Planescape: Torment

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JaySevenZero
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Planescape: Torment

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your memories and opinions of Planescape: Torment for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

Friendly reminder to all that where feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but self-editing (brevity) is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mainly reading. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
markinthehouseofwood

Re: 398: Planescape: Torment

Post by markinthehouseofwood »

About five years ago I googled “best videogame lines ever written”. Probably just one of those needs to check off I’d done the greats. And there it was, crammed between G-Man’s Half Life 2 narration and most of The Last of Us. The story of a man waking up with no memory next to a woman declaring he had a single wish left. It stuck with me for the four years in between reading that and finally get my hands on a working copy of Planescape: Torment and play my way through this adventure. I’d grown up with the old PC Baldur’s Gate series, so the combat was nothing unfamiliar, if a little clunky. But I wasn’t here for the gameplay. The characters, whilst each unique and brilliant in their own ways weren’t my focus either.

What kept me coming back was you, The Nameless One and how refreshing it was to play an RPG where you weren’t the nameless god-child here to save all mankind or submit them to your evil. Kill the bad guy, save the world/become them this wasn’t. Here you were driven to find out what kept bringing you back from the dead and to answer that eternal, impossibly human question: “what can change the nature of a man?”. It was the little touches I loved. The fact your morality is pre-determined, but is chosen organically with your choices. That realisation that all your companions were bound to you by trickery from a person you used to be and had the potential to be even worse than. Those little moments in the dialogue: “Don’t trust the skull.”

And then we get to the end, where you face your uncaring and unchanging morality on every possible level. It’s murdered all your companions. You can fight it and finish the game like any other, with a difficult boss fight that will test all your skills. Or you can answer that question which has plagued you the whole game. As a player I know this should feel very mechanic based, by having so many points in Wisdom/Intelligence I can talk my way out of the game. And yet there’s something about the answer that moves me to my core as a human being:

“If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.”

As someone with a lot of self-doubt it has spurred me on when things can feel too much. There’s a lot of comfort to be taken in it. That no matter how much we can lose our way what we believe can change who we are into who we deserve to be.

Three word review: changing mankind’s nature.
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Caliburn M
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Re: 398: Planescape: Torment

Post by Caliburn M »

I'll keep this short as I played and finished Torment soon after release and don't fully recollect all the details but what I do recall is pretty much all good,. Most of all I remember the Nameless One waking in the mortuary and finding Morte, an unusual beginning for a decidedly unusual RPG and it was the Nameless One's search that really made me want to keep playing the game.

Having played and enjoyed previous infinity engine games I was looking forward to Torment despite being unfamiliar with the Planscape setting and was not disappointed. The world and characters were generally far more diverse and interesting than other games but they still managed to hang together as an cohesive believable whole something its spiritual successor Torment Tides of Numenera never quite achieved.

While I felt (unlike some others) its combat was pretty much on par with previous games the other options it gave you allowed a more varied approach than the talk-bash-talk cycle of similar games, an approach unfortunately largely ignored by many games that followed.

It's a game I would still recommend everyone to try, particularly as an updated version has been recently released, well anyone who doesn't mind reading anyway :) In fact it's definitely time for me to return to Sigil.
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Simonsloth
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Re: 398: Planescape: Torment

Post by Simonsloth »

Planescape: Torment has always been on my backlog so I was pleased to see it on this years playlist so I could give it a whirl. The elevator pitch for this game sounds fantastic and pretty much ticks every box required to get me interested.

In truth I really wish I never started it and It’s been the bane of my gaming life this year. I kept thinking it was going to get better and chipped away at it over the year before finishing it a few weeks ago. My main issue was that I just didn’t find it fun or rewarding to play. I’d love a trimmed down version as the narrative, characters and world building are interesting but as it is unfortunately I didn’t really like it. Couple this with the massive time investment involved in finishing it I’ve been left with a bad taste in my mouth which wouldn’t have been there had it been a quarter of the length.

(You’re probably wondering why I persevered, well it’s Sean Bell’s fault. Every time I gave up he would bring it up on the computer game show and I would boot it up again. His elevator pitch is pretty convincing.)
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