There are people who will claim that Western RPGs peaked in the late 90′s and early 00′s, with BioWare, Black Isle, New World Computing, Sir-Tech, Origin, Sierra, and other’s putting out high quality entries in the genre with regularity. There’s no denying that many of those have been placed into the annals of videogame history as classic, but were games truly better then? Well, that’s a question for another blog entry, not for this one. Here we will focus on a single game from Interplay developer Black Isle. The title in question is one Planescape: Torment, based in the titular AD&D universe and headed by Chris Avellone [who went to Obsidian after Interplay folded and is currently working with fellow Black Isle-alum Josh Sawyer on Fallout: New Vegas].
The game begins with a man waking up in a strange mortuary, with no idea how he got there. Actually, he can’t remember a thing at all, not even his name. He quickly enlists the helping a talking skull named Morte who floats in the air. The two make their way out of the mortuary and into the city, where The Nameless One hopes to discover the reasons behind his lack of memories and his seeming immortality. Along the way, you’ll discovery some truly bizarre locations and equally bizarre characters. Much of the game is very heavily based on dialog, it’s even possible to talk your way out of many encounters, rather than resorting to violence. The game even goes so far as to have no penalty for being killed in combat. The Nameless One will simply respawn at a set location. You might be tempted to think that this makes for a very easy game, but that’s really not the case at all.
In a way, Planescape: Torment is almost more of an adventure game than it is an rpg [not of the point-and-click variety, of course], in that the game has a great focus on story and characters than it does on combat. Some will no doubt see this as a negative, but I see this as a positive. There are plenty of RPGs with great combat in them, if that’s what you’re truly looking for, but there are scant few RPGs with such amazing writing. The time it would have taken to put in a more complex combat system would have taken away from that writing, or at least placed less emphasis on it.
Unlike other RPGs, there are no traditional dungeons. The game takes place almost entirely in within populated areas, it’s just that some of those areas happen to have monsters or thugs in them. Sometimes you’ll even be attacked in broad daylight by thugs, right in front of dozens of people. It’s not all that common, but it happens. The plus side to this is that there’s virtually no dungeon crawling or pointless grinding to deal with, with I see as a plus.
The gameplay is real-time, point-and-click based combat seen in many other Black Isle titles like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. It’s possible to recruit seven different characters, but only five can accompany the main character. It’s clear from the outset that combat is not the main focus of this game, but that doesn’t mean that the combat is just thrown in with no regard. It works very well and there is some depth to it in terms of controlling a party of character in real-time and using their various talents to get through each battle you come across. The combat gets the job done and doesn’t get in the way.
Another area where the game truly shines is in the sound and music. Both of these elements are blended perfectly to create the feeling that you are actually in the places that you see on the screen. While walking through the city you can hear people talking and shouting to one another as their voices blend into a droning din, walk past a bar and you can hear the drunken patrons inside, and so on, all this is done to infuse the world with life. The music weaves through the sound in just the right way, fading when you’re just walking around and suddenly jumping to the forefront when battle is afoot. Although Black Isle was originally going to use a soundtrack by musician Lustmord, his soundtrack was pulled three weeks before the game was to be released so that Fallout-compose Mark Morgan could create an entirely new soundtrack that took the music of the game in a different direction.
The character, writing, and dialog are among the best that will find in any videogame, and the sound and music are no slouch either, Black Isle really went all out with this one and it shows. RPGs since Planescape: Torment have come out have attempted to recreate that depth and that degree of choice in the dialog trees, but most just haven’t even gotten close. Will companies like BioWare, Obsidian, and Bethesda bring RPGs back to this level of detail in the near future? Well, perhaps, but until they do, and even if they don’t, you can always keep playing the one that set the standard in the first place.
http://greatrumbler.wordpress.com/2010/0...e-torment/
It's like you're vying for a position at a video game review site, as that seems to be the style you're bitin'.
If I were vying for a position at a videogame review site then I'd put in more effort.
It's just that you preface it with this whole "some say the games of the late 90's" speech that seems kinda unneeded here at TC.
I'm directly referencing ABF, because he says that all time.
And, anyway, I wrote it for my blog, so I use a slightly different tone than if I were just making a thread for TC.
Ah now I get ya.
But if you're going to charicature ABF, you forgot to add ", certainly" after every opinion on something.
