Baldur's Gate Planescape: Torment — Original Incarnation. Also, MM, MoP and EED

[Ash]

The games you quoted have never been called "interactive novels". I don't count them as storyfag RPGs. Maybe there is some garbage that I haven't played, but Vamp Bloodlines and The Witcher are not storyfag RPGs in my book. And yeah, I didn't play TToN much. I couldn't stand its twaddle and wankery.

They have mediocre gameplay, and pretty good stories. From a development POV, more passion, effort and monocled thought was clearly put into the story as opposed to the gameplay.
Still, the likes of vtm:b gameplay is more intricate than your typical Bioware game. It appeals to gameplayfags and storyfags both, but there was clear bias for story on the developer's part. VTM:B would be top 5 material were its gameplay as good as everything else.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Ok, I've omitted the Avellone line because I can't remember the source. Thus, this overrated writer will not be mentioned in a retrospective for the first time. I do think Avellone is a good writer and he seems like a good chap, but he has been so overrated by critics and fanbase. You would think he was solely responsible for PS campaign setting, the way his name gets thrown about and the rest of the team ignored like they don't exist.

Again, the fans and critics are falsehood-perpetuators. To his credit, Avellone has tried to tell the public that he wasn't the only dev and that Black Isle didn't invent PSCS.

The main merit of PS:T is tying the story of the character and his mysterious past to the exploration of the game world, but that only works because Avellone took the narrative premise from “Pages of Pain”, which was written by Troy Denning. In “Pages of Pain” an amnesiac "zombie" traces the footsteps of his prior lives alongside a tiefling, and his memories are inscribed on his body, but they are sores, instead of tattoos. What are the odds that someone would come up with the exact idea about a novel involving a character of Planescape? Close to zero. Without that premise, the game wouldn’t be as much as memorable, but then again, it’s all about execution, and Avellone deserves his credit for making good use of that work. What is insulting is that he said in many occasions that he wasn’t influenced by this book while writing PS:T, which is a ridiculous lie. He clearly wanted to give the impression that the idea of the premise was his.

https://www.amazon.com/Pages-Pain-Planescape-Troy-Denning-ebook/dp/B0060B6HTG

 

[bminorkey]

The games you quoted have never been called "interactive novels". I don't count them as storyfag RPGs. Maybe there is some garbage that I haven't played, but Vamp Bloodlines and The Witcher are not storyfag RPGs in my book. And yeah, I didn't play TToN much. I couldn't stand its twaddle and wankery.

They have mediocre gameplay, and pretty good stories. From a development POV, more passion, effort and monocled thought was clearly put into the story as opposed to the gameplay.
Still, the likes of vtm:b gameplay is more intricate than your typical Bioware game. It appeals to gameplayfags and storyfags both, but there was clear bias for story on the developer's part. VTM:B would be top 5 material were its gameplay as good as everything else.

But what do you call "gameplay" in RPGs anyway. Too often it just refers to combat and character build/inventory management. I think the combat in TW games sucks, but the gameplay loop has more than just that: you pick up contracts from a notice board, explore villages and cities, listen in on NPCs and come up with various solutions to obstacles and puzzles like the guards barricading the way to Novigrad.

Maybe none of the singular components of TW3's gameplay are stellar, but it has a good gameplay loop, with usually the right amount of exploration, combat, character management, and soaking up the environment (and that one card game).

It's actually the gameplay loop that raises TW3 to a caliber above many RPGs. The story alone is actually pretty mediocre after Bloody Baron and the choices aren't very interesting. It's really standard fantasy fare, IMO, made worse by the fact you're fixed a very boring character like Geralt to be your "point of view" for the story. But the world is immersive enough, and the activities you can do in the game are varied and interesting enough, to hypnotize you to keep playing.

