Why You Should Play PS:T -- An Informative Rant
Madhax
Member Posts: 1,416
Good afternoon, fellow adventurers of the Sword Coast. I come to you today somewhat shocked by the number of BG players who haven't played Planescape: Torment, judging by the "What Infinity Engine games have you beaten?" poll on these boards. Now, even as a huge fan of the game myself, I recognize that PS:T is pretty far from what I might call "mainstream", and I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody. But you guys aren't just anybodies, you're BG players. You have two feet firmly planted in this style of game, and all you need to do is nudge yourself forward to enjoy PS:T.
So, I bring you this: A list of reasons to play PS:T. Bullet-pointed for ease of reading, in no particular order, all off the top of my head with very little preparation on my end. I hope this changes some people's minds, or at the very least gives you something to read while pretending to work.
1. It's the best-written game you'll ever play. Yes, that's a subjective evaluation, but I think if you give it a shot you'll agree. The story of PS:T has no comparison to other games, novels, or movies. It's just crazy. I won't spoil anything by saying more.
2. It has better party members than anything the BG series has to offer. So much more effort is put into these characters' stories and personality. You like Minsc? Yeah, he's pretty cool. Meet Morte, a floating, wisecracking skull with a never-ending supply of one-liners, questionable bits of advice, and sweet interactions with the plot, not to mention infinitely better fighting skills than his dimwitted ranger counterpart. You think Edwin is a powerful mage? Take Ignis along for the ride, a mage so consumed by his desire for power that his body became a living portal into the elemental plane of fire.
3. The dialogue is the best of any Infinity Engine game. Every stat potentially impacts your conversation options, unlocking new conversation routes depending on your build. You have the option to lie and mislead in conversations, or to make binding vows. I've had entire play sessions comprised of nothing but dialogue, and been satisfied with that session. Hell, I've had entire play sessions comprised of nothing but dialogue with my own party members, and it was fantastic. There is so much to discover.
4. Alignment actually CHANGES. This is something the BG series barely does. You start at True Neutral, and your actions throughout the course of the game alter the PC's alignment. This allows for much better roleplay than just picking an alignment and forgetting about it, especially since there are many points in the game where your alignment becomes relevant.
5. The setting is an extremely welcome shift from classic Forgotten Realms, if you haven't experienced it yet. This is a loose comparison, but if you prefer Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings, you'll likely appreciate the tonal shift. There are beggars and prostitutes everywhere, as well as vicious gang members and all sorts of shady characters. Bother the wrong traveler on the street, and he'll attack you. Guards aren't going to come to your aid. There's no Order of the Radiant Heart or Temple of Lathander to comfortably hang out with the goody-goodies of the world.
6. The main character is so much more compelling than BG's Bhaalspawn protagonist. Granted, some people might appreciate the option to concoct their own backstory for a protagonist and won't have that option in PS:T, but the tradeoff is a much more fleshed-out character. You start as a neutral human male fighter, with a malleable alignment and class. That's all I'm going to say about the protagonist, as I encourage you to find out the rest yourself, but suffice to say that I'd place his story on par with pretty much every popular NPC of the BG saga combined.
7. The combat actually isn't that bad. It's common for people to be critical of it, and they aren't wrong, but there are some really cool spells to cast that aren't in the BG saga, as well as several really great set-pieces to battle through. BG and IWD undoubtedly have better combat, but PS:T isn't as deficient in this category as people say.
8. There is a TON of replay value. I find new things every time I go through the game. There are hidden areas, rare items, and wildly different paths you can take through the game. All sorts of secrets are there for you to find. If you need convincing, here's a minor spoiler of one such secret, which won't ruin much unless you really want to go into the game blind:
9. The score rocks. Not much more to say. It's unusually effective.
10. For this style of RPG, there are an unusually high number of NPCs with actual interactions, not just random "Commoners" wandering about to fill up space. You don't have the immersion-breaking scenario of simply ignoring commoners and talking to everyone with an actual name; If an NPC "extra" is behaving erratically or wearing unusual clothing, for example, they've probably got something to add to the game beyond re-hashed filler lines.
11. The ending is nuts. I won't say anything about it. Suffice to say that, if you were worried the game wouldn't pay off for all the crazy stuff you experience along the way, well... it does.
12. It's dirt-cheap, and you have nothing better to be doing right now. BG2EE doesn't come out until November 15th. The super-patch is probably going to have open beta soon, sure, but unless you all intend to spend all of your gaming time bug-testing, you'll want a change of pace.
Yes, the first hour or so is a bit tedious. You'll balk at the engine's inferiority to the BG series, you'll grumble at the lack of direction, and you'll probably get frustrated by all the seemingly-identical zombies in the opening area. Power through it. We all probably remember how much worse BG1 was before people started modding and improving it, PS:T is no worse than that. Trust me, you'll get used to it and forget you ever had an issue with the engine once you've pushed past that first hour.
I hope I've convinced some people to give this amazing game a shot, and that those people will enjoy it when they do. I certainly did once I finally got around to playing it, and all this talk of PS:T has me about to start yet another run myself.
