So you say you don't have a computer, but you just posted a thread saying you're going to make an expansion pack for whichever TES game gets the most votes. OK. And this is about the 30th identical thread you've made for 30 different games.

I'm with Keirik. You're padding your post count. Which is a great way to never be taken seriously by anyone, ever.



Steam usually auto-patches, but I can't say with absolute surety that it's the most up-to-date. I have the Steam version and it runs like a champ on my machine, I can tell you that much.

I have a pc but not a very good one. No wireless card so I can't get Internet without modem have no modem. Just wireless so my iPod psp and phone all have Internet but my pc doesn't.

If you buy it through http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/arx_fatalis you could bum a couple of gigs of bandwidth from a friend to download the file to a USB stick/hard drive. Depending on your phone, you could even use that.

As to your desktop being low performance, bear in mind that the game is just over nine years old . The system requirements from GOG are:

"Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1 GHz Processor (1.4 GHz recommended), 256MB RAM (512 recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), Mouse, Keyboard."

If your computer doesn't meet those requirements, I applaud you .

Actually, the story is fairly NON-linear as you can make choices. Remember the magical rings that you must find? Well there's one in the rebel camp and there's at least three ways to get that one. One is by completing the quest offered to you by the rebels. Another is by breaking into the treasury and stealing it (which makes the rebels attack you) and another is by telling the snake women of the rebels which makes them attack their camp wherein you can now freely loot the magical ring.

Then there's the Shield of Ancients where you can play the puzzle to get it, or simply break into the crypt where it is and take it which makes a lich attack you.

There's there's the option to tell the King about his daughter and the snake women's plot. The option to let the princess become the new snake woman queen and the option to tell the King that it was the snake women who murdered his wife which makes him attack them.

There's also various of other choices but those are the ones that I could remember at the top of my head. Nearly every quest had different choices and alternative endings and even if you killed someone important to the story, there was still someway to complete it. I remember killing the Troll King and destroying all the trolls in his cave. Then I found out that I needed their help. No problem. There was a rebel troll in their prison who decided to help me afterwards.

It really never ceases to amaze me the multiple paths that can be followed in this game and still conclude the same end. I hope Arkane passes this "spiritual license" from Arx onto Dishonored.

HOW? You can't pick the portcullis that guards the shield. And there's no other viable way to get there(that I know of). How've you done this?

i cant remember exactly, but you can steal it. i think there is a hidden pressure plate or switch.

This game is not truly open-world, it's technically open-world because you don't have to focus only on the missions, nor always follow a particular path without the ability to backtrack. It's what I call illusionary open-world. It's open world like Borderlands is open world, with a lot of walls. There are so many walls, you essentially can't really do anything but stick to the missions at hand like in Borderlands, only Arx Fatalis has a much better feel to it, and you don't feel like the game is cheeply trying to appeal to teenagers through the use of cliches, hype, and requiring less cognitive abilities while focusing more on the shoot'em up. I'm liking Arx Fatalis for the most part. It's really what Borderlands should have been, except Borderlands is in the future with guns and explosives. But then they'd of probably accused them of ripping off Fallout 3 or something.

What I like about Arx Fatalis, and really this is their saving grace that lifts them to avoiding the boredom that sets in when one must follow missions all of the time, and that is their crafting. Apparently, there is a crafting element that I haven't yet been fully able to explore as I'm still a lower level. The exploration, collecting of items that might be useful, gaining money, getting better armor and stuff, all of that is similar to every RPG and just about as fun as any RPG.

Some unfortunate things about Arx Fatalis, and this really can be it for some, it's not intuitive. I mean you have a mission. First, it's not really clear about what you need to do, and when you do find out the answer, finally, because of going to some forum, walkthrough, or plain dumb luck, it's something that's relatively ridiculous. It sort of mirrors figuring out the answer for the next step of an 80's adventure game where you had to makes sure you clicked just the right thing before you could progress the storyline. For example, you're being ignored by someone, so how do you get them to talk to you? Intriquing, any number of things could possibly be the solution right? Well, none of those things you are thinking are the answer, the answer is some off-the-wall thing like poisoning him. I mean who comes up with that crap? It seems like someone didn't care about being creative, so they just threw an answer in there.

Anyhow, if you can get past the quirks, glitches, and be willing to grace a walkthrough a few times, it can be an interesting game for the most part.

The atmosphere is dark and dank though. Not dark and dank like Diablo cave exploration, but dark and dank because the human civilization lives under ground, so you're in a cave-like atmosphere always. The synopsis is people moved under ground due to a supernova of their sun. Like they'd even know what a supernova is, much less have an actual term for it. Anyhow, the sun went dark, the planet became inhospitable, and people moved underground. Now you, can't remember who you are, escape from Goblin stew, and go around doing missions for the human race. The world does not seem very big. In fact, it seems quite confined. There are levels of depth. The first level is where humans live.


Now, they attempted to innovate the magic, which seems good, but I don't play magic characters usually. However, I've read people complaining about the fact that you have to wave your hands to do spells, which makes it exceedingly difficult to kill enemies. Oh yeah, and there is no pausing when you get into your inventory. The only way to pause is to go to the menu screen where you can start a new game, continue your current one, load, save, options, or quit. Some people didn't like this.

