Torment Beamdog's Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition

[undecaf]

for most modern gamers the TAB highlighting is really a must.

It's a bit of a shame. I know people love to hate "pixelhunting", but highlighting everything for convenience only further promotes the obsessive compulsive completionist mentality and helps to automate the experience and gameplay habits along with shit like quest compasses. It's a small thing on its own, really, but it just takes a bit of that "something" out of the game when everything's found and discovered for you (even if it is optional to press that button). I played games back in the day not knowing I could highlight objects (I didn't care to read the fucking manual, I liked to explore the games on my own) and had tremendous fun searching the nooks and crannies when feeling like it or when needing to do so, and finding things out. Once I learned that I could, it just didn't really feel the same again... a dull "press'n loot" chore.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Paying 20 bucks for being able of zoom in and out seems fair to me.

Spoiler

Finding things in PT is not hard, highlight could help on making the things more confortable but cleary is not neccesary. The only hard thing in that regard is finding Ravel, which is more about talking with everyone in the zone and making relations between them that searching for items.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

In order to appeal to modern gamers, though, some of these conveniences have to be added. At best they should be options, as in the game should not be designed around them to be used exclusively. I am in favor of adding quest markers to PS:T, for example. I would never, ever use them, but I am at a point in the game now where I imagine modern gamers who are less patient would simply give up as they wouldn't know where to go. I have no problem wandering in-game for a few hours to figure it out, but that's not going to help someone else enjoy the game. A simple hint button or quest marker would be good for players who need that sort of thing.

And while pixelhunting can be fun, it's another RPG element that just has been changed and somewhat lost nowadays. It's the same as drawing your own map or journal. If you keep going back in time I'm sure you can find RPG players who think the addition of visual graphics were terrible and that RPGs should be text only. Go further back and people will say the same about the text RPGs and that tabletop is the best. So pixelhunting in this case is just another RPG element that has been lost to time or just not explored in modern gaming.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Just stop.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Back in the day gaming was like a fine plate of good food. You taste it slowly, feel it, contemplate it. Today is everything about fast food.

Good food or not, the plate can get cold and the food thrown away. Or the food could be missed completely and misunderstood. A modern gamer or kid growing up isn't going to have the patience to contemplate an RPG that is obscure and hard to figure out. So some measures should be taken to ease them in. Once they are eased in you can try and coax them into exploring the further reaches of the genre. That's how I got into it as a kid growing up and I'm sure many others here did the same. It takes years to appreciate some of the finer things.

 

[GloomFrost]

JESUS CHRIST!!!! Not being able to highlight object was an important part of the quest design like hidden stash in buried village or when you have to find Mar after he gives you Moridor box. beamdog said how they didnt want to change anything about the gameplay and they still managed to fuck up!!!! That requires some special kind of skills.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

JESUS CHRIST!!!! Not being able to highlight object was an important part of the quest design like hidden stash in buried village or when you have to find Mar after he gives you Moridor box. beamdog said how they didnt want to change anything about the gameplay and they still managed to fuck up!!!! That requires some special kind of skills.

A) You don't have to use the highlighting if you don't want to, and B) it wasn't that important to the design so far. I'm 30+ hours into the game and other than seeing a lot of text descriptions for buildings and what not, there aren't a ton of hidden stashes or quest items that this feature ruins.

 

[Barbarian]

Shilling for beamdog. Now that's a new low.

 

[GloomFrost]

JESUS CHRIST!!!! Not being able to highlight object was an important part of the quest design like hidden stash in buried village or when you have to find Mar after he gives you Moridor box. beamdog said how they didnt want to change anything about the gameplay and they still managed to fuck up!!!! That requires some special kind of skills.

A) You don't have to use the highlighting if you don't want to, and B) it wasn't that important to the design so far. I'm 30+ hours into the game and other than seeing a lot of text descriptions for buildings and what not, there aren't a ton of hidden stashes or quest items that this feature ruins.

You god damn liar, 5 minutes ago you wrote that the game "must have been tough" without highlighting and suddenly "it wasnt that important for design so far". Dont waste your time replying, enjoy the beamdogs cash grab. Clearly you represent their target market.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Must have been tough as in it would take a lot of time. With the screen zoomed incredibly close you would be spending half the game scouring every pixel. Most modern gamers are not going to want do that, news at 11. And if they do want that, they don't have to use TAB highlighting or any other enhanced feature, they are options.

As for "shilling" for any RPG developer, I guess I just love RPGs. I like that modern gamers may gain interest in these classic CRPGs partly thanks to what Beamdog does. I think that's a great thing.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Thing is Moderns gamers are those who are praising Zelda BOTW for leaving them in a challenging world free to explore with just basic indications about their objetives a la Daggerfall/Morrowind. Mind your words.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Zelda also has a legacy behind it and a huge, excited fanbase. They could take chances and do things like that.

