By Dale Farris, Secretary
Golden Triangle PC Club
May 2003

Game Overview

Arx Fatalis is a first-person role playing game (RPG) from JoWooD Productions Software AG, developed by Arkane Studios, that plunges the player into an amazingly complex fantasy world. Arx Fatalis combines an intelligent storyline with impressive medieval surroundings. The user-friendly interface allows a high degree of interactivity with the game, and it creates a state of intense immersion that allows the player to feel that all the actions have a direct consequence in the Arx game world.

The goal of the game is to destroy the secret cult of Akbaa -- the god of devastation and chaos -- and thereby prevent his return to the physical world. Should the player fail, the demon is bound to impose his reign of terror upon Arx.

The player, assuming the role of the potential hero, fights inside an underground fortress using wooden clubs, swords, and magical items to defend himself against creatures, including goblins, trolls, rat men, and other vicious opponents. However, brute force is not always the best way to succeed, and the player has at his disposal the innovative new "onscreen gesture based magic system" to assist him in his progress through the game.

In addition, Arx Fatalis supports a neat stealth mode that is active when you see the stealth icon on the interface. In stealth mode, usually when you are in dark areas or shadowy areas, other non playable characters cannot see you. You can also crouch to move around less noticeably and sneak up on the bad guys.

Using the mouse and the Ctrl key, burning runes can be drawn in mid-air. A series of these gestures combine to create powerful magic spells that will protect you or empower you to defeat the bad guys and pursue the main quest.

In addition to the struggles against demons and monsters there are numerous opportunities for interaction with the creatures and various objects inside the fortress that help you rediscover your memory, solve puzzles, and fulfill quests. Collecting experience points enables the player to appropriately craft his hero's skills and abilities and develop his overall persona.

In the strange underground world of Arx Fatalis, you explore underground cities, secret temples, lost civilizations, and dwarf mines, all to discover the magic of Arx Fatalis.

Arx Fatalis is developed by Arkane Studios and distributed by JoWooD Productions Software AG, and is the spiritual successor of Ultima Underworld. Arx Fatalis takes place completely underground, as the sun has faded away on the surface. This makes for a very dark, mysterious game environment.

Arx Fatalis offers everything a good RPG needs to have, including a complex RPG system, great graphics, excellent sound, and an immersive storyline. You can manipulate the world in many ways, solve most of the quests in more than one way, and you can play different roles in Arx Fatalis. You can also finish most of the quests in the game in more than one way. For example, you can kill everyone and still solve the game, or you can play as a stealthy thief or a wizard, or even mix these game play options.

The game's automap doesn't allow notes on it, and the journal will not provide you with all the background information you would normally think would be the case.

I found Arx Fatalis to be a pleasant, but curious surprise, as the game does succeed in involving you in a complex, richly detailed story that is matched by the equally rich environments and game play levels. In Arx Fatalis, you are going to want to set aside many hours of game play, as it will take a while to find your way around the many levels in order to complete the primary game goal.

However, Arx Fatalis is not as "never-ending" as Morrowind. Arx Fatalis manages to successfully combine the main features of first person action games, with adventure game quests and puzzle solving, and typical RPG features, including character creation and enhancement, and the finding and using of a lot of required items and objects.

The world of Arx has been beautifully presented, although you may find it difficult to get around at first, because the entire world is underground and the designers have done a marvelous job of creating a dark, mysterious world that sometimes makes it very hard to see objects you need or places you need to go.

Game Play

In Arx Fatalis, you move throughout various levels in the totally underground world, and in each level you can move around various locations and come into contact with various non playable characters (NPCs). Your perspective remains in first person, and you only see your character in the many cinematic cut scenes. Also, as in Morrowind, you find yourself involved in various side quests that further complicates the already deep and richly detailed main story line. However, thankfully in Arx Fatalis, this wandering around has been more limited and thus is not as frustrating as trying to keep from getting lost as is the case in Morrowind.

The game also presents many bad guys you must combat, and although Arx Fatalis does not any where near approximate the hundreds and hundreds of bad guys you have to fight in Dungeon Siege or Harbinger, when you do encounter the bad guys, the combat system has been simplified to mouse clicks to engage these enemies with your current weapon. This combat feature may seem a bit slow to savvy FPS action gamers, as when you have to fight a bad guy you need to press the Tab key to open your weapon, then maybe also the B key to cycle through weapons, and then press the left mouse button to swing the weapon.

