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nano_mooseWay back in the mists of ages past, I promised Squeem I would write a pimp post for Planescape: Torment. And here it is at long last while I draw my design assessment! I probably have a lot more to say about why it's so awesome - including babbling about the characters - but a) most of it is spoilers and b) it would make this post nine times the size of God.
I'll get the boring bits out of the way first:
- Torment is a 1999 isometric, Western RPG made with the Infinity Engine, based in the DnD setting Planescape, and using its rules.
- It was developed by Black Isle, who also made Fallout, and worked on by a number of the same people as Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Knights of the Old Republic 2.
- To progress, you gain experience by completing quests, exploring places, finding interesting objects, talking to people or killing things, and gain levels in your chosen class, Fighter, Mage or Thief.
- You make choices, and your choices reflect in your alignment; you can become more chaotic or lawful and more good or evil, depending on how you handle the various conundrums thrown your way.
But that's not what it is at all. That's just its skin; the heart is something else entirely.
The story starts with you waking up in a morgue, surrounded by zombies and dead people on slabs in varying states of dissection, and you hardly have time to work out what the hell just happened when a talking skull, named Morte, floats up and says hello. And it is by talking to him that you realise you remember nothing; your name, your past, how you came to be where you are, it's simply not there.
And that's not the weirdest part. Very quickly - it's a dangerous world - you learn that you can't die. Every fatal wound sees you waking up back in the morgue with a headache and a few new scars (by this point you're covered in them from head to foot, your skin has gone the grey of stone and you vaguely resemble a zombie). And someone has been using you as a notebook; there's a series of tattoos on your back giving instructions to find your journal, in the possession of someone whose name you've never heard before. Or have you? And so begins your quest to find out just who and what you are, to learn about the world, and, eventually, to die.
The world, incidentally, is Sigil, the City of Doors, centre of the Planes; a nexus for portals from every conceivable place ruled by the silent and frightful Lady of Pain. Here's all you need to know about it: against the backdrop of Sigil, your situation doesn't seem very strange.
But that's still not at all it is, either. Torment...it's like nothing else I've ever played. The developers took every advantage they could of the setting and the premise, to an extent that few other developers have attempted. Take that the Planescape is a consensus reality; you can get more done by convincing people of something than by killing them, since believing something hard enough makes it true. Your charisma, wisdom and intelligence stats will serve you far better than strength or constitution. And your amnesia and immortality are never, ever simply convenient gameplay mechanics; they're tied deeply into the plot and your character, The Nameless One. Your party members are so much more than combat stats. They're people, and they're friends, and often they are completely fucking insane, but it's part of the fun.
Oh yeah, fun. The game is not really about that. Note that it is not called Planescape: Nice, or Planescape: Happy Endings. It's a dark, vicious world that you've woken up in, and there's every possibility that you yourself match it, and you just don't remember. Every step you take into your bizarre and tangled past makes you wish more fervently that you'd stayed on your nice cold slab.
So, why you should play it in spite of that:
- Kidding aside for a moment; it is very, very clever. Genuinely mature, rather than just pretending to be for the sales *coughWarriorWithinhack*, sorry, got something caught in my throat. For example it contains a brothel, but it’s a brothel for slaking intellectual lusts - good conversation, say, or educated debate, or a story you've never heard, or a really cutting insult. Or the factions, which each have their own and deeply interesting beliefs and philosophies.
This isn't to say it doesn't have a fair share of gamey-stupidness, but the rest of it is so smart it doesn't matter. That's not a recommendation I give lightly.
- It's weird. There's a Sigilian cross between mantra and platitude that says it all, really: "You'll see stranger things in the Planes." I could trap you here all day talking about the bizarreness I came across, except I have a feeling I haven't found it all - or even two thirds of it all.
- It's funny. From Morte and his fondness for the ladies - he's a floating, talking skull, and the narration very strongly advises you not to speculate - to The Nameless One's random moments of getting fed up with this crap, to Nordom's relentless and slightly cracked logic, to the general iron-edged cynicism of everyone in Sigil. I love it.
- It's sad. It made me cry, it made me sit staring at the wall in despair, it made me yearn desperately to help these people, it made me feel guilty for crimes that neither I-the-player nor I-the-character had committed or remembered committing.
- It's mean. You know how evil in, say, Knights of the Old Republic boiled down to punching people for looking at you funny, practicing your maniacal laugh, and stealing candy from children?
You don't get that in Torment.
You get things that...I can't bring myself to describe specifically. They're that horrible. Suffice to say it involves an evil path a thread of Something Awful goons unanimously agreed was impossible for any non-sociopath to go through, and the complete mental disintegration of a number of your party members, past and present. If Torment does not at any point cause you to say "Oh - oh god," aloud to yourself in response to certain revelations, then I trust you exchanged your soul for something fun.