Greatest. No question. Torment is the best RPG ever.
[QUOTE=Dark Jaguar]Ah now I get ya.
But if you're going to charicature ABF, you forgot to add ", certainly" after every opinion on something.[/QUOTE]
He'd also need a bunch of "..."s, I think. :)
But yes, I am in the group that thinks the RPG peaked in the late '90s and early '00s. Many PC RPGs fans believe that, it's not exactly an uncommon opinion.
[quote=Great Rumbler]Unlike other RPGs, there are no traditional dungeons.[/qiuote]
Well, apart from the Modron Cube... that's pretty conventional. Entirely optional, if I remember, but conventional. :)
But yes, the game is easier than many RPGs, and has a very, very different structure, as you describe well. I know that not everyone likes it -- some people just don't like the heavy focus on reading text and asking and answering questions, and would rather kill things. Fighting is more de-emphasized in this game than almost any RPG ever, so this game is definitely not for those people...
I agree about the comparisons to adventure games as well, it does have some of that feel to it, with all of the long conversations, things you can click on in the environment that have text descriptions, and more. Of course though, it's also an RPG, and your stats affect which answers you can choose, which is a great touch that merges the genres in an interesting way, I think. It's well done too, it's implemented here much better than the stat-based dialog options in KotOR 1, I think.
I played Torment back in the first half of 2002. We'd bought it in early 2000 I believe, not long after its release in 1999, but while I had been interested, my dad had actually asked for it, which is why we got it (he didn't often play games, but has played a few here and there). I didn't play it right then though... I finally got to playing it several years later. Well, of course I thought it was unbelievable, and was hooked.
If I had to say the things I disliked about the game, though, three things come to mind:
-The second half of the game felt much more linear than the first half. While in the earlier parts you can go many places and have a lot of things you can do, and don't need to spend much time fighting (most fights in this part are optional or avoidable), later on avoiding fights often just becomes a game of "run past the demons, or fight them", which isn't nearly as interesting. It felt like the game changed tones midway through as it became more linear, and I liked the earlier style better. It was still great later, but I did think that.
-Difficulty -- Torment has to be one of the easiest D&D RPGs ever made... it's supposed to be, sure, but it is easy. The hardest enemy in the game is an optional boss who really isn't that hard. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and Icewind Dale 1 and 2 (particularly the IWD games!) have lots of challenging fights in them, but Torment just doesn't. Of course, that is the point, and I got used to it and didn't really mind this, but there were a few points later in the game that I kind of wished that there'd be some enemies to actually try my powerful new abilities on... like, how late in the game you get those spells that actually have FMVs when you use them (like a console RPG or something... :)), but by that point there are so few fights remaining and they are so easy that you have almost no chance to use them. It all fits storyline-wise, but gameplay-wise it felt a little odd sometimes... but of course, on the other hand that's just the clash between this game's design and the design that you "expect" an RPG to have, so the fact that it's different is a big part of the point of why the game is great. Not everything needs to be hard. I just thought it was worth mentioning, for those moments when it bothered me a little (which, of course, the next story part would usually erase, with how they are always the focus of the game).
Torment's great story completely spoiled me for other games, I got and played Warcraft III just a few months later when it came out and was pretty disappointed by its story, probably in large part by how I'd just played Torment. I haven't actually replayed Torment, though... I let a few other people borrow the game for several years, wanting others to try the game as well, but even after getting it back over a year ago I haven't played it again. I probably will sometime, though... :)
[quote]Will companies like BioWare, Obsidian, and Bethesda bring RPGs back to this level of detail in the near future? Well, perhaps, but until they do, and even if they don’t, you can always keep playing the one that set the standard in the first place.[/quote]
Have you played Neverwinter Nights 2's first expansion pack, Mask of the Betrayer? The game has the best story of any Obsidian RPG, and one of the best stories ever in an RPG this side of Torment. The original NWN2 is a good game that fails either in gameplay or story to match the Infinity Engine classics but still is better than any other RPG released after Icewind Dale 2, but Mask of the Betrayer is, stylistically, a "followup" to PS: Torment in many ways. It has a small cast of characters, all of whom have a lot of depth. It has a complex, multisided plot. It of course has great writing. While NWN2 itself had some decent plot and writing, it really wasn't anything that special. I think it must have been rushed or something, it's below Black Isle or Obsidian's usual standards there I think... and they put in so many automation features and stuff to turn off (if you want to actually control things like you should in D&D), while the base strategic gameplay just doesn't quite play as well as the Infinity Engine. But anyway, while the gameplay engine is the same, plot and characters wise, NWN2 is a huge improvement, and really does push almost to Torment levels of great design and writing.
