How's Planescape: Torment?

[Hawkwing74]

Torment is quite possibly my favorite game ever...I would give a lot to have a game that good come out again. I'm afraid it will never happen.

I can't understand the uber-love for Fallout on this site. It was a great game but I think Torment had the stronger story.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

But what if, for some reason, the character has no previous life and hasn't developed any personality or skills before TGQ? The character hasn't and couldn't have decided what he wants to do in life and now the player can roleplay him from the moment his mind becomes active to the moment he understands his place in the world and has developed a firm personality.

In that case there wouldn't be a need for character creation because the character has no previous experiences.

Not quite. The problem here is that the character likely would have had some measure of skill and power, but the amnesia blocks access to it. It basically translates to there being a character creation which instead of having the traditional aspects, simply doesn't deal with skill choices and attributes. This would be similar to Torment's, except that Torment allows players to define the starting attributes of the character, but doesnt' allow the character to regain what he had lost. Players just have to build him from the ground up, which is something i've disliked in games dealing with amnesia. Instead of recovering what was lost, the character just has to learn it all again. And when he does remember the past, he doesn't remember any old skill he might've learned.

IMO character creation is in CRPGs because it wouldn't make sense for the character to have lived 25 years and not have learned anything from it.

More or less true. Character creation is a necessary "evil", so to speak, because it basically allows players to bypass that downtime of the character's past. Traits and Backgrounds are a way to determine a character's background while avoiding to play trough 25 character years. Darklands also had a fairly interesting system of allowing players to decide what their characters did in the past: what was their upbringing, what did they specialize in, what classes did they learn, etc..

But if there was a logical reason for the character to be completely clueless, the character creation screen wouldn't be needed and the TGQ itself would become a long development process that would end when the game ends and the character would be created.

You'd still need a way to relay to the player the character you're playing. The character may be amnesiac, but it has some characteristics, after all. Likely, there'd be a shallower character creation which just focused more on the aesthetics than actual character knowledge.

You said you care more about the characters created in a character creation screen. But in my opinion a properly designed game (PS:T, not KotOR or Gothic 2) can be more rewarding if a good reason is given for the campaign itself to be a long development process that reaches its conclusion at the end of the game and a character is created.

That's a benefit with premade characters which are exclusive and pivotal to a story. The Nameless One has an intricate story because he is only one character. Its much easier to weave a more detailed characterization and storyline when working with a single character. If the player had the possibility of choosing gender, name, class and race for the main character, the story and the charterization would not be as powerful.

In this sense, leading a well made character trough a story-driven game is rewarding to some. And I can see why it is rewarding for some, but i much prefer to to roleplay a multitude of characters i conceived which are acknowledged by the gameworld, instead of playing the same premade character time and again.

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

Torment is quite possibly my favorite game ever...I would give a lot to have a game that good come out again. I'm afraid it will never happen.

I can't understand the uber-love for Fallout on this site. It was a great game but I think Torment had the stronger story.

There's more to a game than its story.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Torment is quite possibly my favorite game ever...I would give a lot to have a game that good come out again. I'm afraid it will never happen.

I can't understand the uber-love for Fallout on this site. It was a great game but I think Torment had the stronger story.

There's more to a game than its story.

I'd say the story is the most important thing in a game these days. Really now; did any of you start loving Fallout for its fantastic combat system?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Did anyone started liking Fallout because of the story? "Fetch me a water chip" isn't exactly something brilliant. I liked the setting and the premise of the game much more than the story.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

And the way it handled quests, and the freedom you had within the game to do things your way. That's something you just can't do in a story heavy game.

 

[plin]

Torment is quite possibly my favorite game ever...I would give a lot to have a game that good come out again. I'm afraid it will never happen.

I can't understand the uber-love for Fallout on this site. It was a great game but I think Torment had the stronger story.

There's more to a game than its story.

Really now; did any of you start loving Fallout for its fantastic combat system?

It was one of the many things that rubbed me in the right way.

While a story is certainly a good enhancer in enjoyment, I would think the actual GAMEPLAY would be the most important thing in an GAME. Where as, if you just wanted to read a good story, you should read a book.

 

[Anonymous]

Torment was really good, but not flawless. It's one of my favorite RPGs, but I like Fallout more and Arcanum is about equal to Torment.

 

[Transcendent One]

I thought Fallout concentrated more on background story than immediate plot progression. The background story with the vaults, mutants, FEV, etc was far more interesting than the stuff that actually happened while your character was there, which is a fetch quest and a save the world quest.

Fallout's combat was not that good. It was usually very easy and was simply not tactical most of the time. Of course when you're getting ripped up by a deathclaw mother, things do tend to change.

Fallout was good because it was original and very open ended, a true RPG. And it had a cool setting.

 

[jcompton]

Fallout's combat was not that good. It was usually very easy and was simply not tactical most of the time.

Depends what you like. If you value a combat system that lets you shoot everybody's face off, it's a great combat system.

