Arkane Studios 20th anniversary: Arx Fatalis is free

Nowadays, a French video game developer Arkane Studios is best-known for their immersive sims games like Dishonored and Prey. 

But, at the beginning of this century, they were mostly known for their unique and quite weird dungeon crawler RPG called Arx Fatalis.

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Arx Fatalis is played from a first-person perspective and is set on a world whose sun has failed, forcing the above-ground creatures to take refuge in caverns.  

But as food and drink become scarce, the wars become even more violent as each race try to survive.

Picture: Arkane

The game has some very unique and strange things for an RPG. For example, you cast spells by using mouse gestures (you are "drawing" runes). Another interesting thing is that there is no dialogue system in Arx Fatalis, and you make choices only with actions.

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Player character is highly customizable, there are no predefined paths, and you can allocate skill points in categories such as spellcasting, weapons, armour, and stealth, with complete freedom and however you want. 

Although, the balance is not quite good, and some archetypes are practically unplayable, so you should be careful with your builds.

All in all, if you love RPGs, and you've never played this one, you should definitely give it a go, now when it's free.

Picture: Arkane

To get the free copy, you just need to go to ARKANE 20 website at bethesda.net and sign up for the "Arkane Outsiders" mailing list. Once you do that, you will get your game on your Bethesda account. 

Additionally, you will also get "The Art of Arkane" digital artbook for free when you sign up.

And one last thing before you start playing Arx Fatalis. We advise you to use "Arx Libertatis" source port, which will polish and fix some problematic things from the original game and make the overall experience better.