Good movie. Tons of steampunk in that one
I was reading about that on IMDB and saw that they also had a TV show back in the 60's. Might try to catch a few episodes one day.
As for Arcanum, I've played it to completion a few times and a few other times I made it about halfway before some "new and shiny" game came out
If you need any more help I've played as a tech/gunslinger, tech/swordsman, pure mage, different schools pure mage, and tried a combination of magic and tech (tried to keep the meter right in the middle) but that didn't work out too well. Spells are too weak. I am still going to try and do that again on my next playthrough. It's really difficult, but giving myself that handicap will keep the game from getting boring.
I can't help out with the evil quests. I've never gone the evil route. I see enough of that crap every day. I want my games to have at least one good guy out there even if in real life they don't exist. Still managed to get some evil NPCs in one playthrough because I was a persuasion master.
Speaking of companions, if you like Sog then don't neglect persuasion. In every playthrough I always became a persuasion expert. Only once did I get the master rank because I wanted to see what the evil NPCs were like, but at expert you can get more followers. I believe I always had at least 4 of them with a combination of Charisma and persuasion expert.
A note about gunslingers. Everyone will say they're harder to play. While that might be true, the tech makes up for any shortcomings that come with using guns. Like I said before I played a combination of TB and RT. In TB you'd get a few shots off then the enemy would be right next to you on their turn. In RT you would get more shots before they were close to you. This might not have been the intention of Troika, but by mix and matching the combat I sorta balanced out the gunslingers.
A note about mages, personally I found that after my first playthrough mages were too easy. All I needed really was one spell, Tempus Fugit and I could level up at lightning speed and kill just about anything I came across all on my own. Almost ruined my first playthrough because the game became too easy. It was ridiculous how many attacks I got using Tempus Fugit. Stay away from that one if you prefer a more challenging game.
Ok then, that's it from me. I'm glad I could tempt you back into Arcanum since Steampunk has become a recent obsession of mine. It's all Arcanums fault!!!