09 - Sweet Sounds of the Planes

Alright, before moving on, I would like to just take a minute to talk about a part of Planescape: Torment that I have criminally omitted: the sound. The sound design in this game is one of the best I have heard in my 20 some odd years of playing video games. Now I’m not talking about the battle sounds or things like that, but the other more ambient stuff. I guess I need to start somewhere, so I’ll start with the music.

The music in PS:T really pleases me in a way that many games don't even understand. I like the soundtrack of a game or movie to walk the fine line of accentuating the personality and action of the piece without becoming overwhelming. This usually falls off either side of the barn, but it works for this one. Most of the tracks are quite ambient with lots of unexpected samples and melodies used. One of my favorites is the Mortuary theme which features eastern sounding wind instruments, substrata percussion, and mutterings of unidentifiable horrors lurking somewhere in the darkness. I’m not exaggerating at all, give it a listen.

[Love this track]

This rich composition continues throughout the game and really appeals to my sense of environment and theme as presented through music in the context of the game as well as my interest in ambient music itself.  (I love stuff by Pole, check it out) I could go all day into what I enjoy for music, but I’ll leave it at that. Check out the other themes that are linked to the video which were used as background music for a Let’s Play of the game done on the Something Awful forums.

As for ambient sound, you can’t do much better than this game. Lots of role playing games feature birds chattering, wind blowing, things like that. Planescape isn’t that kind of game, yet again. When you move the frame of the screen over a pub, you can hear the patrons talking and drinking, beers clanking on the table, and music being performed. Markets have shouts of merchants selling their wares, asking you to “Come have a look cutter, you’ve the looks of a man who needs blah blah blah”. Factories have people yelling encouragement and safety to each other, quiet places people shushing others, it’s an incredible atmosphere. I honestly haven’t heard many games with better sound work than this one. Awesome job guys.

Now, back to the game and a good surprise at the end. Or a bad one, maybe.



Curst, Legacy



At the end of the last entry, I had cleaned up the Clerk’s Ward and learned of a legacy I had left myself long ago. Returning to the lawyer, I picked up my legacy which he described as “ancient” indicating it had been some time since I had left it. Luckily, it wasn’t destroyed and I got to dig around a little bit. It mostly contained some charms, a spell, and a receipt for something at the forge. The plot starting to take a laser focus, I went to the forge to pick it up.

Another ancient piece of paper leads to another ancient legacy I had left myself.  It turns out to be a giant metal hoop. I was told by Ravel that it was in the forge and would lead to her… so let’s give it a shot. The game prompted me that “I had a feeling that if I went through this, it would be a long time until I return”. Kind of hamfisted way to go about it, but at least it’s fair and doesn’t screw you out of content if you weren’t done. So, of course, I went through to Ravel’s maze.

[Is that a portal in your pocket or...]

[You must gather your party before venturing forth. You just heard that in your head, didn't you?]

Ravel’s maze is where the Lady of Pain tossed her for attempting to destroy Sigil and existence. It had turned from a nondescript stone area into a living garden grown from seeds stuck in Ravel’s hair. This made for an interesting setup as this maze had appeared earlier in the dream sequences from the Dream Maker. I had been here before.  After talking to Ravel, I found out that many other things had occurred as well.

[A-Maze-ing. Am I right?]

Bullet pointed beats for the conversation because this was a long one and has major spoilers. Don’t read if you don’t want to know… but you already have followed this far. Go ahead:

• I had sought out Ravel to request immortality without understanding the implications. This resulted in living countless lives with no consistent memory from one to the other and, thus, no meaning.

• Ravel had fallen in love with me and awaited my uncountable number of returns as this scene had occurred over and over in the past. She sees me as a puzzle box that can help her solve the ultimate question: “What can change the nature of a man?” I answered Love, because it can make you change your entire life for a purpose. Put to the same fire, other answers such as anger, hate, or any number of the provided choices could do the same. Also, I’m a nice guy in the game, so it fits.
• All of my companions are doomed to travel with me as they are tormented by their own demons. Annah loves me (We totally made out afterward. High five, bro.), Da'akon is an outcast, Ignus is a nutcase, Morte is still a mystery, and Fall From Grace is a traitor to her race.
• Ravel had taken my immortality, but did not have it. She didn’t know who had it, but a Deva (Angel) living in the outlaw town of Curst may. My next destination is determined.
• Ravel had understood how to leave the maze for ages, but simply didn’t want to. She taught me how to leave so that I could go and seek my immortal soul to finally die. Unfortunately, she didn’t want me to leave again and started a combat that almost wiped my whole party and was pretty exciting. I fought some living trees and the mad witch herself. We came out on top.

[We meet at last.]

[May I have my mortal soul back, please?]

[All my companions are joined in torment.]

[What do they mean to me?]