Basically, playing the base NWN2 made me want to play Baldur's Gate 1 again instead, because that was the better game (which is exactly what I did), but MotB is a fantastic D&D game that should not be missed by anyone who likes story in their RPGs.
Oh, it does not require playing NWN2 first. It does pick up after the original game's ending, but your character is the only one who returns; all of the other party members are new. The story is also entirely original, and not a followup to the ending of the base game. The second expansion is somewhat similar in that way, it's also an entirely new chapter, essentially. That one's quite different in gameplay from MotB though, it's not a Torment-style game like MotB but perhaps could be described as something a little more Icewind Dale... but given that the IWD games are some of the best dungeon crawler games ever, that's not really a bad thing.
I played a little bit of Mask of the Betrayer, but it has this weird glitch where the dialog would appear and disappear too quickly during the cutscenes. It was pretty annoying and I couldn't find a way to fix it. Might try to uninstall and reinstall sometime, but I don't really know if that will do any good.
Huh, that's weird... there's no fix for that?
Took me a while, but I finally figured out what caused it. If you install NWN2 and the two expansions, Storm of Zehir accidentally deletes a certain file used in Mask of the Betrayer. There's supposed to be a fix available, so I'll try that.
I think the fix is available through autoupdate, assuming you can get THAT to work properly. If I remember correctly, it never did.
The vanilla NWN2 glitched on me as well. TWICE. In the exact same spot. Every time I try to leave this inn, the game crashes. I'd avoid the inn entirely, but you have to go there as part of the plot. Both playthroughs took me about three or four hours to reach that spot. Yeah, thanks alot, Obisidian.
Ah. You never got NWN2's autoupdate to work? It always worked fine for me...
After jumping through hoops to manual install a couple of patches, the autoupdate suddenly started to work properly.
Edit: It's finally fixed, now I can play some Mask of the Betrayer. Only now it's passed midnight. :crap:
YOU BEST BE JOKING NIGGER
Morrowind/Oblivion. Final Fantasy Tactics. Ogre Battle Series, Dont even talk shit, you'll just look silly. Fallout was excellent but everything after that smells like Haiti. Even Oblivion couldn't compare to Morrowind, FFT's writing, music? characters?Morrowind's and Oblivion's writing and storyarcs? and you're gonna bring D&D? get the fuck out of here. Just because you can type doesn't mean you should.
Morrowind's writing, characters, story, setting, role playing, and music are no comparison to Planescape: Torment. None at all. And I've put easily a hundred hours into Morrowind, so it's not like I don't know. Morrowind's got a huge, open world to explore, but that's its biggest advantage.
And FFT, Ogre Battle? None of those offer the level of dialog interaction, detail, or depth of sidequests that Planescape does.
Edit: I picked up some essential files for Planescape: Torment. One that increased the resolution to 1280x768, another that fixes the UI for higher resolutions and increases the font size, various patches and tweaks, and one that reinserts some of the unfinished components of the game.
I doubt Lazy has actually played Torment, so I wouldn't take that to mean much...
Quote:and one that reinserts some of the unfinished components of the game.
When I played the game in 2002, I played with the then-current version of the fixpack. It does make things a bit better. :)
I was playing DD when you were learning how to piss standing up. During games I was GM usually and my best char was a human monk with wizard as my secondary (lawful good). But the DD video games are fucking shit and if either of you ever played the actual game you'd know that. Pen and paper, and cyberpunk was even better than DD.
