[Alberto Aguilera]

Now, there is no certainty that they are going to continue the Arx Fatalis game series, but I have strong faith that they will as if they weren't I doubt they would give it it's own forum. So, with that said I would like no posts to be saying stuff like "They aren't making a second one"


So I made this thread, in hopes that the Arkane crew will listen, should they once again embark on the adventure that is making a game, and form it with some influences from us fans.


Now, there are a few rules as to the suggestions:

Rule 1: Nothing in the form of "Better graphics, Better Controls" as these will undoubtedly come. The last game is nearly 10 years old.

Rule 2: No quoting another post and telling them their suggestion svcks.

Thats it! I hope this can be a civil thread. Here are my suggestions:


More Flexible Runes: Throughout my short five minutes in the game. I found it to be a recurring problem that I cannot perfect the second rune in the 'ignite' spell. I think that such things should be more flexible.

Longer Durability: On the topic of durability, I think the makers did pretty well. Albeit a little bit short. I think that the durability should be a bit longer. Keyword: bit. I don't want it to be ridiculously long, but I'd like my weapons to last for more than 10 fights.



Other than that, I have nothing to add as I am still playing the demo.

Regards! Deagonx.

[Cheryl Rice]

I like your enthusiasm Deagonx, but it is not the place for members to put up rules in a thread like this. I have removed rule 2b as inappropriate, and rule 3 as unhelpful.

I've also made several edits to your subject line - this isn't "officially" unofficial, and I've added a subtitle to make it clear that this game isn't in production.

[Jason Rice]

If a sequel would ever be made, I don't think I'd like anything at all changed (just in a different area). Graphics are perfect as they are. Controls are no different from any other RPG. However, interfaces should probably be clearer/better (I did not see the tabs on the map, runes, and other things until I almost beat the game).

[Shianne Donato]

and I've added a subtitle to make it clear that this game isn't in production.

Wish it was, but it isnt.
Now with all that unsightly business out of the way I hope more people will suggest things.

[Laura Ellaby]

There should also be more customization options for your character. There were only 4 presets for faces and you could only play a male character.

[Benjamin Holz]

Wish it was, but it isnt.
Now with all that unsightly business out of the way I hope more people will suggest things.

Ah, beat me to the punch, Deagonx! If work wasn't kicking my ass I would also like to post my review of the game and a pdf/txt walkthrough for d-load.

Here is my list for the next installment;

(spoilers included)




1. Setting: Hard to say if a prequel or sequel from the original would benefit most. Prequels are difficult story wise as the outcome is somewhat predictable, but the back story development would be interesting. A sequel would be more logical, but how does the story progress? We know that the "sun" of the world where Arx Fatalis occurred has failed. Was this the work of Akbaa and his Ylside minion? If yes then the imprisonment of Akbaa by Am Shagaar (the player) would have reversed the destruction and reopened the top-side of the world again for habitation, and therefore reopen wounds between formerly cooperative races and factions.

2. Player customization: FaceGen and a choice of male or female.

3. Archetype balance: Arx Fatalis was balanced more towards a magic user as far as level design and combat. Let's face it; Ylsides were damn near impossible to defeat in melee with their speed attack but fell to a few fire ball casts like sacks of cold dung, and some level design was only meant to be intuitively negotiated by a mage (levitation and telekinesis). This would bring me to the magicka system...

4. Magicka: Flawless!
My only complaint would be to allow the system to be more forgiving of drawing a rune with a mouse, and have a greater number of precast slots; at least six. But I could live with the original system... Very challenging, especially against liches!

5. Ingredient respawn: Sorry, but this lost me with a limited amount ingredients to work in my inventory. It's an rpg, and I'm a pack rat. I want to be ocd and have a fat cache of widgets to do what I like with... Sell, horde, use, bribe, or whatever. I want a chest full of apple pie and roast chicken. If it's a single player game then don't worry about me trying to "cheat the system".

I think that's it..

[Etta Hargrave]

- more "quick memorize" spells, or revise the spell system entirely, such as a keyboard key corresponding to a rune, and I just have to type the sequence rather than draw it.

- More character customization - face, body type, gender (if the story leaves room for that), skin and hair color, tattoos/piercings.

- more crafting options (both for food and items) and more potion types and effects

- more ways to interact with the environment, e.g. setting traps, pushing rocks onto enemies, setting enemies on fire with a torch, climbing, luring enemies with bait, etc.

- revamp the repair system (so that repairing an items doesn't degrade its overall stats) or just remove item degradation completely

- consider adding an item enchanting system (I forget it Arx had this to begin with), such as with charms and runes and the like

- larger world to explore with more-varied subterranean environments. Reward player exploration with hand-placed items and secrets - but at least make the majority exploration possible without special magic; I remember that rune in the goblin hall that could only be accessed with levitation! Speaking of which, levitation controls need to be better!

- better enemy progression for the learning curve (e.g. easier enemies close to the city of Arx, more deadly enemies the further away from humanity you go). I just want a nice little escapism, not to die every 5 minutes against the lowliest of enemies. Sure, get my butt handed to me if I take on something 5+ levels higher than me, but I don't like getting knocked out easily by things that are my level or lower.