There is a slight lag between the button and the action, so you have to time your mouse click to result in the weapon hitting the enemy when it is near enough to you to be damaged. You can also activate the weapon while crouched, which is necessary to fight rats and spiders. The weapons also can be damaged, so you have to find places in the game where you repair your weapons. In addition, you will come across other more powerful weapons that you can use to replace a weaker weapon.

As in most all RPGs, as you encounter and overcome the bad guys, add new quests to your log book, find and later correctly use the many required objects, you increase the points you can assign to your character. As you may be thinking, yes, this does become important as you successfully work your way through the game toward the end, when you encounter enemies that are more difficult to overcome.

The World of Arx

The game takes place on the planet of Exosta in the city of Arx. To be more precise, the game mostly takes place below Arx, although there are many parts of the Arx city you do interact with. This is because the people had to leave the surface of Exosta after the sun faded away years ago, and they settled in the underground in an old dwarf mine. Each race was given a level of its own, including humans, goblins, trolls, snake women, rat men, and a lot of other things like dogs, rats, chickens, and other unfriendly beasts as well.

After the introduction movie you generate your playing character, which, despite its 4 attributes of strength, intelligence, dexterity, and constitution, and its 9 skills, including Close Combat, Ranged Combat, Defense, Magic, Sneaking, or Object Lore, is not that complex. The generating does leave enough room to customize the hero before the game actually begins. This character modeling continues throughout the game, a classic RPG feature.

You wake up in a goblin prison cell and have no memory of who or where you are. Kultar, a fellow prisoner, gives you the name of Am Shaegar for now, which means something like "The Nameless," and he sort of helps you to escape the prison cell. This escape leads to the first encounter in which you have to fight a goblin guard with a bone, since there are no other weapons yet available.

Combat is done with your mouse: You hold down the left mouse button, and the longer you hold it, the harder you hit with one of the three standard types of attacks, including slash, swing, and thrust. The goblin is not too hard to overcome and has some nice goodies with him. You can search almost every dead enemy to claim for your own inventory whatever is in their inventory. This also presents important game play options, as many of the items and objects you look for in the game are found on these dead enemies.

The next encounters are rats and spiders, before you come back for more goblin encounters. The AI for the NPCs is pretty good. Goblins in the prison guard patrol several hallways and rooms, and if they hear you, they stop and look for you. If it comes to combat, they call for help and other goblins come running to assist them. If you hit them too hard, they run away to get help, and then they come back to look for you. If a fight becomes too hard, you can swallow a healing potion or restore your mana pool by pressing quick keys, something that is explained in the accompanying game book.

Later in the game, you find a bow for ranged combat, which is done similarly to the ranged attacks in the Thief games. Once equipped and readied, the target is zoomed into your view and you fire the arrow from a hidden or unreachable spot. This makes ranged attack more effective, because unnoticed attacks seem to be more harmful. You can also poison your weapons or arrows to do even more damage. You can even enchant your armor and weapons to make them unbreakable or harder for example.

Note that in Arx Fatalis, with the heavy emphasis on the fighting, you can indeed die in many places in the game. Thankfully, the game's save function is designed to allow you to save your game anywhere during your current progress, as well as allow you to create many different save games.

All throughout the many fascinating areas you can visit in the various levels you will come across locked doors and even strange walls that show up in a dark blue color, indicating that the wall can probably be broken through or opened only if you find the correct object to use on the wall or discover the answer to how to break down the wall. Also, as you wander around the many areas, you will meet various characters that set up numerous side quests that you can complete, which means you will be doing a lot of traveling back and forth between the various levels. With the limited information automatically written to the game journal, you will want to keep handy your own written notes to help you remember where these interesting locations are after you find in other levels the correct associated object or figure out what to do. Thankfully, in Arx Fatalis it does not take forever to get around these locations, as it does in Morrowind, and the game map will not give you as much detail information as you would like. So, keeping your own detailed map will also help.

Magic Painting

The magic in Arx Fatalis is based on runes you find along your journey though the various levels. There are 20 runes, each with a different meaning. For example, a magic arrow is made by combining the runes Aam and Taar, where Aam means "Create" and Taar means "Bolt." Altogether, the manual reveals 10 circles of magic spells with 4 spells each, but an inventive player may find some more spell combinations.