 

[Doktor Best]

Engaging in dialogues, as long as it is interactive and has impact on combat/ressource management/exploration, or provides hints about those other gameplay elements, IS a form of gameplay. This is why i consider the gameplay of Planescape Torment great, because else it simply wouldnt. I think far too few people understand this.

 

[Lilura]

Wouldn't you just respawn at the beginning of the maze and be allowed to start the battle over?

Yes. But your companions don't respawn. So if they die you will need to raise them. And that assumes player went through specific dialogue thread with Deionarra in Prologue to get Raise Dead memory regain special ability (easy to miss for a newbie) or Grace didn't die, and has broken into fifth priest circle for the spell (unlikely unless Modron Maze or Under Sigil is farmed), and has it memorized, and has enough spell slots to raise TPK (again, unlikely even if she has broken into 5th because she won't have Bell's Shield). All the devs needed to do was have end dialogue trigger area transition of duplicate Black-Barbed Maze to trigger an auto-save. Someone like Qwinn or Skard could mod that in with Near Infinity in a few mins, probably.

 

[Ash]

But what do you call "gameplay" in RPGs anyway. Too often it just refers to combat and character build/inventory management.

Naturally I am referring to everything, not just combat and character progression/management. I get the skepticism though, as this is 2018 and most people don't give a shit about gameplay anymore. Me I am one of the biggest gameplay enthusiasts around.

 

[Lilura]

Engaging in dialogues, as long as it is interactive and has impact on combat/ressource management/exploration, or provides hints about those other gameplay elements, IS a form of gameplay. This is why i consider the gameplay of Planescape Torment great, because else it simply wouldnt. I think far too few people understand this.

Repeating what I said in write-up, PS:T doesn't balance dialogue with combat and other considerations. Fallout, Deus Ex and Jagged Alliance 2 did. That's why those three games are GOAT and PS:T is only in the top 5 for storyfags. Even MotB did a better job than PS:T despite its foundation on Electron.

 

[Jarmaro]

Repeating what I said in write-up, PS:T doesn't balance dialogue with combat and other considerations. Fallout, Deus Ex and Jagged Alliance 2 did. That's why those three games are GOAT and PS:T is only in the top 5 for storyfags. Even MotB did a better job than PS:T despite its foundation on Electron.

Would the world be better if P:T wasn't unique? It seems that you dislike it for being different.

 

[Fairfax]

(who, incidentally, holds a view, long-held by myself, that Fallout did a better job of balancing dialogue, questing, exploration and combat, and that PS:T should have followed suit)

You need a citation for this. I don't doubt that he said something like this and I personally agree, but it makes any writing seem more authoritative when you have a citation backing this kind of statement. It's also informative for the readers.

It's in line with some of the things he's said, but I'm not sure he's ever put it like that.

He did say FO1 is a much better game than PS:T, and that PS:T should've had more combat content and better combat gameplay.

 

[Master]

Ok, I've omitted the Avellone line because I can't remember the source. Thus, this overrated writer will not be mentioned in a retrospective for the first time. I do think Avellone is a good writer and he seems like a good chap, but he has been so overrated by critics and fanbase. You would think he was solely responsible for PS campaign setting, the way his name gets thrown about and the rest of the team ignored like they don't exist.

Again, the fans and critics are falsehood-perpetuators. To his credit, Avellone has tried to tell the public that he wasn't the only dev and that Black Isle didn't invent PSCS.

The main merit of PS:T is tying the story of the character and his mysterious past to the exploration of the game world, but that only works because Avellone took the narrative premise from “Pages of Pain”, which was written by Troy Denning. In “Pages of Pain” an amnesiac "zombie" traces the footsteps of his prior lives alongside a tiefling, and his memories are inscribed on his body, but they are sores, instead of tattoos. What are the odds that someone would come up with the exact idea about a novel involving a character of Planescape? Close to zero. Without that premise, the game wouldn’t be as much as memorable, but then again, it’s all about execution, and Avellone deserves his credit for making good use of that work. What is insulting is that he said in many occasions that he wasn’t influenced by this book while writing PS:T, which is a ridiculous lie. He clearly wanted to give the impression that the idea of the premise was his.

https://www.amazon.com/Pages-Pain-Planescape-Troy-Denning-ebook/dp/B0060B6HTG

Not necessarily. Memento has a similar premise too.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Not necessarily. Memento has a similar premise too.

