Unlike the other three games so far featured in May Millennials, I did at one point many years ago make some progress into Arx Fatalis (which I own both physically and digitally) before abandoning it for reasons I forget. I'd like to think, or hope, that I'm a more patient sort these days and that the added context that Arx Fatalis was explicitly built to be an Ultima Underworld spiritual successor (not to be confused with the more recent attempt at same, Underworld Ascendant) will be enough to buoy me through the whole game this time.
Arx Fatalis, like the Ultima Underworld games, is a first-person dungeon-crawler with full panoramic movement that's set entirely inside a subterranean environment. The various settlements of this game have acclimated to life underground after their sun disappeared, plunging the surface into everlasting winter. Ultima Underworld (the first one) spent a lot of its world-building establishing how a colony might survive several miles underground, focusing on how these settlers fix problems like heating and food production (geothermal vents and magic seem to be the answers so far) and the fragile truces between the many sapient races that were suddenly forced to put their natural animosity aside and work together for their mutual survival. It's already another fascinating RPG premise - you don't see the ol' nuclear winter conceit much in fantasy fiction, where apocalypses usually involve more dragons or demons or both - and Arx Fatalis expands on the UU blueprint with a few intriguing ideas of its own. Paramount of these is a gesture-based magic system that has the player drawing the runes in mid-air with the mouse in order to cast spells, not dissimilar to the DS Castlevania game Dawn of Sorrow. Perhaps to cover their asses, the designers also included a "pre-loading" system for spells where the player could conjure spells in the air and then save them for later, which is of major importance for those times when there's a skeleton barrelling towards you and you're panicking trying to remember the runes for a fireball (or get the finnicky system to comprehend your movements, for that matter).
Regular melee combat follows a more familiar process of holding and dragging the mouse across the screen to slash in that direction, and a limited inventory means you're always having to prioritize what to bring with you and what to leave behind. The survival aspect of the original UU games is mercifully absent (though it was never that much of a hassle): you can find food and water, but they simply boost your regeneration rate temporarily rather than filling any hunger or thirst gauges, and can be safely abandoned if more pressing items demand your inventory space. One thing I recall about Arx Fatalis is that it remembers everything you've placed; thus, there's nothing valuable you can throw away for good, just as long as you remember where you put it. Having filled my inventory about ten minutes after starting, I'm now trying to figure out where to dump everything I don't absolutely need for easy later recovery once I find somewhere to sell my goods - if, indeed, there are vendors to sell all my trash to. There's certain other inconveniences - all weapons and armor appear to have durability, though this value doesn't seem to drop precipitously, and the map can be a bit precious about clearing out the fog of war resulting in a lot of wall-hugging to ensure I haven't missed an alternative path - but nothing I can see becoming a real pain.
Beyond that, the first few areas have mostly involved tutorials and table setting. The protagonist is an amnesiac with no possessions and a current prisoner of a band of goblins, and the first few hours involves escaping their grasp and finding some gear. From there, the player seeks a route to the enormous and eponymous human settlement of Arx, which is where the player can establish a base of operations, have access to abundant spell and equipment inventories, and witness the rest of the world finally opening up.
I'm going to see if I can stick with Arx Fatalis for the long haul this time. The various advancements over the Ultima Underworld games, which I loved in spite of their age, were enough to grab my attention and I'm hoping that the spell system will prove its versatility over time: I'm especially interested in learning levitation magic and doing a bit of sequence breaking. I'm also curious to learn more about this post-apocalyptic underground kingdom and the evils that plague it. I dunno what I was expecting, but fantasy Metro 2033 wasn't it.
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