Planescape: Torment

[Jed]

I had higher hopes for the City of Doors Initiative...

Ah, me too, Elwro. In fact, it was my last hope for ever getting my $50 worth of fun from NWN. That and the never-completed Witch's Wake, yet another broken BioWare promise.

 

[elander_]

I realy wish companies would try to make believable characters like PS:T and Baldurs Gate did, rather then squizing out every penny out of their bugget to make advance AI and non-scripted scheduels (unless they have a freakish huge bugget). For me, the NPC's of PS:T were alot more believable then the ones from Gothic or Ultima VII because of their originality and dialog. It's much more cheaper this way and there are fewer things that can go wrong (ala Oblivion)

I hear you. However AI and most importantly group AI would be very interesting to create global changes. This is not essential as many successful games have proved but it would add more deep. Without this role-playing and consequences is restricted to changing what other npcs think of your char and open or close doors to him. CA made the difference when he allowed your char to change the way npcs think of THEMSELVES and that was a very important step in rp. It wasn't the frst guy to do this but he was the one who did it better.

Planescape Trilogy: Purgatorio -- Features

- A rich 15 hour single player story featuring dozens of side quests, interactive NPC party members, and opportunities for roleplay -and- intense combat
- Player strongholds, romantic subplots & Planescape-unique features driven by a customized Sigil Faction system that operates seemlessly with the game engine
- Custom soundtrack, voice acting and art that all deliver the moody, dynamic feel of the Planescape setting
- Multiplayer Party support so you can complete the module with your PnP group or online friends
- PC Advancement up to level seven
- DM-Friendly design

I am a bit suspicious about this thing. Planescape lived much of the writing genious of CA. This advertising seams to be very standard stuff with romances, strongholds, voice acting. Nothing they say clues they will try to recreate the deep of character interaction we enjoyed so much in PT. The well writen dialogs with PT chars and their descriptions of the Planescape dimension contributed more to create the feeling of actualy being in Planescape than the graphics and sfx. Somehow i don't think this is going to happen. PT was so good because it was hardcore with tons of long dialog lines and complex characters.

 

[Lumpy]

http://www.roguedao.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=16
It appears that there will be a great migration of Elven Ranger women with love interests for the player to Sigil.

 

[Veracity]

...the never-completed Witch's Wake, yet another broken BioWare promise.

Have they actually got around yet to acknowledging that's been canned, not just 'indefinitely postponed'? I stopped paying attention some while back, but vaguely recall what they did release was less of a teeth-pullingly horrible waste of time than most things about NWN (hardly lavish praise, admittedly).

I agree Torment worked largely because Chris Avellone can actually write with some semblance of competence (and specifically for games, which I would think qualifies as different enough from churning out pot-boiler novels that it's a bit much to dismiss it as a game because it 'only' has good writing). But this Purgatorio etc thingy is just a prospective trilogy of modules using the Planescape setting, right? If so, it and Torment aren't really more connected than any two random campaigns in the same setting. Planescape seems to have a bit of a bad reputation in general for being hard to design campaigns for, but if someone's just interested in using it as a setting, I don't think it's really fair to pan them right away for not making another Torment. They do earn a hefty slap for that Web 2.0 bollocks, though.

Aressea is a tall (almost 6') elven woman with large black-feathered wings jutting from her back. Her black hair hangs to her shoulders, but is kept back out of her emerald green eyes. She would be considered young if not for her eyes that hold the wisdom of the ages[...]Swords are something like +6 enhancement keen +2d12 fire +2 divine +2d6 slashing, armor is something like +6 ac +4 Str 20/- resist to piercing, 15/- to slashing and bludgeoning, ammy of +6 ac +4 saves +4 wis, ring is +6 ac +4 str +2 wis, other ring is haste, +4 saves, 40/- fire resistance. Boots are haste, +6 dodge ac, +4 dex, Bracers are +2 Str, +4 wis
Alignment: Chaotic Good, she has little use for laws

Letting random net folk thrust their Mary Sues into your campaign is a good idea how?