Not really, they have completely different premises. What is curious is that Nolan lied about his creative stealing in the same way Avellone did with PS:T. This is what Nolan said about his inspiration from Memento:

Nolan has shrugged off the idea that similarly nonlinear films such as Betrayal or Je t'aime, je t'aime played a significant role in his development of Memento, but he readily credits a piece of literature for inspiring his fascination with experimenting with narrative form: the 1983 novel Waterland by Graham Swift, which explores the personal turmoil of a history teacher in Greenwich, England

But the real story was Soldier of the Mist, with anterograde amnesia and a main character writing notes on himself to himself—thanks MRY for mentioning this. Perhaps Swift's work is "inspired" on this story, so I don't know who was the thief here. You notice how people lie about their main influences because they quote on purpose different pieces in an attempt to distract attention from the real important one. When asked about his infuences, Avellone mentioned a couple references:

Zelazny [Nine Princes of Amber] was a big influence, as was Robert Pirsig (outlook on life and craft, as well as how to approach writer’s block when you’re stuck), Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game appealed to my gamer instincts), David Gerrold, Harlan Ellison, and a number of graphic novel authors: Alan Moore, Garth Ennis (his run on Hellblazer was amazing), Bill Willingham (Elementals – the fact that the heroes in that comic could suffer grievous harm and regenerate was a big source of inspiration for the Nameless One’s ability to recover in Planescape yet leave parts of his body behind), Grant Morrison (Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage all the way until the end of the run, Animal Man, etc.-and Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol was the source of inspiration for the pregnant alley in Planescape: Torment-Morrison introduced a character called “Danny the Street” in Doom Patrol who was a living street who was also a transvestite, and I’ve never gotten that character idea out of my head). I also read a lot of Choose Your Own Adventure books, which also helps train you for game development.

No mention of "Pages of Pain" anywhere. I have Fairfax to thank for this quote.

Perhaps they would be more transparent if there weren't so many prejudices about genuine creativity:

 

[Fairfax]

More relevant quote:

PoP was released in September 96. PS:T's pre-production started in early 96. According to Colin, who joined the project in October 96, MCA had already written half the story on his own before other writers came along. MCA did get many ideas from other works, and he has acknowledged them several times. The amnesiac protagonist was from Chronicles of Amber, and so was the central question.

He also pitched the game's premise and opening as part of his job interview at Interplay in 95.

 

[agentorange]

Again, the fans and critics are falsehood-perpetuators. To his credit, Avellone has tried to tell the public that he wasn't the only dev and that Black Isle didn't invent PSCS.

The main merit of PS:T is tying the story of the character and his mysterious past to the exploration of the game world, but that only works because Avellone took the narrative premise from “Pages of Pain”, which was written by Troy Denning. In “Pages of Pain” an amnesiac "zombie" traces the footsteps of his prior lives alongside a tiefling, and his memories are inscribed on his body, but they are sores, instead of tattoos. What are the odds that someone would come up with the exact idea about a novel involving a character of Planescape? Close to zero. Without that premise, the game wouldn’t be as much as memorable, but then again, it’s all about execution, and Avellone deserves his credit for making good use of that work. What is insulting is that he said in many occasions that he wasn’t influenced by this book while writing PS:T, which is a ridiculous lie. He clearly wanted to give the impression that the idea of the premise was his.

