How did you discover the original Ps: Torment?
DJKajuru
Member Posts: 3,300
Hello cutters!
The year was 1999 , I was 11 and I remember reading an article on a rpg magazine about Torment. It gave a brief definition of the Ps setting and the Torment story, focusing on the fact that the protagonist can't die (actually, can't stay dead for long) , and explained how different it was from Baldur's Gate, specially the fact that you couldn't choose a class but you could find someone to teach you a new one. Finally, it reinforced the fact that all npc's had lots of interesting things to say (not just rumours and gossip as in BG) and you could actually LIE to them (as in the quest where you can pretend you avenged the tiefling's sisters just to get the reward.).
It looked so exotic and cool that I just needed to play it. Also, it was the first IE game I had ever played so it sure has a special spot in my heart.
How you guys, how did you get to know about it?
The year was 1999 , I was 11 and I remember reading an article on a rpg magazine about Torment. It gave a brief definition of the Ps setting and the Torment story, focusing on the fact that the protagonist can't die (actually, can't stay dead for long) , and explained how different it was from Baldur's Gate, specially the fact that you couldn't choose a class but you could find someone to teach you a new one. Finally, it reinforced the fact that all npc's had lots of interesting things to say (not just rumours and gossip as in BG) and you could actually LIE to them (as in the quest where you can pretend you avenged the tiefling's sisters just to get the reward.).
It looked so exotic and cool that I just needed to play it. Also, it was the first IE game I had ever played so it sure has a special spot in my heart.
How you guys, how did you get to know about it?
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It was 2000, just after Christmas iirc. I was 12, and my mother needed a haircut, and so did I, but first we went to our local k-mart, which always somehow had reasonably new games. I wasn't really too keen to buy anything, because I was all set to get IWD and had pre-ordered BG2, which I was reading everything I could about at the time, because I was a hardcore BG1 fan. I even went to the local radio shack and convinced them to special order ship my copy of BG2 lol.I played BG1 so much that my disks eventually wore out (cds can become floppy and the labels fell off) lol. Anyways, so I scamper off to the modest electronic section at k-mart, and I spot this strange orange box with a blue looking guy on it, and I see the Black Isle logo. I'd not seen anything relating to Torment, but at the time I mostly just played other games with what time I got to tie up the phone line lol.
But that Black Isle logo had become a seal of excellence to me, and so I ran and grabbed my mom and begged her to buy it for me, it was cheaper than normal, so she agreed. So, I remember sitting in the old barber shop (it was a husband and wife team, wife did women's hair and husband did men's) and reading through the manual and getting progressively more and more excited to race home and stick the disks in to begin the grand old installation process. I hardly understood anything about the game, but I knew I loved it. I've always been partial to games with lots of NPC interaction, and man oh man did this game have a lot of it. I was hooked.
I still remember that I got *so* frustrated because I needed to figure out how to open the portal to see Pharod, but for the life of me my 12 year old brain could *not* figure out where said portal was, and I talked to every NPC I could think of to try to figure it out (bypassing, due to ignorance the few who will tell you - provided you say the right things and have the right build), and eventually gave up.
I didn't even come close to beating the game until 2 years later, and boy oh boy did I feel stupid when I found that portal lol.
Life was different when you couldn't just look things up lol.
So yea anyways, for various reasons it took me awhile to getting around to playing it. Worth the wait though.
Edit: After writing this I realized I must have played Shadows of Amn at some point before I got it off GoG, since I remember playing it without ToB.
Please note: you cannot import characters from other Infinity Engine games such as Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment or the first Icewind Dale.
By the time I got around to looking into BG, BG:EE was announced, so I decided to hold off buying it. But I heard there were other great RPGs made on the same engine, so I ended up picking up PS:T on GoG.
I made it about half way through the game when BG:EE came out, I decided to put PS:T on pause, but this ended up being a mistake. When I went back to PS:T I found the UI so bad compared to what I became used to with BG:EE that I never finished the game (I was fighting the UI instead of the enemies of the game). But now that PST:EE is here, I am looking forward to seeing how the story ends.
I saw the TSR / Bioware / Black Isle logos, looked at the back, and instantly purchased it as back then, I had been hooked to baldur's gate pretty heavily
I did not regret buying that... and it's still part of my collection of boxed games, alongside BG1 and BG2
It was a long time, and a long time hearing about how good the game was from the internet, that I finally got round to playing it.
I knew of the game, like the Fallouts, from the old Black Isle message boards, but the graphics seemed worse than BG1 based on screenshots I had seen, so I had put off getting it until that Best Buy impulse purchase.
When Planescape came out, being a Dungeons and Dragons title with the Black Isle logo on it, it was an automatic buy. English is my second language and I missed much of the content on my first playthrough, but I was *fascinated*. It's one thing to read PC Gamer, it's another one entirely to experience Planescape's writing.
I still miss the good old days of print magazines, the suspense of expecting news once a month only, figuring out games on your own rather than googling for quest answers, and smelling the fresh ink off the magazine!
the most specific criticism there was that it is "relatively short"
I remember spending the first 30 minutes so frustrated with the radial menu (very un-BG-like, and my itty bitty brain simply couldn't figure it out) -- I couldn't get *anything* to work -- and I almost gave up. I gave it one more chance... and it became my most favorite game, ever.