Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[MRY]

I think the world has inured me to Twitter drama to the extent that his feed just looks like the textual equivalent of a shrug emoji.

 

[Lurker King]

It looks like Chris is eager to discuss Obsidian sekretz, but doesn't want to be the first one to break them. Now that they have been revealed, maybe expect him to elaborate on them in his usual friendly manner

We'll see.

I think that nothing good can come of this. If you have any respect for Avellone and want him to shine again and make the games we want, don’t encourage this bickering in public. He always came across as a charismatic guy, but these attacks make him look smaller than he really is and may damage his image. Let him invest all his energy on the system shock remake and forget about Obsidian. They are the past.

 

[Fairfax]

Inspired PS:T? Memento came out after PS:T. The amnesiac protagonist was inspired by Zelazny's Nine Princes of Amber.

Thanks. That's what I wanted to know. I never said that PS:T was inspired by Memento. I suspected that both were inspired by the same book.

It's been a long time since I read Nine Princes, but I don't remember the short-term amnesia, which is the crux of Memento, nor do I remember the character leaving clues for himself (which is a part of both). If I were going to pick a better "they stole it!" source, it would be Soldier of the Mist, which contains the the same anterograde amnesia that is in Memento and has the main character writing all sorts of notes to himself as in both.

Also, is there a tl;dr of this whole interview brouhaha?

Parts I found interesting:

Talks about the bonus payment fiasco. "Why didn't Zenimax just pay you anyway? Isn't it short-sighted to just burn a talented outfit like Obsidian?" this guy is fishing for some juicy headlines.
Feargus clarifies that they never asked for the bonus, Zenimax just put it in there. Agrees that Metacritic bonuses are silly and mentions other examples. "Personally, it does feel a little petty". And you want to work with Bethesda again saying that stuff?

Doesn't blame SEGA for cancelling Aliens, but says they were short-sighted near the end.

Stormlands was "very focused on storms" and the world was "almost post-apocalyptic". Doesn't blame Microsoft, but says they handled it poorly in some ways. The executive producer from Microsoft was changed, and the new guy wasn't in tune with what the previous one had in mind. Can't say why Stormlands was cancelled, but ultimately it came down to not having a champion at MS.

Not getting the South Park sequel was frustrating. Felt a bit slighted that they didn't even get offered, but says they couldn't have done it anyway because they had too many projects at the time.

Admits some of their games got cancelled because they agreed to a budget that ended up not being enough.

---

Overall not a very good interview, but I guess it was informative to the IGN audience. The "I don't blame them, but it's their fault" answers were classic Feargus. I don't know if he simply doesn't care or nobody ever told him that stuff doesn't help them at all.

It looks like Chris is eager to discuss Obsidian sekretz, but doesn't want to be the first one to break them. Now that they have been revealed, maybe expect him to elaborate on them in his usual friendly manner

We'll see.

I think that nothing good can come of this. If you have any respect for Avellone and want him to shine again and make the games we want, don’t encourage this bickering in public. He always came across as a charismatic guy, but these attacks make him look smaller than he really is and may damage his image. Let him invest all his energy on the system shock remake and forget about Obsidian. They are the past.

Don't worry, I'm not like the guy who interviewed Feargus.

It's just that it seems MCA could barely talk about Obsidian stuff at all. Now I think I could ask him about the Aliens cancellation, for instance, since Feargus made some details public knowledge.

 

[MRY]

Inspired PS:T? Memento came out after PS:T. The amnesiac protagonist was inspired by Zelazny's Nine Princes of Amber.

Thanks. That's what I wanted to know. I never said that PS:T was inspired by Memento. I suspected that both were inspired by the same book.

It's been a long time since I read Nine Princes, but I don't remember the short-term amnesia, which is the crux of Memento, nor do I remember the character leaving clues for himself (which is a part of both). If I were going to pick a better "they stole it!" source, it would be Soldier of the Mist, which contains the the same anterograde amnesia that is in Memento and has the main character writing all sorts of notes to himself as in both.