Such things happen all the time in any creative field. For example Neuromancer and Blade Runner concurrently creating the cyberpunk genre even though neither of them knew about the other (Gibson was distraught when he saw Blade Runner because he thought everyone would think he had ripped it off). People often claim The Matrix ripped off the lesser known Dark City, because both have strikingly similar plots, and yet Dark City was released only one year before The Matrix, which was already long into production, making it quite unlikely that the plot could have been lifted in that time. As far as the two Planescape fictions go, the plot device of a immortal man searching for his past and hoping for his own death is certainly nothing new. Even the more specific idea of a partially amnesiac immortal, who has lived through many incarnations, searching for a way to end his own life is the premise of Borges "The Immortal." Not to mention the more classical "Tithonis" by Tennyson, about a man who asks for immortality and is given it, only for his body to grow increasingly worn out. In deciding to write about an immortal character in the Planescape universe it would seem only likely that a person would settle on an undead type of character, being that they can die over and over again. What could be used to turn their past memories into a storytelling device: tattoos because they can also serve as a gameplay device (also because that sort of tattoo, tribal look was very popular in the edgy late 90s). Given spans of time and the amount of people creating fictitious work it is more unlikely that people wouldn't stumble into creating similar stories.
Is it possible that Avellone lifted material from Pages of Pain? Sure. But it's just as likely that he did not. He did certainly take plenty of ideas from all sorts of places, as nothing is original, and any work of fiction or art or any medium can be traced back to other sources, and those sources in turn can be traced back further.

 

[Master]

In part its because of the situation: if a guy can't remember imediate past then writing stuff on his body is pretty much the only option he has if he's to be sure. So you can't call that part really "stolen".

I seriously doubt Nolan read Soldier of the Mist. He probably just watched that french movie.

In the end it's just a basic premise. Avellone proved later with Kotor2 that he had the skills.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Is it possible that Avellone lifted material from Pages of Pain? Sure. But it's just as likely that he did not.

No, it is not just as likely that he did not. There is a difference between taking general inspiration from different materials and specifically using one idea from a single source. If this was not such an important concept from the game, it wouldn't matter, but it is; and it is precisely because it is important that he lied about it. I will repeat again: in “Pages of Pain” an amnesiac "zombie" traces the footsteps of his prior lives alongside a tiefling, and his memories are inscribed on his body, but they are sores, instead of tattoos. What are the odds that someone would come up with the exact idea about a novel involving a character of Planescape? Close to zero. Do you guys have any idea how credulous you look with these convoluted ad hoc explanations? The fact that he took the premise doesn't diminish his value, but the fact that he lies about it and you all pretend that he didn't, do.

 

[agentorange]

Is it possible that Avellone lifted material from Pages of Pain? Sure. But it's just as likely that he did not.

No, it is not just as likely that he did not. There is a difference between taking general inspiration from different materials and specifically using one idea from a single source. If this was not such an important concept from the game, it wouldn't matter, but it is; and it is precisely because it is important that he lied about it. I will repeat again: in “Pages of Pain” an amnesiac "zombie" traces the footsteps of his prior lives alongside a tiefling, and his memories are inscribed on his body, but they are sores, instead of tattoos. What are the odds that someone would come up with the exact idea about a novel involving a character of Planescape? Close to zero. Do you guys have any idea how credulous you look with these convoluted ad hoc explanations? The fact that he took the premise doesn't diminish his value, but the fact that he lies about it and you all pretend that he didn't, do.

I just explained that the odds of this happening are in no way astronomical.
"Do you guys have any idea how credulous you look with these convoluted ad hoc explanations?"
The field of art and the concept of inspiration thereof is enormously convoluted. The creative process itself is "ad hoc." Saying that a premise is grounded to a single possible source and any similar works owe themselves entirely to that single source is reductionist.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I just explained that the odds of this happening are in no way astronomical.

Your comparison doesn't hold water.

PoP was released in September 96. PS:T's pre-production started in early 96. According to Colin, who joined the project in October 96, MCA had already written half the story on his own before other writers came along. MCA did get many ideas from other works, and he has acknowledged them several times. The amnesiac protagonist was from Chronicles of Amber, and so was the central question.

