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Torment .

KeighnMcDeath

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And she trips forgetting her tail is around her foot.
 
Vatnik Wumao
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Erhm...i think Disco Elysium is a better written game, sorry Torment
Also a much more complete game. By the point you reach the Outlands in PS:T, it's clear that a lot of content had been cut.

Which doesn't mean that PS:T doesn't deserve the love it gets, but we should objectively evaluate its pros and cons rather than fetishize it as some storyfag masterpiece bereft of design flaws.
 

Harthwain

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Erhm...i think Disco Elysium is a better written game, sorry Torment
Disco Elsyium is great successor to Planescape: Torment, but I couldn't pick which one is better written, because I find both of them to be great in this regard. Why do you think Disco Elysium is better written than Planescape: Torment? Disco Elysium manages to be more hilarious despite being set in a dystopian world where you are a screw-up, sure, but other than that?

Also a much more complete game. By the point you reach the Outlands in PS:T, it's clear that a lot of content had been cut.
I never felt like Planescape: Torment was short or lacked content. In case of Disco Elysium I found it to be shorter than expected (by at least 1/3).
 
Vatnik Wumao
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Also a much more complete game. By the point you reach the Outlands in PS:T, it's clear that a lot of content had been cut.
I never felt like Planescape: Torment was short or lacked content. In case of Disco Elysium I found it to be shorter than expected (by at least 1/3).
It wasn't too short, but the content certainly seemed unevenly distributed between the early game areas in Sigil and the late game ones in the Outlands. It gave me the feeling that the latter were rushed, but I could very well be mistaken in that regard.

Disco Elysium didn't suffer the same problem and it didn't feel *that* short, but instead it came with its own issues in regards to the questionable narrative choices the devs made in developing the ending.

The phasmid somewhat redeems it, but it's kind of a cheap trick in order to spice things up and not leave the player with a feeling of "really, that's it?" vis-a-vis the ending.
 

Baron Dupek

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Isn't that the same artist(s?) that made these Baldur's Gate artworks available in our avatars library?
 

Butter

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It wasn't too short, but the content certainly seemed unevenly distributed between the early game areas in Sigil and the late game ones in the Outlands. It gave me the feeling that the latter were rushed, but I could very well be mistaken in that regard.
This is true, but it could be argued that side content should be more sparse as you approach the game's climax, because that's when the stakes are highest and it should be focused. To make an extreme example, nobody was upset that the Fortress of Regrets didn't have side quests.
 
Vatnik Wumao
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It wasn't too short, but the content certainly seemed unevenly distributed between the early game areas in Sigil and the late game ones in the Outlands. It gave me the feeling that the latter were rushed, but I could very well be mistaken in that regard.
This is true, but it could be argued that side content should be more sparse as you approach the game's climax, because that's when the stakes are highest and it should be focused.
I wouldn't take issue with it being focused on the main quest if the overall quantity of content by area stayed the same due to a more fleshed out critical path, but it clearly wasn't.

I don't take issue with the Fortress of Regrets though since that's basically the epilogue rather than a final chapter.
 

Hag

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Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
It wasn't too short, but the content certainly seemed unevenly distributed between the early game areas in Sigil and the late game ones in the Outlands. It gave me the feeling that the latter were rushed, but I could very well be mistaken in that regard.
This is true, but it could be argued that side content should be more sparse as you approach the game's climax, because that's when the stakes are highest and it should be focused. To make an extreme example, nobody was upset that the Fortress of Regrets didn't have side quests.
I wouldn't have minded the first part of the Hive being half its size, if it meant more content for Curst and mostly Baator that is only wasted potential.
 

Terenty

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Disco Elsyium is great successor to Planescape: Torment, but I couldn't pick which one is better written, because I find both of them to be great in this regard. Why do you think Disco Elysium is better written than Planescape: Torment?
Maybe because Torment has a lot of filler npcs and some straight up exposition dumbs here and there. Also playing as Hary felt more exciting and personal as opposed to Nameless One with his check list approach to questioning every npc.
 

KK1001

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I think Curst is fine and mostly serves the main story well. The Prison is definitely a slog and I would have liked to see alternative ways to progress through it. A modern day RPG would definitely allow you to sneak or talk your past a lot of it or use some magic bullshit or w/e. It's not a big deal though. Baator is just way too short. This wouldn't be a problem if we had ideally like two more zones where we could see the Nameless One's impact. After I beat it I always felt a sense it was a missed opportunity not to visit Pandemonium or the Abyss or their gate-towns directly.

As for Torment vs Disco...They're both well-written games. Torment definitely hits a more like high gothic melancholy, and its humor is a lot more subdued. It's just obvious that Disco had more time and the benefit of having come later. And unlike Torment which will never have the content it felt like it should have had added, the Final Cut will probably represent a more satisfying, coherent experience for autists like myself who value that sort of thing.
 

