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The Impact of Planescape Torment
The ever interesting Escapist has a piece up examining just why Planescapes\ Torment is such a perennial favorite among gamers and designers alike. From the article: "The strangest, and one of the least successful RPGs from Black Isle (the company that brought you the Icewind Dale series), Planescape: Torment, which was released in 1999, took a risk by using the alternate Dungeons and Dragons campaign of Planescape, a not-really-fantasy, not-really-futuristic world that's mostly defined as unstable and bizarre. Strange and unruly dimensions intersect at the city of Sigil, where most of the game takes place, and your character, portentously called The Nameless One, wakes up in a mortuary with amnesia, a battered shell of a body that cannot die, and just one friend: a flying, talking skull. And the game gets stranger from there."
If only you could grab that skull & recite shakespear...
The best video games always have the best story telling. The writers make the game. Bloated characters and an exciting journey are remembered longer than omfg best grfx evar.Think about it.
Fallout and Fallout 2 from Black Isle. At least, where Black Isle games are concerned. Those games kick many asses.
Planescape. Singular. If you get confused, look at the huge header on the link you posted, or even in the block of text you copy-pasted.
There are a lot of things one could say about Torment - whether the interface worked, how well the rotating class system worked, etc. I'm focusing on the writing. For me, the fun of Planescape is wrapped up in the atmosphere of Sigil and how well written the whole adventure is. Sigil and its denizens are genuinely, entertainingly bizarre without being excessive (unless of course they have to be). The writers dropped Heaven only knows how many tidbits of history, culture, and glimpese of life on other planes, etc. I especially appreciated the way the writers used progressive exposition regarding the major characters, particularly D'akkon. To a certain degree, Torment so successful because Sigil is like a number of other settings, and like none of them at all. The game is one grand riddle. Granted, some of the fetch-and-carry tasks can be tedious, but solving the main puzzle was fun. Heck, even the order and nature of the fetch-and-carry stuff is left up to the player. Help and join the Dustmen. Or don't. Or join the Dusties after you've joined the Sensates. Or the Chaosmen. Or sell your party into slavery and become totally evil. The possibilities are endless. Torment is the only crpg I've actually finished. I gave up on IWD during the final battle. The party combat system was fun, but the story stopped. I gave up on Diablo and Dungeon Siege just before the final battle. With Diablo, the story wasn't hardly there and the combat got repetitive... With Dungeon Siege, the combat system was cool for quit a while, but the story stopped. I lost interest.
Did the submitter even read the article he linked to? It's Planescape: Torment. NOT Planescapes Torment!
But I just couldn't get into the game. I loved the similar games around that time, like BG and so on...
I think it comes down to the sheer amount of text and story that was provided. I just couldn't bring myself to read it all and *care*. Could be me getting old, but normally a game will suck me in enough that I'll spend the time and really get into it all.
I had the same trouble with morrowind.
With the game story being so bizarre, it only means that the writers can get away with almost anything, and that just means the story can be interesting, as well as weird.
I agree, its been hilariously over-rated ever since it came out. I suppose if your only reading matter is Star Trek novelisations or something it might seem special, but it doesn't really deserve the plaudits its gained.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
I had the same problem the first time I sat down with it, and delayed it for a couple of years. When I found the time to actually play through the thing it was the most intense gaming experience ever. The end will make your back shiver.
The game is still relevant so load it up on a laptop or something, since it has almost no system requirements, and play through what will probably be the last computer RPG with a real story.
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sig sig sputnik
Unfortunately, I went to play Planescape after playing BG2, and BG2 ruined it for me. Yes, I could tell that Planescape looked like fun from the beginning, but BG2's graphics were much better (1024x768 is much better than 640x480, even if BG2 didn't make proper use of it) and the interface was considerably better. I know it shouldn't really matter, but it did.
(Note that BG2 and Planescape had the same general interface -- an isometric view, 2D sprites, etc. BG2 just had it polished a good deal more, as it came out later.)
Neverwinter Nights was sort of fun too, but it never really did it for me like BG2 did. Sure, the graphics were better, but I really missed having a full party, and the story wasn't nearly as good. (Story is very important for games like this.) And the interface never seemed right, though I couldn't really put my finger on it, beyond never really liking those `radial selection things'.
It would be very neat if Planescape came out with either the BG2 or NWN engine (or something newer.) The BG2 engine could probably be done relatively simply, though the artwork might need to be redrawn (or we could just have a larger screen, which would be nice too) and the NWN engine would probably require a complete rewrite. And considering how poorly Planescape sold, I don't see this happening. A pity.
The game probably would have sold a little better if at wasn't for the god-awful box art. I had zero interest in the game from looking at the box and didn't actually play it until several years after it had been released.