- And the key thing about this is that it doesn't do it with gore. There is gore, and it's disgusting and awful, but it also seems that it's just natural, given that you so often travel the pathways of the dead.
- The aesthetic is - not exactly what I would call beautiful, but rich and varied and interesting. There're no soft edges and very few 'fantasy' trapping like elves or whatever. It even has some vaguely steampunk elements.
- It messes around with a number of conventions of both video games and fantasy - for instance, there is no Save the World plot. It's not about the world, really; it's about you as The Nameless One learning about yourself, and eventually realising what that means. Even the ending villains aren't precisely what you’d expect, but they're perfectly in tune with that conceit.
- The Nameless One is one of the ugliest sons of bitches ever to wear the mantle of 'main protagonist'. It's fantastic.
- Tony Jay was in it.
- So are Dan Castlenetta, Robert Paulsen and Jennifer Hale. They're all awesome.
- Kafka jokes. Mime jokes. Biting inventory items. Talking books, prosthetic heads. Baby Oil, made from babies. A Chaotic Nameless One's odd fixation with 'your mother' lines. The Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum. "Why are you being an armoire in this brothel?"
A caveat: there is a lot of talky/ready. It's the closest I've seen to an interactive novel without actually being a text adventure game, and it requires a lot of patience and time/emotional investment to fully appreciate. And that's if you can actually find it - due to the old, stupid story of it not being properly advertised and failing to sell, there aren't many copies around. Though it has received more interest in recent years, that's just made it harder to find - I've seen copies selling for hundreds of Australian dollars, more than even new games.
If you ever get a chance to pick up Torment - and I hope that you do - then please, please give it a go. Not just because I'm kind of tired of being lone voice squawking about games-as-art and the importance of writing and the utter vitalness of interactivity, but because everyone deserves to see just what the medium is capable of.
What can change the nature of a man?
I'll get the boring bits out of the way first:
- Torment is a 1999 isometric, Western RPG made with the Infinity Engine, based in the DnD setting Planescape, and using its rules.
- It was developed by Black Isle, who also made Fallout, and worked on by a number of the same people as Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Knights of the Old Republic 2.
- To progress, you gain experience by completing quests, exploring places, finding interesting objects, talking to people or killing things, and gain levels in your chosen class, Fighter, Mage or Thief.
- You make choices, and your choices reflect in your alignment; you can become more chaotic or lawful and more good or evil, depending on how you handle the various conundrums thrown your way.
But that's not what it is at all. That's just its skin; the heart is something else entirely.
The story starts with you waking up in a morgue, surrounded by zombies and dead people on slabs in varying states of dissection, and you hardly have time to work out what the hell just happened when a talking skull, named Morte, floats up and says hello. And it is by talking to him that you realise you remember nothing; your name, your past, how you came to be where you are, it's simply not there.
And that's not the weirdest part. Very quickly - it's a dangerous world - you learn that you can't die. Every fatal wound sees you waking up back in the morgue with a headache and a few new scars (by this point you're covered in them from head to foot, your skin has gone the grey of stone and you vaguely resemble a zombie). And someone has been using you as a notebook; there's a series of tattoos on your back giving instructions to find your journal, in the possession of someone whose name you've never heard before. Or have you? And so begins your quest to find out just who and what you are, to learn about the world, and, eventually, to die.
The world, incidentally, is Sigil, the City of Doors, centre of the Planes; a nexus for portals from every conceivable place ruled by the silent and frightful Lady of Pain. Here's all you need to know about it: against the backdrop of Sigil, your situation doesn't seem very strange.
But that's still not at all it is, either. Torment...it's like nothing else I've ever played. The developers took every advantage they could of the setting and the premise, to an extent that few other developers have attempted. Take that the Planescape is a consensus reality; you can get more done by convincing people of something than by killing them, since believing something hard enough makes it true. Your charisma, wisdom and intelligence stats will serve you far better than strength or constitution. And your amnesia and immortality are never, ever simply convenient gameplay mechanics; they're tied deeply into the plot and your character, The Nameless One. Your party members are so much more than combat stats. They're people, and they're friends, and often they are completely fucking insane, but it's part of the fun.
Oh yeah, fun. The game is not really about that. Note that it is not called Planescape: Nice, or Planescape: Happy Endings. It's a dark, vicious world that you've woken up in, and there's every possibility that you yourself match it, and you just don't remember. Every step you take into your bizarre and tangled past makes you wish more fervently that you'd stayed on your nice cold slab.
So, why you should play it in spite of that:
- Kidding aside for a moment; it is very, very clever. Genuinely mature, rather than just pretending to be for the sales *coughWarriorWithinhack*, sorry, got something caught in my throat. For example it contains a brothel, but it’s a brothel for slaking intellectual lusts - good conversation, say, or educated debate, or a story you've never heard, or a really cutting insult. Or the factions, which each have their own and deeply interesting beliefs and philosophies.