["What can change the nature of a man." Quoted by nerds everywhere.]

[Choose your destiny.]

We left through the portal provided which triggered a cut scene. Ravel was not dead, but conversing with an unknown nasty green guy who appears to be the baddy of the game. The tendrils all around and deep booming voice gave him a larger than life and pretty threatening appearance. He was telling Ravel that I must be stopped and he intended to do so. She mouthed off to him a little and she got dispatched with much less trouble then I went through. I guess this guy is pretty serious business.

We emerged from the portal outside Sigil in the aforementioned town of criminals known as Curst. After talking to the local barman, the entire town seems to be suspiciously awaiting my appearance. Five quest givers have five parts of a key to see the Deva, but I need to do their jobs first. This lead to a sequence of quests that, although not very exciting, were not terrible either. I divided some property between two heirs, rescued a damsel in distress, protected an old guy guarding the junkyard, solved political intrigue, and freed a demon. What is strange about these quests is that, although sort of interesting, there is literally nothing more than I could write than that about each storyline involved. I did notice that each solution had four or five varying solutions ranging from rational and nice to next level bananas crazy. I think this is a getting to the last minute test to determine what kind of character you will be at end game. Will you be a saint or an Ed Gein nutcase? You decide. So I did these in a nice guy way, because I’m always that person in games. I could go on to write about how this has been programmed into me to get the best rewards for being nice, but that’s for another time. I have the key in hand, and used the opened portal to travel under Curst to seek the Deva.


Under Curst is totally cursed. And I am cursing.


Alright, for this entry I am just going to mention a couple of things. The only point of interest under Curst is an old hobo living in sewers infested by demons who will let me rest. Keep this in mind: I cannot rest except by talking to this guy.  I cannot re-memorize spells or regain hit points unless I do this. Got it? OK. Second is that the sewers connect to a prison where I found the Deva I am seeking. He won’t help me until I remove his chains with his sword that has been put into evidence lockup by the prison guards I ran from like a little girl to get to the Deva in the first place. This is about the point where my blood pressure went up a few points, I started muttering curses, and even entertained putting the game away. No joke, it’s that bad. I’ll get into it next time.

[The Deva. Notice the soldiers lined up to slaughter me once we are done talking.]

Other stuff


I hope to get to the next entry soon and, I’m not going to lie, I may cheat to do it. I have beat my head on the stone wall of combat in this game for the last time, but I don’t want to abandon it or stop the blog. I did take a break for a few days to read, listen to music, see friends, and stuff like that. Now I feel recharged and hope to get back on the horse.  I look forward to pushing through this stuff and finding the golden ending. Check it out.


--Backlog Killer

08 - Getting to the Planes

Let me back up a little from my last post and make some things more clear. I'm not going to undo what I said because it's still how I feel, but there are some things to clear up. I do like the game. I think Torment is the purest "Role Playing" experience you can get with the amount of dialogue choices and malleability your character has. (I haven't played Mass Effect, but I hear it's like this, too.) What I do have a problem with is that I don't have much time as I have said before. I have about one hour to play each day, so when something feels like wasting time, it's really exaggerated. Plus, when I was talking about being a 'game', I meant moving more toward the traditional D&D style role playing with stats and combat. It feels like it doesn't belong in a game so focused on dialogue and pure role playing.

Gary Butterfield, one of the hosts of Watch out for Fireballs, raised a good point that I was going to touch on in this post: Maybe there were some other fingers in the design pie. It feels like a concession that some of these elements were added. Maybe if Chris Avellone had his pure vision, it would have been completely full of dialogue and more of an interactive fiction feel. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in the conference room to see if they pulled a Deus Ex: Human Revolution hijack and said something like "Infinity Engine AND D&D License with no combat?! We need to fix this, even if it's an afterthought." I definitely picked up that kind of vibe.

Anyway, I've made some more progress, and gone through some pretty cool scenarios. I will say that I have been missing a lot of side quests because of my limited play time and I do regret it a little bit, but I honestly may not have time for this kind of thing anymore, which is sad. I encourage you to do it all if you are playing because the writing is evocative and visceral in some cases. Highly recommended if you have 40-50 hours to do this kind of thing.

Finally, I mentioned Gary Butterfield so I would be remiss if I didn't mention the podcast he does with Kole Ross again: Watch Out For Fireballs. It's like a book of the month club (but bi-weekly) and is really critical and interesting. Check out the last episode where they ripped apart what I thought was a classic but never played, Abe's Odyssey . Next episode is one of my all time favorite games, Silent Hill 2, followed by Planescape: Torment. Leave them some comments and questions since most of them come from the Something Awful forums and they do some prizes. A widening of the listener base is important. Spread the love!