Also, is there a tl;dr of this whole interview brouhaha?

Oh, a quick Google turns out that PS:T's plot arc is suspected to have been inspired by Pages of Pain. I guess maybe that was inspired by Soldier of the Mist, who knows?

Fairfax, you should ask Chris about Pages of Pain and Soldier of the Mist in your Clevian interview.

---EDIT---

Whoa, Troy Denning who wrote Pages of Pain was with TSR from 1981 and is from Lake Geneva. Co-created Darksun. A true old schooler.

 

[Fairfax]

Inspired PS:T? Memento came out after PS:T. The amnesiac protagonist was inspired by Zelazny's Nine Princes of Amber.

Thanks. That's what I wanted to know. I never said that PS:T was inspired by Memento. I suspected that both were inspired by the same book.

It's been a long time since I read Nine Princes, but I don't remember the short-term amnesia, which is the crux of Memento, nor do I remember the character leaving clues for himself (which is a part of both). If I were going to pick a better "they stole it!" source, it would be Soldier of the Mist, which contains the the same anterograde amnesia that is in Memento and has the main character writing all sorts of notes to himself as in both.

Also, is there a tl;dr of this whole interview brouhaha?

Oh, a quick Google turns out that PS:T's plot arc is suspected to have been inspired by Pages of Pain. I guess maybe that was inspired by Soldier of the Mist, who knows?

Fairfax, you should ask Chris about Pages of Pain and Soldier of the Mist in your Clevian interview.

As I said earlier:

Some of MCA's detractors claim he took much of PS:T's premise from a Planescape novel called Pages of Pain, but I think it was released after he'd already started to work on the game, and AFAIK he's never mentioned it.

I looked into it while preparing the questions, and it seems the similarity is just the amnesiac hero who explores the Sigil. The story is basically an adaptation of Theseus' story. The review you linked, which is also on goodreads, is the only one I saw that tried to make a connection. As I mentioned above, my research also showed that some of his detractors accused him of stealing the plot from that book, among other things. I'll ask him, though. Hopefully he won't feel insulted and think I'm trying to expose him or something.

Clevian interview.

 

[MRY]

Some of MCA's detractors claim he took much of PS:T's premise from a Planescape novel called Pages of Pain, but I think it was released after he'd already started to work on the game, and AFAIK he's never mentioned it.

I looked into it while preparing the questions, and it seems the similarity is just the amnesiac hero who explores the Sigil. The story is basically an adaptation of Theseus' story. The review you linked, which is also on goodreads, is the only one I saw that tried to make a connection. As I mentioned above, my research also showed that some of his detractors accused him of stealing the plot from that book, among other things. I'll ask him, though. Hopefully he won't feel insulted and think I'm trying to expose him or something.

The book is from 1996 (although other sources say 1997). The PS:T pitch document is from 1997. Not sure when Avellone's original verbal pitch in his hiring interview was (some sources say 1995, some 1996), but his description of it doesn't seem to include amnesia. Given that this was the only novel published in the Planescape setting, it seems plausible that he'd have seen it, but who knows?

[EDIT: Glancing at the book on Google, it does seem to bear some similarities. For example, there is an encounter with a woman who loves him who he has forgotten, and he takes advantage of this love to secure her help. And there seems to be a lot of going on about achieving the "One Death," though I can't be bothered to figure out if that's because we have an immortal in a cycle of suffering, or what. To be honest, I have no idea what the claim that it's based on the Theseus myth is (that myth doesn't feature amnesia, or an amphora delivery?), but perhaps I just don't remember my Theseus well enough. It seems like it would be a crazy coincidence if two people simultaneously and independently decided to tell stories about an amnesiac hero in Sigil who encounters people who know him that he doesn't know, and in the end recovering his memory is a tragedy rather than a relief. But the world is full of crazy coincidences.]

 

[Lurker King]

Some of MCA's detractors claim he took much of PS:T's premise from a Planescape novel called Pages of Pain, but I think it was released after he'd already started to work on the game, and AFAIK he's never mentioned it.

