New Arc Line

[1998]

I am not sure how real this game actually is, but its has surprisingly high production values. Turn-based, party (likely only 4), steampunk and "isometric". Its supposed to be released in 2024, but for that to happen they are not showing a lot right now.

Czech-Ukrainian devs, here is the mandatory team pic

[maidenhaver]

>Czech-Ukrainian
>women
Russians can't control their cocksleeves.

[rusty_shackleford]

I really, really hate 'steampunk'.

[Shillitron]

Its simultaneously high quality and janky shit at the same time.

One thing that set me off a bit was the teleporting dudes in one scene.. Whenever teleporting is allowed, I always feel worried about how the game is gonna abuse that to dump enemies on me or have important characters escaping-last-minute-then-coming-back etc.

Otherwise, cautiously optimistic. It needs to bake a little longer and I need to see more gameplay. if this is a another Pathfinder clone I'm out.

[1998]

>women

As long as they are not in any leadership positions it could be OK. Let them do admin work, maybe create some art, that could work.

[Acrux]

This is the game people keep calling the "next Arcanum". Pass.

[J1M]

5 community managers?

[Vergil]

This is one of the most reddit things I've ever seen. A perfect combo of women, hohols, steampunk, and trying to sell itself by referencing a cult classic these sort of "RPG fans" pretend to have played and liked? Just needs a few troons thrown in now.

[Tweed]

I really, really hate 'steampunk'.

I loved it until the normies found out about it. At least we still have diselpunk, for now.

[Acrux]

Steampunk was fine before it meant sticking goggles and cogs on tophats worn by fat chicks. It also didn't have anything to do with "punk" as in counter-cultural like the term is interpreted today. K.W. Jeter intended the term in the early 80s to describe the books that he, James Blaylock, and Tim Powers were writing at the time with Victorian backdrops. It was a play on words about cyberpunk and had nothing to do with things that are considered virtues to reddit users these days.

[Vergil]

I still think it just looks ugly and retarded.

[Oyster Sauce]

Look, I can only suspend my disbelief so far.

► Show Spoiler

There's no way he would be holding this sign!

[Segata]

Anything that tries to be "the next [well-loved product from the past]" always fails.

[Vergil]

Anything that tries to be "the next [well-loved product from the past]" always fails.

This one is particularly egregious because they don't even have some aging ghoul to wheel out who worked on the well-loved product from the past.

[Emphyrio]

I haven't read, or even heard of the 40 year old steampunk @Acrux mentions. I only know it as a marketting term, and a bad one, associated with stale aesthetics and race and gender politics.

This entire paragraph is concentrated cancer:

"Take a stand in the eternal conflict between Arcane Magic and Steampunk Revolution and tip the uneasy balance between sorcery, elves, dwarves and mysterious monsters on one side and steampunk gadgets, zeppelins, and tesla guns on the other in this single-player, party-based, story-rich RPG"

So I was not expecting the game to look as good as it actually does. If it wasn't for the nigs, elfs and dwarfs, and hulk women, and horrible steampunk gloves and pauldrons, I would be interested in playing the game.

[Element]

Potential is there, but it's buried beneath unserious writing and world building. When a trailer meant to showcase a world is oozing with caustic sarcasm about said world, then impartial treatment of possible 'roles' that you can inhabit isn't to be expected.

[somerandomdude]

Leave it to slavs to take gay themes like steampunk and make them even gayer.

[Hauberk]

Steampunk was fine before it meant sticking goggles and cogs on tophats worn by fat chicks. It also didn't have anything to do with "punk" as in counter-cultural like the term is interpreted today. K.W. Jeter intended the term in the early 80s to describe the books that he, James Blaylock, and Tim Powers were writing at the time with Victorian backdrops. It was a play on words about cyberpunk and had nothing to do with things that are considered virtues to reddit users these days.

Thanks, I always wondered where it came from. I've only ever known the cog larpers. I once saw one of these out drinking on his own. He was dressed up as a smith with a leather apron, welding goggles and all.

While on the topic: Does Thief count as steampunk?

[rusty_shackleford]

steampunk is retarded as shit because it's basically "wow what if they had advanced machines… POWERED BY ...STEAM??? WHOA!!!!" That's the entire genre.


There's a game that perfectly embodies the steampunk genre, and it's called Circus Electrique.

I don't think there's another screenshot on Steam that contains this much cringe in it:

It has nothing to do with the industrial revolution, Victorian setting, and so on. It's just a retarded aesthetic. At least cyberpunk is a libtard power fantasy, steampunk is just "wow… goggles are cool!!!!!"
You could make a game that's about the industrial revolution without a single hint of 'steampunk' whatsoever. And Arcanum would have been better for it.

