It is amazing, how quickly time flies! Almost ten years have passed since the then famous company Origin presented the first facts and screens of their new & ground breaking project called Ultima Underworld. The Stygian Abyss was the first game to feature a real 360° 3D environment, no more right-angles, real up- & downstairs, realistic game physics, 3D puzzles and a great story.
One year later, in 1993, it was followed by its sequel Labyrinth of Worlds, an equally great successor. But that was about it - the gaming world has been waiting for a real Ultima Underworld III ever since, and even though a game by that name is very unlikely to ever happen, this fall will see the release of a game that really would deserve that name: Arx Fatalis is on its way…
While the developers of Arkane Studios are based in France, I am lucky enough to live in Munich, not only the home town of Europe's best soccer team and the Oktoberfest, but also the place of business of Fishtank, the publisher of Arx Fatalis.

Ulla Wenderoth, Fishtank's lovely PR manager, agreed to my visit and producer Friis Tappert took the whole afternoon to show me the latest built of the game.

PR Manager Ulla Wenderoth & Arx Fatalis Producer Friis Tappert get along quite well…

 Friis first told me about the background story of Arx, which takes place in an underground cavern of a planet, on which the outer world is not habitable any more, after its sun has vanished…
I asked Friis, whether he likes the fact, that Arx Fatalis is commonly being rated as an unofficial Underworld sequel, and he agreed: "That's ok - I very much liked to play the Underworld games and we are going for that aim!".

Underneath the daylight, several colonies have formed. Arx Fatalis features eight levels, including a goblin world, a troll colony, a town inhabited by humans, areas with snakewomen, undead, even dragons and the secret cult of Akbaar. Each place has its own characterstics, for example, the human colony offers very civilized surroundings, including shops and taverns. 

There will be no prerendered movies in the game; every sequence is presented in the game engine; that of course goes for the introduction sequence as well, in which we can see a high priest being assassinated by a rat-like rogue.
   "By using the game engine for sequences, the player will stay immerged in the world, while prerendered movies will tear him out, and that is something we don't want to happen!"

The only exceptions are flashback-sequences, which tell of the time, when people were still living on the outer world; those are presented by large scrolling wallpapers, which for example show the story of the war and the disapperaing of the sun, similar to the Tapestry of Ages in Ultima.

Producer Friis Tappert enjoying Arx Fatalis…

So you start off imprisoned in the goblin area, which you have to escape…you're barely wearing clothes and have no memory what happened; and your first weapon may most probably be no better than a bone!  

When it comes to comparing a game to any Ultima game, you inevitably have to rate the degree of interactivity with the gaming world. Arx Fatalis bears up against this comparison:

You can bake a cake or bread, poison a guard by either poisoning his water pool or the cake you are baking. Or when you take out the meat of a just killed chicken, you can't eat it, unless you roast it over a fire. By eating or sleeping (the good old sleeping rolebag has been reactivated!) you will regenerate hit points; you also can find herbs to make your own healing or other potions. You can't steal from a chest, when guards are about to watch you, but you can, when they don't (of course you can do it at any time, but then have to bear with the consequences!). Furthermore, any harm done to one member of a community will make the rest of its members to your enemy, which directly leads us to:

Well, as Friis stated, you could win the whole game by just killing everyone everywhere; that is of course, if you are strong enough and are not killed first - so this is not the recommended way to solve Arx Fatalis. Anyway, there'll still be enough encounters, but at the beginning, you'll only fight rats, spiders and goblins. Combat takes place in real-time and of course you can see the equipped weapon, both on the paper doll (see below) and in your hand in the main graphics window, slashing over your opponent.
There'll also be ranged weapons, like bows or crossbows; alternately, you can damage your opponents by simply throwing items on him!

Next to combat, the magic system of an RPG is always a very interesting aspect. A lot has been written about the magic system of Arx Fatalis, which is based on runes, similar to the Ultima series.
For example, there is a rune for Create, called Aam and one Fire, called Yok, so when you are combining these two, you can ignite a torch, for example, or set something else on fire, while combining Create, Fire and Missile (called Taar) results in a fireball.
But that's about all, Arx Fatalis' magic system has in common with the Ultima Underworld magic system, because you don't have to just click the runes in the proper sequence, but have to paint them on the screen to invoke a spell.
Once you find a rune, it is added to your spell book, as well as known spell receipts of the known 10 circles. So by going to the spell book, you can't cast, but just look up the formula for a spell, before switching to the spell casting mode (accomplished by holding down the CTRL key in this alpha version). And then you paint the first rune of the spell by holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse. Once the program recognizes a rune, a voice says its name and you can paint the next rune. If the rune is not recognized, you simply repaint it, as long as you hold down the CTRL key, the previous recognized rune(s) are stored, but if you release the CTRL key, you have to start all over again.

Friis is just painting a rune, note he's holding down CTRL while moving the mouse!

 You also can cast spells you don't even know yet, just by experimenting with different runes, but you will also find spell descriptions of course. In addition, some spells are neither described in the manual nor can they be found in the gaming world, so you might want to experiment around. However, you have to own a rune to be able to cast with it; if you paint a rune you don't have yet, the voice says, that the rune is correct, but you cannot use it unless you own it.
Another nice aspect is, that the spell effects depend on your level; for example, the result of the Summon Creature spell can vary from a harmless chicken up to a mighty demon, which can be of valuable aid in combat.

Speaking of which: Since combat takes place in real time, I wondered how you can paint these runes while you have to fight and maybe even walk around. Friis told me, that you can pre-cast several spells and put them on hotkeys, so you can use them instantly while fighting. Of course, you can still cast other spells during combat, as long as your mana lasts or the enemy hasn't killed you yet.

Overall, the magic system looks very interesting, but requires a bit of getting used to it. The rune-painting-recognition system works pretty well and I remember, that after playing Underworld or Ultima, I knew every rune and many spells by heart - so I believe, there shouldn't be a problem here!

Next to the hitpoints, mana and a book (see below: The Journal) also a belt is displayed on the screen, which, when clicked, opens your backpack inventory. You can add objects by drag-dropping them into the inventory (or more quickly into the belt-symbol). You also can use objects directly by right clicking them. A dead NPC's inventory opens in the same screen as well, and you can easily transfer its belongings in the same manner as from the gaming world.

From the inventory, you can equip weapons, armor or artifacts, which will then disappear from the inventory and are visible on the 3D-Paper-Doll, which shows every piece of equipment you are wearing.

As mentioned above, there's another symbol on the screen: A book, which holds 4 entries: The status screen, with your hero's statistics and the above mentionend paper-doll, then we have the spell book (see above: Magic), the journal itself and the automap!

The journal keeps track of conversations and quests, while the zoomable automap shows every path you walked upon, similar to the Underworld automap system. Of course, you can take your own notes on the automap!

"Damn! I have to go already?" were my thoughts when I had to leave Fishtank's office, and still today, I would like to try out some things I didn't think of during my visit! While the version I've seen was quite stable already, it still lacked a lot of features, but what I have seen so far is really excellent, and I am very confident, that Arx Fatalis will indeed become a worthy successor to the Underworld games! Producer Friss Tappert is very much dedicated to the project, as are the developers themselves!

The release date is set to October 2001 for Europe and November for the rest of the world and a dedicated site for Arx Fatalis will go up in about 4 weeks.

Oh, and there's another similarity to the Ultima games: The cover art will be done by Denis Loubet, who was the senior artist for some of the Ultima games and did the covers for those as well.

Stay tuned on RPGDot for more exclusive Arx Fatalis coverage in the future!