Lore Together is proud to be part of the Boss Rush Games Network. Feel free to find out more at bossrushgames.com slash network. Hi, I'm Safi. And I'm Isaac.
And this is Lore Together. This is the podcast where a husband and wife team get together to talk about all the stories, characters, world building, and other such items in video games, because that's what we like to do together. We, Lore Together. Yes, and this is episode 39.
This episode is actually a Patreon request. Oh! And this is our first Patreon supporter, Gondar. Yay, Gondar!
If you would like to make requests, join us on Patreon over at patreon.com slash lore together, where you can request episodes. Oh, yeah. You can get early episodes. You can get access to our mini-episodes, which we have to do more of them.
I have an idea for a mini-episode that I want to research, and since I will not be on call soon... What are you going to do? I think it's going to be... I want to do one on the competitors of Nuka-Cola.
So that's Vim and... There's Vim. Yeah, there's a few there. So we're...
It's very appropriate that you're mentioning Fallout, because this game is tangentially related to Fallout. Well, when you guys are ready... Okay, so essentially what happens is I promise a mini-episode... And three months later.
And three months later, I finally edit it, and it gets released. And we're going to try to cut that down to an even shorter time frame, because I'm going to try to extra focus on our podcast, because it's where my creative energies need to be focused, but we're going to do it. We're going to do it. Since you're at a less stressful point, I may toss the next full episode at you, too.
Okay, well, that happened. If you want to contact us outside of Patreon, you can do that by going on Twitter at LoreTogether, on Instagram at LoreTogether, or you can email us at LoreTogether at gmail.com. And yes, usually we do a boilerplate for that, but since this is a Patreon request episode, everything is going to be new. Oh, right off the cuff, shooting from the hip.
Pew, pew, pew, pew. Oh, I've had iced tea, and it's past 8 p.m. Central time. All bets are off, everybody.
So, I'm not going to give you the full title of this game just yet, for a reason. Oh, my gosh. Is this one of these guessing games again? No, I'm going to give you the title.
The title is Arcanum. It is by Troika Games, and here's their development history of Troika Games. Troika Games. So, I feel like I know of them, but I don't.
In 1997, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarski, and Jason Anderson were working on the Fallout sequel at Interplay. Okay. Finishing the initial design for Fallout 2, they were unable to come to an agreement with Interplay about the future team structure, so they left and decided to form a company that felt more like the old Interplay, producing role-playing games for the PC in 97. Okay.
They formed their company on April 1st, 1998. Terrible date of a former company, by the way, calling the new company Troika Games. Arcanum was their first title. Okay.
They did two more, Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, before shutting down in 2005. Right. I remember, I knew that once you said that they left Interplay, I said, this must be the team that made Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Arcanum is a continent with three islands off of it.
Okay. That's the world map, basically, that you have in this game. Okay. The world is inhabited by your typical fantasy races, human, elves, dwarves, orcs, ogres, goblins, half-orcs, half-elves, half-ogres, and the Bedokon, which are just lizardmen, essentially.
Yeah, I always love what the new name is for lizardmen in each world, and it seems like nobody's thought of stealing a lizard name from the real world to name their lizardmen, other than lizardmen. I would call them Draconis. What? Draconis.
Well, because, yeah, because then it's dragon-related. Then they're dragon people, not lizardmen. To me, there's a difference. There's some cool names out there for lizards.
Bedokon sounds good. It's not too bad. It's okay. Yeah, okay, sorry, tangent there.
The player character can be from many of these races, although some races are unavailable if you're playing a female. They didn't want to do the extra rendering? It's either development time or space on the disc, and this is 97. That's fair, yeah.
Space was a real, real issue. You couldn't release a DLC that was the same size as the game the day after the game released like some other game. Of all of those races, I think you cannot play at all as an ogre or the Bedokon. I think everything else has to play about at least male or female.
Are those some more antagonistic-ish races? No, I think they didn't want to make an ogre. I don't think they made an ogre or orcs as playable characters because they just don't look as good. There's a bunch of pre-made characters to select from, or you can make your own, and they vary widely.
Cool. And there's also a ton of companions in this game. There's a full 25 that the wiki calls permanent. Oh.
No, people can leave your party or even turn hostile based on player actions, and it's kind of a web you have to, like some of these people you have to do one action or else it's hostile. Like, oh yeah, you haven't read this book and convinced me to not be against you, so you haven't argued the foundations of my beliefs, so I'm going to kill you now. Wow, interesting. It's a pretty diverse group.
