Planescape Torment is boring

[Yosharian]

What's up with the love people had for this game, i remember playing this back in the day and thinking it was okay, i might've not understood the concepts and writing cause i was younger, but i've replayed recently and the writing and verbose is so cringe and forced.

I am bored by this post.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

you are boring and lazy troll

 

[Jedi Exile]

Actually, it has been years since I last replayed it. Maybe it is finally time for another go... Not like we will see anything like PLanescape: Torment in the near future.

I mean, I liked Numenera's Torment (not a popular view here), but to me it is not 'a new PST', but a totally different game which I happen to like.

Maybe I will like Disco Elysium too... but I don't think it is actually 'a new PST' either

Can a Planescape: Torment really be resurrected or remastered or whatever? I don't think so. Because the appeal of this game is a sum of very different factors. Like a great setting by itself, intentional subverting of RPG cliches, unique type of gameplay, great writing with theme of regret and sorrow etc.

You can do it all, yes. But to make another game like this, it is not possible. It will be just a sum of different parts, while PST was something greater than just a sum, it has its own soul.

Am I finally going mad?

 

[0sacred]

intentional subverting of RPG cliches

the part no one cares about when playing PS:T

 

[Serus]

so cringe and forced.

Indeed.

Most of them that have actual gameplay

Here we go. A combatfag.

Actually it's gameplayfag. In CRPGs combat is, usually, the biggest, most important element of gameplay. But not always. Exploration is sometimes more important. Add puzzles to exploration. Think of some dungeon crawlers, older mostly but there some newer ones as well, where navigating the dungeon and solving puzzles is the main dish and combat is simplistic and of lesser importance. Dungeon crawlers aren't the only type of games where combat is not the most important part - and yet story is not it either. They are gameplayfag games. So, in short, actual games. Games that you PLAY, not mostly read (or listen to).

 

[baba is you]

Actually it's gameplayfag. In CRPGs combat is, usually, the biggest, most important element of gameplay. But not always. Exploration is sometimes more important. Add puzzles to exploration. Think of some dungeon crawlers, older mostly but there some newer ones as well, where navigating the dungeon and solving puzzles is the main dish and combat is simplistic and of lesser importance. Dungeon crawlers aren't the only type of games where combat is not the most important part - and yet story is not it either. They are gameplayfag games. So, in short, actual games. Games that you PLAY, not mostly read (or listen to).

Exactly. I personally think the most important things in a CRPG or PC game are exploration, discovery, and puzzles.
Combat is important, but if those three are lacking, it feels very empty to me.

I was very dissatisfied with the lack of that in Planescape Torment.

 

[somerandomdude]

If a game like Planescape: Torment was made today, the wookies would rage themselves into a stroke. It's unlikely to ever be remade because the general narrative of the game doesn't fit current woke sensibilities.

For example

Miserable
https://constexpr.org/tmp/2023-03-30-194649.jpg
Guttersnipe
https://constexpr.org/tmp/2018-12-30-143509.jpg
Harlots
https://constexpr.org/tmp/2023-03-30-194604.jpg

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The gameplay of Planescape: Torment is hamstrung by its basis on Bioware's execrable Infinity Engine, but it serves as an example of non-ludic factors surmounting poor gameplay, due primarily to Chris Avellone's strong writing which demonstrated that games can be art, this time in a literary sense. Of course, the game was also greatly aided by Brian Fargo's infatuation with David Zeb Cook's Planescape campaign setting, which led him to obtain the license for it from TSR; although Interplay began development on three games in this setting, Torment was the only one to come to fruition. The richly-developed yet highly-unconventional Planescape setting complements and undergirds Avellone's own writing; the game probably would have sold better if it had been set in the Forgotten Realms, but it wouldn't have been half as good. The recent game, Torment: Tides of Numenera, amply demonstrates the difference between a game based on a David Zeb Cook setting versus a game based on a Monte Cook setting, as well as the difference between one primarily written by Chris Avellone and one primarily written by Colin McComb.

 

[Lady Error]

Look at how advanced FFX was compared to Planescape Torment it came 1 almost 2 years later then it and it blows it out of the water in pretty much every department, even the story is better and the themes are similar and the soundtrack is pure bliss, has voice acting, super bosses, mini games, side activities etc

So voice acting, mini games and supposedly better soundtrack is what Planescape is missing? Fuck off. PST also had several very memorable "bosses".