I think it is crystal clear that the premise was inspired in this book, no doubts about it. What I don’t understand is why Avellone “failed” to mention it as an influence and why some people think this could diminish his work. The marriage between story and gameplay was brilliant in PS:T, and unless the other characters in the book are just like the companions, it doesn’t make that much a difference.

 

[MRY]

even now, I could deny the tiefling her One Death, bestow upon her an endless, aching immortality as miserable as my own

Alas, the page that's from is not on Google books. I'm trying to run it down to see if that's the main character talking. I think it's the Lady of Pain.

[EDIT: Confirmed it's the Lady of Pain, who is apparently narrating. Here's the full quote: "Even now, I could deny the tiefling her One Death, bestow upon her an endless, aching immortality as miserable as my own. Even now, I could turn Tessali's gaze inward, show him the same darkness in his heart that he seeks so diligently in those of others. Even now, I could free Poseidon's net, pull back the hood of that black-cloaked helmsman and look into the eyes of the dark one who bought my bride's dark heart."

Since my only exposure to Planescape is through PS:T and a random Planescape comic that floated around the Black Isle boards years ago, I can't tell if this is sort of standard PS:T phraseology. It certainly is reminiscent of PS:T.]

[EDIT2:

The Amnesian Hero looked away. "Sometimes I glimpse the face of a woman I think I once knew, but she always disappears before I can speak with her." He did not add that he was usually drinking at the time. "But I am sure I am a man of renown. That much is obvious from my bearing."

"And your skill with a sword, yes?"

"Yes." The Thrasson smiled, warming to the tiefling. "I must have lost my memory battling one of Poseidon's sea monsters. That would explain why I was found on the shore of an Arborean sea, and why he promised to restore my memories in return for delivering this."

He thumped the amphora.

Jayk's jaw dropped. "You want your memories back? But you are halfway to the next stage!"

"Stage?"

"Of death! To remember is to go backward! You are like the zombie." She pronounced it zoombee. "He cannot recall the light at his back, yet he is afraid to face the dark truth ahead."

"Jayk, the light is still real for me. I am no zombie."

[EDIT3:

And the greater my woe, the more scalding the anguish that seethes from the empty well inside. I boil in my own sick regret, and I cannot staunch the flow. It billows up in white plumes and blanches my bones with sorrow; I burn with the shame of a thousand evils I cannot recall, and still the well pours forth. It fills me as fire fills a forge, until I must burst or scour myself clean on the swarming streets of Sigil.

...


Pain can force fathers to forsake their daughters and heroes to betray their kingdoms. It can change the hearts of tyrants, or subdue the lands of proud and vicious warriors. It is pain that makes wives hate husbands and immortals beg for death, and only pain can that can shackle whole planes to the will of a single lord.

I dunno. Seems like the answer is that this is just how Planescape jargon goes. I think it's the Lady of Pain speaking here, and presumably she speaks the same way in all the other manuals, so who knows if this was the inspiration. Probably just coincidence. If you look at any fantasy book for such things you can probably find 'em.]

 

[Kev Inkline]

Chris is kind of like Obsidian's Bubbles. (which might make me Codex's Peter Molyneux)

Fixed.

 

[Fairfax]

Some of MCA's detractors claim he took much of PS:T's premise from a Planescape novel called Pages of Pain, but I think it was released after he'd already started to work on the game, and AFAIK he's never mentioned it.

I looked into it while preparing the questions, and it seems the similarity is just the amnesiac hero who explores the Sigil. The story is basically an adaptation of Theseus' story. The review you linked, which is also on goodreads, is the only one I saw that tried to make a connection. As I mentioned above, my research also showed that some of his detractors accused him of stealing the plot from that book, among other things. I'll ask him, though. Hopefully he won't feel insulted and think I'm trying to expose him or something.

The book is from 1996 (although other sources say 1997). The PS:T pitch document is from 1997. Not sure when Avellone's original verbal pitch in his hiring interview was (some sources say 1995, some 1996), but his description of it doesn't seem to include amnesia. Given that this was the only novel published in the Planescape setting, it seems plausible that he'd have seen it, but who knows?

