After completing the initial design of Fallout 2 for Interplay, the trio of game designers struck out on their own and Troika Games was founded. Initially scheduled for the fall of 2000, Arcanum has been pushed back to February 2001 for polishing. Magic is no longer the cure all for every problem faced. The result is a steady gain in the power and reliability of technology. The shorter-lived races see a heavy benefit in technology that doesn't require them to practice for decades to become experts.
Technology's a quick fix.
The magical races, naturally, don't quite trust this relatively quick and easy power that the less magical races seem to have mastered. Add to this tense conflict between the races, all the problems of an Industrial Revolution society, like pollution, rapid deforestation, and the loss of jobs to machinery, and you have one very complicated and potentially explosive situation. An uneasy balance has been maintained for the last seventy years in the world of Arcanum, where technology is barreling ahead, ever-evolving, and magic is staying the same as it always has been, rapidly coming to be seen as a backward, outdated power. The world of Arcanum seems more like one headed towards disaster than one that's already been there, as in Fallout. Inevitably, magic will be eclipsed or it will lash out at the scientific progress.