I leave you with some fan-made Torment music from the impeccable Gavin Dunne over at the Escapist. It captures Torment's mood and theme perfectly, and is comparable in style to the score of the actual game if you're interested. Enjoy! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/miracle-of-sound/7890-Nameless-Planescape-Torment
So, I bring you this: A list of reasons to play PS:T. Bullet-pointed for ease of reading, in no particular order, all off the top of my head with very little preparation on my end. I hope this changes some people's minds, or at the very least gives you something to read while pretending to work.
1. It's the best-written game you'll ever play. Yes, that's a subjective evaluation, but I think if you give it a shot you'll agree. The story of PS:T has no comparison to other games, novels, or movies. It's just crazy. I won't spoil anything by saying more.
2. It has better party members than anything the BG series has to offer. So much more effort is put into these characters' stories and personality. You like Minsc? Yeah, he's pretty cool. Meet Morte, a floating, wisecracking skull with a never-ending supply of one-liners, questionable bits of advice, and sweet interactions with the plot, not to mention infinitely better fighting skills than his dimwitted ranger counterpart. You think Edwin is a powerful mage? Take Ignis along for the ride, a mage so consumed by his desire for power that his body became a living portal into the elemental plane of fire.
3. The dialogue is the best of any Infinity Engine game. Every stat potentially impacts your conversation options, unlocking new conversation routes depending on your build. You have the option to lie and mislead in conversations, or to make binding vows. I've had entire play sessions comprised of nothing but dialogue, and been satisfied with that session. Hell, I've had entire play sessions comprised of nothing but dialogue with my own party members, and it was fantastic. There is so much to discover.
4. Alignment actually CHANGES. This is something the BG series barely does. You start at True Neutral, and your actions throughout the course of the game alter the PC's alignment. This allows for much better roleplay than just picking an alignment and forgetting about it, especially since there are many points in the game where your alignment becomes relevant.
5. The setting is an extremely welcome shift from classic Forgotten Realms, if you haven't experienced it yet. This is a loose comparison, but if you prefer Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings, you'll likely appreciate the tonal shift. There are beggars and prostitutes everywhere, as well as vicious gang members and all sorts of shady characters. Bother the wrong traveler on the street, and he'll attack you. Guards aren't going to come to your aid. There's no Order of the Radiant Heart or Temple of Lathander to comfortably hang out with the goody-goodies of the world.
6. The main character is so much more compelling than BG's Bhaalspawn protagonist. Granted, some people might appreciate the option to concoct their own backstory for a protagonist and won't have that option in PS:T, but the tradeoff is a much more fleshed-out character. You start as a neutral human male fighter, with a malleable alignment and class. That's all I'm going to say about the protagonist, as I encourage you to find out the rest yourself, but suffice to say that I'd place his story on par with pretty much every popular NPC of the BG saga combined.
7. The combat actually isn't that bad. It's common for people to be critical of it, and they aren't wrong, but there are some really cool spells to cast that aren't in the BG saga, as well as several really great set-pieces to battle through. BG and IWD undoubtedly have better combat, but PS:T isn't as deficient in this category as people say.
8. There is a TON of replay value. I find new things every time I go through the game. There are hidden areas, rare items, and wildly different paths you can take through the game. All sorts of secrets are there for you to find. If you need convincing, here's a minor spoiler of one such secret, which won't ruin much unless you really want to go into the game blind:
A ways into the game, the protagonist gets the ability to talk to corpses. You might assume that this ability wouldn't work in the beginning area's massive mausoleum... but it DOES. Most of the corpses within don't impact the gameplay meaningfully, but several have fascinating stories to tell, and you can spend upwards of an hour just wandering the beginning area, talking to zombies and hearing cool lore
9. The score rocks. Not much more to say. It's unusually effective.
10. For this style of RPG, there are an unusually high number of NPCs with actual interactions, not just random "Commoners" wandering about to fill up space. You don't have the immersion-breaking scenario of simply ignoring commoners and talking to everyone with an actual name; If an NPC "extra" is behaving erratically or wearing unusual clothing, for example, they've probably got something to add to the game beyond re-hashed filler lines.
11. The ending is nuts. I won't say anything about it. Suffice to say that, if you were worried the game wouldn't pay off for all the crazy stuff you experience along the way, well... it does.
12. It's dirt-cheap, and you have nothing better to be doing right now. BG2EE doesn't come out until November 15th. The super-patch is probably going to have open beta soon, sure, but unless you all intend to spend all of your gaming time bug-testing, you'll want a change of pace.
Yes, the first hour or so is a bit tedious. You'll balk at the engine's inferiority to the BG series, you'll grumble at the lack of direction, and you'll probably get frustrated by all the seemingly-identical zombies in the opening area. Power through it. We all probably remember how much worse BG1 was before people started modding and improving it, PS:T is no worse than that. Trust me, you'll get used to it and forget you ever had an issue with the engine once you've pushed past that first hour.
I hope I've convinced some people to give this amazing game a shot, and that those people will enjoy it when they do. I certainly did once I finally got around to playing it, and all this talk of PS:T has me about to start yet another run myself.