So far, based on all this I've said, what would you expect of this game's universe because at this point we've had a couple of games of Elder Scrolls, right? I think we would have had Arena. I think we would have had Arena. I think that Arena may be Daggerfall?
I don't think so, though. So there were other games that were of that, and I think they would want to set themselves apart. That's part of the reason why Fallout was so unique because it wasn't quite sci-fi. It was more like, it was getting into that dystopian landscape before that was a big thing in video games, or like a huge thing in video games.
I'd say Fallout is like diesel pump without the diesel. Yes. This? Okay.
So I get what you're saying. Usually with the description that you put, it would be that, but I wouldn't be surprised if these guys, and knowing their strengths in Fallout, might have gone for more of what, for referencing another tabletop RPG, and more of a Shadowrun kind of feel. Shadowrun would be a good guess. This is kind of between those two.
Okay. This is a fantasy world that is in the throes of an industrial revolution. Yeah! I love this stuff.
The full name of the game which I didn't give at the beginning is Arcanum of Steamworks and then Magic Obscura. Yeah! Okay, I love this kind of stuff. I love it when magic and technology are going to be combining.
Oh. That's one of my favorite things to tinker with. The world of Arcanum is one of the economy, and it's magic versus technology. They can coexist, but they can't intersect.
Huh. So, for example, if you have a meter, that if you have guns and stuff, you start becoming more technical. If you have spells and stuff, you start becoming more magic. Your attacks are reduced on people who are the other type.
Okay, so this feels like, now it's kind of like a Final Fantasy thing going on. But it plays into the actual setting, too. Well, let's say Final Fantasy 10, specifically, but yes. But it plays into the setting, too, because people with a high magical aptitude might cause technology to malfunction.
Oh. So, like, mages have a special car at the end of the train so they're as far away from the engine as possible. Wow, that's interesting. That's interesting.
And if you're a powerful mage, you just may not be allowed at all. Yeah. Your juice is too good. You need to...
How about you take that broomstick and fly out of here? Now, from what I was... I haven't played this game yet. That's fair.
I do own it. I bought it about a week ago. Of course you did. Of course you did.
I don't know if I would actually like this game if I had to play it myself, though. Oh, and why would you say that? For me, it's... I've never liked...
And someone's going to hate me for this. I've never liked the isometric computer RPG. So, kind of like the original Fallout 1 and 2. I never liked Fallout.
I never liked Baldur's Gate. I never got into those. So, and it's funny you say that because I thought I would feel the same way, but I'm still slowly getting through Disco Elysium and that's how the gameplay is. I think you have to be into the rest of the aesthetic of the game to be able to get into the isometric layout.
I think my problem with them is my first RPGs were either full 3D, Scars of Arcadia, stuff like that, or first person, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Oblivion, stuff like that. Right. So, and I've played 2D ones since then. Okay.
Golden Sun is one that comes to mind. A more recent one that comes to mind is Octopath Traveler. Yes, yes. And Chronicle I played.
Right, yeah. But for some reason, the isometric ones have never clicked for me and I don't know what it is about it. Partly it could be just that due to their age, they don't look great. You are definitely an aesthetics, like, look snob.
Yes, but I definitely are. I found reviews for this one that said that even back then it is an unremarkable looking game. But you in particular. So, one of the reasons I mention this is because you like sci-fi, but you have a hard time going back to older sci-fi.
Yes, I do. Especially shows that were really good because they were well written and well performed, but because of how old they were or that they were, say, on the BBC, you just couldn't get into the way the set is made and things like that. Like, original Doctor Who. In my defense, when it comes to these games, I'm not saying anything about the gameplay beyond the asymmetric angle.
I'm not saying anything about the writing because I know the writing in some of these is amazing. Yeah, but you're a man about looks when it comes to your games. Well, the thing is, also, I played these mostly back before I was a writer. Okay.
So, maybe now if I try them again, it'll be a different thing. I haven't tried to play these in well over a decade now. Oh, okay. So, I'm looking forward to actually trying this.
I just haven't had a chance to yet. Okay. But that said, it does have some quirks from what I understand based on reviews and stuff. Okay, okay.
So, like, there's 16 schools of magic. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, there's 16 schools of magic. Each school has five different spells, so you have 80 spells that you can learn.
And then if you're a tech character, there's eight technological disciplines, each with seven degrees, so there's 56 different technological items you can make. I'm not here for learning all of this in this episode, so I'm sure you're not going to do it. No, I'm not going to do it well. I feel overwhelmed.
I will say it's impossible in the base game to get everything. You only get one thing per level, and there's only 50 levels before there was any patches or mods. Oh, wow. So, yeah.