Clerks

During the interim between blog posts, I returned to the Burning Man Pub with the Decanter of Endless water to free Ignus from his prison. I did snap him out of his reverie, but he is still covered in flames. Adding to my own mage skills, this gives me two solid fighters (Morte and Da'akon), a thief (Annah), and two mages (Myself and Ignus). I still have room for one more you will find out about... now.

[Sucks to be this guy.]

Returning to the Clerk's Ward from The Hive, I entered the last major building of interest: The Brothel of Slating Intellectual Lusts. This was one of the most interesting parts in the game and shows the subversion of genres and tropes. As you can probably tell by the title, this brothel is meant to satisfy mental cravings, not carnal ones. It is run by a succubus named Fall-From-Grace who is not only celibate, but also benevolent. She agreed to travel with me if I talk to all ten students in the brothel and learn some new lessons. I really like this character because succubi are generally token enemies that simply exist to seduce men and enact violence afterwards. I've killed tons in Nethack (after exploiting them for extra levels) and never thought of a situation like this. One thing I am not clear on, however, is if I have traveled with this character before as it seems the others knew me previously. We'll have to see.

The brothel is laid out like a wheel with many rooms along the periphery. Each one of these belongs to a prostitute instructed to discuss and contemplate certain aspects of life for the customer. These include discussing dreams for meaning (Especially those of erotic nature), collecting and sharing a myriad of stories, and even an S&M type of situation where the prostitute will berate the customer to provoke increasingly creative and devious insults. Needless to say, Morte put her in her place and actually elicited a "Good on you" type of comment.

I spoke with nine prostitutes/students and quickly figured out I was the tenth to get Fall-From-Grace to travel with me. Just what I needed, priestess with healing spells!

[Devil with a blue dress.]

I felt like this scene was what the designers were wanting from the game in its purest form. Simply talking to different NPCs, role playing with a myriad of responses, and solving simple quests as excuses to travel. The creativity and level of writing really stands out here with opportunities to discuss metaphysical ideas or choose to arbitrarily lie, vow, or otherwise simply for character development. A couple of prostitutes were missing items and I had to figure out who stole them. Turns out it was some pervy wizard transfigured into a piece of furniture to spy on the girls who had them. Pretty hilarious and interesting stuff.

[This guy is crazy... or a genius.]

Dreams and Sensations

I completed the Dream Builder at the great forge, but this process was kind of annoying. I returned with a bottle of my skin and blood to find out that I also needed a birdcage to trap the dreams. He was kind enough to inform me that it can be found in the Seige Tower of the Lower Ward, but the problem is everybody can't figure out how to get in. It warped in years ago and has no entrance or reason for being there, although it does look like it was involved in countless battles in the lower planes connected to the ward. After asking around the ward EXTENSIVELY, I found a guy named Laszlo in the market who was thinking about how to get in. Turns out the portal is activated by NOT wanting to get in. So we did.

Inside we found an iron golem eternally constructing weapons of destruction out of iron. I convinced it to make me a birdcage and also to construct  a blade to kill me. It won't work unless I'm in a plane separated from the prime... so it's a no-go for now.

[Right to suicide messages in my game?]

I brought back the cage and was instructed to get a pillow from a coffin to ensure deep sleep. I got it from a warehouse after the coffin maker lectured me on how to construct a pine box. After returning it, the machine was done and I stepped in. What I found was a nightmarish memory in which Ravel was testing my immortality by having living plants tear me apart (The Ruins?) and fighting against the legions of Hell. Needless to say I survived and got some experience.

[This looks rough.]

Not sure what to do next, I returned to the sensates to see if I was missing something...

Finally found that journal.

Returning to the festhall, further investigation led to finding out I had lodged there before. Returning to my room I found a ton of charms and spells in the closet along with a strange, heavily trapped dodecahedron puzzle box. After solving it, the box revealed a collection of writings in an unknown tongue presumably scribed by myself in an earlier life. But how can we read it?

Luckily the local linguist was around and was kind enough to explain his murdered father knew this language. Not only that, but his ashes were on the mantle. Using some skills learned in the still terrible catacombs portion, I spoke to the dead daddy who taught me how to read the script and also awoke some new memories in my head. I was the one who murdered him so nobody else could read the journal. Harsh. I apologized for it and everything was cool, but I decided not to tell his son. Just in case.

Reading through the journal was an exercise in madness. Lots of the journal entries covered things I had already discovered in the scribblings of a mental patient. This life was obviously unstable.

[Index of craziness.]

[I guess I hit that three death clause.]

[Paydirt. This should tell me something.]

I found out there was a legacy left to myself from... myself. Maybe I should check this out... As for the portal to Ravel's maze, I went back to the brothel and found that one of the prostitutes was her daughter. After helping her deal with this revelation, I attained some of her blood and need to head to the great forge to open the portal. After getting the legacy, that is. Wish me luck!

Other stuff.

