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."

Nothing beats..

[OmgTEHMATRICKS]

Fallout and Fallout 2 from Black Isle. At least, where Black Isle games are concerned. Those games kick many asses.

Atmospheric depth

[andphi]

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.

Re:Atmospheric depth

[bradbeattie]

Note that Planescape: Torment laughs at the mindless hack 'n' slash genre. There's a Modron gauntlet you can access mid-way through the game; it's something you need to see to appreciate. That only highlighted to me why I loved the game: it had depth. I'm sure it's less dynamic than I give it credit for, but I never felt steamrollered into a choice. Not many games can boast that.

Needs a remake ...

[dougmc]

Planescape is exactly the sort of game I ought to love -- for example, I thought Baldur's Gate II [bioware.com] was one of the greatest games ever. (BG1 was good too, but BG2 was a good deal better.)

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.

Re:Atmospheric depth

[vitamine73]

the only computer RPG you can get trough without a fight, seriously!
yes, fallout (1) was also great, but it stood out not only for its story but also for its analog interface that was out off this world, but PST was just a wicked story in which you could actually roleplay if you had the brains and charisma to do it! just a memorable piece

Re:Box Art

[screwballicus]

Indeed, this is a point which Chris Avellone made fairly recently in an interview with gamegirl.org [gamer-girl.org]

Specifically,

MCA: Well, it sold all right, although it didn't do Baldur's Gate numbers, but rarely did a PC RPG do that well anyway. I guess some obstacles to its sales were the nature of the game itself (very text heavy, non-traditional gameworld), a shitty box cover (all that had to be done was make a box cover that looked similar to the Baldur's Gate one, and be done with it), and those are the only factors I can see. There was probably more, but those are the ones I can point to and wince.

Overrated? Feh.

[SageOfShadowdale]

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.

Re:No, you are wrong.

[BlightThePower]

Fair I think. I don't so much take any of that back but to be honest the rhetorical style was for effect mainly because it was a comment attached to something I felt had been unfairly modded down in the first place. I'd like to see more open minded debate in general on this site but the groupthink is sometimes very strong with regard to the majority opinion. Frankly I find being a bit muscular is often the only way back into the discussion, and actually it did work looking at the moderation.

More positively let me say this, Planescape wasn't bad but I think we can do better, a lot better. A game could become, as it were, great literature. I genuinely believe that. There was a time when nobody thought film could be an artistic medium either and photography was just for snaps. Basically I'd hate to think that it was considered some sort of pinnacle of interactive story telling when its really just a foot hill. Lets not stop here, lets press on. In this world of sequel factories, computer game censors and so on I hope the chances aren't missed.