And there's a lot of choices and paths through this game. Cool. And a ton of different ending slides, most like Dragon Age Origins had. Right, exactly.
You meet one character in a town and you kill them and that whole town has a totally different ending. Yeah, Origins had a really good way of presenting that. Yeah, this game does that, too. Trying to parse it off from the wiki was honestly a bit difficult because the wiki is written almost like a game guide FAQ as opposed to a linear story.
It's interesting when you mention this because all these are like the fandom wiki pages, right? So they're all... It's so interesting to see which fandoms get into wiki details of their games. I even dug for other walkthroughs because sometimes, like, again, my favorite walkthrough of all time is a ribbon walkthrough that reads like a novel.
Yeah, no, that one's really good. But, you know, if we go through... A story summary would be great, but the summary reads literally like, you are blah, here are the options you can take without telling you why. Oh.
You are in this town, your goal is this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next town. Interesting, okay. So I am indebted to the Redditor Partially Fermented.
Partially Fermented? Who, three years ago, answered a request for a story synopsis on the arcane of Reddit and made this all so much easier to understand. Partially Fermented, first of all, I love your username. I love Reddit in general because usernames get really, really creative.
I'm on a few Reddit pages and sometimes I look at your username and I'm like, that's a good one. I wish I thought of that. But also, thank you for allowing your knowledge to become public domain, I guess. Well, public domain would mean I wouldn't have to credit them.
I give them a shout out. Like last time, we'll be doing a one pass of the storyline because the main beats do not change for the most part until you get towards the end. So again, we're doing a game where as much as we're going to be going over the main storyline. There's a lot that you can do differently.
Plus there's 25 characters we're not going to get into. This is a game I may come back to just to cover the followers because there's a lot of them. Wow, okay. And a few of them are kind of one note.
There's this ogre who you meet at a tavern and as long as you keep him drunk you can do anything you want in the story and he will not leave you. He's one note, he's just there. But there's other ones who are much like Dragon's Origins when the primary antagonists can become a party member. Wow, I love it.
I love it. Yeah, because in a lot of games like this there's always like there seems to be the primary on January 1st, 1885 the Zephyr left on its main voyage carrying passengers from Caledon to Tyrant. Is that a long distance or is it just a short distance? That I don't recall actually.
I didn't actually memorize the map or anything and this is all cutscene. Okay. But the voyage ended tragically when it was shot down by ogre bandits flying armed experimental heavier than air aircraft. So there's like nobody's seen these before and they're shooting down a Zephyr.
Suddenly the ogres have the Wright brothers working for them. Yeah, the blimp crashed at a site close to the small mining town of Shrouded Hills leaving only one survivor. Guess who that is? Your hero.
I forget what they're actually called I think they're called The Lone Survivor. The Lone Survivor. Oh man, that's just like I prefer things like The Hero of Ferelden. You say The Hero of Ferelden I hear The Hero of...
My brain always goes to Oh, what was it? The Hero of Kvatch. Oh yeah, because yeah. It's from Oblivion.
Yeah, exactly. But people go, it's you, The Hero of Kvatch. I like the way that you say that with such an air like Welcome to the stage, The Hero of Kvatch. Well, you hear the same line over and over again because Oblivion had absolutely weird voice acting.
That's right, because they pay all their money to one actor and then everybody else. Well, no, they have more than one actor in that. Yeah. More than one big name actor.
Oh, really? So you had Patrick Stewart playing the Emperor. You had Sean Bean playing another protagonist. Please tell me he didn't get beheaded.
He doesn't die. Uh-oh, that's not... Sean Bean, why? We found your career dirty.
What is this? Oh my gosh. But no, Oblivion mercurously did all their voice acting. The lines were recorded in alphabetical order.
That's right, you mentioned this to me before. Okay, I'm getting this off track again. That's why they all sound absolutely out of context all the time. I don't think that's Oblivion, right?
That's Oblivion. That's Shivering Isles, but yeah. Oh, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye, nye. So anyway, the player character survives the Blimcrash.
A dying gnome who's under the wreckage and was on the ship with you gives you this ring basically telling you in his last breath to take it to the boy. Keep it secret, keep it safe? Kind of. Okay.
Tell him that he escaped from mysterious evil ready to destroy everything. And that's kind of the whole start. Like, you're just like, yeah, okay, I have this ring. Yeah, you guys aren't seeing my face enough.
I guess that happened. Whoa, okay. For some reason, many parties are interested in this ring including assassins wearing amnets of the Molotian Hand which is this ancient guild of assassins. So somebody's paid them probably to hunt this down.