I am already in the process of writing the next entry, so things are moving along. After finishing Torment, I may take a break for a week or so to relax and maybe play some relaxing and less demanding things like Minecraft or Nethack or just spend it reading. Incidentally, I finished the book The Ruins and can't recommend it. It was a fast read with interesting points, but it would have made a much better short story or novella. I started reading Clive Barker's Books of Blood which is already more imaginative and interesting. Pretty bloody stuff, though. The title of the story I just read, Midnight Meat Train, may tip you off to that.

Look out for my next entry when we should be close on Ravel's tail and getting to the end of this game.

--Backlog Killer

07 - Don't Hate Me

Video games, in my experience, exist on a spectrum. The far left of this line will be labeled ‘Story Telling’ while the other may read ‘Pure gaming experience’. Now, that’s not to say that these are mutually exclusive, but every program is some type of amalgam along this line. When one wants to display a story, gameplay elements that are in the player’s control must be sacrificed. If the player is in complete control, on the other hand, the story must suffer. This is the conundrum that I always find myself in, is a hot-button in game discussion, and rears its ugly head in Planescape. I love the game as a role playing exercise where you can really write your own story, but am disappointed with the jarring disconnects lots of the more ‘gamey’ parts caused.

In a less gameplay focused post, I would also like to point attention to an interview Matt Barton, author of Dungeons & Desktops, did with the creator of Planescape: Torment. Chris Avellone discusses his writing of the game and other interesting stories. Check it out and be sure to look at his other interviews, they are very interesting and informative.

Spectrum

Video game technology is developing at a lightening pace. I remember playing the Nintendo I got for Christmas way back when and thinking “It can’t get any better than this.” Well, it did. Super Nintendo followed, N64, Playstation, Xbox, PS3 (I grew up a Nintendo kid). Each generation produced unfathomable advancement and the same sentiment of reaching the zenith of graphics and function. We are still there today. My ideas begin at the start of this cycle.

Games have always been played to test ones competitiveness, skill, or luck. Basketball, baseball, soccer, and golf are all examples of physical games we play. Mental games like chess, backgammon, and Monopoly also qualify. Video games continued this trend with limited technology and are seen in the early days with Pong, Space Invaders, Pac Man, Nethack, and Donkey Kong. All of these games have almost no story and exist purely as skill and pattern recognition machines. The player’s sole goal is to reach the highest score or the next level. It doesn’t matter if you are playing against yourself or others; you are still competing by using your skill to manipulate the programmed system.

Another line of games came out that pushed in a different direction: story. Programs like Zork, graphic adventures, and, reaching forward, the current subject of this blog (Planescape: Torment). These programs tell a story through descriptions using words, graphics, or a combination of both. The “player’s” goal is to complete this story while passing through various gateways required for progression. These tasks required thinking, reasoning, some measure of skill, but not purely based on manipulation of the system. I would say that these are the only parts that resemble a game. The rest is simply a choose your own adventure book in another medium.

I’m not trying to start an argument here. This is purely a mental exercise for me that is ludicrous, needlessly heady, and unimportant when I think about it. As technology exists, games are becoming more and more like a combination of their skill-based forefathers, movies, and novels rolled into one medium. Visual art is also a part of this, but it really depends on which game you are talking about. As we continue to progress, games will also keep bouncing around in this triangle. I doubt that it will ever find a settling point and also have a problem seeing it as a good device for pure storytelling as Planescape is attempting.

Pace is the Trick

The main barrier to effective storytelling is pacing. A master filmmaker, writer, or even musician must become a master at pacing and manipulating the feelings of the viewer or audience to make a successful piece. This is more difficult for writers as the reader is turning the pages, but there are ways to accomplish it such as sentence clustering, paragraph structure, and other techniques. These can make you feel as if you are reading faster during action scenes or dreading a page turn in a good scary story. As a game designer, pacing becomes even more difficult. I would even say almost impossible.

Time progresses linearly for people watching a film or listening to a piece of music making this aspect easy to measure. For books, people can turn the pages or even read at different speeds, but the aforementioned techniques can simulate these changes. In a game, all sense of pacing is completely stolen from the author/designer and placed in the hands of the player. The avatar in the program can move anywhere in the defined game space at any time. Any action can be taken, even if it is needless or tedious. This is the major disconnect that leads to all sorts of problems. In a skill based game, these pacing issues are ignored and put on the player to reach a high score. If you don’t play, you won’t get there. Restarting and replaying same scenes or solving problems is just expected for this situation.

