Planescape: Torment... Why?

[GameMaNiAC]

Meh. If you're looking for the best RPG ever made, try Arcanum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_and_Magick_Obscura], a game unmatched in depth and character development to this day. And my favorite game of all time for that very reason.

Arcanum's a great game, but you also forgot to mention that it's also unmatched in brokenness and a lot of it is just thrown together. Fallout 2 is a much better example of that style of game, if you ask me. Much more consistently good.

Fallout 2 was much smaller in scale compared to Arcanum. And Arcanum had a massive selection of spells and technology creation kits, too. It was entertaining. And that's just gameplay-wise.

Let's not forget Arcanum's end boss is perhaps the most thought-provoking boss in video-game history. He had such amazing points that, in the end, I had no idea what I was fighting for anymore. He even made me consider his theories in real life, too. Something a game has never done before to me. And it is why the game has a very special place in my heart.

I really liked the insane amounts of skills, spells and items in Morrowind, even though some them were basically game-breaking. Arcanum, however, is inherently broken. Not necessarily because of an absurdly large set of skills, but in its core game mechanics - most guns are basically useless, because they do so little damage and characters have so many action points that they can reach most ranged attackers within a single round. Also, melee damage gets massive, exponentionally increasing damage bonuses from a high strength stat, meaning that a quick-attack weapon (like, say, the ironically-named "Balanced Sword" that is one of the first items you learn to craft, or get crafted by an RPC you meet early on) will make short work of pretty much anything, effectively making bigger weapons like greatswords obsolete. Oh, and the worst part is that your character gets massive amounts of XP for hitting stuff. So you wanna play a diplomatic character that lets his half-ogre buddy do most of the fighting? Guess what, you're going to miss out on a ton of XP - so much in fact, that it's more efficient to just make a swordfighter and have enough skill points to spare to also become a master diplomat.
You want an actual example of how broken the system is? One of the party members you can recruit is a dog, whom you save from being kicked to death by a halfling. Unlike Dogmeat from Fallout, however, the designers gave him insane strength (since he can't spend any character points on intelligence or charisma), meaning that he can easily chew through guys in full plate armor, rock golems, or even reinforced doors. Did I mention you have to save this dog from being kicked to death by a halfling?

You have some good points there, but I don't think the game is that broken. It had a few bugs, yes, and some balancing issues. But my diplomat character still managed to get to the end boss. It was slightly tough, but it is still possible. And I think it's common sense that a diplomat will have more trouble than a warrior going through all that.

Realistically speaking, I'd say that an adventurer who slays monsters and goes through hell is much more experienced than the one who fearfully avoids fights and tries to talk his way out of everything. Sure he has good charisma skills, but in the end, he's not so experienced when it comes to adventuring.

Arcanum may have suffered from some minor balance issues, but I don't think they were major enough to ruin the whole game for me.

Think of it as New Vegas (and funnily, enough, it was made by the same developers). If you look past it's issues, you're in for an awesome time.

 

[Daemonate]

PS:T was one of the most amazing game experiences I have ever had.

You need to be in the zone where you really want to read every scrap of text and want to explore every conversation tree to its end; but it's a thought provoking, thoroughly enthralling journey.

Yes, combat has been done better in a lot...well, most games. But I still had fun throwing spells and smacking stuff to death on occasion. It's not horribly broken and is still fun as long as you aren't playing in a Diablo mood where all you wanna do is fight.

It's a fantastic game and most of what you're going to hear from those who recommend it is going to be spot on, but add a pinch of salt to any raving you hear about its philosophical merit. It hangs around the college A-level / early university zone philosophically.

Don't get me wrong, it's thought provoking, particularly if existential, ethical and political concepts haven't made it on to your list for higher education. The way these subjects are included is entertaining all on its own- the writers occasionally make very sophisticated use of the game setting to demonstrate ideas, as well as just describing them.

Obsidian, Bioware and Bathesda are no longer capable of writing on this level. They've been demonstrating their concept-famine for years and years now. TES has never been a high-brow experience (just an awesome one), Obsidian has been producing garbage since (and including) NWN2 and Bioware is a lost cause as long as The Helper is waiting in the wing, with a pen full of effluent and a memory laden with BL visual novel endings (and Twilight).

So if anything, get it because it's a game that has no modern equivalent, which represents a narrative zenith from which we are still descending toward some horrific sub-fanfiction quality nadir (Dragon Age 3, probably).