Harthwain

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Maybe because Torment has a lot of filler npcs and some straight up exposition dumbs here and there.
I never thought about it that way when it comes to Planescape: Torment. It could be because the universe in the game was fresh and interesting, and the writting itself helped me to absorb all information that came my way. In fact, I think it was mainly due to writing itself, because I simply couldn't stand Torment: Tides of Numenera exactly because of the huge exposition dumps, despite it having a new universe. That game had a lot of writers (Colin McComb, Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie, Adam Heine, George Ziets, Mark Yohalem, Leanne C. Taylor-Giles, Nathan Long) and Chris Avellone himself wasn't doing much of the writing (his role was to "review and provide feedback on all creative aspect of the game" and he designed and wrote one companion), so it could be that there were just too many mediocre writers on the team and this showed.
 

Terenty

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Another thing, Torment, like any other rpg suffers from "side quests that have nothing to do with the main character" syndrome, where Nameless One goes around doing random tasks for random people, whereas Disco Elysium avoids this trope and a much better experience for it compared to what it would have been otherwise.
 

adddeed

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I like side quests in RPGs.
And you can choose not to do side quests if you're such a dumbfuk.
 

Harthwain

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Another thing, Torment, like any other rpg suffers from "side quests that have nothing to do with the main character" syndrome, where Nameless One goes around doing random tasks for random people, whereas Disco Elysium avoids this trope and a much better experience for it compared to what it would have been otherwise.
In Disco Elysium you kind of do "random tasks for random people". Such as looking for a drunk. Or investigating the cursed building. I could name more examples, but I think I've made my point.

The way I see it, side quests are part of the exploration. If you get rid of the side quests, then you do miss out on opportunites for storytelling regarding the state of the world at large, because nothing outside of your quest matters anymore.
 

Maxie

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I'm giving it a second playthrough right now and my teeth hurt from how boring the game is. I'm currently getting pinballed all around the Clerk Ward piecing together a way to reach Ravel, very dull
 

PEACH

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I'm not of the opinion that torment is a flawless masterpiece, but the first half is sublime.

It's the endless slog of copy/pasted encounters post-Ravel that're truly dull.
 

adddeed

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I'm giving it a second playthrough right now and my teeth hurt from how boring the game is. I'm currently getting pinballed all around the Clerk Ward piecing together a way to reach Ravel, very dull

Back to Skyrim for you then.
Dumbass.
 

Maxie

Guest
I'm not of the opinion that torment is a flawless masterpiece, but the first half is sublime.

It's the endless slog of copy/pasted encounters post-Ravel that're truly dull.
Yeah I fail to note this sublimeness. Given that I've just beaten pre-Ravel stuff, let me summarize real quick what is actually in the game

-you wake up in the Mortuary and go down the hall, meet Deionara's ghost if you're so inclined
-outside you do a meagre crypt dungeon quest, some fedex for random NPCs (like the medallion for the pacifist warrior, or finding a guide for the woman lost between planes)
-in the Burning Man Inn you recruit Dak'kon
-eventually you establish that Pharod lives under the Ragpickers Square, you reach it via a junk-powered portal
-there's a weaksauce dungeon leading you to a hidden village of the collectors
-Pharod tells you to scavenge the catacombs even deeper into the ground for the Bronze Sphere
-tons of cut & paste rat killing, flying heads attacking you, crocodiles
-in the Dead Nations you establish that the king is dead, allowing you to go to the Drowned Nations
-there there's more weaksauce fights, you pick up the sphere and the decanter to douse Ignus, there's the Tomb where you die to get a shitty axe
-after talking to Pharod, Annah leads you to the alley where she found you (after cleaning Tenement of Thugs from a generic mob of bandits)
-in Lower Ward, Morte gets stolen by Lothar, you convince him to give Morte back with some novelty skull (like Soego's)
-you wander into Clerk Ward and pinball between the Brothel and the Sensates base to find out where's Ravel
 

Vormulak

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Erhm...i think Disco Elysium is a better written game, sorry Torment
Nah man Disco Elysium has a lot of cringe and really shit and immersion breaking writing. Harry thinking and speaking like a cartoon caricature of whatever political beliefs he espouses being the best example of the shit writing.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
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Great game but with some problems. Nowhere near being a cult game that codexers think this game is.
8/10

Cult status doesn't indicate quality, it indicates popularity.
Ahh not really,cults are niche side sects that spawn around mainstream religion. Which means that the game is niche but good enough to inspire zealotry in to the people that enjoy it. It is opposite of what you said lol.
 

Konjad

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Replaying PST now (only played it once in 2005 I think). I have a few games on my playlist, but got PST EE copy from begging thread and thought i'd just run it to quickly check out changes in EE and go back to playing other games... but I was instantly hooked again and yesterday I spent literally whole day on just PST, just as today's morning. Unfortunately I have some stuff to attend to, so I have to take a few hours break.

By the way, am I the only one who never liked Annah? I like every joinable NPC in the game, but she was always repugnant and annoying. I don't dig her character at all. She's as annoying as Minsc in BG.

I made a party of Morte, Fall-from-Grace, Ignus, Nordom and Dak'kon. I'll probably take Vhailor once I can, but idk whom to kick out then.
 

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