I leave you with some fan-made Torment music from the impeccable Gavin Dunne over at the Escapist. It captures Torment's mood and theme perfectly, and is comparable in style to the score of the actual game if you're interested. Enjoy! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/miracle-of-sound/7890-Nameless-Planescape-Torment
27
Comments
What can change the nature of a man?
Oh, addendum to the above and credit to the guys in blue: When I say the PS:T party members are better than BG party members, I'm talking about the original group of party members. I think the Overhaul crew has made some great additions to the game. Dorn, in particular, is of comparable quality to the PS:T cast, and actually reminded me a bit of Vhailor and Ignis when I recruited him.
The NPC's are diverse and fun. Maybe with the exception of Vhailor.
This is by far my favorite game. Dakkon, Annah, and Fall-from-Grace are great characters. And good ole Morte. Hey Chief.
I spent hundreds of hours on this game in 1999. In fact I broke it back out before BGEE came out. How many games can you use your own tatted arm as a club.
The Witcher saga has the same issue. The Witcher 2 was excellent, and The Witcher 3 looks downright revolutionary. I hope your preference for hotter male leads doesn't keep you from these games =P
The game has some replay value, but I wouldn't say a ton. Even though the game had a far bigger impact on me than the BG games when first played (I was actually disappointed with BG2 because I played PS:T first), I think I only made 2, maybe 3 complete play throughs over the years. I've spent far more time playing BG 2. With BG 2, once I became too familiar with the dialogue I just skipped most of it and played it for the combat/character building. With PS:T, the dialogue IS the gameplay, so over familiarity kills a lot of the replay value.
Oh, and as for the ending. The final "dungeon" and "battle" were interesting, but the actual ending itself, not so much. It left many things unanswered and obviously left room open for a sequel that never happened because the game wasn't successful enough.
That said, still one of my favorite games of all time.
When I made it out of the first area, I was promptly killed by a group of street toughs. I thought combat was something that Didnt matter in this game?
My only other problem was the lack of direction. I had no idea what I should be trying to accomplish. The only goal I seemed to have was crazy vague.
Not trying to hate on the game, the dialogue was very good, but it seems that you need to invest some serious time and energy on this game. I just haven't been able to take the time to figure it out yet. Maybe if I quit my job...
(Though having said that, I still prefer the BG series.)
Anyways, the game is unique. It's very fun, and it moves at an interesting pace. I love that game and would buy it again in a heartbeat. I feel like there is so much of it I left unexplored.
I still remember my first run thru, I went to every shop looking for armor ha ha.
The story of PS:T is all 'read lots of text', not much 'experience it through the game'. It's fun in a sense, but it doesn't often feel like a game.
The denoumont is cliche and a bit lame.
The combat is horrible; awkward, unchallenging and boring.
Half the characters are bare bones and the game generally has a lot of 'planned but not realised/implemented' parts.
There is very little replay value at all as it is so linear and story driven.
The engine is even more limited and difficult to handle than the BG one.
Items and character development is borderline non-existent. There is no meaningful range of classes or play styles: see comments about the combat also regarding this.
However is is worth playing once. Though it isn't as good as the BG games and will not be a cup of tea for many many players it is a unique experience and will be really enjoyed by a certain type of gamer.
I don't get the complaints about the ending, though. I found it very fulfilling, and there were so many cop-out paths the writers could have taken that they thankfully avoided. Plus, and I'm being exceedingly vague here, the experiences leading up to the final encounter were absolutely BRILLIANT in my book.
Despite what people say, tactical combat really is PS:T's one huge weak point.
Shame, because everything else is so good
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/4771/what-to-overhaul-first-pst-or-iwd/p1
For the best experience, I highly recommend to install the fixes as explained here:
http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.fr/2009/01/planescape-torment-fully-modded.html
For me a video game is defined primarily by the interaction. Presenting text over text over text ...over. is not really the interaction I was looking for ... The fact that I know there are fairly limited ideas in the text just makes it less attractive. I can fully appreciate, and enjoy a well designed Forum based RPG, due to the high chance of something awesome happening, sometimes even out of context. -- So it isnt really about reading and interacting with text either.
For me the atmosphere was not attractive. (Not for everyone I guess)
I learned the lessons the hard way: Just because people advertise something as "Aaawesome", it isnt necessarily good, lots of people like social networking, let me not go into detail how badly repulsive I think socmedia is
To get a story awesome you definitely dont need walls of text tho. Some of the best characters and stories for me said little but told much. I prefer genius in simplicity.
For many reasons I would rather know OG is working on icewind dale. At least upgrades could post affect BGs as well. I would even pick up the worse parts of IWD2 (and i really dislike some parts) than to force play PS:T.
No offense meant at all, I know some folks are touchy about their precious games.
That is only one of many things about the mortuary you might not immediately notice, but are there. PS:T is absolutely chock full of stuff like from start to finish so what you are saying doesn't really make much sense to me.
I enjoyed PS:T, but I'm not going to replay it.