As for PS:T, I too describe it as an "adventure game with a combat engine." Collecting items to open doors, running around and talking to people gave me a" Zak McCracken in a funhouse nightmare" vibe.

Bottom line: yeah, it's worth playing. But if you find yourself giving up after killing the 50 billionth rat in the vain hope that the game will give you another subtle dialogue option to rip off your ear in the search for buried treasure that will expose a plot, don't let these guys make you cry.

Too much.

 

[tunguska]

It really depends on what you like. Your like for Fallout and dislike for Morrowind (I also hate it BTW) are not really enough.

IMO, the RPG vs. Adventure game distinction is an artificial one and doesn't serve us well. They are only useful insofar as game designers follow them as some kind of rulebook for game creation. RPGs developed as a subset of what used to be called adventure games. What people call "adventure games" now are what I would refer to as puzzle games. They are like RPGs except with no fighting and lots of annoying brain-teaser puzzles or riddles. The FedEx quest is the CRPG equivalent to the puzzle. Bad game designers think they can just throw a bunch of these things together and they have a "game". They are wrong. That may work for younger gamers, but not for those of us who have been playing computer games for more than 20 years. It does start to get old after a while. Hell, even Pong was fun the first few times you played it.

The day that a CRPG is not allowed to have a more unique and interesting story than Quake is the day that I stop thinking of myself as a CRPG fan. I am sorry but I am no longer some 12 year old playing Castle Wolfenstein and Archon before I start my homework. Why should I bother playing some stupid game. If a game designer wants me to play his game he had better give me some better motivation than getting Phat Loot and Super Powers <yawn>.

The premise behind PS:T may not be exactly original, but it was at least a genuine mystery with decent writing (better than any other computer game I have ever seen). Most of the time I was playing in order to find out what was going to happen next. I also loved the atmosphere, which I found immersive and interesting. I found the NPCs convincing and enjoyed spending time with them, even though on power gaming replays I usually played without any NPCS at all in order to hog all the XP.

If you thought Diablo was a pretty good game and think Bethesda is the ultimate in CRPG developers due to their "open ended", "non-linear" game designs, you will almost certainly hate PS:T. It is a controversial game. Power gamers hated it. It didn't quench their thirst for "leveling up" and getting those +8 adamantium swords of omnipotence.

I enjoyed the combat in PS:T and replayed it many, many times even after I knew the whole story. I enjoyed it immensely. The only part of PS:T I did not enjoy immensely was the last 20% of the game. Due to it's story-based motivation, once the central mystery was solved it kind of felt like the game was over for me. The rest sort of felt like an artificial extension just to keep the game going. Although in truth the entire story was not over, it felt like much of it was.

Did I find the combat to be as strategically interesting as the Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic series? No. Of course not. Those games were all about chess-like RPG strategic fighting. Nor did I really enjoy it as much as the Ultima Underworld and Arx games which added a bit of realtime fighting skill to the mix.

Fallout had a nice balance of story and fighting, but it was a bit simplistic and shallow for my taste. I wanted a bit more depth to both the story and the gameplay. Even though I loved the game and played it many times, I find it to be a bit overrated. There aren't many games where you can kill children though. And I don't know of any other games with that kind of setting (aside from wasteland).

So, to answer your question, PS:T created it's own unique genre: the StoryCRPG. It is like a merging of interactive fiction (think of an Infocom game like Zork) with a decent hack'n slash RPG. It cannot really be included in the (modern) adventure genre if only due to its lack of puzzles. It was, by far, the best game ever created of any genre in the entire history of computer games. But if you have bad taste or are just very very young and/or stupid, you may strongly prefer Diablo or Bore-o-wind.

 

[Voss]

Did I find the combat to be as strategically interesting as the Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic series? No. Of course not

Wha? Color me confused... it uses the same combat engine as BG, and M&M has never had *any* strategic depth (beyond the early games when you had to worry about using up your supply of gems)

 

[tunguska]

it uses the same combat engine as BG

Both games have similar rendering engines, but the fighting in the two games is very different. I played Baldurs Gate only for the battles, which were long drawn out affairs for me where every move was carefully calculated. I found BG to be mostly about defeating powerful magic-users like liches and major game characters with other defensive spells etc. All move/counter-move. I really enjoyed that.

In PS:T the fighting always seemed to follow the story, which was the main point. The fighting was kind of secondary and was usually just a way of forwarding the story. There were no demi-liches to imprison you or other nearly-impossible adversaries to defeat. Maybe it was just easier. But there was definitely less depth to the fighting. It was more fleshed out and chess-move-like in the BG series.