He also pitched the game's premise and opening as part of his job interview at Interplay in 95.

You do know that in the real world that's exactly the type of explanation people would use to cover their asses, right? Sure, let's take the plagiarizer's word for it, it must be true. He didn't copy that PLANESCAPE BOOK WITH IDENTICAL PREMISE that was released in the same year he started writing the thing. It is a coincidence.

 

[ga♥]

Is it possible that Avellone lifted material from Pages of Pain? Sure. But it's just as likely that he did not.

No, it is not just as likely that he did not. There is a difference between taking general inspiration from different materials and specifically using one idea from a single source. If this was not such an important concept from the game, it wouldn't matter, but it is; and it is precisely because it is important that he lied about it. I will repeat again: in “Pages of Pain” an amnesiac "zombie" traces the footsteps of his prior lives alongside a tiefling, and his memories are inscribed on his body, but they are sores, instead of tattoos. What are the odds that someone would come up with the exact idea about a novel involving a character of Planescape? Close to zero. Do you guys have any idea how credulous you look with these convoluted ad hoc explanations? The fact that he took the premise doesn't diminish his value, but the fact that he lies about it and you all pretend that he didn't, do.

Did you even read Pages of pain? Because I didn't and all I could find are plot summaries which are different enough to warrant the chance hypotesis.

And so do the first few pages, freely available on google books...

 

[Master]

Amnesiac main character is also a common thing in Rpgs.

 

[ga♥]

Amnesiac main character is also a common thing in Rpgs.

It's basically a staple of fiction.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmnesiacHero

 

[Sizzle]

More relevant quote:

PoP was released in September 96. PS:T's pre-production started in early 96. According to Colin, who joined the project in October 96, MCA had already written half the story on his own before other writers came along. MCA did get many ideas from other works, and he has acknowledged them several times. The amnesiac protagonist was from Chronicles of Amber, and so was the central question.

He also pitched the game's premise and opening as part of his job interview at Interplay in 95.

Don't even bother bringing facts into this. Lurker King has already decided that MCA plagiarized that book, and no amount of evidence will dissuade the little retard.

 

[agentorange]

I just explained that the odds of this happening are in no way astronomical.

Your comparison doesn't hold water.

Nor do yours, but that's not an argument only reiteration. Are you really prepared to tell me that the concept of an amnesiac hero, something so ubiquitous to video games, and other mediums, that it has become a well known joke, could only possibly have originated in that one source?

PoP was released in September 96. PS:T's pre-production started in early 96. According to Colin, who joined the project in October 96, MCA had already written half the story on his own before other writers came along. MCA did get many ideas from other works, and he has acknowledged them several times. The amnesiac protagonist was from Chronicles of Amber, and so was the central question.

He also pitched the game's premise and opening as part of his job interview at Interplay in 95.

You do know that in the real world that's exactly the type of explanation people would use to cover their asses, right? Sure, let's take the plagiarizer's word for it, it must be true. He didn't copied that PLANESCAPE BOOK WITH IDENTICAL PREMISE that was released in the same year he started writing the thing.

This is the real world, as far as I know. Most people would take Avellone's word over yours or mine.

Did you even read Pages of pain? Because I didn't and all I could find are plot summaries which are different enough to warrant the chance hypotesis.

I have. The story is essentially a pastiche of Greek myths taking place within the Planescape setting. The premise of the story does center around an amnesiac hero who does travel with a tiefling companion, but the similarities end there. The ending is entirely different, as is the bulk of the narrative. It's a fairly generic adventure and does not involve any of the deeper themes of existence and individuality that make PST unique. They do share plenty of elements that are derived, naturally, from the Planescape setting itself, in particular the Lady of Pain. Also the story does contains many thing that Avellone explicitly wanted to avoid in Torment, such as an abundance of sword fighting.