Yes. A human priest of the Pinari religion named Virgil, Pinari's most widespread religion on Arcanum. Is it like a sun god sort of thing going on there? I will tell you what it is in a second.
Oh. It tells you that he believes you to be the resurrection of Nasruddin, a powerful elf who died 4,000 years ago. It was prophesied that he would be reborn on wings of fire in hills shrouded in fog. There's a crash of Zeppelin burning here and the closest town is called Shrouded Hills.
I mean, I guess, I mean, that's the kind of leap of faith you need to make, right? You also learn that Nasruddin was to be reborn to fight a final battle with Aranox, an evil elf who was banished into the void long ago. Okay. You eventually figure out we are glossing over a lot of exploration RPGing.
Basically, these aforementioned interested parties and you're connecting dots in Shrouded Hills and all that stuff. Okay, intrigue and mystery and that gif of the guy connecting all of the dots on the clipboard. Literally, when you travel from town to town, it's like dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And, you know, kind of like what Fallout did or what Dragon Age did where it's like you just see stuff moving on a map and sometimes stuff happens.
Oh, okay. Yeah, it's not that big in. You find out that this ring belonged to Gilbert Bates. What an unassuming name.
He is the inventor of the steam engine and primary cause of our team. Arcanum's industrial revolution. He is one of the world's richest men. There is some trivia I found on one really weird wiki because I can't even tell you what this wiki is about.
Like the main page is all about math equations, but they had a page on Arcanum like as a game. Where have you been digging into on the internet today? Arcanum's kind of an obscure game. Yeah.
All things considered these days. Gilbert Bates is apparently Bill Gates. That's exactly where my brain went to. So unknown to the general public, Bates' engine is based on dwarven technology.
Oh, did he steal that? What did he do? Oh. You find him in Toronto, which is the largest and most technologically advanced city on Arcanum.
And it's like this really old man who's reading. It's like the old voice man sound. Oh, okay. Like he had a Mass Effect 3.
That was Buzz Aldrin. You show respect. I love the man, but he was old at that time. So to give you an example of how many choices and branches this game actually has, to get into the Bates' estate, these are your options.
This is according to the wiki. You can fight your way in. You can convince the captain of Bates' guard that you're an old friend. Sure, okay.
That's one way I would think of it. You can do some prowling and lockpicking and get your way into the front entrance that way. That makes sense, yeah. You can protect Bates' factory and Gilbert Bates is based off of Bill Gates.
Well, that's the name is at least. And his competitor is Apple. Okay. I just realized that too.
I just want to make sure we didn't miss that one. So you can turn him into Bates or you can talk with him and then blow up the factory. He'll give you a green or gold and then he'll give you servant's clothing and you can find incredible evidence on Bates and yeah, so there's basically there's all these different ways but basically there's like six different ways you can go about getting into this guy's house to talk to him. At least.
At least. So, and he tells you of his time with the dwarves of the Black Mountain clan and that the gnome leads you to the Black Mountain mines to look for clues. Basically, he's paying you. Oh, okay.
So we're getting paid to do some research. Woo! That's my impression of it anyway. In the mines, you find numerous dead assassins in the Molochian hand.
Behind several traps, you find the only remaining member of the Black Mountain clan, Goodman Orbender. Goodman Orbender. So he's another, he's a dwarf. He's a dwarf of the Black Mountain clan.
Decades of isolation have driven mad but he carved the story of the clan's demise on this pillar and you can kind of read it and understand that the clan was banished to the Isle of Despair by decree of the Wheel Clan because dwarven clans are annoying and that the banishment was carried out by the elves because of course elves hate dwarves. In this case, elves hate dwarves because elves are very magic-based and dwarves are very technology-based. Which, considering if you're going into the Western mythology of those, you know, fantastic races, that makes sense. Yeah.
It would make perfect sense. I mean, it's always interesting to see how universes manifest in different ways. That makes sense. But it's such a cliche.
I wish that there wasn't this whole idea that there were, like, race-wide hatreds or alliances in fantasy stories. It seems to happen a lot. Dragon Age does it very well because they make sure there's different distinctions within those races and also shows you exceptions to those. Like, for example, I think Varric is one of the best ones because he's the one dwarf you meet who very much is...
He's a rogue. He's a bard. Like, not a rogue. He's a bard, essentially.
He's a rogue. Well, he's a rogue as a class but when you think about him in the sense of, you know, he's a storyteller. Yeah, he's good with making deals and profit but he really is somebody who loves telling a story, spinning a yarn, spending time with people, getting to know them and he hates the beard. Like, there's, like, not only are there differences within the general ideas of what those races are but there are going to be outliers when it comes to personality and goals and life experience within those.
