter. Since Boyarsky's half-ogre's intelligence score was a bit low, though, he didn't get much of a chance to further the dialog between him, and the first character he meets.

Boyarsky shifted to another game soon thereafter, and showed us some of the game's combat system. Combat occurs in real-time, though a turn-based mode can be instigated at the player's will. During real-time combat, further, the action can be paused instantly with the shift key, so that strategic decisions can be made, a la Baldur's Gate. The half-elven character used in this phase of the demo was armed with bladed throwing-star, reminiscent of those found in the film Krull, and proceed to engage a group of nearby creatures. Apparently, the character was quite accomplished, and the weapon particularly deadly--Boyarsky made quick work of the creatures with no more than two throws of the boomerang-like blade. After showing us some of the more interesting weapons in the character's inventory--which included a chakra, similar to the one TV's Xena uses, and a unique implement called a head dislocator--Boyarsky treated us to some of the game's role-playing elements.

The phase involved a parley with a magical being with a very stoic demeanor. The entire sequence featured some very involving voice-acting, with members of the player's party interjecting at various key moments. One of Boyarsky's henchmen--a mercurial mage--was apparently against allying with the creature in question. The character was quite eloquent in his admonition, and the voice work and writing were both quite amusing--it brought to mind images of a sketchy, 19th century dandy.

Sadly, our audience with Leonard Boyarsky wasn't as long was we'd have liked it to be. We will be receiving a fully previewable build of the game within the next few weeks, however, so expect some updated coverage very soon. We were also able to shoot some footage of the game in motion, as well as Boyarsky's bright commentary, so look for that, as well, real soon.

Arcanum is set for release this May. Check out our extensive preview coverage.