M&M has never had *any* strategic depth

I'm not sure why you don't think M&M had strategic depth. As with the BG series I found the stories to be rather unconvincing, but found the fighting to be some of the best I have ever encountered. I am more specifically referring to MM6-8. I loved the way bow and crossbow battles were handled especially against many opponents. Those were some of the most enjoyable battles I have ever fought in a game. To me the whole game was about finding novel and interesting ways to defeat the enemy. So, to me, both series are examples of "strategic" fighting RPGs. They certainly had no story that I took any interest in. I was held almost entirely by the fighting.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

it uses the same combat engine as BG

Both games have similar rendering engines, but the fighting in the two games is very different.

The combat engine is the same; the combat model, however, is different. Both games use the same type of combat that all other Infinity Engine games use, but Torment's combat is differently handled, although the underlying engine is the same.

 

[DemonKing]

It's more of an interactive book than an adventure game I'd say. Great writing, captivating and unique setting and great story. The combat was pretty useless and the char system as well as inventory objects such as armors et c was very limited.

Pretty much sums up my feeling for Torment.

It was hard to get involved with the Nameless One because basically I was finding out his story as I went along rather than going into the game with a firm concept of what/who the NO was.

Also the excessive amounts of reading could be a bit of a turn-off. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy reading, but I don't play computer games so I can sit clicking through endless pages of text. PST felt like more of a chore thana game sometimes.

The combat also sucked. I found the radial menus pretty clumsy compared to to the option bar available in all the other IE CRPGs. Also for what was supposed to be a deep CRPG an awful lot of the combat was unavoidable, which made the game harder for a straight Thief character, for instance...

Its a good game. By taking some unusual design decisions, the designers produced a truely unique gaming experience. However they also managed to limit their potential audience somewhat by doing so.

 

[Hawkwing74]

While a story is certainly a good enhancer in enjoyment, I would think the actual GAMEPLAY would be the most important thing in an GAME. Where as, if you just wanted to read a good story, you should read a book.

How many books are there where you're personally involved in the outcome? Your logic is a tired cliche I've heard many times before and I'm sick of it.

A designer could use that statement as an excuse to have virtually no story, like Diablo II or Dungeon Siege.

 

[plin]

While a story is certainly a good enhancer in enjoyment, I would think the actual GAMEPLAY would be the most important thing in an GAME. Where as, if you just wanted to read a good story, you should read a book.

How many books are there where you're personally involved in the outcome? Your logic is a tired cliche I've heard many times before and I'm sick of it.

Shit, even any of those lame adventure books where you choose what to do have more of a personal involved outcome on the character than torment. Which outcomes are you talking about? Keeping a fed-ex quest item long enough so you can learn a couple more tidbits about your pre-made characters past? Was it choosing what to do with the trancendant one aka choosing what ending you wanted to see?

I don't give a crapola if it's cliched or if you're sick of it, it's relevent here.

 

[Ausir]

That you can't choose your character's background doesn't mean you can't choose what his personality in current incarnation is.

 

[Ding0]

Shit, even any of those lame adventure books where you choose what to do have more of a personal involved outcome on the character than torment. Which outcomes are you talking about? Keeping a fed-ex quest item long enough so you can learn a couple more tidbits about your pre-made characters past? Was it choosing what to do with the trancendant one aka choosing what ending you wanted to see?

I don't really see how player involvement can get any more significant than "determining the outcome of the game". If you're thinking "but only what I say to the Transcendant One affects the outcome", that's not true given that throughout the game you're gaining stats which contribute to the final encounter, not to mention the part played by items such as the Bronze Sphere.

 

[AlanC9]

I simply didn't feel that TNO was a pregenerated character. That's because I didn't feel that the various previous incarnations were the same individual. My incarnation didn't so much have a pregenerated background as have no background whatsoever.

 

[jcompton]

If he has no background, what's with all the stuff hidden in his body, lovingly revealed through subtle, textured, not-at-all-totally-daring-you-to-choose-them dialogue options?

 

[suibhne]

Did anyone started liking Fallout because of the story? "Fetch me a water chip" isn't exactly something brilliant. I liked the setting and the premise of the game much more than the story.

Yeah, I loved the story in FO. Some of the writing was on par with PS:T, and the Master's plan was like something out of Philip K. Dick. This was the first game I ever played which could be analyzed in a college lit class.

That said, "story" involves more than the linear narrative. Most games, even those with strong narratives, are heavily interactive relative to fiction. There are obviously exceptions - I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy whatever - but "story" in CRPGs should certainly include the setting and background as well as the particular narrative hooks which drive your character through that setting. When you conceptualize "story" more broadly, as I think is necessary for interactive videogames, then FO is a slam-dunk.

 

[Ausir]

If he has no background, what's with all the stuff hidden in his body, lovingly revealed through subtle, textured, not-at-all-totally-daring-you-to-choose-them dialogue options?

That was hidden there by the previous incarnations, which were totally differen persons (like that wacko who wrote the diary).

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Granted, suibhne.

 

[AlanC9]

That was hidden there by the previous incarnations, which were totally differen persons (like that wacko who wrote the diary).

Exactly. Different people, same body.

Of course, I can see having a different take on this. Depends on how you view identity.