Arcanum Armageddon

In what might be the most in-depth and be all to end all previews of the beta test of the techno/ magick/ holocaustic/ wildwest/ colonial RPG Arcanum, and I don’t hand out this prize just to anyone, Gamepower receives my Armageddon Award. What that means is No Mas! No Mas! That’s it, no more. I can’t take any more previews of the beta after reading this and countless others (but I’ll post one if it’s good <g>).

What separates this preview from the pack is its length, the sophisticated way he slices and dices the aspects, screenshots that show more than a junkheap of a car in the middle of a screenful of dirt, and finally an in-depth interview with Troika Games:

Q: All these subtleties about levels, skills, disciplines, degrees, colleges, training, and how they all work together may be lost on novices, yet the news release says this is for both hard-core gamers and novices. What will draw RPG novices to Arcanum?

A: I think the fact that someone can pick a pre-generated character and let the game distribute his points for him would excite people who want to know what an in-depth RPG is all about but are a bit intimidated by all the numbers. The heart of what we’re doing here, after all, is making an engaging world to adventure in, with a detailed story line. We don’t want people to be scared away by the depth and complexity that lies beneath the surface.

Where the subtleties enter into it for the more novice players would be when they compare their playing experience to that of their friends and find that they are all experiencing the game differently depending on their choices.

It’s more than your night-time, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head fever so-you-can-rest medicine kind of preview.