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Planescape Torment is full of bad writing

mfkndggrfll

Learned
Shitposter Bethestard
Joined
Mar 21, 2018
Messages
546
It's also full of great and memorable writing, some of the richest and funniest dialogue lines I have ever read in an RPG, but the game still has instances of writing that make me step back and ask "Is this really the greatest bestest RPG of all times that people are praising so much?". Some passages actually reminded me of Pillars of Eternity...

It feels like a highschooler tried to act smarter than he was to impress his college friends by using a level of writing that he didn't fully master. Like a gym bro trying to bench more than he can handle to impress the gym ho. He managed to pull the early bluff quite well but he's losing his steam.

The writing style feels a bit overused and im only 1/3rd into the game. Where PoE does most comparisons with 'like' (this NPC is like this, has a face like that, etc...) Planescape overuse the 'as if' as if the writing didn't know better, (this NPC looks as if..., he acts as if, he smells as if, etc...).

Like PoE you can find some questionable choices for descriptions that end up being vague and fail to depict anything, i.e. a certain NPC has a face shaped like a moon. What the fuck does that even mean? Does he have a round chubby face? Is his face covered in acnea craters as if he smoked too much crystal meth?

Some NPCs have 'angular' faces, what kind of angles? 90 degrees? 180? 270?

Another description to detail the nasty smell of a NPC "you can almost see the yellow(ish?) lines wafting from his body". Again what the hell does that mean? This is a sort of reference to the way smelly characters are depicted in comic books but doesn't make any literal sense, even the foulest of smells cannot be visible to the eye and if you can see it then it's more than smell. A quick research told me that the writer was also into comic books, go figure.

I vaguely remember another passage, from Dak' kon I think (can't find it anymore though), where his sword is described with the metal waving/rippling and you can read "through/under/beyond" (not sure about the exact words but it was 3 words separeted by /slashes/ as if it was a rough draft and they forgot to edit the chosen word) "some chaos-like stuff". This is possibly the worst example I found so far, what the actual fuck is "chaos-like stuff"???

That was for the form, the substance has some stupid stuff as well. The way TNO is willing to rip off his own finger/eye to stick some rotten flesh on it and expect a result is just retarded, it's as bad as Resident Evil 7 where you heal your severed hand/leg with some rubbing alchohol. It's just so unrelatable, that and the part where you allow a woman to dig through your body and crack your skull open to find stuff.

Reading PST is sorta like ordering a soup at a 5 star restaurant and finding curly black hairs in it. If you can ignore them and pick them out then the game is fine but I think I prefer games like BG or Fallout where you are much less likely to find hairs.

Anyway my playthrough isn't finished yet, stay tuned for some more ranting.
 
Last edited:

HarveyBirdman

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 5, 2019
Messages
1,044
Jasede: Ah, wretched Planescape: Torment, always Planescape: Torment. This game is so hard to sell. I've many times attempted to get people to play it, only for them to get bored before leaving the mortuary or the bar outside it. If they do keep playing despite that, they are met with terribly shallow encounter design and an RPG system that seems more like a strange cross between Choose Your Own Adventure books and an adventure game, based around puzzles and conversations. Even calling it an RPG is almost a matter of some debate. So why then does this game hold such a high place to so many of us?

The biggest reason is that this game has shown us that story-based games can work. Often likened to a playable novel, PS:T tells the engrossing tale of a man in search of his past - or pasts. Starting from the tired cliché of amnesia, PS:T quickly draws those who will accept it for what it is, warts and all, into an engrossing tale of redemption, love and treachery, covering succinctly many of man's desires and shortcomings.
While nobody is going to suggest this is the same level as classic literature, this is the game that showed us that video game writing can be above average, can indeed conjure up fantastic worlds and allow us to visit them. Not one NPC in PS:T does not have an interesting story, not one description of text or snippet of party banter an enticing tidbit that teaches us about the odd, foreign world that the tale occurs in.

PS:T invites us to a strange journey, and those who accept the invitation will, if they have the patience to read the game's copious walls of text, find themselves drawn to into an experience that they are not likely to ever forget.
 

mfkndggrfll

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Shitposter Bethestard
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546
As if writing in video games has never been above average until 1999.

That reviewer is so clueless it sounds like a Kotaku review.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Messages
33,052
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KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
That was for the form, the substance has some stupid stuff as well. The way TNO is willing to rip off his own finger/eye to stick some rotten flesh on it and expect a result is just retarded, it's as bad as Resident Evil 7 where you heal your severed hand/leg with some rubbing alchohol. It's just so unrelatable, that and the part where you allow a woman to dig through your body and crack your skull open to find stuff.