It was 1995. The pitch in his interview was about starting on the death screen, waking up in the Mortuary and then "figuring things out like a jigsaw puzzle", which does imply an amnesiac hero. MCA did read a lot of Planescape material for research, so it's possible he read Pages of Pain as well, but I don't think he got the amnesiac hero from that, not to mention it's a very common trope.

Btw, here's the list of inspirations for PS:T he's mentioned over the years:

• Zelazny's Nine Princes of Amber - How to do an amnesiac hero.
• Bill Willingham's Elementals - Hero who can regenerate after losing body parts.
• Betty Cooper (Archie Comics) - Anna and Fall-From-Grace were inspired by Betty and Veronica.
• Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run - One of the characters was a living street who was also a tranvestite. This inspired the pregnant alley in PS:T.
• Fallout - Stat/skill-based dialogue options.
• Cube (film) - Modron Maze.
• FF7 - Spell animations/videos.

I think there's something about Chrono Trigger that inspired him as well, but I can't remember now.

Also, the things he disliked about RPGs from the time were very influential:

Rats - usually trash enemies, so he made them strong.
Sympathetic undead characters.
Brothels with intellectual stuff.
Nameless protagonist.
Lying angels.
He disliked the D&D alignment system, so he introduced an immortal hero with different incarnations because any playstyle would fit.
D&D character creation - instead of changing settings at the start, he wanted the player to define the character through actions.
Hated the promiscuous succubus trope, so he made a puritan one.
He believed dying too much was the main reason for players to abandon RPGs, so he made an immortal protagonist and made it necessary at times.
Tired of dwarves, elves and halflings (he has a particular hate for halflings for some reason), so he explored different races.
Conventional weapons - he wanted to avoid swords and bows in general, and add more unique ways of killing enemies.
Personal story instead of epic ones about saving the world.
Items with stories instead of regular ones.

EDIT:

To be honest, I have no idea what the claim that it's based on the Theseus myth is (that myth doesn't feature amnesia, or an amphora delivery?), but perhaps I just don't remember my Theseus well enough.

I don't know it myself, but it's how several reviews describe it, and the book's description does mention Poseidon.

 

[MRY]

The Thrasson is lifting his hands toward his face; the Pains have become too much. Already- as he battled the monster, as he pushed his way down Scab Way, even as he has been kneeling there on Lethe's cragged bank – a hundred husks have burst; but what is a hundred to a thousand? He cannot bear that broken emptiness inside, that cold, sick guilt gnawing at his belly, that eternal ache in his breat. He has only to drink and they will be gone; the soines will straighten, the husks will slip from his body and splash into the cold, swirling waters.

The Thrasson lowers his face to meet his rising palms, purses his lips to draw the soothing waters into his mouth… but if he drinks, he will forget Ariadne. Will she not return to torment him? Will he not start chasing her through the mazes, begging her to tell him his name? Will he not keep making the same mistakes, keep adding more Antiopes and Hippolytuses and Jayks to his long ledger of betrayals, keep adding to the terrible burden he must shoulder each time he seeks out his legacy?

....

Can I drink from the Lethean stream myself and forget this discovery?

[EDIT: It appears that the last chapter of the book takes place on the Isle of Despair.]

[EDIT2: When Theseus learns his name, it is accompanied by the smell of rotting food.

"Theseus?" he croaked. "I am Theseus?"

"You remember!"

The wine woman gave him a moon-bright smile and hugged him close to her breast, and that was when the Thrasson – no, Theseus-that was when Theseus remembered the throbbing husks of ichor dinging to his breast.

"No, wait…"

A trio of yellow pods burst, filling the air with the stench of spoiled meat.

...

As the pain deepened, the reek of the yellow ichor grew stronger and more bitter, until the smell grew so overwhelming that Theseus could not prevent himself from gagging. The convulsion caused more yellow pods to burst; more golden ichor spilled over his body, and crushing bands of agony began to tighten around his stomach, his legs, even his throat. The rancid rotten-meat stench grew overwhelming, and he knew he could not keep himself from retching.

