xXxJessicaxXx said:
As a big fan of the epic (but okay buggy) Arcanum I find myself longing for a game that mixes elves and steam trains, dwarves and hydraulic axes, orcs in tuxes and evil gnome inventors.
Why has no one pushed this genre recently. It seems an obvious diversion from the Tolkienism that seems to be so intrinsic in western RPG's. I'm not a massive fan of sci fi over fantasy but after playing Mass Effect 2 I found the change of scenery most refreshing.
I know Bioshock dabbles in steampunk to some effect but wouldn't a Steampunk fantasy world be awesome fun and easy to apply to a game. Would other people like this or is it just me?
Edit: Changed the title for clarity
Sorry about that.
There are a decent number of games developed using what people consider Steampunk to be, people have listed a lot of them, and honestly I think the genere is fairly well represented given that it is such a niche genere.
I'd like to see it visited more often as a true RPG setting, and with a big budget, however it's noteworthy that most attempts to do this have pretty much failed. "Arcanum" was a great game, but consider that there was a fight between Troika and Sierra (much like their battles with Atari later) over game content, and they went with an earlier build and released what was a buggy mess, not to mention causing enough bad blood where the odds of there ever being a sequel became non-existant as soon as the game was released. To most people looking to produce games, they tend to simply look at this as a relative failure, without considering the reasons why. "Space 1889" was anticipated by a lot o people, especially given the relative popularity of the two "Megatraveller" games in RPG circles, however the game was clunky and watching six months go by as your characters walk around the streets talking to people is kind of annoying.
For the most part Japan has focused on the genere more, and truthfully they probably come closer to actual Steampunk in style than western attempts to do the same thing. The reason being that people tend to forget the "punk" aspect of the whole thing and tend to label anything retro-future as being "Steampunk". With Japanese creations the big hair, and outlandish fashions tend to bring them far closer to the actual vision of Steampunk than the more straightforward "Pseudo-Victorian" take on the genere you see in western creations. I will admit though that I long for well done WRPGs of the sort however, because while I enjoy JRPGs I tend to ultimatly prefer WRPGs more when all is said and done, and equal attention is paid to them.
That said, I've also been hoping someone would again take a crack at doing some "Shadowrun" RPGs or something similar to that universe. Not Steampunk, but another neglected style of game, in this case though the neglect is odd because I don't think the "Shadowrun" games were unsuccessful when they were released.
At any rate, these are my thoughts, mixed bag that they are. I'd love to see another Arcanum-type game, done to the level of say "Dragon Age", but it doesn't seem likely. I think we should count ourselves lucky that we see as much with this obscure genere as we do.