- more detail on that race of snake-ladies. The in-game books were tantalizing, but didn't give nearly enough backstory to be satisfying

- more realistic Arx city and political system. I find it really strange that the subterranean architecture looked like the same stuff I'd see in an overworld/surface setting. It's familiar, but I'd prefer more exploration into what would really happen if all of humanity (not just 25 NPCs) had to relocate underground and start from scratch. What do these people even do? Most were locked up in their homes, or were merchants to only my character (i.e. no other clients). As a city, it felt more like a little corner village that was extremely empty.

- more ways to complete quests, dialog options, dialog and quest branching, choices with consequences

- better combat system is needed. I'd suggest adding in dodge mechanics for stealth characters, either manual dodge or auto-dodge based on a skill.

- ditch the "look around mode" and "combat mode", it isn't needed, there are plenty of games that let you look around and do combat all at the same time

[LittleMiss]

This game definitely needs more cowbell.


But, this will probably be my last suggestion. You see I have a terrible fever.

[Sunnii Bebiieh]

Yeah I kind of tried to make a thread similar to this one but i was thinking there would be like a new game or version or something of the like.

[Jason King]

gunz and drgunz

[Andrew Tarango]

gunz and drgunz

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/9338/srslyg.jpg

[Jonny]

I find it a sad day that when making a wishlist for a sequel, I have to explicitly ask them not to dumb down, simplify, or leave things out.

But, yeah, my wishlist for Arx 2 would be to keep almost every mechanic from Arx and just expand on it or make it better.

[Hayley O'Gara]

I would really like to play someone from the guild of travellers and actually visit several of the underground realms of the world throughout the course of the game.

What I found to be the most interesting aspect of Arx was that despite it being such a microcosm there was mention of other similar places throughout the world, other kingdoms etc, leaving a lot to still explore...

I'd also like to meet some dwarves who are still alive.

[megan gleeson]

I find it a sad day that when making a wishlist for a sequel, I have to explicitly ask them not to dumb down, simplify, or leave things out.

But, yeah, my wishlist for Arx 2 would be to keep almost every mechanic from Arx and just expand on it or make it better.

this

removing bugs, ballancing and add some new stuff like making not possible to steal from a merchant and sell him again his merchandise would make an awesome sequel

[Kate Schofield]

I found an interesting comment from Raphael from 2006;

Hi Everybody,
Thanks very much for your support and your obvious desire to see Arx 2 one day.
We're currently on a different game, but we're often thinking of doing a good sequel to Arx in the true spirit that you guys would like very much. We even have docs written down. Be patient, we'll get to it at some point.
Sincerely.
-Raphael

December 27th, 2006

Of course this was posted before Arcane was enveloped by the Zenimax/Borgthesda hive, so who knows what direction they may be taking now. But there is always hope...

[Lady Shocka]

Ooh, I do love a good wishlist for a hypothetical sequel, here's my top 5:

1) it would be great to have voice recognition built into the game for commands (similar to Tom Clancy's Endwar) that would translate to runes. I.e. you could say the words 'Aam Yok Taar' within a given amount of time and it would cast the spell, freeing up your mouse to be used for looking around.

2) I'd like to learn more about the travellers guild and explore the trading routes between different underground cities.

3) Dwarves.

4) Although the first game rewarded subsequent playthroughs with more gameplay depth, I was always a little disappointed that some of the locales (the city of Arx in particular) felt a little empty as they were quite small and could have benefited from having more AI.

5) It would be nice to have a deep conversation tree to make AI interactions more interesting.

[Laura Simmonds]

I don't honestly know what to wish for. The Arx Fatalis is almost ten years old. I bet we are going to see huge changes no matter what. However I only wish they stayed true to the setting which means building the gameworld underground. And same races too, although we need to see dwarves this time. Maybe ways to travel between various cities with the adventure guild...

I also hoping Arx2 to have a similar magic system, maybe a bit more forgiving this time though. I loved the idea of drawing runes with my mouse, but I hated it when I just couldn't do it right no matter how hard I tried.

Even more ways how to interact with the environment. baking, fishing, setting up fireplaces etc felt so dynamic. Arx feels still a superior game with all the interactivity going on. Very few modern games have tried accomplishing same level of interactivity.

Larger cities and decent daily routines for npcs.

The sound work was spectacular.. Its one of the best i've heard. Even by today standards, few games come close to that detail.

Better melee and archery and a better balance with magic would be nice.

Larger gameworld and more terrain to explore.

[aisha jamil]

Like Loup above, I'm too not sure of what I would ask. However it would be interesting to be able to make treks throught the extremely snowy terrain to other fortress cities. I think they can even achieve excellent atmosphere if they'd do it with the Creation Engine, as we saw from the videos, it can handle snow pretty well. Of course more variety in items is good, and more npcs to interract with as the human city of Arx seemed to have a total of 4 females and like 50 males. More variety would do the game good. I don't want the game dumbed down either, it started as an homage to Ultima Underworld, which was not the simplest of games and I believe it should remain as such. It is not neccessary to please the ever increasing amount of CoDtards, there's an audience for good RPGs.