 

[Cryomancer]

I wish that I could play it with the original Infinity Engine spells. This final fantasy style "cinematic" spells are boring imo.

 

[Berengar]

Bro just admit you don't know how to read it's ok.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Most of them that have actual gameplay

Here we go. A combatfag.

More like a troll. Planescape: Torment has combat, as shitty as it is, so by combatfags' standards that should be enough (otherwise one would use "good" instead of "actual"). What's "an actual gameplay" then, if that does not constitute a gameplay? As bad as Planescape: Torment's combat is, it isn't that far removed - mechanically speaking - from other Infinity Engine games after all.

Most infinite engine games are VN's disguised as rpgs, it's why wrgps never took off cause they are books and not games, jrpgs took over cause they let the player actually play a game, figure that one out.

Sengoku Rance is not representative of visual novels as a whole, sadly.

 

[NorwegianWolf]

I played it back in the day, and I replayed it recently (Enhanced Edition on Steam). I remembered it to have much more combat. In reality there is A LOT of reading and quests based only on dialogue. There is combat, but there were periods in the game where for 2 hours you did nothing else, but visit different persons and talk. It's cool if you expect it, but it's definitely not Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale where you fight more.

 

[Camel]

If a game like Planescape: Torment was made today, the wookies would rage themselves into a stroke.

The Wookiees could complain about PS:T, stranger things happened but we wouldn’t understand their growling.

 

[Maxie]

I played it back in the day, and I replayed it recently (Enhanced Edition on Steam). I remembered it to have much more combat. In reality there is A LOT of reading and quests based only on dialogue. There is combat, but there were periods in the game where for 2 hours you did nothing else, but visit different persons and talk. It's cool if you expect it, but it's definitely not Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale where you fight more.

the logical conclusion being it's inferior to either baldur's or icewind dale

 

[rubinstein]

What's up with the love people had for this game, i remember playing this back in the day and thinking it was okay, i might've not understood the concepts and writing cause i was younger, but i've replayed recently and the writing and verbose is so cringe and forced.

maybe you are too old now? i suppose the perfect time window to play this game is when you are between 18 and 25 yo, because people are generally at the peak of the openness to art then, and pt is obviously considered one of the artsier rpgs. i played it for the first time when i was 22, and i enjoyed it greatly, it really impressed me, at least the story and writing, but i feel like i would be too jaded and too impatient to fully appreciate it now, when i am much older, senile even. i tend to appreciate simpler stories (yet still deep) these days.

in the next iteration of The RPG Codex's Top PC RPGs list, if we have one, PT will surely be out of top3.

E: i deeply regret taking this nigga seriously. i only briefed through the first page, and somehow i managed to miss his most obvious troll posts, but after reading them, this thread was clearly a bait. but it would be cool, if it wasnt, because he kinda raised a good point. i also started feeling this way recently

 

[NorwegianWolf]

Torment sometimes happens to be recommended along with Baldur's and Icewind. If you expect a lot of combat, varied enemies, varied items... Torment might be inferior.

 

[Vic]

reading: the game

 

[NorwegianWolf]

Reading: Game of the Century

i suppose the perfect time window to play this game is when you are between 18 and 25 yo, because people are generally at the peak of the openness to art then, and pt is obviously considered one of the artsier rpgs. i played it for the first time when i was 22, and i enjoyed it greatly, it really impressed me, at least the story and writing, but i feel like i would be too jaded and too impatient to fully appreciate it now, when i am much older, senile even. i tend to appreciate simpler stories (yet still deep) these days.

I found Torment definitely less deep than I perceived it to be when I was ~20. I mean, it was deep, but it kinda forces its depth down your throat, not unlike Paulo Coelho's "Alchemist". I'm not afraid to admit that when I was 16, I found Alchemist extraordinarily deep and mindblowing. Maybe Torment is not that tacky, but it has some of Coelho-like quality.

I guess when you are young, you need this. When you're older, you find depth in Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" which is a book about a bunch of simpletons running cattle and eating beans, but I'll be damned if I didn't find it deep.