Planescape: Torment was doomed to be a cult classic. Combine the unique and often disturbing setting, the cabal of antiheroes that follow you through the game, the fan favorite voice talent - like Dan "Homer Simpson" Castellaneta - and a story that some gamers called "intellectual" and others dismissed as "brainy" and "dull," and you've got a product that was sure to ward off casual players, yet convert others into lifelong devotees. Planescape's ideas on character development and storytelling are still bold and exciting - and today's mainstream hack-and-slash adventures could still take lessons from it.
The strangest, and one of the least successful RPGs from Black Isle (the company that brought you the Icewind Dale series), Planescape: Torment, which was released in 1999, took a risk by using the alternate Dungeons and Dragons campaign of Planescape, a not-really-fantasy, not-really-futuristic world that's mostly defined as unstable and bizarre. Strange and unruly dimensions intersect at the city of Sigil, where most of the game takes place, and your character, portentously called The Nameless One, wakes up in a mortuary with amnesia, a battered shell of a body that cannot die, and just one friend: a flying, talking skull. And the game gets stranger from there
People remember Planescape most fondly for its characters. The NPCs that join your party - including a reformed succubus, a psychopath engulfed in flames and a girl with a Scottish accent and a rat's tail (who was voiced by pop star Sheena Easton and was, well, wicked hot) - are not only exotic, but their motives and back stories make them feel three-dimensional. But the most complicated character is the one that you control. Planescape neatly balances a rich protagonist with an emergent narrative: Although you wake up as a blank slate and you can roleplay any way you choose, you're just the latest in a series of personalities that have controlled this beaten-up body. The Nameless One has also been wild and savage, cold and calculating, and an obnoxious do-gooder - and you have to deal with the fallout. (It's true that LucasArts' Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic pulled a similar trick, but the reveal was far more straightforward.)
Most RPGs don't respond to your behavior in any serious way, except maybe to give you either a "good" or "evil" ending after you beat the game; while the Dungeons and Dragons rules use an alignment grid that extends from good to evil, and from lawful to chaotic, most dungeon crawls just tack it on as another attribute. But in Planescape, alignment informs every part of the world you're in. Instead of your usual fighters' or thieves' guilds, the factions include the Anarchists, the Godsmen, and a pack of people who roam like wild dogs. Everything, from your gnarled body to the changing city streets to all of the planes around you, shifts and disrupts based on nothing but principles; one city physically drops from its original plane to a more nightmarish one after its people become chaotic. The same conflicts that rack the Nameless One also torment the people you meet,
the neighborhoods you walk through, and the world around you all the way up to the endless "Blood War" between law and chaos that rages at the edge of the game's world. Ideas become real, and the conflicts in your head are reflected on gigantic battlefields; like your character, the entirety of the world is in turmoil.
You could go so far as to call Planescape a work of art; it's a truly interactive story that would only work in this medium, and with this setting. You spend more time exploring ideas than game maps, and you experience a character, making his actions and suffering your own. And crucially, Planescape never settles for simple answers or gives up its secrets. Fans are still arguing over the themes and the ending, like movie buffs arguing over, say, Donnie Darko. And even the players who "beat" it keep coming back to the question at the heart of the game: "What can change the nature of a man?" End Article
Chris Dahlen is a freelance writer for Pitchforkmedia.com, the Boston Phoenix, Signal to Noise, Paste, and The Wire (New Hampshire). His website is Save The Robot.
Sounds cool. I'm in. .torm...err, .torrent please.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I loved Torment. That game is definately up there in the best of all-time. Not only did it have the most interesting and complex storyline I've ever seen in a game, a cast of interesting characters that you can actually talk to, (not just this banter and occasional stuff like BG2 had), and excellent graphics and music, beyond all that, it made you think and it made you believe. And that is what Planescape was all about. Torment was a game that gave you choices. Lots of choices. Sure, the over-all storyline was rather linear, but there were many different ways to get there, and no two peoples' paths would be the same. You had to create your character from nothing more than a beat-up undying amnesiac, and by the end, that character was you. Your character reflected the choices you made, and those choices were created from your thoughts and beliefs about the scenarios presented in the game. Well, if you cared while you played it, of course. Torment asks one fundamental question: What can change the nature of a man? What did you tell Ravel Puzzlewell? What did you tell the Transcendent One? What was your answer? Or were you too concerned with flashy lights and box art know or care? The game has a lot of dialog, narration, and description in it. Thousands and thousands of lines of it. So what? Take a look at the work of Josh Mandel, quite possibly one of the best writers adventure gaming ever had. He wrote thousands of lines of narration for Space Quest VI, so that you could click on everything and get something funny back. He wrote Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, another game with thousands of lines of narration, and no narrator for it. Mandel made you laugh, and Torment's writers made you think and believe. There's so much there that you're going to miss some of it, so you'll play again and again. Unless of course, you're too concerned with the box art to play in the first place. Torment is a game that you have to spend some time with to understand. You have to read and you have to think. What's wrong with that? Besides, it's been years since I've read one of those Star Trek novels.
