Tales of steam and sorcery

Arcanum: "Set to be a classic"

By BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward

The opening movie says it all.

A knight gathers his breath after a battle, oblivious to a mail-clad enemy approaching from behind wielding a glowing sword.

At the last moment our hero notices the advancing foe, draws a revolver, sights, and fires.

Welcome to Arcanum.

This game places you in a fantasy world populated by orcs, elves, dwarves, halflings and gnomes who use spells, magick weapons, potions and artefacts to augment their puny physical powers.

But that is where the familiarity ends.

It also features steam engines, airships, revolvers, elephant guns and a host of other mechanical marvels that would be more at home in Victorian Britain.

Arcanum minimum requirements

Pentium II 300Mhz

64 MB Ram

1.2GB disk space

4X CD-Rom

8MB video card

The game's central story revolves around the on-going conflict between the opposing forces of "magick" and technology. This antagonism defines everything from the politics of Arcanum to its basic physics.

Sorcerors can cause steam engines to break, and the mere presence of a technologist can make otherwise powerful spells fizzle.

Choose carefully

The choices you make as your character develops define which force you favour, and therefore how easy you find it to use, or make, magical or technological items.

Unlike other role-playing computer games Arcanum does not force you to choose one career, such as priest or paladin, and stick with it. The open-ended development lets you decide what you want to become.

You could be a dashing, rapier wielding do-gooder by day, who becomes an expert safe-cracker at night. You could play a powerful magician who can hold his own in a bare-knuckle fight. The choices are as bewildering as they are welcome.

But this isn't the best feature of Arcanum, nor is it the intricate, sprawling plot, or the vast number of quests you can follow.

Talking cure

The best part of Arcanum is the interaction with in-game characters.

Almost anything is possible for experienced technicians

In other games being particularly evil, stupid or ugly has little effect on your overall success. In Arcanum, by contrast, everything matters and reactions to your character can quickly switch.

If your character changes between successive conversations with someone, perhaps by comitting an evil act or specialising in technology, then their reaction will change too.

This is not always bad as some quests are only open to certain sorts of characters. Quests can be solved different ways depending on how your character is developing. It is another welcome change.

Arcanum does have its problems. The manual is huge, lacks an index and information about how to perform key tasks. It also takes ages to install and needs a powerful computer to be at its best.

There is also a lot of wandering around almost empty maps, too much talking to people to get anywhere, and combat can be deadly for starting characters.

But all this is outweighed by Arcanum's playability, detail and huge scope. It looks set to become a classic.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura is published by Sierra