 

[existential_vacuum]

A) You don't have to use the highlighting if you don't want to

Let's add press to win button. Why not? You don't have to use it if you don't want to.

Moreover, playing the game isn't that important, aye?

As for "shilling" for any RPG developer, I guess I just love RPGs.

EDIT: fixed image hosting fuckery

 

[FeelTheRads]

This just in: MCA refused a CE of Siege of Dragonspear that Beamdog wanted to give him. lul

 

[Zer0wing]

Thing is Moderns gamers are those who are praising Zelda BOTW for leaving them in a challenging world free to explore with just basic indications about their objetives a la Daggerfall/Morrowind. Mind your words.

Let's look on it from the positive side - maybe this will convince Bethesda return to a more "challenging" format than Skyrim for the next TES.

 

[FeelTheRads]

This just in: That Phil Dongle or whatever his name is says "RPG games". In actual speech not only in writing.

 

[Infinitron]

Steam still says "pre-purchase" for some reason, but it should be out now: http://store.steampowered.com/app/466300/
https://af.gog.com/game/planescape_torment_enhanced_edition?as=1649904300

 

[aratuk]

It is out for iPhone now. I already have a headache from playing it on the tiny screen.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Themazingness : to be fair, if there was multiplayer you could play as Morte, Grace, Annah, etc, which would be cool

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

The biggest font is way to small, even TTON has bigger fonts
.Also why the hell do we have to read the dialogue only on center?
You can have bigger fonts on vanilla with proper mods so for people who care for their eyes should stay away
Also no resolution change so it only runs on your desktop resolution.

 

[merchant's skeleton]

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/planescape-torment---enhanced-edition

I really loved what Beamdog did with the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition series. It modernized the games, and with the inclusion of transsexual clerics, lesbian vampires, homosexual half-orcs, and male hating feminist characters to name but a few, I enjoyed playing a game where I felt I could be myself, slaying the oppressive patriarchy, to become the new Lady of Murder.

I was therefore most disappointed to play Planescape to find it lacked the diversity Beamdog had included in previous RPGs. I thought Beamdog was a progressive games company and yet the protagonist is an over-privileged heterosexual male who can only date a really hot succubus, Fall-from-Grace and another attractive female, Annah a fiery tiefling. Their roles are clearly limited to being sexual objects for the main character. Given the main character wakes up in a morgue, he basically has no material wealth, so this is highly unrealistic that any women would find the protagonist attractive, thus further pandering to the stereotypical male sexual fantasy. He is tall though, so perhaps that offers some minor compensation but the face is certainly not Instagram material.

The writing is overly complicated for a RPG, and lacks the subtle touch of class that Siege of Dragonspear had in abundance. I wanted to play an RPG that did not require much thought but Planescape is difficult to comprehend in many parts. Too many options to choose from can leave the player bewildered and the lack of linearity makes it difficult to decide what to do next, so one can easily become lost.

Last but not least, the lack of “story mode” is disappointing as I found myself constantly dying in this game.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Back in the day gaming was like a fine plate of good food. You taste it slowly, feel it, contemplate it. Today is everything about fast food.

Good food or not, the plate can get cold and the food thrown away. Or the food could be missed completely and misunderstood. A modern gamer or kid growing up isn't going to have the patience to contemplate an RPG that is obscure and hard to figure out. So some measures should be taken to ease them in. Once they are eased in you can try and coax them into exploring the further reaches of the genre. That's how I got into it as a kid growing up and I'm sure many others here did the same. It takes years to appreciate some of the finer things.

Or they could go on and play other games that don't require that kind of attention to detail. You know, a fundamental difference between games then and now is that back in the day, games weren't designed so everyone was expected to finish them. I played plenty of games in my teens that I didn't finish because I couldn't manage to. I never finished Darklands, I never finished Might and Magic I - but that's my fault, not the game's.

This bullshit about 'coax them into exploring the further reaches of the game' is hilarious. Why would anyone need coaxing into anything? Why are you playing a fucking game if you're not willing to play the fucking game?

Take an easy example: the Copper Coronet in BG2. There's a whole fucking questline in there with slavers and shit, and it's one of the first locations you visit in the game - it's not previously announced, there's no ! marker on the npc you need to talk to to trigger it, it just flows naturally from talking to the tavern patrons. You don't expect it, and you feel a real sense of exploration when you open the back door to the sewer/slave quarters. There's a cool sword as a reward for clicking some dumb shit on the screen that's not highlighted. None of that is plastered on your screen as an AWSUM QUEST. You feel rewarded for finding things and interacting with the game. That's good design.

Quest markers, object highlighting is fucking decline.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I won't be satisfied until they let me play Planescape Torment on my oven's LCD screen

Sound idea, could attract modern gamers. The text and shit could be an option for those stuck in the past.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

So, the game is in GOG now? And it hasn't Denuvo or any similar shit, right?

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/planescape-torment---enhanced-edition

This one needs to be put out of his misery.