Anyhow, for $5.99 or $4.99, or maybe even less if you look around, it's really not that bad at all, and even though it's dark and dank, they've done a decent job of lightening it up by not having overly deadly enemies popping out of every corner. I know in some games, that's what scares me most, is enemies popping out of unexpected corners and killing me before I even know what's going on.

The game definitely seems more cognitive than most. It seems the creators wanted us to think about what we were doing rather than just hack and slashing our way through. And that adds a nice ring to it as well. Unfortunately, their lack of creativity in keeping it both cognitive and intuitive can annoy people. I mean their hints are almost non-existant, and to a point where if you find something, just the fact that it was made available to find is the only reason it's actually a hint because the solution that the hint implies can make no sense. However, they have allowed more than one way to finish some missions, so if you can't think how to do it one way, try another, and as a word of advice, try and keep hack-and-slash solution as a last resort. I read somewhere that the game is designed for the carnage craver, and allows for the completion of the storyline even if you go all lunatic and kill everything. I probably won't ever test this, but people seem rather convinced that every lock has a key somewhere or on someone in this game, and every quest-essential item exists somewhere at all times, which would suggest that storyline missions can be done even with hack-and-slash player mentalities reigning supreme.

Some also describe it as a puzzle RPG game because you have to figure things out in order to progress to the needed area or to help the required person. Although, if the cognitive processes were more interactive, it would be better. For instance, you have to find an item that someone may have stolen. Well, apparently, according to one conversation, the guy who may have stolen it didn't even know it was stolen. And if it weren't for like a word in that conversation, the second time I heard it, I would have thought he knew about it being stolen, which doesn't make sense to the next action he takes, and what happens after I recover the stolen item. It's like a hard to follow movie that's hard to follow not because you have to watch it carefull and remember certain details, but because they leave out large chunks in the path of logic that leads someone to a certain thinking. This game tends to leave out some chunks of logic here and there, which if touched up better, could make it much much better, and probably even more intuitive.

One other thing, I'm not sure what Bethesda had to do with this game because it was Arcane and JoWood that released this game. I'm not sure if Bethesda had anything to do with it, but Arcane and JoWood are the primary names on this game. It's plausible that all three were working on this game which is really what needs to happen. Not JoWood necessarily, I'm still not sure about them. Maybe them, if they can release a game without so many bugs and glitches. The Arcane people, the Pirahna Bytes people, and if they're up to an open-world RPG first person and space sim game, even the Egosoft people, and the Bethesda people need to all get together and take all the greatness of each of their games, The Elder Scrolls, Fallouts, the Gothic series, this Arx Fatalis, and if they want to add that first-person space sim functionality, X-3 series, and combine all of their best pieces to come up with an epic game. This game should include the cognitive requirements of Arx Fatalis and the Gothic series, with the crafting of all of them, and the freedom/sandbox play that the Elder Scrolls and Fallouts have demonstrated, and the creativity of the Bethesda team for the storyline, and the variety of missions that they all have should provide sufficient variety. Maybe even include the Wurm Online people for crafting pointers. Now they know crafting better than any other open-world RPG game. In fact they're only crafting, Yeah, actually they are only crafting. Everything in that game except the base landscape and resources found on the ground, and the spawned animals and trees was crafted by the players. You can even grow animals and plant trees and bushes, they are so deep into the crafting. You want a great game that makes great utilization of crafting, talk to the Wurm Online people, they know crafting.

Play deus ex & system shock 2. THEY are what borderlands should have been like. or fallout NV.

Glad you enjoyed playing, I enjoyed reading your post (ill nit pick it later ) if you want some more advanced experiences try the games I mentioned above.
you may never get another chance to play (experience is the better term) games so good the way the industry is going atm.

I completed arx fatalis when I was 16 years old and only needed a walkthrough once or twice (on dwarf level forgery) and I do not consider myself all that intelligent, IQ over 100 apparently but I have trouble with sentance structure and punctuation! so if iI can beat it nearly everyone can.

The game world is small and not confusing at all, if you listen to the plot and look in your journal you should know where to go, once you get there however you have to search, like all games without objective markers you have to explore each area thoroughly on arrival and remember each area that was unreachable at the time, to come back to. If you have bad memory then write it down. But it should all come naturally whilst having a blast with the game.

Anyway this game may not seem overly impressive to you at the moment, but if you do a little research on it, play the other games in the family (mother is ultima underworld or cousins deus ex & system shock 2) understand the design then you will come to love it just as I do. And try the magic you crazy! try everything when you play games as awesome as this!

Yes the spells are challenging to cast when battling enemies, but practise makes perfect, also you can "pre-cast" spells. I like it like this magic is overpowered most of the time in games and this balances it out, and adds depth and simulation. Also the no pausing in inventory is another awesome decision, once again balance and simulation. an easy mode that simplifies all this would have helped the game sell better though. <3 Arx

It's one of the most atmospheric games i've ever played. I played it right through a few times. Went back to it a couple of years ago and found it rather clunky but soon got so drawn into the 'world' it didn't matter.
It remains on my top ten list, even after all these years. If you want to know if you's enjoy it, my favourite games are Elder scrolls (except Oblivion - just didn't grab me, but good enough to play through to the end), Fallout (3 and New Vegas), Jade Empire, Mass Effect (1, 2 & 3), Deus Ex, Alpha Protocol, and so on.