Game News Tentative Torment Kickstarter Tiers Announced

[Zeriel]

...

Fair enough. I've said before that on paper a lot of the areas have great potential, they just weren't greatly presented in-game imo. Curst was especially jarring to me because it came right after the best part of the game - Ravel.

The belief thing was reinforced with more examples, actually. Adahn, the whole becoming-a-mage quest, the tale-chaser and her mother, making Vhailor realise he shouldn't exist, the ways you could upgrade some of your companions (Nordom especially). I'm sure there are others I'm not remembering right now.

That kind of... reinforces my sense that much of this stuff is entirely in the eye of the beholder. I _loathed_ Ravel, thought it was extremely hammy and over-the-top other than the coolness of the brambles aesthetic, in general I tend to despise much of the High School Philosophy overtones of the Torment-y parts of the game, and prefer the parts that are just exploring the setting as distinct from TNO.

Adahn was awesome, no question about it. It would have been really cool if things like Adahn were actually positioned as antagonistic to you, like the Transcendent One, but much more direct. (As a sidenote, I've always thought that TTO should have been way more active in dealing with you.)

 

[Jasede]

Not liking Ravel!
What hath 2012 wrought!

 

[FeelTheRads]

McComb did some good things and some bad things on PST. For me, the bad outweigh the good, whereas, as far as PST is concerned, MCA's good stuff outweighs the bad stuff.

OK, so from "arguments" we've gone to opinions now. Well, then what I think is that Avellone piggybacked on the setting, a setting on which McComb worked, by the way. Sure, he wrote some great things, but he didn't create the whole fucking thing. You can't go "Avellone good; the rest crap." Likely many of the things he created were based on inspiration from the existing material so they couldn't have existed without that. Not to mention many things in Torment are taken straight out of the Planescape books, including NPCs, despite the dumbfucks that will tell you that "Torment would have been the same in any setting".

 

[Vault Dweller]

McComb did some good things and some bad things on PST. For me, the bad outweigh the good, whereas, as far as PST is concerned, MCA's good stuff outweighs the bad stuff.

OK, so from "arguments" we've gone to opinions now.

Usually people use arguments to support their opinions, so they do go hand in hand.

Well, then what I think is that Avellone piggybacked on the setting, a setting on which McComb worked, by the way. Sure, he wrote some great things, but he didn't create the whole fucking thing.

He wrote the fucking story and the characters which is what matters the most.

You can't go "Avellone good; the rest crap." Likely many of the things he created were based on inspiration from the existing material so they couldn't have existed without that. Not to mention many things in Torment are taken straight out of the Planescape books, including NPCs, despite the dumbfucks that will tell you that "Torment would have been the same in any setting".

Contrary to what some dumbfucks believe, Planescape Torment wasn't about planewalking. It was about some guy's attempts to regain his memories, figure out what he is, and stop the curse. As such it could have been set in any fantasy setting where a talking skull, demons, powerful witches, possessed armor, and angels won't be out of place, which means 90% of fantasy settings.

Mask of the Betrayer, for example, was set in the FR and had an equally quirky cast of characters (One of Many alone is a perfect PST-style companion, not to mention the angel and Rammaq the demilich who happened to be a floating skull) and plenty of exotic locations to visit, which easily rival plane-hopping you did in PST.

 

[Infinitron]

VD, it sounds like what you really want here is "Ultimate Avellone RPG 2015". Maybe you should email Obsidian and ask them to Kickstart that next.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The man can write.

 

[Harold]

You can't go "Avellone good; the rest crap."

I didn't.

Likely many of the things he created were based on inspiration from the existing material so they couldn't have existed without that. Not to mention many things in Torment are taken straight out of the Planescape books, including NPCs, despite the dumbfucks that will tell you that "Torment would have been the same in any setting".

You're not telling me anything I don't know.
I still maintain that, from what we know, and as far as I'm concerned, in regards to PST content the good outweighed the bad in the case of MCA and vice-versa in the case of McComb.
As much as you may dislike it, or view it as unfair, PST=MCA for most people/potential Tides backers, and I don't mean just on the Codex. As much as mca may have devolved into a popamole designer/convetion-whore over the years, most pledgers would say he doesn't have to prove anything if he wants to work on a Torment succesor, whereas that isn't quite the case for inxile with mccomb as creative lead.