To cast a spell, you use the Ctrl key and the left mouse button to paint on the screen the spell's associated runes, and then unleash the spell, or save it in one of your three quick spell slots in your inventory  to have them ready in combat. Note that this sounds easier than it really is in the game. I found this feature way too tedious for the game, and thought maybe the developers just ran out of time to better code this idea. As it is, making these spells requires practice, especially if you wish to cast a spell in the midst of an active combat situation. During combat, it can be fun to cast spells, but it is also tricky and requires training, because you have to avoid the attacks at the same time. You can also enchant weapons or armor with a certain spell, but for enchanting you need reagents, like a special stone that makes items unbreakable or harder or stronger.

The key is finding the rune stones, and this represents what I thought was a tedious aspect of the game. These rune stones are located in literally any part of the game, and not all are to be found in the early levels. This means you have to try and explore all parts of the game environment levels as you work through them, as you can very easily miss opportunities to pick up these runes.

Of course, you can also play with a walkthrough that helps you know ahead of time where to go to find these stones. Even though Arx Fatalis is certainly not the most difficult of RPGs now on the market, because of its wide open expanse of rooms in all the levels you are going to want to set aside a ton of time to play through the game in order to find all these rune stones, as well as all the other items and objects as the game does not play in a linear manner, like Dungeon Siege, but expansively with many different places to visit in the levels. Also, many of the places you need to visit do not open to you until you have completed other required quests, sub-quests, or other steps in the game.

Interacting With and Using Objects

Items in Arx Fatalis can break and need repair, which decreases their overall durability, if your repair skill is too low. So, it is recommended that you have items repaired at the armory in the beginning level that you can return to later in the game. You can also enchant items or merge them into something new. For example, when you want to bake bread or a cake you mix flour with water and put the dough in the oven, add apples, and you have a cake. Or, you can add poison to make a poisoned cake which impacts some of the NPCs if they eat it. You can also mix potions, if your skill is high enough, and you need different flowers for different potions, which regenerate life or mana, make you invisible, or provide healing from a poison.

You also can move items in order to reveal hidden items, and you can throw some items at opponents, or block a way, and the objects do fly and fall.

The inventory will "max out," as you gather and store the various objects, and the game's inventory mechanism is one of the areas that have been improved with the various game patches now available.

Character Interaction

Interacting with the various characters in the game is done by double-clicking on them which opens dialogues. Thankfully there are no dialog options, which helps simplify the game play. You can also use key items on NPCs, which will open a cut scene or dialogue, lead to a fight, or open a new quest. When you are being assigned a quest or something important happens, it is always recorded in your Journal.

The Journal

The Journal consists of a character sheet with all the equipped armor and weapons, your current level, the number of experience points, your attributes and your skills. You use the journal to distribute new points when you level up. The spell book contains the runes you find and the spells you can cast with these runes. Quests and plot changes are automatically tracked in the journal, but there is no real quest log or list of quests and completed quests.

The Automap

The game's auto map shows only the ground you have walked on, but no walls of houses or castles, and you cannot take your own notes on it. The book it is in covers almost the whole screen, so you can't really move while in the map. Instead, the right hand side of the book shows a zoomed view of the nearer environment.

Display Settings

The game offers resolutions from 640 x 480 x 16-bit, up to 1600 x 1200 x 32-bit. Of course, you will want to set this display option according to the capabilities of your particular video card and processor speed. The levels are boldly designed, although very dark most of the time since the game is set in an underground world. The graphics change from medieval in the city of Arx, to a rough environment in the different dungeon levels, to a somewhat spacey look in the Edurneum outpost. The textures are very detailed and add a lot to the atmosphere. Spell effects are neatly presented and the NPC animations are quite interesting and life-like.

The crypts are very eerie, and even frightening. Behind each door or corner is an undead creature waiting for you, and because the line of sight is limited in this area, before you know where they are you first hear them, saying "Come here and become one of us" in a genuinely creepy voice.

If your system can support it, I urge players to try and play the game with maximum resolution and display settings, as this will help in finding many of the objects or other items which are otherwise very difficult to see in this very dark, foreboding environment.

Sound Effects

The sound effects are super, and the EAX adds to the game's eerie atmosphere. The sound of your character's footsteps changes according to the ground and the type of armor you are wearing. Also different NPCs and monsters have different footsteps and ambient sound.

The voice acting is very professional, and there is almost no music in the game. The sound effects and ambient sounds do an excellent job of drawing you deeper into the game.

Game Characters

The Player
You are unable to remember who you actually are, you do not even remember your name. The only thing that you know is that you have been imprisoned by goblins and are to be sold to the priests of Akbaa for a few coppers. Your cell inmate gives you the name Am Shagaar, which means "The one who does not carry a name."

Iserbius, Priest of the Order of Akbaa
Iserbius founded the cult of Akbaa to allow the return of god Akbaa himself.