]

 

[Fairfax]

The part above is a similar theme, but the Lady of Pain stuff is standard Planescape, it was all over the Planescape modules and books.

 

[MRY]

I think this: "Pain can force fathers to forsake their daughters and heroes to betray their kingdoms. It can change the hearts of tyrants, or subdue the lands of proud and vicious warriors. It is pain that makes wives hate husbands and immortals beg for death, and only pain can that can shackle whole planes to the will of a single lord."

And this: "I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me."

Are pretty surprisingly close, but you're probably right that it's all Planescape scenes-a-faire. Still kind of fun poking around at this book.

---

Perhaps that was why he had lost his memories in the first place: he had lost himself. ...

"No morel" he cried. "I have remembered too much already!"

But the memories continued to come; with each, another black pod ruptured and spilled its dark purulence over his body. He saw dearly what he had only glimpsed before: his callous betrayal of Ariadne, how his neglect caused his own father's death, how his own prideful blindness cost the lives of two wives, how his fury destroyed his innocent son. From the moment of his first victory, he had lost the very thing that had made him a hero.

and

The Thrasson kneels upon the cragged bank and cups a precious mouthful of the river's dark, soothing water in his hands. How many times before, he wonders, has he done this? How many times before has he been the Amnesian Hero, the man of renown searching out his legacy, only to discover it not worth the having? How many times has he knelt upon these same barren shores, taken these cold waters in his palms to drink the numbing bounty of the Lethe? Lethe?

[EDIT: "Whole towns have been known to slide from one plane to another when the natives took to new philosophies more suited to the mindset of a different land." This is a stock Planescape idea, right? I assume it's in the source books, which is why it shows up in both.]

 

[MRY]

I think it'll be great to hear what Chris says in the interview. My current take would be that PS:T clearly draws a lot of inspiration from Pages of Pain, but basically takes the same elements and renders them in a more compelling way. For example, having the counterpart be The Transcendent One rather than The Lady of Pain, using scars rather that abscesses as the symbol of his past wrongs, the shadows, moving mythological aspects like the River Lethe (mistakenly "Styx" in PS:T) to the background, the interactions with the prior incarnations... It feels like Avellone took PoP, reduced it down to the best aspects (including some great language) and then found a way to harmonize everything into a more personal story.

That said, it would be an amazing and wonderful coincidence if both Denning and Chris independently came up with these stories -- it would show the great way a compelling setting can give rise to the same kind of story when in the hands of people with a lot of classical grounding.

 

[Roguey]

Has Bubbles had dramatic meltdown episodes about Codex on twitter after his escape?

As far as I know, Bubbles has kept his word regarding his promise not to discuss RPGs anywhere else.

 

[Ivan]

VS

Who's better and why it's MCA?

chunky arms on that one on the left. sorry, it's my dick talking

 

[Fairfax]

I think this: "Pain can force fathers to forsake their daughters and heroes to betray their kingdoms. It can change the hearts of tyrants, or subdue the lands of proud and vicious warriors. It is pain that makes wives hate husbands and immortals beg for death, and only pain can that can shackle whole planes to the will of a single lord."

And this: "I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me."

Are pretty surprisingly close, but you're probably right that it's all Planescape scenes-a-faire. Still kind of fun poking around at this book.

The wording does look similar, but it's a recurring theme in Planescape. Several modules and accessories explore that stuff in the middle of faction wars across the planes and in the Sigil, specially the Blood War.

[EDIT: "Whole towns have been known to slide from one plane to another when the natives took to new philosophies more suited to the mindset of a different land." This is a stock Planescape idea, right? I assume it's in the source books, which is why it shows up in both.]

Yeah.