When reading or watching a movie, you don’t need to go back and re-read or review parts to progress through the medium. Games can introduce death, roadblocks, or other similar situations. When a designer is trying to tell a heavy story in a video game, actions must be taken to overcome this lack of progress before frustrating the player to the point of quitting. Writers and filmmakers don’t want you to quit taking in the material, so why should these game designers? This leads to ‘cheating’ the medium to prevent this frustration. ‘Cheating’ is illustrated in Planescape through the mechanic of never dying permanently and allowing the infinite resurrection of your party members. This keeps the pacing going, but effectively eliminates the skill based portion of the game. Therefore, it ceases to be a game by definition. It just becomes a story with some interactive elements.

What’s this muddy, hastily written argument all about?

Planescape: Torment does an amazing job of telling a story as a video game. It is well written, heady, evocative, and, most importantly, interesting. The major flaws come in during the ‘gamey’ parts where the characters are forced to fight, even though most experience comes from conversation. These can be thrown out, in my opinion. It also comes through in its pacing of fetch quests and dungeons padded with combat. The point of the game is to tell you a story about this tragic man who can’t remember anything and is desperately seeking his forgotten past. Couldn’t these parts be streamlined a little? Most RPGs contain these to send you on a quest through dungeons where combat is the means of progressing. This is not that kind of game.

To end this muddled exercise in pontification, I guess I am saying I would rather read this story as a novel or a more streamlined experience falling on the side of ‘Story Telling’ in the spectrum. There is a novel included with your GOG.com purchase, but you miss out on beautiful artwork of the game. It was also not the intention to put it out in this medium. I love Planescape, but I think its biggest flaws shine when it attempts to be a computer game. 

I look forward to comments... maybe?

06 - Return of Greatness

06 - Return of Greatness

I am happy to return to this blog with progress and improvement in the game, returned Internet service, and improved spirits. I've also been getting lots of reading done. I'm currently reading The Ruins by Scott Smith which isn't my normal cup of tea, but it's pretty good. Got it under recommendation of the Library Police Podcast which is also very good. Check it out.

What have you been up to?

Other than being dreadfully sick with a flu I can't get rid of, I've been playing some Planescape. Luckily, the combat portion has ended and we've moved back into the bread and butter of central hubs, people to talk to, and awesome awesome story reveals and twists. The end of the second act is taking off like a rocket and I'm enjoying the ride. I will find kidnapped craniums, find out who the big baddie is, and interface with said baddie through a virtual reality system only this world can have. Join me.

Where o' where has my little skull gone....

After popping out into the Lower Ward, the Nameless One was distracted by some peddler selling shiny objects while some wererats kidnapped Morte! I thought this would be the major plot point of the act, but I was completely wrong. This section has several venues to check out including a market, a print shop, a pawn shop, a mysterious siege tower in the middle of town, an abandoned house, and The Great Foundry (Home of the Godsmen). The Godsmen are a sect that believe in a higher power and order beyond the chaos of the planes. I checked out their HQ in the Great Foundry and it turns out I had commissioned a project there eons ago called the Dreammaker. It was prophecy and was said I would come back, and here I am! Stuff like this is really cool and I want to get into the machine, but the builder said he needs some skin and some blood. Shouldn't be too tough.

I spend the rest of the time panicked and looking for Morte. Who would want to steal a skull?! Apparently, everybody around town knows of a guy who collects bones named Lothar. I investigated the abandoned building and found Morte stuck in a whole library of skulls that you may have seen in the intro video in the first post. I talked to Lothar who was willing to accept a skull of higher value in trade... luckily I was still holding Suego's skull from my foray into the Dead Nation. He took it, gave me back my skull, AND tipped me off with a huge lead.

[Ravel Puzzlewall, the woman who stole my soul.]

When asking my companions and others about who this Ravel is, I get one definite answer: Somebody never to be messed with. She's a witch who plays games with people and ran afoul of the leader of the city, The Lady of Pain, who mazed the hag for attempting to unlock the largest puzzle box of them all... the city of Sigil. She basically tried to open all the portals at once to allow in an infernal army to cause trouble. The Lady obviously doesn't like this. So, how can I infiltrate a pocket universe to find Ravel? We'll have to see. Somebody tipped me off about a great place called the Sense Stones in the Clerk's Ward...

VR for the Planes

The clerk's ward is a shopping area with two large landmarks. One is a Brothel that I will visit next post, and the other is a Festhall featuring the Sense Stones. These are stones that, when touched, allow the user to experience others' sensations of pain, joy, loneliness, and anything else. This is my next destination.

I found out quickly that this place is pretty exclusive and you have to be a Sensate to use the stones. This was easy enough to become, I just donated a new vivid experience to them. Waking up from death in the mortuary!

[How do you like that? Boom!]

After being allowed in, I found three sense stones that I proceeded to use. Somehow... they all related to me. One stone was labeled 'Longing' and forced me to relive an argument I had with a former lover that appeared as a ghost in the mortuary named Deionnara. It was pretty terrible showing an evil former self manipulating her into following me to death, even though she knew it would end this way. Another stone was set as a trap by a crazed version of myself that I escaped by staring at the construct's tattoos until it got pissed and let me out. The last stone was pay dirt.

