Editorial Planescape: Torment Retrospective

[PorkaMorka]

Does gameplay matter in a game where combat can (and should) be mostly avoided? The real gameplay of the game is in the dialog.

My statements above are counting dialog as part of the gameplay of PS:T (also as part of the gameplay of visual novels).

 

[Murk]

What was its gameplay style? Interaction with a graphical environment through a text based description that offers branching choices based on your characters' stats and in-game-experiences that result in legitimate short term and long term consequences?

Yeah that sucks bro, we'd have like RPGs and shit instead of fps+stats games.

 

[PorkaMorka]

What was its gameplay style?

P:ST had a gameplay style which focused on dialog, reading text and picking choices from menus at the expense of combat, exploration and high adventure.

This worked alright in PS:T because it was well written and benefited from a great licensed D&D setting.

But

a) it is a significant departure from the traditional CRPG gameplay formula, almost a different genre, or a strongly differentiated sub genre at least

b) If it had been widely mimicked, only the top quality offerings using this gameplay style would have been tolerable. Can you imagine how tedious it would be to play a PS:T style game with mediocre - bad writing?

If you've ever tried to play a mediocre visual novel... it's horrifying.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

If you don't want combat to count, don't put it in your game.

 

[Murk]

P:ST had a gameplay style which focused on dialog, reading text and picking choices from menus at the expense of combat, exploration and high adventure.

This worked alright in PS:T because it was well written and benefited from a great licensed D&D setting.

But

a) it is a significant departure from the traditional CRPG gameplay formula, almost a different genre, or a strongly differentiated sub genre at least

I disagree. Combat is a big focus of RPGs but character based interaction with the setting, environments, and characters are just as, if not more, important and Torment had that in spades. You were given options on how to investigate and interact with things and characters on a regular basis, far more than any other major cRPG (except maybe those of Ultima fame), and those interactions were always, when possible, based on your characters' stats and abilities. I have no qualms with a text based interaction schema instead of a graphical one, like say in UU or Arx Fatalis. Those are neat, no doubt, but if selecting an option that says "make a potion" does the same thing as drag-and-dropping items on one another 5 times to make a potions means there is more time to dedicate to a game's content and quality, them I'm all for it. Also, it becomes tedious.

To call it a subgenre is... well, silly. Some cRPGs will focus more on one aspect, some on others. D&D is ultimately a cooperative storytelling game, it stands to reason then that a single player cRPG based on it would also be a storytelling game -- though Torment did not sacrifice interactivity (major part of gameplay) for it, it only sacrificed combat. Unfortunate, but it was not enough to harm the game's solidity. Good combat is difficult to find anyway, the genre is mostly polluted with systems that seem novel initially but quickly become routine and cumbersome as the player gains some skill. There are very few, if any, combat systems that don't break.

b) If it had been widely mimicked, only the top quality offerings using this gameplay style would have been tolerable. Can you imagine how tedious it would be to play a PS:T style game with mediocre - bad writing?

So I would not play those mediocre games the same way I do not play mediocre games now, but it does mean that the trend in the genre would be more in favor of character-interaction instead of GRIPPING CINEMATICISTICISM or whatever the hell the current movie-like infestation is called.

If you've ever tried to play a mediocre visual novel... it's horrifying.

I tend to not indulge in entertainment that is not... erm, entertaining.

 

[Sceptic]

I was halfway through typying a reply to PorkaMorka but had things to do and dropped it. Thanks for expressing my thoughts far better than I would have.

I would just like to point out that, when a good game is badly imitated and results in a shitload of poor clones, you can hardly blame the original good game for this. The complaint about the original is only valid if the original itself did things badly and then this became a standard (see sticky cover).