Ogre battle's package makes anything released for DD (outside of pen and paper) look retarded and FFT has some of the best writing and story in an RPG ever, not that either of you have any idea why. And the music, of course, is top tier. No RPG can compare to Square's music arrangements. They may not be the best samples or use midi, but the arrangements are from *actual composers* who created full soundtracks with through lines that carry the story audibly, not purchased free-form orchestrations for shit that sounds cool. Get the fuck OUT. *POINTS*
FFT isn't that great, I bought it shortly after getting my PSX in 2005 because everyone said it was so good but it just didn't hold my interest and I never got more than three or four levels in. But that and Ogre Battle are strategy games, not RPGs like D&D... not that either one can even remotely compare to any of the better D&D games, they certainly cannot. (Ogre Battle 64 is better than FFT, but still nothing compared to any of the better D&D games, if I must compare games that really aren't at all alike)
Quote:I was playing DD when you were learning how to piss standing up. During games I was GM usually and my best char was a human monk with wizard as my secondary (lawful good). But the DD video games are fucking shit and if either of you ever played the actual game you'd know that. Pen and paper, and cyberpunk was even better than DD.
I've played real D&D too. And yeah, it's great, but so are the computer games, and particularly the Infinity Engine and Neverwinter Nights 2 games. You basically confirm here that yeah, you haven't played them. Sure you can't do anything like you can in a pen & paper game, but they make up for it in other ways, I'd say. Torment's great writing and story really does stand out, for instance, and the way it de-emphasizes combat and emphasizes reading is so unlike most other RPGs. But you'd know that if you'd played it, which anyone (yes, anyone) who hasn't should, for a while at least to see if they like the style.
Quote:They may not be the best samples or use midi, but the arrangements are from *actual composers* who created full soundtracks with through lines that carry the story audibly, not purchased free-form orchestrations for shit that sounds cool.
Black Isle dumped Planescape: Torment's soundtrack with three weeks left before the game was to ship. That's what Mark Morgan was working against and the soundtrack is STILL amazing, and not just because the tracks are great but in how the music is integrated into the ambient sounds as well.
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Quote:I was playing DD when you were learning how to piss standing up. During games I was GM usually and my best char was a human monk with wizard as my secondary (lawful good). But the DD video games are fucking shit and if either of you ever played the actual game you'd know that. Pen and paper, and cyberpunk was even better than DD.
I don't see how these two things follow. I'm even willing to let it go that D&D the actual game is a better experience than D&D the video game, but a claim like that completely misses the point entirely. I'm not comparing Planescape: Torment to D&D the actual game, I"m comparing Planescape: Torment to other video games. And in that street brawl, Planescape: Torment is one of the last ones left standing.
Quote:Ogre battle's package makes anything released for DD (outside of pen and paper) look retarded and FFT has some of the best writing and story in an RPG ever, not that either of you have any idea why.
Planescape: Torment also has some of the best writing and story in any RPG ever. Every location in Planescape: Torment is filled with NPCs that you can talk to and every single one of the them has numerous lines of dialog. Not only that, but that game also gives you textual information about that character, such as what they look like and what they're doing. Not only that, but each character that you can talk to has their own story, their own backgrounds, their own life. They're not just one-dimensional mouthpieces who spout the same line over and over, like NPCs in a lot of other RPGs. And this is just random people you can talk to on the street! Many of them will also offer you various side quests to tackle.
The game's script, meaning just dialog, character descriptions, and so on, was 800,000 words or about 3,200 pages. Black Isle went all-out to give Planescape: Torment a depth to the story, characters, and settings that very few RPGs have ever been able to match, and it shows.
So because it has moar pages of text, that grants it a 'good story'? And if an RPG is a tactical RPG, it doesn't count as an RPG? Do either of you just get randomly hit through out your day? Be honest. Jesus Christ it's like shenanigan central in here.
FFT isn't good because ABF said so, nevermind that everyone else is still floored by it. ABF I am sorry to say that you are full-retard, get some crayons and maybe a good hat like what parents make their down-syndrom children wear, I dunno something to make it easier to pick you out of a crowd and run you over so I dont injure bystanders.
Here GR, this is what a real soundtrack sounds like.
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Quote:Planescape: Torment also has some of the best writing and story in any RPG ever. Every location in Planescape: Torment is filled with NPCs that you can talk to and every single one of the them has numerous lines of dialog. Not only that, but that game also gives you textual information about that character, such as what they look like and what they're doing. Not only that, but each character that you can talk to has their own story, their own backgrounds, their own life. They're not just one-dimensional mouthpieces who spout the same line over and over, like NPCs in a lot of other RPGs. And this is just random people you can talk to on the street! Many of them will also offer you various side quests to tackle.