[Emphyrio]

Steampunk was fine before it meant sticking goggles and cogs on tophats worn by fat chicks. It also didn't have anything to do with "punk" as in counter-cultural like the term is interpreted today. K.W. Jeter intended the term in the early 80s to describe the books that he, James Blaylock, and Tim Powers were writing at the time with Victorian backdrops. It was a play on words about cyberpunk and had nothing to do with things that are considered virtues to reddit users these days.

Thanks, I always wondered where it came from. I've only ever known the cog larpers. I once saw one of these out drinking on his own. He was dressed up as a smith with a leather apron, welding goggles and all.

While on the topic: Does Thief count as steampunk?

we're not talking about authoritative definitions handed down from on high, but how the term is actually used.

i see it used two ways:

1. The very specific aesthetic of gears, leather, brass, and tophats. Even settings that are very close, like Dishonored, don't seem to count.

2. Any technology that's more advanced than the middle ages in a D&D-style fantasy setting. A normal 19th century factory, without goofy gears or anything, is still "steampunk" if the foreman is an elf. The normal, non-geary muskets in PoE are also considered steampunk.

[Emphyrio]

You could make a game that's about the industrial revolution without a single hint of 'steampunk' whatsoever. And Arcanum would have been better for it.

I would really like a few non-sjw games set in the New Imperialism era but played seriously, not as a joke, and drawing from the fiction of the period instead of later pastiches and parodies. There's a ton of material to draw on, and it's untapped and fresh, unlike steampunk. It hasn't even been done in movies since Brendan Frasier's "The Mummy".

I want Stanley steaming up the Congo, I want Roosevelt paddling up the Amazon. I want to hunt down primitive pagans and kill them and steal their stuff.

► Show Spoiler

[maidenhaver]

While on the topic: Does Thief count as steampunk?

No, I'd call it pulp fantasy.

https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/04 ... y.html?m=1

[Tweed]

steampunk is retarded as shit because it's basically "wow what if they had advanced machines… POWERED BY ...STEAM??? WHOA!!!!" That's the entire genre.


There's a game that perfectly embodies the steampunk genre, and it's called Circus Electrique.

I don't think there's another screenshot on Steam that contains this much cringe in it:

It has nothing to do with the industrial revolution, Victorian setting, and so on. It's just a retarded aesthetic. At least cyberpunk is a libtard power fantasy, steampunk is just "wow… goggles are cool!!!!!"
You could make a game that's about the industrial revolution without a single hint of 'steampunk' whatsoever. And Arcanum would have been better for it.

QUIRKY!!!

[Lutte]

steampunk is retarded as shit because it's basically "wow what if they had advanced machines… POWERED BY ...STEAM??? WHOA!!!!" That's the entire genre.

It's just retrofuturism applied to an older era than usual. People don't whine when Fallout shows the future partly as imagined in the 50s and 80s but somehow steampunk is always offensive? at the core, outside of plebbit shit, steampunk works great when it's about making futuristic worlds that could have been imagined in the industrial revolution era, it's about more than just showing a few cogs and gears if you want to be truly evocative. Good steampunk takes inspiration from actual writers of the times and try to present human politics as they were understood then. As much as I hate Bioshock as a video game (just a really mediocre shooter), it's a legitimately good example of steampunk on a thematic level, you can feel the mark left by books like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Frankenstein. Contrasting views on imperialism, reaction toward human progress taken to an extreme in both ways against/for, human experimentation, the desire to surpass human limitation, man's inherent yearning to explore the next frontier, growing megalomania are examples of themes that are about as important to the genre as people wearing top hats. Andrew Ryan is like Captain Nemo in how much he hates contemporary civilization, while having chosen the other extreme as a solution to the world: where Captain Nemo sees freedom in the ocean because there can't be any tyrant and major power owning it, Andrew Ryan wants to build a techno utopia.

As Captain Nemo puts it: "I am not what you call a civilised man! I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again!"

[Humbaba]

I'm more annoyed by people who put Lovecraftian elements into a steampunk setting when Lovecraft wasn't Victorian in the slightest and his style and themes are very distinctly American.



-Humbaba

[1998]

Damn all that hate towards that setting. Give me some decent exploration, good party based TB combat, interesting char development and I'd take any setting. Not saying that this is what we are getting here obviously.

