A few thoughts on Arcanum

I got back to Arcanum, that I had abandoned for months if not one or two years, because I didn't progress anymore in the main quest – and because of my laziness too.

What shocked me – it was was already a little annoying at first, but now it really shocks me – is the totally artificial aspect of what happens in the game. Apart from the main quest, which is a kind of treasure hunt, there is not a single side-quest that does not start with "Hello, my good man, how are you? – I have this and that problem. – Oh, yeah? What if I solved it for you, even if I don't know you at all, huh? ».

And this is done systematically. How can you handle things with so much scantiness? Can we at this point roughly say to the player, "There's XP to be done, things to visit and a loot to catch"? Without offering him the slightest real script justification? Exactly as if entering a bar, in real life, and greeting the NPCs, sorry, I mean other customers, you end up with 15 or 20 missions on your hands: what's-his-name needs money to pay taxes, another has trouble with bullies in his neighbourhood, another one is sick and needs a herbal medicine. People who have never seen you before and to whom you owe nothing. Realistic, right?

Conclusion: it is better to have a main quest with more sub-chapters, with some of them that are optional (or that tolerate failure without the game being over) than 3500 unjustified side-quests so badly brought that the player can't say anything else to himself but: God, another side-quest – with a total disinterest for its content.

It is even better to FORCE the player to complete this or that mission (examples: a surprise attack by enemies; a nearby NPC that is bitten by a snake; a vehicle to be repaired in the open country) than constantly offering him unjustified quests, as if in life people spent their time hiring you to solve their problems.

Another thing that bothers me, and very much, are the dialogues. Arcanum is known to be a game that constantly adapts to the characteristics of the character; his race, his intelligence, etc. If you play an orc the NPCs will treat you as such; if you are a human, the elves will take you down, etc. The problem is that for the game to take place, it is still necessary that at some point the NPCs agree to talk to you and provide you with information. Also, with my human character, I spend my life getting repacked by elves, in a really insulting way but all it takes is a couple of lines of dialogue like "Please, let's go beyond our racial differences" for my interlocutor to become sympathetic and tell me everything I need to hear.

Overall Arcanum would like to manage in a rich and complex way the impact of the race and intelligence of the character-player on the game, but it does so in such a coarse and limited way that in the end it seems even more limited than a game that does not take these criteria into account.