The game's script, meaning just dialog, character descriptions, and so on, was 800,000 words or about 3,200 pages. Black Isle went all-out to give Planescape: Torment a depth to the story, characters, and settings that very few RPGs have ever been able to match, and it shows.
It is one of the longest scripts ever in a videogame. KotOR, Baldur's Gate, what have you, they have tiny fractions of the amount of script of Torment. Most games measure the size of their script in words... Torment measured it in lines, and it had over a hundred thousand of them.
Of course lots of script doesn't matter if it's not well written, but on that note, Black Isle had great writers. Chris Avellone and the others made a deep, insightful story which asked questions, gave you many opportunities to decide what you wanted to do and gave you true moral choices in the oddest of circumstances (think of the rat section in the underground... how many people just walked in and killed everything, never realizing that they did have a choice? They're just giant rats after all, the fodder of all D&D, right? Nope.), and so much more.
At the time the only game it was compared to in depth of story was Xenogears... and I don't know if anything else since then is in that same class. Mark of the Betrayer is one of the closer ones, but even it doesn't quite match Torment. (I haven't played enough of Xenogears myself to say how I would compare those two, though)
Quote:So because it has moar pages of text, that grants it a 'good story'?
No, it has a good story because some of the best writers in the industry wrote it. But it's utterly pointless to argue about a game with someone who has never played it and knows nothing about it, so there's no reason for me to continue. I know you're just trying to troll for fun, not saying anything much of actually backed up by fact, so it's easy to ignore.
Quote:And if an RPG is a tactical RPG, it doesn't count as an RPG?
I've been saying for years that in my opinion "tactical RPGs" are strategy games. Western games with very similar gameplay to "tactical RPGs" are pretty much all considered strategy games, so why should it be considered any different just because of what platform they're on?
Some sites do agree with me, Gamefaqs for instance lists tactical games as a subset of strategy. They are right.
Quote:Here GR, this is what a real soundtrack sounds like.
On that note, Planescape: Torment has one of the best game soundtracks ever. It's a very different sountrack done by Mark Morgan, the composer of Netstorm, Fallout, and Fallout 2, among others, and like all of his soundtracks, it's ... um, what's the best description? Techno or electronica of some kind, I imagine, but beyond that I don't know enough about music to be able to categorize it besides "awesome". :) It's an unconventional soundtrack for an unconventional RPG.
Quote:Black Isle dumped Planescape: Torment's soundtrack with three weeks left before the game was to ship. That's what Mark Morgan was working against and the soundtrack is STILL amazing, and not just because the tracks are great but in how the music is integrated into the ambient sounds as well.
I know, isn't it absolutely stunning how he managed to make such a brilliant and amazing soundtrack in such a short period of time?
Now, I know, it did result in him reusing some themes -- I know I've said it before, but he did reuse some bits of Netstorm's soundtrack in Torment. Still, Netstorm has an outstanding soundtrack too, so I don't mind... and Torment's music is mostly new, and all brilliant. The way the themes return through the game, changing with the circumstances, is very well done; just listening to these songs it may seem like a bunch of variations of a few things, but when you play the game and realize what each one means and why the songs change over time, or depending on your actions, it all makes sense.
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etc, etc, etc. I won't continue or I'd have to just link every song in the soundtrack. :)
Quote:So because it has moar pages of text, that grants it a 'good story'?
No, sheer amount of text doesn't equate to "good story", but sheer amount of text that's incredibly well written and engaging/interesting certainly does. Like I said, in addition to there being a lot of text, there are hundreds of NPCs that are unique and have their own personal stories. It's really incredible.
Quote:And if an RPG is a tactical RPG, it doesn't count as an RPG?
A tactical RPG has a different purpose than an RPG like Planescape: Torment. A tactical RPG is almost always going to be focused more on gameplay, probably at least half of the time, maybe more than that, is going to be spent fighting on the battle grid. That's just the nature of the sub-genre. There's less interaction with NPCs, the sidequests are necessarily less varied, and there's less free-roaming exploration. Whether you think one way or the other is better will depend on what you value in an RPG. I value what Planescape: Torment does from a gameplay perspective more than what Final Fantasy Tactics does.
That's why it's an opinion.
Quote:Here GR, this is what a real soundtrack sounds like.
