Torment I just finished Planescape: Torment and...

[MRY]

Perhaps the right analogy here is that both of us are mounted on high horses, galloping in the same direction, and occasionally flicking each other with our riding crops out of pique. Probably not worth extending the debate, since I think we ride together.

That said: "but [Tolkien] was terrible at characterization and thematically stunted." Yeesh. Hard to see how someone can say that and think PS:T has good characters and themes. Tolkien has his shortcomings (including taking sexual and religious passion out of chivalric romance/Norse folklore), but I've never been persuaded by these knocks on him, which seem to be in some sense politically driven. In particular, I've always like the characterizations of Theoden, Denethor, and Sam, and the core theme about fighting to defend a beauty that is fading from the world, even while knowing that it is fading from the world, is very powerful. I also think there is pretty sophisticated thematic stuff going on in the various permutations of failed leaders throughout the world. I know people don't like that Tolkien's bottom line is that good guys should be good, that good ought to triumph through goodness, and that in a moral society, different people are bound for different stations in hierarchies (and that trying to upset those hierarchies is what bad guys do). Those may all be naive beliefs, but they aren't "stunted" beliefs -- a love of dignity, order, and decency are actually mature traits that you never seen in children, while a delight in rascals running amok is almost universal in kids. Thus, I might argue that grimdark fantasies are just a cynical extension of that childish anarchism, whereas Tolkien's luminous fantasies are an adult's efforts to foster the wisdom he's gathered in seeing the world at its worst.

Anyway, that will be my last flick of the wrist -- I'll let you whip me back, if you'd like, but I forbear further debate on the subject. Avellone is great, PS:T is great, and games should strive for game-ness, not novelistic/cinematic excellence.

 

[Azarkon]

Certainly plausible, I felt like we were on the same track, as well. But I'll fight you to the end about Tolkien... Another time.

 

[Cael]

Perhaps the right analogy here is that both of us are mounted on high horses, galloping in the same direction, and occasionally flicking each other with our riding crops out of pique. Probably not worth extending the debate, since I think we ride together.

That said: "but [Tolkien] was terrible at characterization and thematically stunted." Yeesh. Hard to see how someone can say that and think PS:T has good characters and themes. Tolkien has his shortcomings (including taking sexual and religious passion out of chivalric romance/Norse folklore), but I've never been persuaded by these knocks on him, which seem to be in some sense politically driven. In particular, I've always like the characterizations of Theoden, Denethor, and Sam, and the core theme about fighting to defend a beauty that is fading from the world, even while knowing that it is fading from the world, is very powerful. I also think there is pretty sophisticated thematic stuff going on in the various permutations of failed leaders throughout the world. I know people don't like that Tolkien's bottom line is that good guys should be good, that good ought to triumph through goodness, and that in a moral society, different people are bound for different stations in hierarchies (and that trying to upset those hierarchies is what bad guys do). Those may all be naive beliefs, but they aren't "stunted" beliefs -- a love of dignity, order, and decency are actually mature traits that you never seen in children, while a delight in rascals running amok is almost universal in kids. Thus, I might argue that grimdark fantasies are just a cynical extension of that childish anarchism, whereas Tolkien's luminous fantasies are an adult's efforts to foster the wisdom he's gathered in seeing the world at its worst.

Anyway, that will be my last flick of the wrist -- I'll let you whip me back, if you'd like, but I forbear further debate on the subject. Avellone is great, PS:T is great, and games should strive for game-ness, not novelistic/cinematic excellence.

Tolkien's ultimate sin may be that he fostered such heights of love of dignity, order and decency, only to end with the note that it is all futile and will be lost. In the end, all that was good basically left for Aman or died, and the beauty they all fought so hard to preserve is lost forever.

In a way, he was prescient, given the fucks we deal with today, even here, who think that civility, dignity, ethics, decency and order are things to be sneered at and thuggery and anarchy are so-called "manly" pursuits.

LotR was a lament for a dying world being mirrored in reality.

 

[MRY]

No. LotR was about doing more than lamenting a dying world. It's about doing your piece to preserve the beautiful things as best they can be preserved a little longer.

The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.

