Planescape: Torment

Time to finish off this month with one of the stranger games in my little "Golden Age of Interplay" lineup. Planescape: Torment. Just like my porn addiction and my need to consume any liquids legally termed alcohol, a good RPG is something I just can't help constantly coming back to.

Jared from The Pretender will totally blow your mind as TNO

Planescape: Torment was special because unlike most so called "RPG's" this one really pushed the barrier of what Roleplaying was considered at the time. Your character was a blank slate (amnesia) and the way you played would influence how you turned out.

It did away with the whole character creation aspect of traditional RPGs and placed you in a "develop as you go" sort of story with a completely nameless protagonist. What made it even more memorable was that it almost completely dropped the usual "race table" you would be used to in a Western RPG. Elves? Nope. Dwarves? Nadda. Halflings? Fuck off.

*NOT* and Elf. Githzerai. Githyanki? No, those guys are pussies.

The story takes place in the whole "Forgotten Realms" setting of the Icewind Dale/Neverwinter Nights/Baldur's Gate universe but finds you on a completely different plane of existence. Sigil, the city of doors. A place that was supposedly the "center point" of the multiverse. The special thing about the place is that it is more of a middle-ground between worlds and dimentions where every arch is a possible portal with a specific key.

To give a few more precise examples: walking through a doorway while humming a certain song might teleport you to one of the lower layers of hell (if only life was this convenient) or carrying a piece of paper folded in a specific way while climbing through a window and pissing yourself would take you to another world.

This isn't where I parked my car.

This was also a world where "belief" plays a huge role, not in the way you might think though. This is a place where what you believe to be reality can manifest into solid form. Examples from the game would be talking someone into simple nothingness because you convince him in a conversation that he doesn't exist. Or meeting your imaginary alias made manifest after having used the name in a few conversations then even being able to talk to him.

The game was also very special for another reason: you could go through the entire story without having to fight. This was a game where your character's intellect and wisdom played a huge role. Your ability to talk through things and negotiate could net you far greater rewards than simply punching something in the face until it stopped being funny. By extension the game featured a bucket load of text to read through, but it was so well written that it never got tedious or stale. This game is in effect: the thinking man's RPG.

Tossing around insults until an enemy attacks him is an actual ability. Dear God I love Morte.

The setting was also very unique: Sigil is a place filled with all kinds of messed up races, most though are demons, planewalkers (people that travel to different dimentions and worlds for a living) and a shit ton of tieflings (any kind of mortal race with a little demon blood in their family). The world itself feels like a run down city that is somewhere between modern industrialism and traditional magic while the people and the cultures are the ones that really stick out.

The City of Doors has it's own lingo and customs, walking into this place is like walking into a foreign country. There are all kinds of strange terms and slang that you will learn and pick up before the game is over. The immersion of the game is almost scary in how well it pulls you into the setting and sucks you into the world your character is inhabiting.

They call it culture. I call it a tub full of body parts.

Most of this would not be as effective if the cast was not excellent and in that aspect PS:T fails to dissapoint. Your main character "The Nameless One" is interesting in the fact that as someone with amnesia he is a blank slate for you to Roleplay as you wish and control while still having an established past that crops up many times in the story without actually forcing you to react in a way that you do not wish. There is also the fact that he is apparently an immortal that can't stay dead for more than a few hours.

Seriously, one of the gameplay elements is the fact that there are very few ways to permanently kill you, this actually leads to situations where getting yourself killed can be a good thing. Sometimes you need to die to get past puzzles and sometimes a death can even offer you a small flashback of your previous life before amnesia set in.

To quote Kael'Thas: "This is merely a setback."

The supporting cast is both strange and in their own ways tragic. Each character that joins you has a well thought out and sometimes painful backstory, they come into the group with all their own emotional and spiritual baggage and each one of them is more different than the next.

Morte, the floating skull and somewhat of a "Virgil" to your "Dante", Dak'kon the Githzerai, Fall-From-Grace, a Succubus Priestess that abstains from sex, Annah the Tiefling, Ignus the Insane Flaming Mage (flaming in the sense that he is literally on fire all the time, not in the man-loving sort of way) and Vhailor...the uh...walking suit of armor.

PS:T has an awesome cast that will make you jizz your pants

These are just a few of the many that can join you on your journey through the planes, some of them might even end up accompanying you to the very lands of Baalor, the Blood War and beyond (once again, the DnD geek in me shining through to recognize all the places in the game just by hearing the name long before I even played)

The graphics are what you would expect of an Infinity Engine game, it all runs in a 2.5D sort of isometric view and actually has held up quite well over the years, the design and aesthetics of the game are so well made that even now, years later it holds up against modern titles by the simple fact that well thought out design can trump the "brown-gray" colour pallette of the more modern "next-gen graphics" games.

Totally not just brown and gray in this screen...there's uh...green?

The controls...well they definately streamlined the interface and menu compared to the other IE games. Gone is the long taskbar on the bottom of the screen, replaced by the character portraits (which happen to be beyond cool with their actual movement and reactions to the character they represent). Now all of the actions are mostly controlled by simply right clicking anywhere on the screen which summons a sort of pop-up menu. It works in theory but in reality feels a tad clunky and can make fights feel a little unwieldy.

Of course all of this takes a backseat to the story itself. As I said before, this game is more of a thinking man's RPG. Fights will likely happen at some point but the simple fact is that the story and even minor dialogues are so well written that almost anyone will find that taking the intellectual route is just as rewarding and fun as taking a violent one. I won't spoil the story but just for a reference, let me just say it all starts with you being carted into a mortuary on a slab by a zombie and waking up in the morgue to a floating skull asking you if you are just playing dead for laughs.

Clearly this is the face of a spiritual man who prefers to go the diplomatic route

Planescape isn't about saving the world or the princess. The princess is dead and the world is fucked. This is a story of personal discovery and in the end, Nameless One is really concerned with who he is and what the hell is going on.

The game really favours this to the point that rewards are usually better if gotten through diplomatic, intellectual or charming means and even follows this to the point that of the 4-5 possible ways to beat the game's ending, 2 of those are gotten through simply talking your way into/out of the whole final confrontation altogether.

Don't take that to mean that the game ends all puppies and kittens though. Because this game is itself almost bittersweet, the game world is harsh, unforgiving and brutal. The whole thing feels pessimistic and on more than one occasion showed me that in this world, doing the right thing can sometimes be very painful for you. In a way they game itself is very philosophical.

The whole question of love could easily have been answered if TNO listened to Haddaway in the 90's

You will often face questions of redemption and choice. What constitutes free will? What are the rewards of Love? Friendship? Loyalty? What happens when these things are betrayed and you see the consequences? What is reality and how can we shape it to our will? Or as the story itself asks you to think over many times: "What can change the nature of a man?"

Before the game ends you will make some painful choices, meet some truly memorable characters some of whom you will feel true regret and pain for and even start to ask yourself if some of the choices you made were really the right ones.

This game deserves to be called one of the best RPGs ever made. In fact on it's own it is one of the most profound and deep stories I have ever experienced. You would be doing yourself a favour by trying it out at least once.

Also this. I don't know why but I felt compelled to add this picture.