Masaharu Iwata and Hitoshi Sakimoto are both talented composers, I don't believe I ever said otherwise. I just think it's a bit funny that you completely disregard the great job that Mark Morgan did with Planescape: Torment
It's just samples and drum loops! It doesn't even have a THEME. It's a horrid soundtrack, it's designed by someone who knows nothing about song creation or even just what sounds good. It's not even as good as the sample disks like Immediate Music. How can you claim it's a good soundtrack?
The both of you are like the ignorance of the world incarnate. I swear if you both met it would create the end of days.
It's nice to know that we can all have a rational discussion about this without resorting to ad hominum attacks and ridiculous claims that have nothing to back them up!
Got Planescape: Torment off GoG the other day and I've been playing it again to see if it's still as good as it was last year when I made this thread.
Answer: Yes, it is. One of the few games that I can play over and over and not get tired of, but this time I really do plan to beat it!
The only thing disappointing about Torment is that it mentions all these utterly bizarre, and totally interesting planes, doing such an amazing job of making you want to see what they're all about but only giving you just the faintest taste. Why no other developer has tackled the Planescape part of D&D, I'll never know. It's way more interesting than "generic medieval setting with elves and dwarves" that's 90% of Western fantasy RPGs.
I gave it a try. The fairest review I can offer is that it just wasn't my thing.
Well then, we know who to go to for wrong opinions about RPGs. :)
If I ever meet you in real life, I'm going to click a mouse until you die.
I want to savor this thread forever.
Weltall Wrote:I gave it a try. The fairest review I can offer is that it just wasn't my thing.
Torment's kind of the anti-RPG, in many respects. Most have some real-world analog or some gleaming semi-futuristic setting for you to play about in with high-spirited characters and we're going to save the world blahblahblah [See: every JRPG ever]. Maybe there's some evil lurking about, some monsters roaming the countryside, but the idyllic villages and cities generally have few problems and are often adorned with green trees, green grass, and people whose medieval attire just came back from the dry-cleaners.
But Torment, true to its name, is very dark and mean. The characters you meet are ugly, inside and out, and the only ray of light might be your own character, or you can be just as ugly and cruel as everybody else. The world itself it twisted and bleak and you often hear stories of places that are even worse than that.
And the story isn't about saving the world, it's about a man who live and dies over and over again, losing all his memories each time, even the memories of his friends and lovers, trying to find a way to finally die once and for all.
It's decidedly different, and a big part of why I love it so much.
This thread is awesome. For the record, I love both Final Fantasy Tactics AND Planescape Torment. They are on opposite ends of the spectrum in just about every way one can imagine, but they are both incredible games. I will say this though. FFT's art has aged a lot better than Torment's has. Torment has good art design and the concept art is amazing, but the sprite makers didn't really capture it in game form in a way that ages well. The end result is "too much brown". That said, 2D sprites on a 3D background also hasn't aged all that well.
So yeah, Final Fantasy Tactics has a very interesting story, much more about the costs of war and how muddy the concept of "good" and "evil" can actually be, especially as seen through a warped reading of history written by the winners. It was made by the writer of Tactics Ogre, so that's to be expected. Certainly not the same kind of story as your typical Fire Emblem game.
Planescape is interesting in it's own way, on a much more personal scale. There is room enough in the world to appreciate both. That said, don't play Torment if you are looking for an RPG bruisin'. Tactics is for that.
Oh yes, anyone new to the game, or people who gave it an hour and found they didn't enjoy it, try these:
http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2009...odded.html
It's a myriad of graphics patches as well as bug fixes and content additions.
If you want to play FFTactics, try the PSP-make of the game. There is an iPad version, but I wouldn't recommend it. While a game like this seems like it would be amazing using a touch screen, Square Enix has a terrible track record when it comes to adding touch screen support. Rather than a true point and click interface, they merely mapped controller buttons and pop up commands onto the touch screen. It comes across as very awkward in a game that seems like it should LOVE a touch screen. If you don't have a PSP or PSVita, a used PSP is very cheap now, as is the online version of the game on the store. Otherwise, I guess you're stuck. The game simply isn't available on anything but Sony systems and the most expensive of Apple products at the moment.
lazy had some really strong opinions about Western RPGs versus Japanese RPGs, I'll say that.