So, the Bioware team for Dragon Age has done that really well. I think I go on this tangent to say it's really frustrating how one-sided sometimes development of a Western fantasy gets because of stuff like that and, you know, I'm really glad we're in an era where we're looking past, like, the traditional, like, Western Europe fantasy ideas. I haven't had a chance to really explore a lot of that but it's becoming more relevant and I hope then thinking about those things in different ways where we can start incorporating the idea of, like, intersectionality in our storytelling a lot better. Okay, tangent over.
Did I tell you I had iced tea before we recorded today? My brain's going a million miles a minute. Return to Bates, he sends you to Ashbury where there's a ship that will take you to the Isle. By the way, the captain of the ship is Edward Teach which is technically Blackbeard so there's just a lot of funny name things around.
Interesting. The Isle turns out to be a prisoner colony. The only dwarf you find there is a member of the Wheel Clan and he swears that no Black Mountain Dwarf ever came there. You obtain the Wheel Clan crystal glass from him which allow you to see the clan's secret entrance.
Ooh. So finally you go through the whole thing and finally in the throne room of the Wheel Clan you find the King-in-waiting, Rangar. In-waiting. Interesting.
He tells you that the true king, his father, Logare Thunderstone, exiled himself into the mines after banishment of the Black Mountain Dwarfs feeling that he let his people down. Interesting. Okay, I mean I can understand why you would feel that way. You're meant to find him in the chamber below the throne room where he divulges that the banishment was requested by a delegation of elves from Kintara.
Oh, interesting. With a letter from the Silver Lady herself. The Silver Lady is kind of like this old oracle. It's funny enough, there's a wiki entry for the captain of the boat who literally his only thing in the game is to take you from here to there and from here to another island.
He only is there for liminal travel. Okay. There is no wiki entry for the Silver Lady. I couldn't find artwork of her except for one sprite sheet that was just a lady in silver.
But wait, is she even present in the game? Oh my gosh, okay. What the heck? What the heck, everybody?
The crime that they were banished for was allowing technology to spread among humans through baits and the subsequent destruction of numerous ancient forces. The elves threatened war if their demands were not met. Such a war would have ripped our kind of part and Logare consented to banish the Black Mountain Clan. Okay, so it was very much a touch and go kind of political move because, wait, because Bates decided that tech was cool and he wanted to share what he learned from the dwarfs?
Pretty much. But the elves, do the elves share what they know with humans? The big thing with the magic versus the technology is the short-lived races really glommed on, I don't know if glommed is still a word the kids use, really glommed on to the technology because it kind of was an equating force against all these magic users. Oh, okay.
So the elves don't like the tech. Never mind that the tech and the magic can't. Wait, they don't like the tech because it's an equalizer? Shocking.
Interesting. Very interesting, elves. I see what you did there. Return to Batesy awards you but cannot help you locate Kintara.
The Molucan hand is still after you at this point as well. Around this time, you're visited by a phantom identifying himself as Aranax. Oh, I'm Aranax. Sorry, you said phantom and that's the voice I know.
I'm the ghost of the money you wasted on the stupid game. What channel is that? That's Re-Res. Re-Res.
Oh, guys, it's funny. That's not a reference to Arcanum. It's a series called Just Bad Games. That's one of our favorite things to watch whenever they have a new episode.
Anyway, so Aranax states that his return is close at hand confirming that you are indeed Nasruddin reborn. So eventually you find your way to the town of Silwod and you find an elf from whom you learn the location of Kintara. You go to Kintara and you find Raven, the daughter of the Silver Lady. Some of these named characters are followers you can recruit.
I may want to come back to this game just to cover the followers because there's so many of them and some of them are really kind of fun. She tells you she had never heard any of this and the elves of Kintara are no part of the banishment. Wow. You gain an audience with the Silver Lady but can discern little from her mystic and prophetic visions, basically.
It's one of those. So I imagine when you say Oracle 2, I imagine it's essentially what the ancient Greeks considered Oracles were basically. You're high on vapors. You're high on this methane vent that happens to be under you and you're supposed to be like...
That's at Delphi. Yeah. That was the theory of the Oracle, Delphi. Yeah, and essentially because you're just getting like...
You're losing oxygen. You're like, I'm seeking things that shall happen. That's how I imagine this right now. I know that's not how they wrote it, but...