Seriously, now. EVERY FREAKING WEEK they get a plug here. WE GET IT! YOU LOVE THE ESCAPIST! Go get a room so you two can do goatse style shit to each other.
Seriously, just add a slashbox and be done with this. I like reading the Escapist as much as the next guy, but come on now. They can't be paying you that much, can they?
Look, it's ok to say you didn't like the game. That's great, you're welcome to your opinion. However, just because you didn't like it doesn't mean it was "overrated" -- the consensus of the majority of the people who've played the game is that it's amazing. A much more likely answer is that you're the who's underrating it.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Sorry, the majority are not always right; if they were there would be no such word as "overrated" yes? Anyway, Planescape bombed commerically compared with BG/IWD so don't be so sure. The people who are still talking about it now probably did think it was amazing.
The plot of Planescape is somewhat trite and predictable. The dialogue writing is average to fair. The setting is the same-old same-old with a few cosmetic changes.
This sort of thing had been done countless times before.
Let me explain to you why "over rated". When people talk about Planescape they discuss things like the plot and the quality of the writing. Words like "literate", "dramatic" and "philosophical" are used. These are people who clearly know nothing about good writing or drama; ie. computer nerds who if they do read anything other than programming manuals only read paperbacks with pictures of spaceships or unicorns on the front. They overrate the game because it far outside their expertise to assess it in the terms they are using. These are, for example, the same people who consider the FF VII theme to be a great piece of classical music and thought the Matrix was stunning philosophical statement.
Another specific problem is if you aren't blinded by the Shakespearean prose (LOL) you'll notice that a majority of the missions are basically FedEx jobs. People who do that in real life get paid because its tedious. I don't pay money to be a glorified mail man.
As an RPG it wasn't bad, I much preferred Fallout but thats just my opinion. But people don't restrain themselves to just considering a computer game, they get all flowery and at that point I think they are indeed overrating it.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
paragraphs.
:)
paragraphs are good.
(capitalization is optional, however.
If any game ever deserved a remake, it's this one. I really think it's one of the best stories of any game I've ever played.. It had me glued the entire time. It just needs a graphics update for the Ritalin generation.
I played through it twice (a few years apart), and encountered characters, plots, and levels I never even saw in the first play through. My wife then played it, and uncovered yet again characters, plots and levels I had never encountered in both play throughs.
Truely amazing game - memorable not just because of the depth, the supporting characters you could care (at least a little) about...but for being one of the few CRPG's where you can actually ROLE play, instead of hack/slash. Only games that I've played that have come close in the past few years are KOTOR I/II.
I was bagging the article, not the game.
I suppose I'm going to sound like an snob for saying so, but I really don't think you were part of Planescape Torment's target audience. The draw of the game was the characters and the development of the story, along with having the ability to have your actions actually have an impact.
:P
The technological aspects of the game were very well suited to that task, and did not hinder either major facet much at all (the running back and forth between room-screens became annoying once or twice, IIRC, and/or there was one exit hotspot in a particular area that was a royal pain to find).
In summary, the best CRPGs have all been about story and substance over eye candy. Even Morrowind (*some* say it was a good CRPG, so leave me alone) left a ton of room for improvement in the eye candy department, especially when it came to the character models. If you think Planescape Torment sucked, what do you think about Darklands?
(P.S. Planescape Torment's music was awesome, too.)
I've read many a story (or seen movies) with a "relucatant immortal/cain/wandering jew/etc" character - in virtually all of them the character ends the story as he began it - reluctantly immortal. For the few where they are released - its usually do to the intervention of someone else (a gift from some higher power) or as an unexpected side effect of some quest or another. I've certainly never read a story where the antagonist, let alone any other character, is someone's Mortality...
Any story, let alone a computer game, where the protaganist is someone who is trying to find a way to destroy his own immortality, is certainly in a very small circle of stories.
I never thought there was anything wrong with the art, but Wikipedia has a picture of the cover for you to judge for yourself.
as it happens I'm really a bit of a wimp.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
This game is truly one of the best I've ever played. It sat unplayed on my shelf since 1999. Maybe I had some growing up to do, but playing it now has been a sublime experience. The Baldur's Gate series was one of my favorite of all time, so I guess Planescape's adventure-game puzzles and heavy dialogue with the Infinity Engine caught me off guard.
There's also still a fairly responsive community for the game on Planetbaldursgate.com
Check out Platter's Planescape-torment.org for good stuff like fan patches and story analysis.
If you like Planescape, I also highly reccommend Arcanum. It's not nearly as high quality, but the world and storytelling are still quite good and off the beaten path.
Nice introduction, but where's the article? Is that it?
All I'll say is can you name any other dramatist (who isn't Russian) whose work has genuinely outlived their own time? Well maybe you can, although I can't think of very many, the cupboard is surprisingly bare.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76