Accessing this stone placed me into a painful memory of someone with all limbs and both eyes removed. Because you BECOME the person in the memory, you react as they did... but this one was a little different. A woman asked who I was, and when I spoke her name she responded to me directly. "Ravel." She had placed herself into the sensate stone waiting for me! Now, I can't figure out if I was connected to a real vessel through magic or if this were a manipulated memory, but she told me exactly how to find her so I can get my soul back. Maybe this isn't a good idea since everybody is telling me she'll blast me to kingdom come...

[Things are coming together.]

I need to find a key and the portal to open it to find Ms. Puzzlewall. She straight up told me the portal is in the Great Foundry. To get the key, I have to ask another sensate to divine it. Unfortunately, he has no interest in me. He just keeps eating candy and walking around... until I said something to make him spit out his candy. I ate it and owe him now. He demands chocolate or candy that is very special... and I have just the right idea.

I am obviously leaving out a lot of small side quests because there are too many to mention and I don't want to necessarily spoil everything... although I am already, I guess. Anyway, next time I need to pick up some special chocolate, rebuild the dream machine, and find Ravel to sort this whole thing out.

Other business.

I'm going to post another entry after this one about some of the failings of the game and its pluses that I think make it what it is. My memory of the game was something that was pretty much flawless, but this was not the case. It turns out most of my favorite games follow this kind of "genius with a major drawback" problem. I hope to explore some of those and get some more critical aspects I wanted to add to the blog out of my head in a separate entry. Check it out.

--Backlog Killer

Technical Difficulties

Technical Difficulties

Well, as with all technology, I’ve encountered a bit of a snag for the publication of the next blog post. Our modem got unplugged momentarily to be switched with a hair dryer. It took affront to this and decided to stop working. Every time I turn the thing on it just flashes lights angrily and refuses to surf the World Wide Web. Looks like we need to call the cable company and get it replaced.

What this means is that I can still play Planescape (and I am) and write the blog entries,  but I can’t post them except from work. This leads to another problem in that I cannot Dropbox the screencaps to my work computer to be published. Ouch. So, I’m still writing the entries and annotating the captions and screen shots, but I won’t be able to post them for several days.

Silver lining.

On the bright side, act 2 of Planescape has taken off like a rocket and I love it again. Lots of revelations have come around and it’s starting to wind up into the climactic third act. You’ll be along for this as well! It also means it’s starting to come to the end and I can start planning my next game. I have decided to use the list I posted on pastebin with line numbers as a reference. Plug in the random integer function on excel and out pops…

Drumroll: (Lots went over the range, too lazy for nesting)

Cross-referencing back to pastebin we find that 47 is Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis! I’ve been looking forward to this one after I played the Lovecraft themed Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened which I recommend to any graphic adventure fans.

[This is what’s coming next. Good changeup.]

Nemesis tells the story of master thief Arsene Lupin in a calculated game against Sherlock Holmes. Planned thefts take you all over London as you attempt to stop these robberies before they occur. It is a fully first person 3D graphic adventure with themes of exploration and logic. Thankfully, there is not too much of the Adventure game kind. You gather items and information, combine them, and use them to solve puzzles. Brilliant!

One disclaimer: I remember attempting to play this game several years ago when it came out and getting crazy motion sickness. This is insane as I used to play FPSs almost compulsively in college (Thanks Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) with no problems. Hopefully I’ve gotten over it or the television will help by not sitting too close. Anyway, there it is, and look forward to the next update about the Nameless One where things are really starting to pop off.

--Backlog Killer

05 - Let's get Into It

5 – Let’s Get Into It

I had a lot of time to dig deep into Planescape this past weekend and got a lot done. Now that I’ve recovered from a bit of food poisoning, let’s go!



What have you been up to?


We’ve been rocking and rolling in the Planescape universe. We last left our Nameless hero in the Gathering Dust Bar getting ready to check out a crypt where the dead won’t stay that way. Even though it’s pretty ironic to have a guy who just woke up on a slab go put the dead to rest, I’ll be happy to do it for the experience! It turned out to be a pretty easy quest where I went into the catacombs, fought some skeletons, and found a necromancer doing evil experiments in the inner chamber. It appears that this guy knew about me somehow and was looking for a way to get my blood to do other evil things to mess around with immortality or something. I walked into his lair! Classic goof. Anyway, I actually lost this battle the first time because, as a mage, he had some pretty good buffs to use and hit me with spells while his undead minions hacked up my companions. I reloaded (I got resurrected back in the Mortuary) and tried the fight again using some better tactics. Morte has an insult power that causes him to berate an enemy until they go nuts and chase him around to attack him exclusively. I did this before the magician could pop his buffs, he got pissed and ran after the skull, and I was able to down him in seconds. That felt good. After returning for my reward, I ran to find Pharod under the garbage heap that is Ragpicker’s Square.