They did that in The Simpsons when they had Maud, like Praise Land or whatever it was. Everyone was getting high off of natural cast beams. Yeah, that would do it, everybody. That would do it.
So with the help of Raven, you deduce that the Dark Elves were involved in all of this. Oh, of course there's Dark Elves. The only lead that she can give you on their hidden city, Sen Aang, that a few decades past there's been this book written called Sen Aang, Horror Among the Dark Elves, which kind of explains where it is. So in the life of Toronto, you can only find The Curse of Sen Aang, which is not the book you want, but it's a book about the book you were looking for.
Books about books. I feel like I'm in college all over again. Apparently almost all copies of the book have been destroyed, their owners killed in mysterious circumstances, but it does identify the owner of the last known copy in Kaladin, Victor Minsk. Upon arriving in Kaladin, though, you find that Minsk is dead.
Oh, as the prophecy foretold essentially. In mysterious circumstances, the book is lost, but with all the detective work you find that it is in the grave of his father, and on the third page is a map to where you have to go. Oh, lucky us. Dining Amlet with a Molokian hand, you deceive the Dark Elf guards and gain entrance to the city.
Masquerading as the assassin who killed yourself... Wait, wait, excuse me? Basically, it's a ploy. Well, yeah, and I guess since you're not a well-established person in this world just yet, you can get away with doing something like that.
You're not not established. I think at this point people do understand, because at this point you probably have a party. You're like, oh, who's the person with the entourage? Well, that's actually the lone survivor!
Sorry. You are way too loopy. I'm at like a 12. I'm going to try to take it back down to like a 7 where I usually am.
You get an audience with Minderad. You learn that the dwarves were banished into the void to build a machine to allow Aranax to break the wards that guard him against his return. So wait, the Dark Elves... No, the Dark Elves have basically banished, basically have enslaved the dwarves to build a machine in the void to get Aranax out of the void.
And so essentially were they lied to by the dwarves that they met on that isle that they were banished to? Do you not believe so? Okay. I believe that's...
It's like... Because he says no dwarf from that clan has been here and they weren't there. That was just a... Oh, interesting.
So essentially... So the dwarves believe that the regular elves, I should say, the not-dark elves... Yeah, banished them but it was the Dark Elves or... The Dark Elves who were...
Or... I don't know if the Dark Elves are the ones who are doing it. I know that the Dark Elves are involved but it could have been the elves not from Kintar may have banished them. Or maybe they had...
Yeah, okay. So essentially the Dark Elves are in on this though. Yes. Okay.
Yeah. So using the machine that the doors are building, Stenar, the guy who gave you the ring in the first place, managed to escape the void to warn the people of Rakanom and thus the Dark Elves commissioned the Malokian Hand to deal with him and any who might have been in contact with him hence why you've been attacked by these people since the ship crashed. Yeah, they were like, well, if we make this just look like a horrible raid in accident and then you became the lone survivor and essentially he let... He caused his own destiny to happen.
Okay. Returning to the Silver Lady she only tells you that your answer lies with Nasruddin and you set off to Kaladin to find his remains. Okay. In the temple of Penari in Kaladin the final resting place of Nasruddin was in fact an island called Thanatos.
On the southernmost tip of Thanatos you find a shack inhabited by an old elf and it dawns on you that he is indeed Nasruddin himself. So he's not... Never dead. Yeah, so he's not dead.
You're not his reincarnation. Oh, interesting. He confirms you that Aranax was actually his son. Oh, well that's awkward.
And he also tells you Aranax single-handedly destroyed the people of Vendigroth 2,000 years ago based on this super technologically advanced city. Wow. And Nasruddin and his elven council were forced to banish Aranax into the void but the spells needed were so powerful they permanently weakened the walls between the two realms. Oh, because...
Yeah, it's a... I don't even know... Isn't there a better answer than to ruin the stability of the two worlds that are in question here? The funny thing is Nasruddin also is not a huge fan of this religion around him which is why he's living on this secluded island.
I mean, I can see that being the responsible answer too. Like, we think you're a god. Please, no. I'm going to go on vacation for about a few eons.
Thank you, bye. Nasruddin and the remaining council members erected the stone wards in Roseboro to deal with this weakening between the realms. And then Nasruddin then traveled far south and retreated into the state of hibernation. And upon returning to the reeking world he visited the mainland but realized that in the time of the past there's this, you know, religion now.
Right. And he returns to Thantos and he's worried by your news that Aranax is returning and tells you of a device the Vendigroths had been working on one that would help kill Aranax. However, he does not know where the ruins of their once great capital lie. He forgot where the capital was?
