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Torment Planescape: Torment has bad writing

Kruno

Arcane
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Village Idiot Zionist Agent Shitposter
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I know a good reason why Planescape Torment has bad writing.

PS:T uses too many difficult words.

i.e.
Fear names. Names have power in identity. Others can use names as weapons. Names are a hook that can be used to track you across the planes. Remain nameless, and you shall be safe. I am the Nameless One.

MA BRAN HERTZ!

--------------

I've forgotten just how engaging PS:T was, and I finished the game not too long ago. Sure the combat was shit, but I continued to play the game because of the mystery and the events in the game kept me interested in wanting to know what comes next. PS:T is the Seinfeld of video games.
 

Neanderthal

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I know this sounds fucking obvious but a crpg isn't a novel. Torments prose does a bloody good job at evoking atmosphere and character, it nails Sigil which is no mean feat, and adds characters and situations that are genuinely interesting and enthralling. Look at Giscorl wash cloth, sell cloth, in other games he'd be ejected, in Torment he just enriches the oddity and depth of the Hive. It may not be masterful prose, but it does the fucking job masterfully.
 

Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal

Guest
The difference between PS:T and PoE writing is that the former is engaging and immersive, whereas the latter is boring and repulsive. Reading dialogue/exposition from PS:T sucks you into the situation and the world it takes place in, reading PoE makes you think about whether you turned off the stove when cooking dinner earlier that day.

I really cannot stress enough how utterly dreary, incompetent, and atrocious PoE writing is. When I think back to playing that game, all I can remember is Durance dialogues, and even then I only have a vague recollection of the subject matter (I think he detonated the bomb that killed Aéothéowyynné, and went insane afterwards). With PS:T, I can easily recall even relatively minor encounters, like finding a lifeless corpse on the throne of the undead king, or talking to sluts at Grace's brothel (the one that tells you the story of a hag giving three wishes was particularly engaging, especially when you realize it is a story of the protagonist meeting Ravel).

The main reason for this, is that every piece of dialogue in PS:T has an interesting point, one that the authors believed in, and arranges words in sentences to arrive at that point. Dialogue in PoE is pointless, it's just words that go on and on and on, and can't focus on anything in particular, and constantly get side-tracked, or try to outsmart themselves.

This is all because the hacks behind PoE don't have any real ideas, aren't interested in writing fantasy worlds, and don't believe in what they're doing.


Any random example of dialogue from both games would easily prove my point, but I'm too lazy to search for it.
 
Joined
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Codex really changed.

--> Analogy with real life: you see a big smelly shit right in the road, you try to avoid it.

---> Codex: there is a big shit in the road, everyone tries to smash it and proceed to get dirtier in the process

Why not just ignore this topic altogether?
 

I ASK INANE QUESTIONS

ITZ NEVER STOPS COOOMING
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
but ...Sanderson, Rothhuss, or Hobbs played Planescape they would say it has bad writing.
Oh, this is masterfully baited. This is beautifully done. Love it. There are people out there who genuinely think like that.

I'll use this as an excuse to post some of Sanderson's exceptional writing, since he was mentioned.
Behold, the subtle art of writing, a demonstration from the master himself. And some music to set the appropriate mood, too.

"Well," Shallan said to the captain, blushing but still eager to speak, "I was just thinking this: You say that my beauty coaxed the winds to deliver us to Kharbranth with haste. But wouldn't that imply that on other trips, my lack of beauty was to blame for us arriving late?"
"Well...er..."
"So in reality," Shallan said, "you're telling me I'm beautiful precisely one-sixth of the time."
"Nonsense! Young miss, you're like a morning sunrise, you are!"
"Like a sunrise? By that you mean entirely too crimson"-she pulled at her long red hair-"and prone to making men grouchy when they see me?"
He laughed, and several of the sailors nearby joined in. "All right then," Captain Tozbek said, "you're like a flower."
She grimaced. "I'm allergic to flowers."
He raised an eyebrow.
"No, really," she admitted. "I think they're quite captivating. But if you were to give me a bouquet, you'd soon find me in a fit so energetic that it would have you searching the walls for stray freckles I might have blown free with the force of my sneezes."
"Well, be that true, I still say you're as pretty as a flower."
"If I am, then young men my age must be afflicted with the same allergy-for they keep their distance from me noticeably." She winced. "Now, see, I told you this wasn't polite. Young women should not act in such an irritable way."