[Emphyrio]

steampunk is retarded as shit because it's basically "wow what if they had advanced machines… POWERED BY ...STEAM??? WHOA!!!!" That's the entire genre.

It's just retrofuturism applied to an older era than usual. People don't whine when Fallout shows the future partly as imagined in the 50s and 80s but somehow steampunk is always offensive? at the core, outside of plebbit shit, steampunk works great when it's about making futuristic worlds that could have been imagined in the industrial revolution era, it's about more than just showing a few cogs and gears if you want to be truly evocative. Good steampunk takes inspiration from actual writers of the times and try to present human politics as they were understood then. As much as I hate Bioshock as a video game (just a really mediocre shooter), it's a legitimately good example of steampunk on a thematic level, you can feel the mark left by books like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Frankenstein. Contrasting views on imperialism, reaction toward human progress taken to an extreme in both ways against/for, human experimentation, the desire to surpass human limitation, man's inherent yearning to explore the next frontier, growing megalomania are examples of themes that are about as important to the genre as people wearing top hats. Andrew Ryan is like Captain Nemo in how much he hates contemporary civilization, while having chosen the other extreme as a solution to the world: where Captain Nemo sees freedom in the ocean because there can't be any tyrant and major power owning it, Andrew Ryan wants to build a techno utopia.

As Captain Nemo puts it: "I am not what you call a civilised man! I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again!"

Fallout's look is pretty unique. If there were a bunch of other media all aping the exact same look, poorly, it would be tarnished (and its already overdone by so many Fallout games imo).

I haven't seen Bioshock described as steampunk. Maybe Bioshock Infinite... almost, kinda, not really.

Is Andrew Ryan based on Nemo for sure? Always thought he was a combination of Ayn Rand and the creator's loxism (A. Ryan). Bioshock 1 is not set in Verne's period, and the art deco look imitates the famous covers of Ayn Rand's books.

Fallout, Dishonored, Atomic Heart, Bioshock, all have a retrofuturistic look, but they all look different. The hate on steampunk is for the stuff that all looks the same, following a generic style sheet, like Rusty's game.

[Emphyrio]

I'm more annoyed by people who put Lovecraftian elements into a steampunk setting when Lovecraft wasn't Victorian in the slightest and his style and themes are very distinctly American.



-Humbaba

And it's not Lovecraft without Lovecraft's writing. Darkest Dungeon is the only game that did better than some tentacles and cultists, because it had the narrator to borrow from Lovecraft's style.

[Humbaba]

And it's not Lovecraft without Lovecraft's writing. Darkest Dungeon is the only game that did better than some tentacles and cultists, because it had the narrator to borrow from Lovecraft's style.

Darkest Dungeon also stayed faithful to Lovecraft's work by being equally shit.



-Humbaba

[Lutte]

I haven't seen Bioshock described as steampunk. Maybe Bioshock Infinite... almost, kinda, not really.

The original Bioshock is definitely more steampunk than most things moderntard call steampunk just because there's a lot of unneeded gears on armor sets.

Is Andrew Ryan based on Nemo for sure? Always thought he was a combination of Ayn Rand and the creator's loxism (A. Ryan). Bioshock 1 is not set in Verne's period, and the art deco look imitates the famous covers of Ayn Rand's books.

I am not the illithid in the writer's brain, I dunno what things he read and I'm not the sort to read hundreds of interviews. What I do know though is that I did read Leagues and it's impossible not to see some of Captain Nemo in Andrew Ryan's experience of life. If you've experienced both things then the similarities couldn't be more obvious.
Of course, there's also the Ayn Rand influences, but she herself was inspired by the writers of the 1800s.
The aesthetics of art deco are indeed anachronistic to the vibes and themes of the game, which from a writing point of view is firmly rooted in the expectations of the genre. But even with the heavy art deco presence, there's quite a few direct steampunk influences on visuals. You can't look at a Big Daddy and not think "yeah, that looks like an armor version of a Verne suit".

The hate on steampunk is for the stuff that all looks the same, following a generic style sheet, like Rusty's game.

Steampunk as a genre is not at fault for what people did with it. The person who coined the term for the first time to describe a type of literature didn't have any of this in mind. There's millions of things you can do with "the future and fantasy as perceived by people who lived in the era of steam power, and before the use of transistors". Frankenstein was written in 1818, that's an industrial revolution era novel exploring the idea of man creating artificial man and the consequences of such perversion of life not through mysticism but through the scientific method. You can even see it as one of the first novels to prop up sci-fi as a genre. It's a good example of the sort of inspiration you can have to build upon when you write retrofuturism of that era.