So here's the thing that bugs me when I was reading this is the Vendigrothians are in... Like, their ruins still exist. Yes. They were a little subterranean but it's like somewhere...
Like, it's only 4,000 years. There has to be something if they're that technologically advanced. No. South America.
The Aztec ruins. Okay, fair. Yeah. Those are pretty much hidden until people really just top you with forests.
Yeah. And on top of that like, who does the conquering as well? I mean, we can also... Getting back to Dragon Age because that's the fantasy game that's always in the back of our minds.
Essentially, humans took over elven towns and cities and culture to a certain extent. Okay, fair. Yeah. I can definitely see it happening.
But my question is Natsuddin was alive and he doesn't remember? Okay. Another example from a Bioware game. Javik of Mass Effect 3.
Cryogenically frozen. Comes back and he's supposed to magically know where everything is and it's been eons? But that's in a galaxy where things change. This is not a continent.
Where things change because there's tectonic plates and people on the ground changing the world over eons. All right. It's late. Fair.
When you take a... I mean, like, I'm sorry. I think there's a lot to expect. Somebody does a Rip Van Winkle and comes back and everything is supposed to be the same.
Okay, fair, fair. I sometimes have to be your devil's advocate on that stuff. So eventually you travel to the mage city of Tula in the Vendoroth Wastes hoping to find answers and their leader tells you that you'll find those answers from Pelagian, a long-dead master of the academy whose specter appears by a fountain in the car every night but never speaks. Ooh, it's a specter!
Not a phantom! No, but a specter! Sorry. After solving a puzzle, he finally acknowledges you and tells you where to find the device you seek.
Oh, thanks. So you find this device, you travel to Roseburg where Nostrid and banishes you into the void to confront Aranac. You need to find Aranac but not as you thought. He is imprisoned by the necromancer Kirgon.
Oh, wait. Excuse me. What? Who was a very powerful mage who was banished to the void for literally inventing the black necromantic college of magic.
So he invented necromancy and they were like, this is gross. Yeah, I'm a world. He's talking about necromancy actually. There's black necromantic and white necromantic.
White necromantic is being able to have positive effects on the spirits. Okay. And black necromantic is negative effects on the spirits. So basically the fact that he's experimenting on souls and like damaging them Oh, okay.
So it's all about, essentially it's almost about the line of consent with the spirit. Will the spirit consent to this? So it is Kirgon masquerading as Aranac who was trying to return and it was he who appeared to you as a specter before. Oh.
And you find him and this is the best thing. This is the end. you literally have choices of your character can either kill him or join him you can be the bad guy that's a big one that's a big one and there's like there are so many different things to this game like that's the end of it wow yeah that's the end so the funny thing is when I was looking for videos of like story synopsis or something I also looked at speedruns you don't know how long the glitch the any percent speedrun is for this game I want to say two minutes double that four minutes oh wow okay literally it's from the crash of the zephyr to fighting this guy in the void wow I feel like that's just like a map glitch it is a lot of map glitching if I'm moving glitching but it's just I like games you can end up being the bad guy even though I never do I never do it the funny thing is I can't think of many games where I can be the bad guy except for stuff like Elder Scrolls with the Dark Brotherhood or stuff like that yeah because even like in Mass Effect or Dragon Age you're just a jerk who happens to be doing a good thing well Mass Effect I would say Renegade sometimes is not Renegade is a thousand lives for a million yeah you know it's not good but it's the Saren line security of the galaxy is in stake yeah exactly but to be the actual guy to join the guy who's going to be like I'm going to destroy the world right you want to join me you're pretty smart and he does turn on you like in the epilogue of course he does and there's so many different epilogues to this like there's a player there's a follower who will if you do not do certain things they will join Kurgan if you don't join him they will fight alongside Kurgan against you oh wow so yeah there's something like 43 different ending slides to this game depending on what your actions are and it's like it's separate by town so like the towns have oh interesting so every place you've visited has an epilogue we didn't cover half of them like remember we mentioned the Battlecon that's actually like a story beat but we just basically played over it yeah because we didn't even like mention half of the races that you mentioned are in this game so I do want to revisit this I want to do more of a thorough deep dive once I can because it sounds like this is a game where you're going to actually have to like play it because it's so old and it's old and again most of the stuff I'm finding are walkthroughs yeah there's our let's plays but they're like 43, 50 videos long and it's just I'd rather just play it at that point right exactly but I do want to do more of these types of games the not as well known yeah but yet well established games but even some of the well known ones that I've never actually had a chance to actually go into like Planescape Parma is one that we've heard before that's what I mentioned in our in our patron episode about Keith David's awesome career in video games with Valor because that's a D&D game and there's so many games that are based on D&D that actually helped establish narrative points just so you guys know this is an unscripted part like this is outside of my notes now and Sappi literally