As for you're 'arguments' jab, you refuse to tell me why those examples that I gave as bad design and explained why I see them as such are, in your opinion, good, switch gears and accuse me I'm doing all this just to suck some mca cock; I in turn reply to your idiotic assumption and explain myself and how I feel about the whole mca, mccomb, inxile thing, so now you selective-quote me so you can bitch that I'm dropping arguments and presenting opinions, as if you hadn't already switched the gears of the 'conversation'. Since you insist on being an overemotional retard, I see no reason for this to continue.

edit: and ninja'd by Vault Dweller. I agree that the planhopping had very little effect on PST's plot, but I'm sure planescapefags will insist that they were emotionally engaged by the ridiculous infodumps on the planes from the Smoldering Corpse Bar and by the fact that they could walk around in Curst, Baator and Carceri, even though the strentgh of those areas from the setting was not present at all or very badly presented in RPG gameplay terms in PST. (with the exception of Fhjull and the Pillar of Skulls imo)

 

[FeelTheRads]

Contrary to what some dumbfucks believe, Planescape Torment wasn't about planewalking.

Would have been much better if there was more Planescape in it, actually.

It was about some guy's attempts to regain his memories, figure out what he is, and stop the curse.

Fucking genius. Needs Avellone to come up with that. Everything else besides that is useless fluff to his mastery of creating the whole building from scratch while others could just barely mix their own poop in the brick mold.

He wrote the fucking story and the characters which is what matters the most.

As such it could have been set in any fantasy setting where a talking skull, demons, powerful witches, possessed armor, and angels won't be out of place, which means 90% of fantasy settings.

Sweet mother fucking this is so fucking retarded it has to be quoted. Seriously you think that without the setting to back him up he could have pulled a story of the same level?

You're just fucking taking things out of context again and judging things with your awesome hindsight. Oh, man Romeo & Juliet is such a great story, I'm sure that if you take it and make Romeo a pimp and Juliet a Japanese school-girl it would be the same. After all the STORY AND THE CHARACTERS MATTER THE MOST

 

[FeelTheRads]

that I gave as bad design and explained why I see them as such are, in your opinion, good,

I have not said they're good. I initially said that your "LOL I WANT TO BUTTHURT FANBOYS" post (still didn't explain fanboys of what exactly) didn't actually contain any arguments but "I like this, I don't like this".

and accuse me I'm doing all this just to suck some mca cock

If I'm a fanboy of whatever you think I'm a fanboy of, you're a fanboy of MCA. I said I prefer the Planescape related stuff. Fanboy. You say MCA's goods outweigh the bads. Fanboy. Very fucking simple.

Since you insist on being an overemotional retard, I see no reason for this to continue.

I'm not the one crying that people don't understand my genius.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Needs Avellone to write it in an interesting way. Just compare PST party members' dialogues and banter to those of BG2 and shut up already.

 

[Infinitron]

Needs Avellone to write it in an interesting way. Just compare PST party members' dialogues and banter to those of BG2 and shut up already.

But wait, I thought what mattered to you was full creative control. You don't need to be a game's lead designer to write party member dialogue and banter.

(Also, FFS, do you really believe Avellone is the only one in the entire ex-Interplay family of companies who can write good dialogues?)

 

[Vault Dweller]

The word example is not familiar to you? As in example to demonstrate how two different writers handle relatively simple tasks.

Edit: No, many people can write good stories, dialogues, and characters, but Avellone is by far the best, which is why Torment stands alone.

 

[Diablo169]

Avellone cant write everything, for one the mans busy on Eternity and theres such a thing as stretching a writer too thinly. I honestly think that Fargo should get Ziets involved though.

 

[Infinitron]

The word example is not familiar to you? As in example to demonstrate how two different writers handle relatively simple tasks.

Needs Avellone to write it in an interesting way...shut up already.

Seriously man, this sentence is just bizarre. Are you drunkposting?

What about Age of Decadence? Maybe that needs Avellone too. Better throw out all your writing.

 

[Jaesun]

Yeah I also would love to see Ziets on this.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Needs Avellone to write it in an interesting way. Just compare PST party members' dialogues and banter to those of BG2 and shut up already.

Read the edit. And again. It didn't need Avellone to make it interesting. Planescape is interesting in by itself. It needed someone who didn't fuck it up. I'm sure that he could have done a better job on the BG2 characters and someone could have made Planescape look like BG tripe but most definitely the "greatness" of Torment isn't sitting just on Avellone's shoulders.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The word example is not familiar to you? As in example to demonstrate how two different writers handle relatively simple tasks.