The nature of physics (and statistics) is that the world will end at some point. The nature of biology is that death is rushing toward us at increasing speed every day. Tolkien's message isn't to pretend that these facts don't exist, but to suggest there is a higher truth, which is that the road, and how we tread upon it, matters, even if the road's end is going to be the same no matter whether we crawl or stand tall.

 

[Cael]

No. LotR was about doing more than lamenting a dying world. It's about doing your piece to preserve the beautiful things as best they can be preserved a little longer.

The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.

The nature of physics (and statistics) is that the world will end at some point. The nature of biology is that death is rushing toward us at increasing speed every day. Tolkien's message isn't to pretend that these facts don't exist, but to suggest there is a higher truth, which is that the road, and how we tread upon it, matters, even if the road's end is going to be the same no matter whether we crawl or stand tall.

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

I prefer to look at it from a nother direction: How we tread on the path matters because if we inspire enough, if we do enough, we can change the outcome. True, we may die, but the next generation will take up the torch, and the beauty we defended will continue to be protected against those whose sole goal is to destroy it. While the individual may die, and an entire generation may end, the beauty will live on, from this world to the next until time ends.

This is why I hate certain segments of our society with such passion, for they are irredeemable Evil far worse than Morgoth himself, if we were to use a Tolkien analogy.

 

[MRY]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

That may have been Tolkien's perspective, but it made quite an impression on me, a secular Jew.

I prefer to look at it from a nother direction: How we tread on the path matters because if we inspire enough, if we do enough, we can change the outcome. True, we may die, but the next generation will take up the torch, and the beauty we defended will continue to be protected against those whose sole goal is to destroy it. While the individual may die, and an entire generation may end, the beauty will live on, from this world to the next until time ends.

The two hardly seem inconsistent. I do worry sometimes, though, that "do enough [to] change the outcome" encourages reckless utopian thinking. Still, I agree with your basic sentiment, which is why parenting/teaching/mentoring strikes me as one of the most important things one can do -- especially if, like me, he doesn't have the heart to fight along the frontiers of decency.

 

[Cael]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

That may have been Tolkien's perspective, but it made quite an impression on me, a secular Jew.

I prefer to look at it from a nother direction: How we tread on the path matters because if we inspire enough, if we do enough, we can change the outcome. True, we may die, but the next generation will take up the torch, and the beauty we defended will continue to be protected against those whose sole goal is to destroy it. While the individual may die, and an entire generation may end, the beauty will live on, from this world to the next until time ends.

The two hardly seem inconsistent. I do worry sometimes, though, that "do enough [to] change the outcome" encourages reckless utopian thinking. Still, I agree with your basic sentiment, which is why parenting/teaching/mentoring strikes me as one of the most important things one can do -- especially if, like me, he doesn't have the heart to fight along the frontiers of decency.

Not Utopian. Take a look at the I will Bring Back Buttons thread in Site Feedback. Regardless of the assholes and their assaults, I refuse to stand down from advocating that they be removed due to abuse. Decency is a skill born of self-discipline, and the Internet is far too often a sounding ground for the feckless, the irresponsible, the thug and the arrogant. Those of us who still believe in dignity, order, decency and civility must stand firm or the entire western culture, born of the chivalric ideals, is lost.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Fallout's engine was so dated on release that it was only used for one slam dunk sequel and never again (not even for Fallout Tactics).

Now you're jumping too far ahead. Morrowind was 2002, Arcanum was 2001.

Someone mentions an engine prior to 1998 and you complain that it's too dated; someone mentions an engine from later than 2000 and you object that it's too advanced.

If the question is: "Did Interplay have access to a better engine for use in creating Planescape: Torment in 1999?", I still think they would have been better off modifying the Fallout engine, assuming they were capable of doing so, which they may very well not have been. Interplay was evidently suffering from a variety of deficiencies which resulted in a number of projects being cancelled after considerable expense, and this inability to create or modify game engines might have left them with no choice but to use Bioware's Infinity Engine. Regardless of the other available options for game engines, as I stated two posts earlier, Planescape: Torment is successful despite the Infinity Engine rather than because of it; the success of the game as an artistic achievement compensates for the faults of the game as a game.

 

[NatureOfMan]

Ultima 7? You mean that game with one of the worst inventory management systems ever put into an RPG? Combined with one of the worst combat systems ever put into an RPG?

I prefer it to a lot of things that came since.