I am actually suprised to see an arx forum here, it seems pretty new, which gives yet again a shimmer of hope that Arkane might actually be considering working on a sequel. Hopefully Dishonored does well so they can do Arx II. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[ShOrty]

I absolutely adore Arx Fatalis and played through the original three times!

Julian Roby once sent me the basic storyline of what Arx2 was going to be...but this was like 8 years ago. If I remember correctly(and I probably don't), he said they would reverse the game where you start in the subterranean world and then make your way to the surface.

I really don't care as long as the game has the awesome magic system of Arx. The alchemy system was great for its time as well! I actually preferred the Xbox version the PC version as I thought it was fun casting spells with the d-pad (sorta like street fighter combos).

[JD FROM HELL]

A few basic ideas I had on how to improve things for a sequel:

• More responsive gesture system. Of course, this fits in more with "bug-fixing" than anything else, but POSSIBLY it might also make sense to change some runes to be easier overall; a number of them were notorious in difficulty of getting right. Combat with magic largely relied upon your pre-cast spells.
  
• A larger world. Sure, Ultima Underworld limited itself to 8 floors, but that isn't entirely necessary for future games. And of course, I think it's pretty unanimous that upon mention of the "traveler's guild," the idea of a whole WORLD of these settlements sounds very enticing. The ability to make it between multiple dungeons would definitely perhaps be at the top of the list.
  
• More fleshed-out towns. The city of Arx DID feel kinda sparse for being the capital of one of the greatest human settlements remaining on the planet. In such a closed situation, this would be a perfect place to implement something akin to TES's Radiant scheduling... Scale is perhaps secondary here, behind attention to detail.
  
• Similarly, more in-depth crafting. This goes for alchemy, but also other types too, such as cooking, and possibly the addition of enchanting/smithing/etc. The alchemy/cooking were actually quite fun to deal with, so it'd only make sense to flesh them out even further.
  
• Possibly some side-quest content. Definitely no factions or "open world" stuff; this is Arx Fatalis, not The Elder Scrolls. The idea is to keep it more focused, more intense, and get (hopefully) more detail in the bargain. Some more side-content would definitely help there. Not just quests, but secrets, easter eggs... There were a good number in the first game, but even more could be better.
  
• Better class balance. For the most, you just wind up spamming Fireball for almost every single fight in the game, while later you then promptly switch to using the Ylside armor and sword once you got it to one-shot everything. Melee was useable for the first few levels, then promptly became a death wish, and archery was ignored throughout the entire game.

[Soph]

As others have pointed out, a better interface. I figure this is pretty much a given anyway, but it needs to be said. Arx Fatalis is one of the best games ever made, but I suffered through the controls. Also, a bigger world. Although I pretty much figure that as a given as well.

I would like to see more of the world of Arx, but only if it fits in with the lore of course!

[IM NOT EASY]

As others have pointed out, a better interface. I figure this is pretty much a given anyway, but it needs to be said. Arx Fatalis is one of the best games ever made, but I suffered through the controls. Also, a bigger world. Although I pretty much figure that as a given as well.

I would like to see more of the world of Arx, but only if it fits in with the lore of course!

interface was fine on xbox version. the only problem was if u accidently hit the left trigger it would auto arrange your inventory. id spend ages sorting my inventory to make it accessible with potions together, ingredients together ect, and one tap of that trigger and BOOM. my inventory is a mess. damn that pissed me off. but no game is perfect, but this game surely nears perfection. i might get the PC version if its on steam just to try out the manual rune drawing. and because its about time i throw away that big ugly xbox. hardly any games worth keeping on it anyways.

[Tiff Clark]

They should have a construction set for Arx Fatalis 1 and 2 like they had for Morrowind. They should have a console command like Morrowind so if u want your strength to be 500, you can do so. In Arx Fatalis 2, they should have better character customization, able to make your own name.

[Matt Fletcher]

In Arx Fatalis 2, they should have better character customization, able to make your own name.

this i completely disagree with. complete waste of development time imo. it really annoys me when a game has tons of variables for character appearances and none for gameplay. think skyrim- the time spent on that vast appearance customisation at the beggining could have been time spent on adding/balancing spell making or other gameplay changing features. also if you can change your appearance, you most likely can change your gender, which completely [censored]s with the story, and more money spent on voice actors. waste of time. a set character with a story written with an exact gender/race in mind is how its done, as proven by deus ex, arx and the rest. some games pull it off well, like vampire bloodlines or gta san andreas, but i still think its a waste of time.

[Nitol Ahmed]

Mainly i would ask for everything to stay the same.Dont make it Skyrim,make it Arx.

I want Dwarfes! Priceless time i spent looking for them,i know every secret and corner of the game,and i want it to be like this in the next one too!
And the big one im asking:Dont make the main char mute.Just let him talk! TALK! goddamnit you can talk!? Gordon Freeman drowe me insane.
Expanded,but not open world,just a bit bigger.
Maybe the possibility to go outside,later in the game.......(Co-op? Not so sure about this 1)

Also add an editor,so i can add my own spells! yes,we want more spells,too!