Needs Avellone to write it in an interesting way...shut up already.

Seriously man, this sentence is just bizarre. Are you drunkposting?

I'm doing several things at once, my apologies for the inconvenience. The bolded statement was in reply to "Needs Avellone to come up with that."

What about Age of Decadence? Maybe that needs Avellone too. Better throw out all your writing.

Well, it's not a Torment sequel, is it?

 

[Zeriel]

Edit: No, many people can write good stories, dialogues, and characters, but Avellone is by far the best, which is why Torment stands alone.

Wow. You're really staking out a line in the sand, there. Not sure what I think of it, I mean I understand people like him around here, but goddamn.

 

[evdk]

Yeah I also would love to see Ziets on this.

So should Ziets be flattered or irritated by his hew status as an adequate MCA substitute?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Edit: No, many people can write good stories, dialogues, and characters, but Avellone is by far the best, which is why Torment stands alone.

Wow. You're really staking out a line in the sand, there. Not sure what I think of it, I mean I understand people like him around here, but goddamn.

Can't be that Torment "stands alone" is because of Planescape. Because hey "it's not about planewalking" which is really the only thing they got from Planescape, absolutely nothing else. It's definitely because of one man who didn't do anything worth of notice since then and when given a "regular" setting could only come up with whatever NWN2 had.

 

[Vault Dweller]

As such it could have been set in any fantasy setting where a talking skull, demons, powerful witches, possessed armor, and angels won't be out of place, which means 90% of fantasy settings.

Sweet mother fucking this is so fucking retarded it has to be quoted. Seriously you think that without the setting to back him up he could have pulled a story of the same level?

Can the story be ported to, say, Forgotten Realms without losing anything important? Yes. There you go.

You're just fucking taking things out of context again and judging things with your awesome hindsight. Oh, man Romeo & Juliet is such a great story, I'm sure that if you take it and make Romeo a pimp and Juliet a Japanese school-girl it would be the same. After all the STORY AND THE CHARACTERS MATTER THE MOST

Not the same. You don't have to change anything but simply replace Planescape references with something setting appropriate.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Wow. You're really staking out a line in the sand, there. Not sure what I think of it, I mean I understand people like him around here, but goddamn.

All I know is that PST, KOTOR 2, and MotB are the best written games I've ever played. Hence, Avellone and Ziets.

 

[Zeriel]

I'm not even sure what "something important" consists of in terms of Torment, so much of the game's magic is not the core plot but the incidental details. If you approach the storyline in an assembly-line fashion you could take Torment and put it in Roman Judea, but I happen to believe that wouldn't work very well.

I'm _totally_ okay with the idea that Torment is the best game of its kind, but the notion that Avellone is just the best writer, I don't know. Not really comfortable with that--then again, I tend not to think in bests anyway. I've always found it absurd when people say Shakespeare was the best playwright of all time, I'm always thinking: 'Really? The BEST? Without a doubt?'.

Edit: I am now imagining Jesus as Adahn. Someone needs to make a mod!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Can't be that Torment "stands alone" is because of Planescape.

Like I mentioned earlier, after PST I bought some Planescape books expecting something equally awesome or better. The books were garbage which made me realize that Torment stood alone because of Avellone's writing and storytelling, but hey, let's pretend that it's the setting and that anyone could have done an awesome job there.

Because hey "it's not about planewalking" which is really the only thing they got from Planescape, absolutely nothing else. It's definitely because of one man who didn't do anything worth of notice since then and when given a "regular" setting could only come up with whatever NWN2 had.

KOTOR2?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Can the story be ported to, say, Forgotten Realms without losing anything important? Yes. There you go.

If you think that only the barebone story made the game, then sure. Whatever the fuck you want.
It didn't, though, and Avellone didn't create everything.

AGAIN, they didn't just slap Planescape on the cover for the moneyz or the lolz and "planewalking" wasn't the only thing that was borrowed from there.

The books were garbage which made me realize that Torment stood alone because of Avellone's writing and storytelling, but hey, let's pretend that it's the setting and that anyone could have done an awesome job there.

Not anyone. But it's sure easier to do it when you have a strong setting behind you. He certainly didn't need to find a story that only a man of his caliber could make great. There's so much potential for great storytelling in Planescape it's mindboggling.
However, the fact that you think it's garbage and that only the story of "MAN FINDS MEMORIES" is actually important... well, I guess there's no point to actually argue on the matter.