Akbaa
A mighty demon indeed. He feeds on death, grief, and sorrow of the human kind. Nobody has ever laid eyes on Akbaa since he telepathically communicates with his servants. Trying to flee from his dimension to set chaos on Arx, Akbaa seems to be resistant to any known weapon or magic spell. How can he be stopped?

The Priests of Akbaa
They indulge in the ghastly practice of human sacrifice. Since they are forbidden by king's law, they hide in secret temples and places of their cult to fulfill their quest.

Ylsides
Outstanding warriors, and nobody knows who they act for. One lside can kill several guards in a few seconds.

King Lunshire
The good and rightful human king of Arx. He lives in his castle and is always available for questions by the player and is never short on helpful advice.

Sylib Nurath
Member of the race of the sybarta. He is the mastermind of the Noden, the dimension of gods. The Sybarta are there to keep the balance between good and evil gods.

Kultar, Friend of the Player
Just like the player, Kultar has been imprisoned by the goblins. He assists the player in his escape and from then on becomes his helpful companion.

Rebels
These people have long since turned their backs on Arx. They do not belong to any order or cult, but it has been heard they carry out certain assignments for the right amount of coins.

Dwarfs
The dwarfs have retreated in the deepest level of the fortress. They master technology and they are said to be capable blacksmiths.

Trolls
Enormously powerful, yet dim witted beings. Trolls are gem miners and therefore have extensive interaction with the rather clever goblins.

Goblins
From the beginning of time they have been constantly quarrelling with the humans. They do not know what the Akbaa cult is about and they are not interested in the issue. Getting paid a fine sum of money for catching humans and bringing them to the priests is the only involvement of interest to them.

The Sisters of Edurneum
Mighty female magicians who are half snake, half woman. Their order disapproves of the cult of Akbaa.

Wrap Up

In Arx Fatalis, a deep, richly detailed story unfolds as you play the game that is filled with plot twists, excellent atmosphere, and great graphics. You will also need to use your wits in Arx Fatalis.

Arx Fatalis contains a lot of puzzles and secrets, and is not simply a hack-and-slash RPG. Most puzzles or quests are solvable in more than one way. For example, you can either fulfill the quest in the way the quest giver means it, or you can steal the reward from the quest giver. You can play good or bad, and still can solve the game, which is an added feature of the game.

Everything in Arx Fatalis, beginning with the clever dungeon design, the neat story, and the challenging puzzles make this particular RPG unique in the glut of RPG titles now on the market.

Super Features

50 different spells based on 20 different runes
Numerous opponents and monsters
Different weapons and armor
Huge story with more than 60 hours game play
Collect items to help solve puzzles, avoid danger, win in combat
Combine and transform items
First-person perspective
Beautiful layout and design
Hundreds of non-playable characters richly detailed
Employ stealth to survive

Some Game Concerns

While this very brief overview conveys but the merest of the rich, dynamic nature of this fascinating game, nevertheless there are some key points here that need further discussion. Arx Fatalis is a very impressive RPG that will definitely appeal to any fan of the RPG genre, and it also represents some new ideas in gaming that are hard to achieve in today's very mature game development environment.

RPG fans will be pleasantly surprised to find the focus in Arx Fatalis is shifted from intense combat to exploration, interaction with characters, and finding and using certain objects. This said, the attention to detail in the backgrounds and layout of the game, which is superb, also adds difficulty to being able to find these objects. You will just have to be prepared to set aside a lot time to fully explore the depth of the game that is wonderfully envisioned and realized in the game.

The JoWooD folks have also gone to a lot trouble to set up and support a super gamer forum at their main Web site ( www.jowood.com ), and to keep up with the technical patches for the game. The forum will also provide you with links to the www.arxfatalis-online.com site, where you will find a pretty good walkthrough guide, and access to hints to the game in the Universal Hints System approach.

I also thought the game was deep and detailed enough to warrant licensing the rights to publishing an accompanying game guide, from either PrimaGames, BradyGames, or VersusBooks, but it seems that this has not yet been completed. If ever there were a game that would be enhanced by an official walkthrough guide book, Arx Fatalis would be it. The published guidebook would provide a more direct, linear explanation of where to go next, what to look for, accompanied by more detailed maps of the environment.

I am always interested in playing computer games with walkthrough guides, because I just do not have the luxury of all the hours it takes to complete many of today's more sophisticated games, like Arx Fatalis, and with a guide book I find the game play experience to be just that much more fun and rewarding. The online tools are useful, for sure, but just not as useful as what I've found in past published computer game guide books.