I think it'll be great to hear what Chris says in the interview. My current take would be that PS:T clearly draws a lot of inspiration from Pages of Pain, but basically takes the same elements and renders them in a more compelling way. For example, having the counterpart be The Transcendent One rather than The Lady of Pain, using scars rather that abscesses as the symbol of his past wrongs, the shadows, moving mythological aspects like the River Lethe (mistakenly "Styx" in PS:T) to the background, the interactions with the prior incarnations... It feels like Avellone took PoP, reduced it down to the best aspects (including some great language) and then found a way to harmonize everything into a more personal story.

That said, it would be an amazing and wonderful coincidence if both Denning and Chris independently came up with these stories -- it would show the great way a compelling setting can give rise to the same kind of story when in the hands of people with a lot of classical grounding.

The Styx is from the Manual of the Planes, so before Planescape was even created. It was used in other works for similar purposes as well, as it's water steals memories and all that. This is from "Fire and Dust", a Planescape novel from 1996:

The woman's half-eaten eyelids opened. I saw now that her eyes had a tiefling cast: blood-red and feline, with no discernible whites. She did not move a muscle, but her body circled on some undetectable current until her face was focused on Yasmin. "I have been recognized," she said, in a breathy voice that released the stink of gases from her gut. "What do you ask?"

"Nothing," Yasmin answered immediately. "I don't want anything from you. Go away."

"What do you ask?" the woman said again. Her breath fouled the air like sewage.

"I told you, I don't need anything. I don't want to talk to you." Yasmin snatched up her sword, though the body was floating just too far to reach. "Go back wherever you came from."

"Impossible," the dead woman said. "I have been recognized. What do you ask?"

"I ask you to get out of my sight!" Yasmin's voice was becoming shrill. "Now!"

"That is not within my power," the floating corpse replied. "What do you ask?"

Yasmin balled her hands into fists and covered her eyes. I put an arm around her shoulder and growled at Garou, "What's this all about?"

For a moment he didn't answer, perhaps debating whether the truth would cause us more pain than ignorance. Then he said, "Nothing truly dies in the multiverse. When a soul is killed in one place, it is merely re-embodied on another plane...but with no memory of its former existence."

"Any leatherhead knows that," Miriam muttered.

"But if the memories are gone, where do they go?" Garou asked. "They can't just vanish--the multiverse doesn't let anything slip through its fingers so easily. Every dying person's memory drifts like flotsam on unseen tides, until it fetches up in a holding basin like this one. Here lie the remembrances of all those drowned on a million worlds. I could show you other such memory sinks: the Poisoned Jungle, the Plain of Knives--"

"What do you ask?" interrupted the floating corpse.

"Why does she keep saying that?" Yasmin whispered.

"The memories are drawn to those who knew their owners in life," Garou replied. "If you recognize and name them, they are compelled to reveal a secret to you. Your mother-- or rather, the cast-off memory of your mother--will not rest until she has discharged this burden."

"What do you ask?" the dead woman said. She spoke in a monotone, devoid of emotion; yet I suspected she would follow us the length of the Styx until we had let her disclose something of her past.

The PS:T novelization (which has a different story) used the Styx to explain the TNO's ability to recover previous memories, saying he was dosed with the Styx's waters in a previous incarnation.

Troy Denning also says in the book that "the opening and closing epigraphs and all stanzas of poetry used in the book are from the poem “Dolores” by Algernon Charles Swinburne. There's a clear influence in this quote, for instance:

"Pain can force fathers to forsake their daughters and heroes to betray their kingdoms. It can change the hearts of tyrants, or subdue the lands of proud and vicious warriors. It is pain that makes wives hate husbands and immortals beg for death, and only pain can that can shackle whole planes to the will of a single lord."

It's possible that someone in the PS:T team read Pages of Pain and was influenced by it, but I doubt MCA was, or he would've mentioned it at least once in 20 years. Perhaps he was influenced by Chronicles of Amber (never read it myself), or works by other authors he's mentioned, such as Robert Pirsig, David Gerrold, Harlan Ellison, and so on. Or maybe it's indeed a coincidence. The themes are all Planescapey, the amnesiac hero is a common trope, and the Sigil would've been part of any major PS novel or game.