Now I can say for sure that the game is starting to get some rails and pick up speed. The entire first act reminded me of the main city in Baldur’s Gate 2, Athkatla, which is almost entirely open from the beginning allowing you to build some experience. I found an entire buried trash village accessed by a portal in the square where Pharod has made his ‘kip’. The path led me to the old guy pretty quickly, after which he asked me to perform a task for him: Find a small bronze sphere that was lost in an underground catacomb. I could just kill him and progress, but he has information. I love that instead of chasing loot like in most RPGs, the story pushes you to place more value in info and exposition about yourself. So, we trekked off into the catacombs where I found something very interesting…

This interesting thing of which I speak is a tomb that, as it turns out, belongs to me! The death mechanic really shines here because the entire area is filled with deadly traps. I mean deadly. They will kill you. When you die, you are transported back to the entrance making it impossible for any thief, grave robber, or character who is not you to make it through alive. This is a simplistic but clever puzzle to flesh out your character and exactly what you’re capable of. The sequence essentially involves being transported to different quadrants of the area, getting a key that lets you bypass the next trap, then getting killed by the next one. This repeats until you make it through the gauntlet and end up in what must be one of your innumerable tombs scattered all over the planes.

This crypt has wall inscriptions giving information about you, your past, and instructions for the future. These were presumably made by a previous iteration of yourself. The game forces you to read all of these by not allowing the sarcophagus to open until all of the panels are pushed in. One particular panel is of great interest and a semi-spoiler, although I’m not sure how… yet.

[He’s been lying all along… well, not telling the WHOLE truth.]

This is a huge shock as Morte is one of the most likable characters in the game and the first companion you meet. In most games, the first companion is your most trustworthy ally. I don’t know if Morte is or isn’t trustworthy, but he won’t disclose his past. He says he doesn’t remember anything, but he remembers enough to omit this sentence. I’m really looking forward to see how this plays out. The disclosure also does a good job of shaking up your current alliances and understood trusts you have built so far. An institutionalized system of paranoia is being brought to the surface over and over to challenge your perception of the world.

***

The next section felt a bit empty and I couldn’t shake off the feeling of fluff, which I will talk about later. I got trapped in an underground city filled with undead. Their assistant leader (The leader is the Silent King who I did not meet) said we can’t leave because we are not one of them and we can’t be trusted to keep a secret yadda yadda. I normally don’t like this trope in games where you are arbitrarily trapped in an area until you complete some task. In this case, to move on to where the sphere is, I need to get through a locked door by gaining the trust of the undead citizens. This can be done several ways, but I chose to find a traitor in their midst… Before I arrived, a Dustman missionary named Suego had recently appeared. The locals don’t trust him and he is preaching true death to the people (Zombies? Corpses?) of the nation. Of course they don’t like this because if they all accept death, there is no nation. I had a chat with him and discovered he is a spy for another possible path you can take: a crypt full of wererats. I ratted out (ha) Suego to the leader of the dead, he gets killed, and I move on. This whole section didn’t have too much background and was too fluffy for me. It felt like a time waster that was just in the way and really had no bearing on anything or the fictional culture. Did not like it and I fear there is more to come.

I proceeded to the drowned crypt, got the sphere, and found a ‘Decanter of Endless Water’ that I hope will be useful for freeing Ignus back at the Burning Man. I could use another mage.  After returning it to Pharod, the information he gives me is not promising. It turns out I asked HIM to keep the sphere for ME in a past life. Now he has it and wants to unlock its secrets. Despite this dick move, he has admitted that he took some stuff from me and my journal may be where I was found dead by his daughter, Annah, who is a foul mouthed tiefling (Demon and human mix) with a tail, skimpy clothes, and a Scottish accent.

[Voiced by Sheena Easton]

We went off to find my body (After which a video played showing some shadows killing Pharod), went through another fluffy combat dungeon that’s not fun and eventually made it to the lower ward where my body was found. This is where I stopped and hope to pick up more plot stuff as we go. It should also be noted that I returned to where Pharod died and retrieved the sphere. Who knows… it could be useful in the future.

Now what I REALLY wanted to talk about this post.
I’m afraid I’m not enjoying this game as much as I hoped to.
Now hear me out. I still play lots of games in my life. I have a PC, PS3, Wii, and DS. What I don’t have is a lot of time. The reality of being almost 30, married, working, and living in a pretty demanding city doesn’t leave much time to play games or do anything else after quitting time. When I sit down to play Planescape, I usually only have about one to two hours at a time. This is not enough for playing an almost entirely narrative based game on the computer which also takes up the TV. (Sorry, honey!) I just don’t have time for this anymore!