 

[Lumpy]

It isn't.
And what's worse, they asked at the beggining for characters used in NWN modules. Most of which, obviously, take place in the Forgotten Realms. They changed their mind later on, but people have still been posting only FR characters.

 

[MLMarkland]

Letting random net folk thrust their Mary Sues into your campaign is a good idea how?

We did not, and never will let random PCs into the game module as NPCs. All of our decisions about characters are driven by the needs of the story and are appropriate for the campaign setting.

Extending to people the opportunity to be a part of a large Planescape campaign module without having to know how to use the toolset or script, or etc., is the purpose of the PC-NPC Conversion process. The idea is, in part, inspired by my long efforts with NWN1 PWs. Where hundreds of players drove the story, rather than one person being responsible for all of it.

If anyone has any questions about the Planescape trilogy, I would be glad to answer them here, or on our forums, or anywhere else for that matter.

There is a new trailer up on the vault, and on the entry page to our website. While we might miss some self-imposed deadlines, the one thing we are most certainly not, is vaporware. Beta testing begins this weekend.

-Monty
htttp://www.roguedao.com

 

[sabishii]

Doing my second run-through of PST. And I realized that the Paranoid Incarnation sounds a frightening lot like Volourn.

He crosses his arms and looks away. "If you put STOCK in such TRASH, yes."

"They spoke LIES, LIES, LIES, and nothing more!"

Albeit with better vocabulary.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Doing my second run-through of PST. And I realized that the Paranoid Incarnation sounds a frightening lot like Volourn.

He crosses his arms and looks away. "If you put STOCK in such TRASH, yes."

"They spoke LIES, LIES, LIES, and nothing more!"

Albeit with better vocabulary.

The Paranoid Incarnation is DEAD.

 

[Jasede]

That reminds me... I would /love/ to replay PS:T but I can't; I only own the German version, which sucks donkey balls.... I wish someone would host the lastest dialog.tlk file...

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Download a torrent of it. If you own any version of it legally, there's nothing to lose alignment over.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

That reminds me... I would /love/ to replay PS:T but I can't; I only own the German version, which sucks donkey balls.... I wish someone would host the lastest dialog.tlk file...

There, Sausage-Man: http://www.planescape-torment.org/mods/readmeenglish.htm

 

[Jasede]

I love you guys... I would gladly repay the favour... just give me your MSN... *winks*

 

[Texas Red]

Doing my second run-through of PST.

Second walktrhough?! Damn, you are lucky. I have practically everything memorized.

NEVER use a walkthrough!

 

[Lumpy]

Since it's very unlikely that we'll ever see a PST2, especially not a good one, maybe some masturbation should be in order?
A Githzerai adventurer is the lover of a powerful sorceress. The adventurer dies . She discovers eternal life, but grows insane over the years, eventually starting to deny the adventurer's death. Her belief in his existance becomes so strong, that it causes an image of him (you, the player), to exist. However, you are more of an image of how she imagined him than how he really was.
You awake with no memories, except that of your own name, and that of the Sorceress, the love of whom is forced upon you.
You set out to find her, and have two options - search more info about your past along the way, or tip the scales in a conflict between order and chaos towards the side that you prefer.
Both paths lead you to the sorceress's palace, which you find in ruins. You get some clues about what happened to you, and find a portal to your grave, thus figuring out everything.
If you chose to find out about your past, and have a sufficiently strong willpower, you can consolidate yourself as an image, and live on life with the sorceress.
If you chose to fight in that conflict, and have a sufficiently high wisdom, you can understand that you have been more than an image, and have become an individual person. You lose all that you inherited from the original life, and leave to live your own.
If in either case, you don't have high enough a stat, you die/disappear.

I await cheers for my creative genius.

 

[Jasede]

This uncannily sounds like the story of Final Fantasy 8, using the Rinoa=Ultimecia theory.

 

[psycojester]

Yeah.... I'm sure the people playing a fighter or thief are just going to LOVE that insufficient trait= death thing Lumpy

 

[Lumpy]

Yeah.... I'm sure the people playing a fighter or thief are just going to LOVE that insufficient trait= death thing Lumpy

Death as an ending should be as satisfactory as the others.

