The opening of Baldur's Gate 3 bears a certain resemblance to that of the beloved 2001 CRPG Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, a fact that's not lost on the writers and designers of the D&D game.
Earlier this week, Baldur's Gate 3 composer Borislav Slavov posted an image of the Arcanum cover art on Twitter, asking "Does anyone remember and want to see a sequel to this marvel?" Among those who responded was BG3 writer Kevin VanOrd. "Fun story: very early in BG3 development when we talked about starting the game at basically the crash of a ship, my first response was: Arcanum did that. Which is to say, Arcanum is good."
Fun story: very early in BG3 development when we talked about starting the game at basically the crash of a ship, my first response was: Arcanum did that. Which is to say, Arcanum is good. (I didn't like it in the day; years later, I came around on it.) https://t.co/66knQVd9rZNovember 5, 2023
The opening of Arcanum sees you narrowly survive an attack on an airship. Clambering from the wreckage, you find an artifact that propels the game's story forward in the possession of another passenger of that ship. The opening area sees you exploring the fiery wreck in search of further survivors - at least one of whom, naturally, will become a party member. When it's laid out like that, yeah, the resemblance to the Baldur's Gate 3 opening is kind of uncanny.
Arcanum is a steampunk RPG notable for its open-ended narrative, its hybrid real-time and turn-based combat options, and its willingness to let you play just the way you want. By the early 2000s, many RPGs had experimented with letting you find non-violent solutions to problems, but even today few games can match Arcanum's support for pacifist playthroughs - or its willingness to let you murder literally everyone, though Baldur's Gate 3 might be close in that regard.
For those reasons, Arcanum has become one of the biggest cult classics in the CRPG canon, though it didn't manage to inspire a modern franchise, the way contemporaries like Fallout or Baldur's Gate did. Arcanum's DNA does live on, however, in the upcoming Xbox RPG Clockwork Revolution.
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