The man pulling the machine was short and dark-skinned, with a wide smile and full lips. He gestured for Shallan to sit, and she did so with the modest grace her nurses had drilled into her. The driver asked her a question in a clipped, terse-sounding language she didn't recognize.
"What was that?" she asked Yalb.
"He wants to know if you'd like to be pulled the long way or the short way." Yalb scratched his head.
"I'm not right sure what the difference is."
"I suspect one takes longer," Shallan said.
"Oh, you are a clever one." Yalb said something to the porter in that same clipped language, and the man responded.
"The long way gives a good view of the city," Yalb said. "The short way goes straight up to the Conclave. Not many good views, he says. I guess he noticed you were new to the city."
"Do I stand out that much?" Shallan asked, flushing.
"Eh, no, of course not, Brightness."
"And by that you mean that I'm as obvious as a wart on a queen's nose."
Yalb laughed.
 
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Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
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I swear i posted in this thread but apparently i'm no where to be found here. Did this fucktard just made the same tread again?
 

Darth Canoli

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So, what's you're story ? You were kidnapped and raped as a child and between breaks, the guy was playing all the best classics RPG ?
You're just another idle redneck with too much time on his hands ?
Or a real legit retard ?
Maybe a bit of both ?

Well, at least, we can insult someone whom deserves it, keep up the good work. :shitposting:
 

Iskramor

Dumbfuck!
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But wait there is more...

Slim and slender - fast as greyhound
Tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel
Swearing loyalty to death beyond the torches' light
Steadfastly marching to the beat of the drum
 

Bigg Boss

Arcane
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Sep 23, 2012
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I swear i posted in this thread but apparently i'm no where to be found here. Did this fucktard just made the same tread again?

No, your brain totally degenerated now. It is actually 2025 and we are anxiously awaiting Fallout 5.
 

bataille

Arcane
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Feb 11, 2017
Messages
1,073
Why can't we get a monocled saboteur for once? All those comparisons of Torment to fantasy writings are so tired, trite, and tiresome, by gosh. If you wanted, you could demolish the game by comparing it to structurally similar modernist works about finding oneself. The themes of Torment put it on a higher than usual pedestal; and killing it by invoking high-brow narratives in the same vein is not a complicated trick.

But no, we got to have low effort and no literacy. You can't even murder a videogame, guy.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I was speaking about all fictional literature in general, but if Tolkien, Erickson, Sanderson, Rothhuss, or Hobbs played Planescape they would say it has bad writing.

Rothfuss actually loves Planescape Torment which is why he was willing to write a companion for Torment: Numenera. And his companion ended up being one of the better written characters in the game (which isn't much of an achievement considering the low quality of the game's overall writing, but still).

So yeah you obviously have no clue wtf you're talking about.
 

HeatEXTEND

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The realty is, if Planescape came out today the same people in this thread defending it would be calling it shit.
And you in turn would be calling it literary greatness you dumbfuck. Nobody argues that PST is some sort of masterpiece body of writing, and only a retard would argue for it being shit. Contrarian dumbfuck.
 

Lios

Cipher
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Jun 17, 2014
Messages
425
Planescape's sometimes over-the-top sometimes crystal clear in its intentions writing supports and is supported perfectly by the over the top yet crystal clear chaos of the setting it contains- I wouldn't want a single word to disappear or change, it's immaculate in its certainty.
It doesn't have NPCs who describe stories, it has stories which contains NPCs like avataras of information, and its extra Grant-Morrisson-esque touch in its prose and in its whole RPG deconstruction modus operandi(Doom Patrol? Animal Man?) fits like a glove.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that this thread reminded me how great it is to replay this game every 3 years, and how bright the memory remains of the first time you played it. It's amazing shit.
 

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