 

[MRY]

That poem is tl;dr -- what's the quote in it that you're thinking of?

It's Lethe, by the way, not Styx that removes memories. It's a glitch in PS:T. (Possibly in Planescape, not sure.)

 

[Fairfax]

That poem is tl;dr -- what's the quote in it that you're thinking of?

The whole poem is about a "Lady of Pain", a cruel, sensual, immortal and feared sacred figure from a tormented lover's perspective.

Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
Men touch them, and change in a trice
The lilies and languours of virtue
For the raptures and roses of vice;
Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,
These crown and caress thee and chain,
O splendid and sterile Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.

When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;
When the city lay red from thy rods,
And thine hands were as arrows to scatter
The children of change and their gods;
When the blood of thy foemen made fervent
A sand never moist from the main,
As one smote them, their lord and thy servant,
Our Lady of Pain.

And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,
And satiate with comfortless hours;
And we know thee, how all men belie thee,
And we gather the fruit of thy flowers;
The passion that slays and recovers,
The pangs and the kisses that rain
On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,
Our Lady of Pain.

Pages of Pain's intro as a whole is very similar, the main difference is that it's from the Lady of Pain's POV.

It's Lethe, by the way, not Styx that removes memories. It's a glitch in PS:T. (Possibly in Planescape, not sure.)

I meant in Planescape, yeah.

 

[MRY]

Well, no sense pushing this any further, but I really don't think the poem is similar to the quoted passages from PoP and PS:T. They are all about a bunch of things that happen, to be sure, but it's the specific structure of the PoP and PS:T quotes that's so striking to me -- both of them focus on a subject (Pain / Belief) and list a series of things it can do "X does 1, X does 2, X does 3, X does 4." Both of include the broad ("betray kingdom, subdue lands" or "move cities") and the personal ("forsake daughters, hate husbands" or cling to love) and both specifically mention "change the heart" or "turn ... [a] heart" as well as immortals. Anyway, I'm sure you're right that it's coincidental, but such a fun coincidence!

 

[MRY]

Whoa, in a further crazy coincidence, Troy Denning was hired by Interplay/Black Isle to novelize Stone Keep the same year Torment came out. What a small world.

 

[Sacred82]

Whoa, in a further crazy coincidence, Troy Denning was hired by Interplay/Black Isle to novelize Stone Keep the same year Torment came out. What a small world.

Troy Denning?

Silly Stone Keep?

not exactly the best fit

 

[Fairfax]

Well, no sense pushing this any further, but I really don't think the poem is similar to the quoted passages from PoP and PS:T. They are all about a bunch of things that happen, to be sure, but it's the specific structure of the PoP and PS:T quotes that's so striking to me -- both of them focus on a subject (Pain / Belief) and list a series of things it can do "X does 1, X does 2, X does 3, X does 4." Both of include the broad ("betray kingdom, subdue lands" or "move cities") and the personal ("forsake daughters, hate husbands" or cling to love) and both specifically mention "change the heart" or "turn ... [a] heart" as well as immortals. Anyway, I'm sure you're right that it's coincidental, but such a fun coincidence!

The themes are roughly the same in the poem and PoP, but yes, the wording in the quoted passages looks like a direct influence. I think one or more of the designers read that book for research and used some ideas. Other than MCA and CMCC, the PS:T designers haven't really talked about the game over the years, which is probably why the book and its potential influence are very obscure.

Whoa, in a further crazy coincidence, Troy Denning was hired by Interplay/Black Isle to novelize Stone Keep the same year Torment came out. What a small world.

That's the novelization of what was meant to be Stonekeep 2's story, by the way.

 

[MRY]

Stonekeep 2 was originally Planescape PSX, right? :itwasaliens:

 

[Fairfax]

Stonekeep 2 was originally Planescape PSX, right? :itwasaliens:

No, Stonekeep 2 used to be Planescape PC. I actually tried to get in touch with Zeb Cook via Facebook to ask him about that game (the most mysterious Black Isle project), but I guess he didn't like the question/wasn't interested: