I'm with you. The 3 games I have always wanted sequels/prequels to: Baldur's Gate, Arcanum, and KOTOR.
I love Arcanum. The combat kinda sucks, but where else can you actually choose how pretty your character is, AND IT MATTERS. Go ahead, play a character with Beauty: 1-3. People won't necessarily be unfriendly to you, but some might be. Some people will be straight up rude. Play as an ogre/orc and see how many people talk down to you or are downright hostile.
DOS 2 doesn't seem to be quite that responsive in regards to reactivity towards your character customization, but it does have people who will respond differently based on your race, though I don't know if your gender makes a difference or not. The crafting isn't on the same level as Arcanum... but, it is fun and worthwhile. No skill trainers, like in Arcanum, which is too bad- it is something I haven't seen any game do besides the Elder Scrolls games, and that was a different mechanism. Pickpocketing is MUCH more limited, and we'll see what happens with the full release... but they made some stupid mechanic where if you are SUCCESSFUL at pickpocketing someone... they will then accuse your entire party of stealing from them and immediately try to have the entire party searched... risking almost certain death if they go hostile because they find their stolen equipment/items in your inventory. No gambling. No substantive min/maxing... which is annoying. If I want my character to have flimsy health, in exchange for being ridiculously dextrous and fast, I should be able to... but DOS 2 won't let you do that. So, you can't have your Doc Holliday archer, who is continuously hacking up his lungs, yet still able to nail a fly to the wall with a bow and arrow at 20 paces (and believe you me, that I made my Doc Holliday gunslinger in Arcanum). DOS 2 is a lot more linear than Arcanum, so you can't just go wandering around freely, trying to find whatever suits your fancy. Maybe that changes after the 1st chapter, but that has yet to be seen so far. Day and night cycles? As far as I am aware, they won't be implemented in the game, which is too bad.
What else... I don't know, that is what I can think of off the top of my head, as I'm sitting here, hoping that it will indeed be available for download it a little less than an hour... but might be severely disappointed. I don't think it is the 2nd coming of Arcanum by any means, but it is a great game. Just based off of my experience with the early access, this is definitely going into my top 10, maybe even top 5 of favorite cRPGs.... For reference, that looks something like this to me:
1.) Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 (just so epic, so many ways to replay it, great party banter, so huge)
2.) Arcanum (most reactive game I've played, with largest ability to really customize your character in a meaningful way, and I love steampunk)
3.) Fallout New Vegas (only real drawback is that you can only have 1 companion and I don't really like the post-apocalypse setting)
4.) KOTOR 2 (made me actually appreciate the Star Wars universe- a tad short, but great party banter as well)
5-10.) Mass Effect 1-3, Shadowrun games, Neverwinter Nights 2, Planescape Torment... and I might be forgetting something, but those games all sort of occupy the same space for me. I love them all, but I don't consider them the absolute best.
What I would LOVE would be for a conversion of Arcanum to the DOS 2 engine. The combat in DOS 2 is way better, and could easily replace Arcanum's. Arcanum Remastered would be absolutely brilliant. I would 100% replay it, even though I have played it who knows how many times in it's original form.
I wish Larian would get the rights to the Arcanum IP and make a new game based in that universe. There are only a handful of developers I would trust to do that: Obsidian, Larian, Hare-Brained Schemes, and CD Projekt Red. If any of them announced a Kickstarter for it, I'd be on it like white or brown on rice...
Looking forward to Steampunk 2077... but that won't be until 2019, and it will probably be such a resource hog that I won't even be able to play it