Me too, the game is really revolutionary, has memorable multi-choice sidequests and approaches to various situations but for real though the combat system is absolute shambles. Even RPGs with notoriously bad combat such as Quest for Glory do it better.

Too bad they ran out of ideas for QfG towards the end. 5 was pretty lackluster compared to the rest

True, sad that the worst game of the series came after the best one. QfG IV was so memorable and enchanting and sadly the fifth one is so bland.. The horrendous art direction also "helps"

 

[Life of the Party]

I like William Hope Hodgson, Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith better than any of those names, and John C. Wright's Awake in the Night Land might just be the finest piece of speculative fiction ever written.

Wolfe is a genre of his own, he doesn't really belong in this discussion.

Anyway, since someone mentioned poetry, here's some CAS:

The Dark Chateau

The mysteries of your former dust,
Your lives declined from solar light—
These would you know, or these surmise?
Beneath a swathed and mummied sun,
Descend where dayless dials rust,
Where the void hourglass fills with night;
And seeing with still-living eyes
Dim Acherontic rivers run.

Follow where shrouded barges float
And fall, in regions of the dead,
Into the sable-foaming depths.
Then over ghostland mountains go
To find, beyond a bridgeless moat,
What stairs with shadow carpeted
Crumble behind the climber's steps
In some foreknown forlorn chateau.

Where exile ghosts of gales that blew
At eve from vintages antique
Still stir the blurring tapestries,
And empty armor guards the rooms
By rotting portraits that were you,
Pass on. From airless cupboards bleak
Startle memorial spiceries
And plagues adrowse in attared glooms.

By oriels charged with stifled stains,
With night-blent purples, gules embrowned,
And spring's lost verdure, graver now
Than cypress at the set of day,
Pause, and look forth: no ghost remains
Save you to gaze on that dim ground
Where once the budding almond-bough
Waved, and the oleander-spray.

Hoar silence is the seneschal
Of court and keep, of niche and coigne.
With drumless ear no lute annoys,
Nor clang from farring jambarts drawn,
Death, with pulled arrasses for pall,
Waits whitely there; and none will join
Your quest, nor ever any voice
Speak from the chambered epochs gone:

Till from the vaults with shadows brimmed
Shall come a cowled lampadephore,
Holding his lamp, by no breath blown,
To mirrors moony-clear and still
Where never living face is limned,
But wan reflections fixed of yore—
Long-mouldered shapes that were your own—
Graven in glass, unchanged and chill.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

 

[Cael]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

Incorrect, as any Christian will tell you. There is only one act required to get the reward, and that act has nothing to do with virtue. Being virtuous follows that act, not the other way around.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

Incorrect, as any Christian will tell you. There is only one act required to get the reward, and that act has nothing to do with virtue. Being virtuous follows that act, not the other way around.

Yeah, you are right. It's even worse with Christian than I stated.

 

[Junmarko]

After that experience I wanted to share this with someone else and also wanted to ask, do you think it's worthwhile to continue with Torment: Tildes of Numeria?

Play through it once if you're a TBS nerd. The Crisis System was really good, shame it went underappreciated.

Just don't pay too much attention to the writing - it's the definition of "too many cooks".

 

[Cael]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

Incorrect, as any Christian will tell you. There is only one act required to get the reward, and that act has nothing to do with virtue. Being virtuous follows that act, not the other way around.

Yeah, you are right. It's even worse with Christian than I stated.

Also incorrect. Virtue is a consequence rather than a target, which is why being virtuous even in the face of overwhelming odds or inevitable failure is a Christian thing.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

Incorrect, as any Christian will tell you. There is only one act required to get the reward, and that act has nothing to do with virtue. Being virtuous follows that act, not the other way around.

Yeah, you are right. It's even worse with Christian than I stated.

Also incorrect. Virtue is a consequence rather than a target, which is why being virtuous even in the face of overwhelming odds or inevitable failure is a Christian thing.