While I agree on most of your sentiments, you truly sell the metaphysics of the game short.

Planescape has real philosophic inspiration - it doesn't didactically indoctrinate you in the 'viable alternative' views and criticisms that you are permitted to accept in 'modern philosophic thought' (read: fashion), it just presents you with thought experiments, and ideas! Oh ideas, some of them dangerous, some of them disturbing. Many of these ideas may have been done to death in philosophic academic study - but reading and writing essays is one thing. Role playing and living a character to explore those ideas is QUITE another. It may well be seen as before its time, as the future of exploring philosophic ideas through interactive media.

Examples:

* There is a brothel in this game, where you can go. This was pretty avent-garde and risque for a computer game in the mid-90s, many a year before Hot Coffee and Mass Effect Alien-boob inured us all to nasty computer sex /sarcasm. Except, this brothel doesn't really cater to physical needs. It's called the Brothel of the Slaking of Intellectual Lusts. It's a brothel your wife will be happy to pay for you to go to. Your poor fish-wife can't satisfy you intellectually - so go there and play chess and have an engaging conversation with one of the beautiful courtesans. It's run by a succubus in a chastity belt. Yes, it's that sort of game.

* Your main character is immortal, but not omnipotent. What sort of life that entails is not really what you may expect.

* Your past lives, whose memories have been on occasion obscured by more violent 'deaths' (which are merely slightly inconvenient setbacks) may tell you that you were a very, very different person to the character you are playing now. This doesn't mean you are WRONG in how you are playing - the game is asking you to consider the experience/essence question on a deeper, more personal level than you could get in a philospohpic doctorate paper. Because you are playing the role.



I've done enough higher philosophy to realise that most everything beyond first year is pretty much fundamentally broken and incompatible with practical human nature. Any lingering faith I had as to the relevance of higher phil study went out the window with a course in Virtue Ethics... let me summarise what I learned from 2+ year phil:

ie "relativism is fundamentally bad, you aren't allowed to disagree, and we can argue anything that isn't fashionable/accepted currently is basically relativism in sheep's clothing. And spirituality is out. The greatest minds in history cannot solve the problems of human nature and God, but God and the soul don't exist even metaphysically because you FLUNK THE COURSE if you say otherwise, as you have failed to properly regurgitate what you have been fed, despite the fact that you would be taking the approach from which everyone you ever studied, from Aristotle to Kant, based their investigations on. Coz we're so much smarter now, and what those poor guys believed is clearly silly, but we still study them anyway."

Ahem.

 

[Dwarfman]

Snip

Let me put it to you this way. You could, today, walk into a games store and spend 90 bucks on a very pretty, yet under-developed, overpriced, half-assed game that'll give you maybe four or five days of pretty yet mediocre game play. Or, you could spend 10 bucks on a game that people - despite that game being 12 years old - still rave about, still obsess about and still buy at the games store for twice the amount you just past it up for and play for months on end.

The ball's in your court son. I'm sure you'll make the correct decision.

90 dollars? Where the hell do you live, and who's fucking with your economy?

Ahhhh...Dude. I said twice the amount. He's paying ten I paid... 20 bucks or there abouts

 

[PleasantKenobi]

Aren't some of the guys at Bioware guys who worked at Black Isle? That is how I always thought it had worked, or are they linked in some capacity?

EDIT: well, a quick google search and Baldur's Gate was published by Black Isle while Bioware developed it. The similarity in style of writing and some gameplay elements across all these isometric RPGs, from the Infinity Engine up into present day games like KotoR would suggest that they had at one point a strong working relationship or Bioware are literally the sucessors to Black Isle, at least in style.

Black Isle never "published" anything, Interplay published both Bioware and Black Isle games in the past before they kind of went bankrupt.

I know that Wikipedia is not a fantastic source for this kind of thing, but you are wrong. Bioware are a development company that have shifted around, getting their games published by different companies where as Black Isle were in fact a 'division' of the Interplay.

Ultimately this is all varying business-themed semantic differences between these terms, but Black Isle was the division of Interplay that published Baldur's Gate II among other titles.

 

[Daemonate]

Meanwhile, Temple of Elemental Evil, Arcanum and Vampire Bloodlines are some of the greatest achievements in electronic art of all time...
Troika got the good people it seems. I wonder where they are now?