 

[Texas Red]

Thats a very good story, Lumpy. Too bad Im going to steal your idea now.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah.... I'm sure the people playing a fighter or thief are just going to LOVE that insufficient trait= death thing Lumpy

Death as an ending should be as satisfactory as the others.

SPOLARZ!!



Yeah, death was the only ending of PST, and it was the most satisfactory ending I've ever seen in any game. So, whatever.

 

[kingcomrade]

I've got a better idea.

An ancient evil is stirring in the planes, and only one man can stop it. The Blood War comes to a halt and the Nameless One (whose real name is Jack) is released from his damnation at the behest of the self-loathing Diablo, the ultimate ruler of all demons and devils. Jack must find the four elemental crystals (earth, air, fire, and water) and combine them to create the Holy Sword Elsydeon, the only weapon powerful enough to defeat the fallen angel tranvestite vampire ninja Sephiro before he is possessed by the Ultimate Evil.

 

[sqeecoo]

Actually PST did have a good plot. The plot made perfect sense when you consider the fact that the Nameless One is an amnesiac who knew absolutely nothing of himself or his past. Therefore he stumbles about confused from person to person trying to find someone who can help him when they are only interested in using him for their own purposes. The plot was a basically about investigating the Nameless Ones past and was thus a vehicle through which the exceptional storyline unfolded bit by bit.

Of course, when you replay the game the plot doesnt seem to be good because you have already uncovered the mysteries of the Nameless One before and know all about him. Therefore one can no longer relate to the Nameless One as he stumbles about confused from place to place and person to person.

I agree completely, I said something similar in lumpy's topic on how PST's story sucked. The plot is fine: it's based on coincidence, but then again you are an amnesiac lost in a huge city, you need a bit of luck to get you on your way to some answers. The game does not say this is the *only* way to figure things out (up to the point when you find about Ravel), it shows *how it happened*. It's quite possible that others know about Ravel, or that there are other ways to the Lower ward (which are perhaps less convenient: dangerous or exclusive to merchants etc.). PST never pretends to show the whole city.

The first part is linear, yes, but the world is interesting and well-depicted, so I didn't really notice the linearity in my several playthroughs.
PST is of course more linear than darklands, but then again darklands does not have a central storyline worth mentioning.

So we have: brilliant story (characters, events, writing, setting), dialogues (quite a few meaningful dialogue options), character creation (intelligent mages and fast and strong characters play quite differently), and quite interesting consequences to your actions (you don't have two "paths" through the game, but the choices you make change the game quite a bit). Oh and the game is very original, both in the story, and in some of its mechanics (immortality, Lie:/Truth: options, shifting alignment, no armor/swords).

So what's not to like?

 

[psycojester]

I've got a better idea.

An ancient evil is stirring in the planes, and only one man can stop it. The Blood War comes to a halt and the Nameless One (whose real name is Jack) is released from his damnation at the behest of the self-loathing Diablo, the ultimate ruler of all demons and devils. Jack must find the four elemental crystals (earth, air, fire, and water) and combine them to create the Holy Sword Elsydeon, the only weapon powerful enough to defeat the fallen angel tranvestite vampire ninja Sephiro before he is possessed by the Ultimate Evil.

Wtf are you doing here? You should be in Japan writing plots for Final Fantasy games and shouting "Kawai!" as you rub your sweaty bulk up against Japanese women too browbeaten by their society to resist your musky advances

 

[kingcomrade]

I wish I'd been older when I lived in Japan.

 

[Jinxed]

Moron.
First, storyline and combat are hardly the most important parts of an RPG. Storyline is the most important part of Adventure games, Combat - of action and FPS games.
In RPGs, the most important part is (obviously) the part that allows you to Role-play - choices. Which Planescape did great.
"The RPG part (character classes and statistics)" = omg RPG is a game where u have lvls and gain XP and havv a class.

Choice without good writing to actually make you feel something about making it shit as well.