just remembered that off the top of her head well I worked very hard on that episode but yeah no also the segment was not scripted either but like but I think I remember because when I was doing the research and luckily Valor appears later on in the game so he's not he's you know I didn't have a lot of that story spoiled but I remember doing research and like I'm not going to do a deep dive in this like historically helped build towards the art form one way or another and some of these things like this all got built in so like Trigger Games before they closed right one of the last things they were working on was a post-apocalyptic game and it was they were pitching Fallout 3 but Bethesda outbid them but then Bethesda gave but what but how did New Vegas happen between 2 and 3 well it happened after 3 right so Bethesda got Fallout 3 yeah Bethesda bid for Fallout they got Fallout they made Fallout 3 and then soon after that they gave New Vegas to Obsidian or like they broke well not gave but I think you know what I'm trying to say and didn't then Obsidian at that point have not necessarily these writers but other writers it's basically this fraternity of like people tied to Fallout in the old interplay games but the thing is that sometimes some of these older games like as much as they are good games they do show their age in terms of gameplay or in terms of interface or like the character creator the character creator aspect of this game like the designer was like we didn't have a UI designer so I don't like it well I mean I think of this like for example a long time ago I thought about playing and we'll never cover this because it's part of a movie property but I was starting to play Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and your character creation are we never going to cover movie properties or they have to be I think we said that we could cover properties that were not games first as long as the games were different enough like it wasn't just you mean that were not movies first because they were games first right well no say we did The Witcher which is books, TV show, games and the games came second yes so there's a lot to talk about there but the games are still different from the book and they're still different from the show so we would not cover like GoldenEye on the 64 because there was a GoldenEye movie and they're basically the same story but we would cover even though I don't think we're going to something like 007 Nightfire which is not a movie oh I see what you're saying yeah okay so regardless speaking about things that look crunchy from the past even though they had a lot of relevance Star Wars Knight is the older public it's really you don't have a lot of options to customize your character and it's really hard because the time that I really got into video games was when I first started dating you which is when you had the level of detail with Mass Effect it is hard as a gamer to get used to that or like even before that I was playing The Sims and by the time I met you there was The Sims 3 where you had a lot of detail customizing the characters you're going to play with it is very very hard for me to then go to an older game where you have here are your six pre-selected faces which one would you like to play for your preferred gender this is that yeah now the difference I will say with this is Fallout 1 you are the Lone Wanderer yeah and you're faceless practically in the way it's up this game feels a little bit more like what Dragon Age Origins was in that there is backstory to your character you select a backstory that changes based on your race sometimes even your gender and sometimes that backstory even includes why you're on the Zeppelin to begin with oh interesting and there's some interesting things in here too that you wouldn't expect for around 2000 for instance if you play a female character you have less strength but your constitution is higher that makes sense and it literally says because women can take more pain we honestly and I hate to say it guys but at least experience in this household is that has been true I didn't have to birth somebody I mean I'll be honest guys I took that epidural and if you think I'm less of a woman for it I don't care the worst I get is joint problems from carrying Buddy and he likes to kick me in the balls as well but that's short term pain versus like hours of agony that you were in that was pretty intense that was pretty intense guys anyway regardless it's late at night it's late at night we should probably go I do want to get back into Arcanum or at least into this genre because there's a lot of games we should cover like Planescape Torment we should cover Baldur's Gate at some time because it is such an influential series and there's a new one that just came out what? yeah so yeah there's a lot of stuff to play so we're going to end it there thank you for listening yeah thanks so much guys well thank you for the suggestion thank you patrons for supporting us thank you fans for listening and for dealing with my my iced-y hype today and the next week you get to play this game which was yeah I'm actually pretty excited I have to so Gondar did warn me that this game might be a bit of a pain to stream on the plus side there's plenty of walkers for us to work with on this one yeah exactly they're all the stories now but should we mention that we are going to start our live streams later yeah we're going to start around 9 o'clock at night yeah because we've realized central time we appreciate guys who are fans of Little Buddy but Little Buddy is a fan of bedtime and he does not like the interruption of a video game before the bedtime routine so we're going to start doing them a little later hopefully that will mean more of you can join us but you can always catch the stream later on on YouTube as long as I have not revealed any CIA secrets in the middle of the stream alright have a good one everybody we'll catch you next episode alright bye thanks for listening bye