Being virtuous even in the face of overwhelming odds or inevitable failure is everyone thing except hardcore nihilists.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

This is a retarded argument, and is related to the accusation saving one's soul is a form of selfishness. The error is very similar. A quote from Schuon:

Some people readily accuse of “selfishness” the contemplative preoccupied with his salvation, and maintain that instead of saving oneself one should save others; but this is firstly hypocritical and secondly absurd because, on the one hand, it is not from excess of virtue that those who argue thus refuse sanctification, and on the other hand, it is impossible to save others, since one can only know and will with one’s own knowledge and one’s own will; if it is possible to contribute to saving others, it is only by virtue of one’s own salvation. No man has ever been of service to anyone by remaining attached to his own faults out of “altruism”; whoever neglects his own salvation certainly will save no one else. To mask passions and spiritual indifference behind good works is a proof of hypocrisy.

The social interest can only be defined in terms of the truth; it is impossible to define truth in terms of the social.

All you are saying here is that Christians are "hypocrites" for wanting to be virtuous for the sake of salvation, where as the hypocrisy here is those who want to remain attached to their own faults for the sake of remaining "honest", whatever the hell that means.

Ultimately, you fail to realize that salvation is inherent in the sincerity of one's virtue in the first place, so that there is no problem. The fallacy here is that you misunderstand the purpose of Christianity to begin with, which is not that of telling people to be "good" (or else, as if damnation wasn't inherent in doing evil whether one believes in God or not), but that of showing what the way to virtue is, real virtue, not whatever it is secularists think virtue is. The truth is that people don't know what virtue actually is. That is why we often say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

Incorrect, as any Christian will tell you. There is only one act required to get the reward, and that act has nothing to do with virtue. Being virtuous follows that act, not the other way around.

Yeah, you are right. It's even worse with Christian than I stated.

Also incorrect. Virtue is a consequence rather than a target, which is why being virtuous even in the face of overwhelming odds or inevitable failure is a Christian thing.

Being virtuous even in the face of overwhelming odds or inevitable failure is everyone thing except hardcore nihilists.

I think you watch too much television if you think that's the case.

What'a amusing is that, by your argument, only hardcore nihilists can be virtuous. Everybody else, who may be motivated to develop virtue for the sake of a belief in some kind of higher truth, is doing it only because of some kind of reward. You are basically claiming that the only people who can be actually virtuous are those who have no reason to be virtuous, which is a contradiction if there ever was one.

 

[Cael]

That is a particularly Christian way of looking at things.

No it isn't. It's more similar to existentialism. Christian wouldn't care about the road of life, because life is only a test for them. There is no virtue for virtue sake, there is only a virtue for reward.

Incorrect, as any Christian will tell you. There is only one act required to get the reward, and that act has nothing to do with virtue. Being virtuous follows that act, not the other way around.

Yeah, you are right. It's even worse with Christian than I stated.

Also incorrect. Virtue is a consequence rather than a target, which is why being virtuous even in the face of overwhelming odds or inevitable failure is a Christian thing.

Being virtuous even in the face of overwhelming odds or inevitable failure is everyone thing except hardcore nihilists.

Wrong. Just take a look at the Codex. A good proportion of Codexians here think that bullying and harassing others is a good thing and the victims should just suck it up. You call that being virtuous? And don't even try to portray those Codexians as hardcore nihilists. At best they are little children trying to sound "hardcore" by acting tough. At worst, they are just arrogant assholes.

Examples all around you that holding on to virtue in the face of adversity and overwhelming pessimism is a rare thing, not a common thing, and yet, here you are, saying that it is everyone bar a few idiots. Lay off the drugs, man! Face reality for a change.

 

[Lyric Suite]

There's being virtuous, and there's being a pussy.

Codex "abuse" is just an edgy form of camaraderie. It's not serious, it's just for the lulz.

In other words, stop being a faggot, faggot, and take it like a man(child).

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Isn't it amazing how conversations about combat mechanics never devolve into politics or religion...

 

[Darth Canoli]

Planescape: Torment is successful despite the Infinity Engine rather than because of it; the success of the game as an artistic achievement compensates for the faults of the game as a game.

No truer words were ever spoken on the Codex.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Derailing threads is a time honored Codex tradition.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

true.

 

[hivemind]

MRY

please be less self-deprecating, it really does get like borderline cringeworthy when in like one article you mention your avarageness(compared to your genius talented peers) like seven million times, I get not wanting to sound arrogant when you are like self aware about your place in the world but honestly it just feels so over the top when you like write like a long and interesting post where every chapter has a "i'm a big dumbass tho, actually, I dont think i'm tolkien xdd" disclaimer