He's an immortal who probably also doesn't feel any pain. There is evidence that his lost limbs regenerate after a while, like this severed arm you can find: https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Severed_Arm_(Yours)

This means that limbs once lost (this arm at least a decade ago, going from the description) re-grow after a while, since you start the game with two full arms.

So doing some shenanigans with your body is completely in character and not illogical at all. When you're immortal and know lost limbs will re-grow after some time, wouldn't you tear out an eye and plop in some magical thing that has a chance to grant you a new ability? What's there to lose? Literally nothing.
 

Dux

Arcane
Joined
May 26, 2016
Messages
635
Location
Sweden
Reading PST is sorta like ordering a soup at a 5 star restaurant and finding curly black hairs in it. If you can ignore them and pick them out then the game is fine but I think I prefer games like BG or Fallout where you are much less likely to find hairs.

So you'd go to a 5 star restaurant to order soup with someone's pubes in it, and be sort of okay with it? "Nah, man, it's fine, I'll just move these to one side and continue on slurping my lentil soup."

Soup. What are you, a moon maiden?
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Some NPCs have 'angular' faces, what kind of angles? 90 degrees? 180? 270?
This angle here:

2hzsd3.png
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
3,626
Location
Granbretan
If you think Marta rummaging around in your body or Marrow Friends finger grafting is crazy there's a simple solution, don't do it.
 

Mexi

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jan 6, 2015
Messages
6,811
Jasede: Ah, wretched Planescape: Torment, always Planescape: Torment. This game is so hard to sell. I've many times attempted to get people to play it, only for them to get bored before leaving the mortuary or the bar outside it. If they do keep playing despite that, they are met with terribly shallow encounter design and an RPG system that seems more like a strange cross between Choose Your Own Adventure books and an adventure game, based around puzzles and conversations. Even calling it an RPG is almost a matter of some debate. So why then does this game hold such a high place to so many of us?

The biggest reason is that this game has shown us that story-based games can work. Often likened to a playable novel, PS:T tells the engrossing tale of a man in search of his past - or pasts. Starting from the tired cliché of amnesia, PS:T quickly draws those who will accept it for what it is, warts and all, into an engrossing tale of redemption, love and treachery, covering succinctly many of man's desires and shortcomings.
While nobody is going to suggest this is the same level as classic literature, this is the game that showed us that video game writing can be above average, can indeed conjure up fantastic worlds and allow us to visit them. Not one NPC in PS:T does not have an interesting story, not one description of text or snippet of party banter an enticing tidbit that teaches us about the odd, foreign world that the tale occurs in.

PS:T invites us to a strange journey, and those who accept the invitation will, if they have the patience to read the game's copious walls of text, find themselves drawn to into an experience that they are not likely to ever forget.
It's better than classic literature. Whoever wrote that is a Chris Priestly cuck ass piece of shit. Classic literature makes me fall asleep.
 

Chippy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
6,037
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
OP is like a 5 year old sitting in a F1 racing car and throwing a tantrum because he can't put his feet through the floor and make it go vroom. It would be nice if the Codex had a new tag for potential millenials - then I could test my theory that they're all this thick. They even have poor standards of trolling.
 

mfkndggrfll

Learned
Shitposter Bethestard
Joined
Mar 21, 2018
Messages
546
torment writing can appeal only to people who never read seriuos literatule or have just read couple of juvenile fantasy novels

I guess that's the reason it's so highly ranked. People who got impressed by the writing didn't read a lot of books and thought that if it was too complex for their understanding then surely it must be good.

That was for the form, the substance has some stupid stuff as well. The way TNO is willing to rip off his own finger/eye to stick some rotten flesh on it and expect a result is just retarded, it's as bad as Resident Evil 7 where you heal your severed hand/leg with some rubbing alchohol. It's just so unrelatable, that and the part where you allow a woman to dig through your body and crack your skull open to find stuff.

He's an immortal who probably also doesn't feel any pain. There is evidence that his lost limbs regenerate after a while, like this severed arm you can find: https://torment.fandom.com/wiki/Severed_Arm_(Yours)

This means that limbs once lost (this arm at least a decade ago, going from the description) re-grow after a while, since you start the game with two full arms.

So doing some shenanigans with your body is completely in character and not illogical at all. When you're immortal and know lost limbs will re-grow after some time, wouldn't you tear out an eye and plop in some magical thing that has a chance to grant you a new ability? What's there to lose? Literally nothing.

Except that so far canon-wise you aren't aware that they regrow, you have no memory. As far as the canon goes you need to be brought back to the mortuary to get stitched up. The manual states that you die for real if you are somewhere where you cannot be brought to the mortuary.

You also have no confirmation that the rotten flesh will stick, it feels just so out of place.
 

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