A nice cup of rabies

Ravel hates you, no matter what alignment you choose you're a bad person, and apparently a lot of things can change the nature of a man.

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Man, that Ravel conversation was one of the highlights of my gaming life, but hey, to each their own. If a game with eight novels' worth of dialogue trees isn't enough depth for you...

And to be precise, no matter what alignment you choose, you can't reverse events in the game that happened before you start playing. You can totally be a good person from the moment you start playing.

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I was amused here and there by the dialogue. But all the combat breaking it up started to get really boring. Bash, heal, bash, heal, oops I died again. Let me stick more random healing items into my 'quick inventory' slots. Why do I have a 'quiver' slot when I haven't seen hide nor hair of a single ranged weapon in the game so far? So much for tactics. Bash, bash, heal bash bash.

I stopped somewhere after 'find my old diary' got yak-shaved into 'go through an apartment building filled with Barking Mad Chaos Kidz'. Saved, realized I'd spent all day, realized the narrative wasn't feeling anywhere near compelling enough to go through countless hours more of this stuff.

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waterotter.livejournal.com

The combat system is cooler in context, yeah. In a way, it's subverting the 'start weak, level up, get strong, use tactics, etc. etc. etc.' RPG progression by making the whole rigamarole basically pointless. If you don't want to go back and play 100 hours of Baldur's Gate to fully appreciate the distinction, I fully understand.:)

I like to think that Planescape isn't a CRPG at all. It's a work of IF that uses a popular RPG engine just to fuck with your head.

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It'd be subverting it a lot more if the 'raise your biddies from the dead for free' ability Mr. Nameless gets near the beginning also included more than 1HP for the lazarus. But...

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The combat isn't the strength of the game, that is true. Baldur's Gate, which uses the same engine, has much more hardcore combat, but it's also far more of the focus of the game. Believe it or not, in Torment, I think there are only a grand total of 5 or 6 places in the game where combat is inevitable. The rest of the time, combat is generally optional, depending on character decisions, whether you have the ability to bullshit or schmooze your way out of a potential combat. It's been a while since I played through the whole game, but the first time I played, I loaded up on Wisdom, Charisma, and Intelligence, and wound up talking my way out of a lot of the combats. The second time I was a combat monster, and the club did all the talking.

There are ranged weapons, but I believe you really only get to really load up on ranged weapons when you get Nordom in your party, who uses crossbows exclusively and is about halfway through the game. Tactics become alot more interesting when you have 5 or 6 party members and spellcasters and all that good stuff. Do you have Dak'kon yet? He's a pretty devastating spellcaster.

If you haven't found Pharod yet, you're still in the beginning chunk of the game, where it's very open, and there are lots and lots and lots of optional smaller quests that aren't quite as focused on the narrative. So if you're wondering if the game ever focuses, it does. When you find Pharod, the game gets more focused on who the Nameless One is, and it hums along. I know why they designed the game that way, because the Planescape setting is rich enough that they wanted to nail the big-crazy-city vibe as much as they could, but it's a bit bewildering to be doing all the little errands. Also, a lot of the factions in the game open up quests depending on which one you ally yourself with, so if you decide to be a Dustman or a Chaosman for example, that status follows you throughout the game.

It's a pretty core RPG, overall, based on D$D 2.5, and possibly the best game of its type ever made, but honestly it might just not be your thing. If you're more into console RPGs, this is a loooot different. Overall, I think the game took me about 25-30 hours to finish. But I'd say give it until you hook into the Pharod story arc, it picks up a lot of steam.

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I didn't actually do most of the optional side-quests, just followed the clues to Pharod. Went down into the dungeons full of flocking critters and sentient undead and all, came back with his ball of gold snot, got given his daughter as a party member... and realized that I wasn't having a good time, just an okay one.

Planescape: Torment is full of a different flavor of time-marking tedium with occasional amusements than console RPGs, but it's got a pretty similar tedium/reward balance.

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Yeah, if you're not enjoying the game elements of Torment for their own sake, the story won't be enough to convert you. For me there really was no tedium, all of Torment is cream for me. But a game like this is right in my wheelhouse, a hardcore RPG that is very focused on narrative. If new developers were making solid games in the Infinity engine (which powers Torment, BG, and Icewind Dale) I'd be in heaven. But I've always been an old paper-and-dice gaming nerd with a closet full of Gurps and Cthulhu modules. If this isn't grabbing you, then you REALLY won't like Baldur's Gate. Make the combat about 5 times as hard, and about 10 times as much of it.

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I should clarify that I loved PST to pieces. Your clarification about alignment is accurate, thank you.

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okay okay. ^_^ It just sounded a little dismissive which made go :( That game is one of those things where the journey really is the destination.

(I love me some Nordom)

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Ach! Sorry - I was aiming for flippant and jokey, not dismissive, assuming that rather more of the game than the first quarter was being discussed.

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That's the ending?

I don't think I even met Ravel in the time I played. *shrug*

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You're still in the very beginning of the game. The ending is pretty damn complex. ;-)

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xyzzysqrl

Ouch... that's a shame. Torment has basically the best narrative you'll ever find when it comes to video gaming.

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The fact that everyone claims this is why I bothered with it in the first place.

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Not that I make a blanket recommendation of this, but my personal patience for videogames is extraordinarily low. I generally cheat like hell in one way or another and run from one bit of dialogue to the next. I am no good at videogames, and the computer does not mind (yet) being the subject of cheating. I get the story of the game at exactly the speed I feel like getting it, and I get a tour of the shinies. I spent plenty of time (and more) cultivating skill (http://www.wizards.com/magic/) and getting good at something (http://l5r.alderac.com/), I'm done, show me the god-damn shinies and tell me your story because the running, sneaking, and shooting don't interest me at all. This is among the reasons that I'm still running around Vvardenfell exploring community-created content.

I hope that I don't push you into the territory where one resists consuming media because everyone says it's awesome, but my vote is for finding some way to get to the substance of PST (as mentioned, basically everything post-Pharod). The highly decent story is a frustrating reminder that like comics, video games are a medium, not a genre, and can address much bigger subjects than generally acknowledged.

Clarification: I'm totally happy to play, say, Super Smash Melee with a clutch of friends because that's a very different exercise that's more about friends than about the game - cheating is impossible because there's no narrative to discover, the shinies are all right there, and thanks to David Sirlin I don't mind losing (and I lose a lot).

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I'd say just peek at a FAQ to blow through the beginning-of-game stuff, pump up the Nameless One a couple levels, grab Annah and Dak'kon and go see the great stuff to follow.

I enjoy the sneaking and the fighting and the process a lot, but I'm not above peeking at a FAQ. Once I start grunting in frustration at something in a game, I know it's time to FAQ it.

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That's a good idea, too. Me, if I never see "18/33 STR" again it'll be too soon.

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alinsa.livejournal.com

Annah. Yes, Annah rocks. And is damned sexy. Wish they'd make a game about -her-... :)

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koogrr.livejournal.com

PS:T

Loved it, Loved it.

Fall-From-Grace's exposition on how words can be more arousing than physical things, when you meet her at the brothel, was worth the price of admission.

Also, there's a PDF out there, where someone took all the text from the game and arranged it on a book-narrative. I'm not exactly sure how it works, as you couldn't see all of it through normal play. It wasn't terribly well formatted for reading, it needed to be printed out and bound.

I've got it somewhere, if you can't find it and want it. However, you seem lukewarm to the story so I'm not going to digging for a link. If you or someone else wants it, I'll find.

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