Targeted Customers

Arx Fatalis is focused on computer gamers most intrigued by the Role Playing Game (RPG) genre, although it does manage to combine the best of adventure questing with combat as you go about the development of your character and interact with the many other characters in the game.

I suspect most experienced RPG players will likely find Arx Fatalis to be up to their level of expectations, and it certainly provides some new and exciting twists on this now mature genre. I also think those relatively new to computer games may find Arx Fatalis a nice introduction to what RPG is about, and not overly difficult, or as impossible to play as are so many other RPG titles now on the market.

Cheats/Recommendations

Of course, if all this complexity intimidates you, then this is not the game for you. Also, if you do not have many, many hours of free time available, then Arx Fatalis is not for you. This is an excellent example of a type of computer game experience that succeeds well, especially in the Summer and especially for those with a lot of free time on their hands. Then, for those who enjoy the breathtaking beauty and awesome features of the game design, there are always game cheats to help you more quickly get through the game and see all the many different wonderful design of the game.

I found some good cheats and a pretty good walkthrough at
www.uhs-hints.com/uhsweb/hints/arxfatal

There does not appear to be any formalized, published walkthrough guide book planned, but I would strongly suggest one be considered, as this would just further enrich this otherwise already dynamic game.

I also think we owe a great deal of thanks to the game developers for their extra attention to making the cheats work so well. I am one of those gamers that while I enjoy playing such games as Arx Fatalis, I really do not enjoy having to try over and over and over again to get past the more difficult parts, mostly because I do not have that kind of time to waste retrying parts of the game so many times. So, in my case, the cheats for Arx Fatalis really made playing the game a much more enjoyable experience, and enabled me to see more of the rich, dynamic world imagined by the game developers.

Install and Setup

Installation and setup should proceed with no glitches, assuming of course you have a system that meets at least the minimum requirements explained below. As many gamers know, installing and running computer games represents one of the most significant challenges to any computer hardware setup. With the advances in 3dfx games that have pumped up the rigorous hardware demands on graphics accelerator video boards and sound boards, in many cases, trying to get these state-of-the art games to actually play on a computer can fail dismally.

Folks interested in Arx Fatalis will need to be very concerned about their computer hardware, and be sure to strive to install and play this on a high-end machine. s of this writing, JoWooD has made available at their Web site various patches for the game, the latest taking to game to v. 1.17.

Price

$34.95

This price may vary from one vendor to another, so shop around.

System Configuration Requirements

Minimum
P-III 500MHz processor or compatible
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
64MB RAM
750MB free hard disk space
DirectX 8 or higher
DirectX 8 compatible sound- and graphics card with 16 MB

Recommended
P-III 900 MHz processor
256MB RAM
750MB free hard disk space
DirectX 8 or higher
DirectX 8 compatible sound- and graphics card with 32MB

At the time of this writing, the game had a patch available at the JoWooD Web site to take the game to version 1.17. Note that with this patch installed, the available game trainer program I found made the game crash. However, this game trainer worked very will with the initial version released on the CD ROM disc.

These system configuration requirements are the minimum and recommended required to install and play the game. I ran the game on a Pentium III, 800MHz, Windows XP Pro, 256MB RAM, 32MB nVidia GeForce 2 GTS video card (from Creative Labs), SoundBlaster LiveX Gamer sound card (from Creative Labs), standard keyboard, Microsoft Optical mouse, with a CD RW drive, and a 60GB, 7200 rpm Western Digital hard drive. I noticed the game did become a bit more "sluggish" as I began to add items to the inventory and the number of non playable characters increased. However, on the recommended system requirements, the game should play flawlessly.

About JoWooD Productions

JoWooD Productions Software AG is a publicly traded company on the Vienna Stock Exchange, and is rapidly establishing itself as a leading force in the video game industry. Its strategy is to identify, develop, and publish internationally competitive, high-quality entertainment software for all existing next-generation gaming platforms. JoWooD Productions has in-house development facilities in Vienna and Ebensee, Austria and a fast growing roster of exceptional subsidiary studios, including Wings Simulations and Massive Development in Germany. JoWooD Productions Software AG’s head office is based in Austria, with wholly owned subsidiaries operating out of the UK, Germany and Japan.

Contact

JoWooD Productions Software AG
Technologiepark 4a
A-8786 Rottenmann, Austria
+43 3614 2966-0
FAX +43 3614 2966-1064
support@jowood.com
www.jowood.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.