This isn't to say it doesn't have a fair share of gamey-stupidness, but the rest of it is so smart it doesn't matter. That's not a recommendation I give lightly.
- It's weird. There's a Sigilian cross between mantra and platitude that says it all, really: "You'll see stranger things in the Planes." I could trap you here all day talking about the bizarreness I came across, except I have a feeling I haven't found it all - or even two thirds of it all.
- It's funny. From Morte and his fondness for the ladies - he's a floating, talking skull, and the narration very strongly advises you not to speculate - to The Nameless One's random moments of getting fed up with this crap, to Nordom's relentless and slightly cracked logic, to the general iron-edged cynicism of everyone in Sigil. I love it.
- It's sad. It made me cry, it made me sit staring at the wall in despair, it made me yearn desperately to help these people, it made me feel guilty for crimes that neither I-the-player nor I-the-character had committed or remembered committing.
- It's mean. You know how evil in, say, Knights of the Old Republic boiled down to punching people for looking at you funny, practicing your maniacal laugh, and stealing candy from children?
You don't get that in Torment.
You get things that...I can't bring myself to describe specifically. They're that horrible. Suffice to say it involves an evil path a thread of Something Awful goons unanimously agreed was impossible for any non-sociopath to go through, and the complete mental disintegration of a number of your party members, past and present. If Torment does not at any point cause you to say "Oh - oh god," aloud to yourself in response to certain revelations, then I trust you exchanged your soul for something fun.
- And the key thing about this is that it doesn't do it with gore. There is gore, and it's disgusting and awful, but it also seems that it's just natural, given that you so often travel the pathways of the dead.
- The aesthetic is - not exactly what I would call beautiful, but rich and varied and interesting. There're no soft edges and very few 'fantasy' trapping like elves or whatever. It even has some vaguely steampunk elements.
- It messes around with a number of conventions of both video games and fantasy - for instance, there is no Save the World plot. It's not about the world, really; it's about you as The Nameless One learning about yourself, and eventually realising what that means. Even the ending villains aren't precisely what you’d expect, but they're perfectly in tune with that conceit.
- The Nameless One is one of the ugliest sons of bitches ever to wear the mantle of 'main protagonist'. It's fantastic.
- Tony Jay was in it.
- So are Dan Castlenetta, Robert Paulsen and Jennifer Hale. They're all awesome.
- Kafka jokes. Mime jokes. Biting inventory items. Talking books, prosthetic heads. Baby Oil, made from babies. A Chaotic Nameless One's odd fixation with 'your mother' lines. The Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum. "Why are you being an armoire in this brothel?"
A caveat: there is a lot of talky/ready. It's the closest I've seen to an interactive novel without actually being a text adventure game, and it requires a lot of patience and time/emotional investment to fully appreciate. And that's if you can actually find it - due to the old, stupid story of it not being properly advertised and failing to sell, there aren't many copies around. Though it has received more interest in recent years, that's just made it harder to find - I've seen copies selling for hundreds of Australian dollars, more than even new games.
If you ever get a chance to pick up Torment - and I hope that you do - then please, please give it a go. Not just because I'm kind of tired of being lone voice squawking about games-as-art and the importance of writing and the utter vitalness of interactivity, but because everyone deserves to see just what the medium is capable of.
What can change the nature of a man?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-17 09:55 am (UTC)Reposted for HTML phail.
Date: 2009-03-17 01:26 pm (UTC)I am terribly curious about this mysterious horrifying evil path.
Oh man, well, here's a vaguely spoilery sample:
There's a character you can get in your party who is from a certain race. This race's history involves long ages of horrific enslavement by another species, until the day two of them rose up and inspired the rest into a bloody rebellion. When the war - and it was by all accounts a long and nasty one - was won, the first race vowed that they would never, ever wear chains again, as long as they existed. Their entire culture and outlook and even spirituality since then is built on this; on indomitable will and knowledge of thyself.
Now, it seems at some point this character swore a life-debt - to serve The Nameless One until one of them was killed. Except you can't be killed, so he's bound to you until he is. He'll do anything you ask him to, he has to, for his honour. Frequently, he expresses his desire to die so he can escape the chains, because nothing else - not even your word - will free him.
And you can sell him into slavery. He doesn't even fight back or protest,, because he can't. It's apparently easy, though I never tried it because I couldn't even stand ordering him around too much and I spent a lot of my time looking for a way to free him (he's one of my favourite characters, actually).
This is one awful deed in many dozens - possibly even hundreds - of awful deeds. I'd say on a scale of one to ten for the evil in the game, it's about an eight. There's worse. It's a mean, mean game, though on the other hand that just made it more satisfying being my usual saintly character, and there are moments of wonderful niceness to balance it out.