If this was not such an important concept from the game, it wouldn't matter, but it is; and it is precisely because it is important that he lied about it. I will repeat again: in “Pages of Pain” an amnesiac "zombie" traces the footsteps of his prior lives alongside a tiefling, and his memories are inscribed on his body, but they are sores, instead of tattoos.

I would use this premise to argue the opposite. Both of these stories are based firmly around the pre-existing material of the Planescape setting. Therefore, a chance similarity in the nature of the protagonist results in the two works superficially appearing far more similar than they are. For example the Tiefling companion. From the outset PST, being an infinity engine game, was intended to be a party based RPG, so travelling companions are a given; Avellone was adamant about having romance-able companions, and in the world of Planescape what choices does one really have when trying to create a character that the player would be attracted to? Tiefling, succubus, and human are the only sane options. And being that they clearly wanted each companion to be a different race, the human role being already filled by the Nameless One, one is left with a Tiefling and a Succubus. The personalities of the respective races in both works are similar because the Planescape sourcebook defines the basic personalities of the races. As stated in the Pages of Pain itself: "Although no two tieflings were alike, they were all quick to anger and rather touchy about their heritage." The same goes for the Lady of Pain, riddles, mazes, githyanki and so on. I would say that one would be hard-pressed to find a work based on the Planescape universe that does not feature these elements.

In fact, plot points, character concepts and even gameplay devices involving memory are already explored within the Planescape source books themselves, as in this example: "Perhaps one day I, too, will sell my memories, my experiences, to the Festhall Perhaps one day others will come to a sensorium, take up my recorder stone, and know what it is to be me. Perhaps one day another will know more of me than he does of himself, as I do of those now contained in these stones." (source page 6). As well as these two: "The majority of bodies on the planes are petitioners, which are departed spirits of primes and planars whose bodies reformed on the plane that matches their previous alignment or devotion. A petitioner retains the mannerisms, speech, even general interests of his or her former self, but all memories of the past are wiped completely away. At best, a petitioner has a shadowy recollection of a previous life, but little or nothing useful can be learned from these fleeting images." (source page 77) and "’Course, how a sod prevails upon the favor of a giant brain is a question. Most likely, the seeker must agree to give up part of his mind as payment, resulting in memory loss (loss of proficiencies) and/or insanity." (source page 134 ). Even tattoos that embody memories are a pre-existent element of the Planescape world, Fell and his tattoo parlor having been a part of the Planescape universe before Torment.

So what we are left with as evidence of one having ripped off the other is the tenuous connection of the amnesiac protagonist, which, again, can be proven to be nothing more than long standing cliche of the medium, genre and fiction as a whole.

 

[Pizzashoes]

I don't think Agentorange needs help, but people come up with the same similar ideas all the fucking time. Famously, both Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus independently, and the same thing happened with Darwin and Wallace regarding evolution by natural selection. The fantasy stories Dune and Wheel of Time both feature similar desert tribes, Fremen and Aiel. It's believable that none of them copied each other. Every great idea is derived and synthesized by great ideas from the past. So if people from the same period are working with the same background ideas, it's easy to see their products might be similar.

 

[ga♥]

I don't think Agentorange needs help, but people come up with the same ideas all the fucking time. Famously, both Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus independently, and the same thing happened with Darwin and Wallace regarding evolution by natural selection. The fantasy stories Dune and Wheel of Time both feature similar desert tribes, Fremen and Aiel. It's believable that none of them copied each other. Every great idea is derived and synthesized by great ideas from the past. So if people from the same period are working with the same background ideas, it's easy to see their products might be similar.

Agreed as a general rule. Thing is, in this particular case, they don't even seem similar enough to be called "same idea".

 

[Pizzashoes]

They're both working in the same setting, Planescape! That setting was barely explored before dying out. Of course they're going to have similar ideas. What is going on Lurker King, my man?