As old as that makes me sound, I really don’t mind. This situation has actually moved me in directions I’m not used to for my hobby. My tastes have shifted toward more “game” type games. I read on public transport or when I want quiet to get my super dense stories. When I sit to play a game, I want to PLAY. This doesn’t mean I want an easy game, but I do want one that will challenge me and pit me against the system itself. A good example of what I have enjoyed recently is Dark Souls. I’m sure you’ve read about it, but, if you haven’t, I’ll just sum it up quickly:

Dark Souls is a PS3 action/RPG in which you are tossed into a hostile world that will kill you over and over. You must survive on your own wits and learn from your mistakes. It is hard. It is unforgiving. It is superbly balanced.

[I finished this.]

I loved this game because I felt like I was playing AGAINST it, much like other games I have really liked recently such as number based RPGs (Wizardry, Icewind Dale) and strategy games with well balanced mechanics. This is the kind of thing I love. I want to sink my teeth into a deep system and figure it out or have to practice to win. I don’t want to just be handed the text to progress the story unless I’m reading a book.

This may be upsetting if you are a gamer who loves games for story (Which I do too!), but I also want a GAME to go with it. Let’s be clear: Planescape has combat and movement from place to place, but it is bad combat and movement is incidental in the gaming experience. Other enjoyable genres, such as interactive fiction, which are entirely text, take care of this with imagination and puzzles to solve. Planescape feels more like an interactive movie where you need to “run here to get x and return it to y to get more text”. Just tell me now? Maybe? I feel rewarded with text but the gameplay itself is not rewarding. I don’t know if that makes sense, but those are my thoughts.

I’m having a hard time constructing them in a monologue format, so if you have any thoughts please post them in the comments. I love this kind of debate and it is one I rarely get to have with any friends here. None of them play games as much as I do. I’ll be back soon with more Planescape, which I am enjoying, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not as much as I thought I would.


--Backlog Killer

04 - The Double Edge

04 – The Double Edge

Even though I have been raving about Torment, it is not without its troubles that are beginning to manifest themselves. I am still enjoying the game just as much as I remember from the first time I played it. The writing is consistent throughout the story and the quests are generally interesting with good back story and interesting objectives. Glad I can enjoy myself while setting out on this long journey.

Take the bad with the good.

The Infinity Engine is generally known for its excellent combat mechanics. Icewind Dale is often revered as an excellently distilled D&D campaign with balanced and varied combat situations requiring adaptation and player knowledge to be stretched at every beat in the plot. This was also touched upon recently with Dragon Age which was, in some respects, a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate with tactical combat, D&D style rolls and spells, and ‘epic’ story. Planescape does not fall into this category.

Combat in this title is clunky at best. Every battle so far consists of me fighting uniform groups of bad guys (Thugs, zombies, rats, etc.) with no change in tactics between them.  This includes:

1.   Highlighting all party characters
2.  Clicking on enemy closest to us
3.  Wait until it’s dead
4.  Repeat with the next one

The good news is that combat is pretty easy and has not caused any problems in progression. I just hope that I’m able to get around this in the future. One of the big advantages of playing PS:T on a modern system is that the widescreen mod exists. A typical complaint about the game is that the perspective is entirely too close to the character. It is nice for the art as it can be showcased, but, for combat, this view is not ideal. Having a view of the whole battlefield and all the monsters is nice when you run into large groups that may stray from the field of vision at a lower resolution.

[The game in all of its original 640x480 glory.]

Another solution the designers put into the game is the ability for The Nameless One to infinitely resurrect party NPCs if they expire. They also keep all their stuff on their corpse which is great. I hated carrying all of another character’s heavy things to the temple to get him or her resurrected. You are resurrected at the mortuary if you die in the city or at the beginning of the dungeon if you don’t survive there. (I like to imagine Morte pulling your giant, limp, muscle-bound corpse to the entrance of the area using only his teeth.) Although this may be detrimental from a challenge point of view, it is obvious the designers want the player to progress in the story without frustrating them to the point of quitting. I appreciate that as this isn’t that type of game. Dark Souls is.

What have you been up to?

Since becoming a mage, my life has gone pretty much back to basic RPG elements: mainly running around asking random people if they have errands for me to run. The introductory area, known as ‘The Hive’, is separated into four quadrants: The Mortuary and Dustman Bar (NE), The Burning Man Pub (SE), The Market (SW), and the entrance to an even crappier slum called ‘Ragpicker’s Square’ (NW). I usually try to only tackle one section at a time, but this just won’t work with all the quests having me run all over town. I’ve heard rumblings that Pharod (The guy who may have my journal) is hiding in Ragpicker’s Square, but I won’t be heading there yet. I’ve got some business to take care of.

First stop is at the Burning Man Pub for some drinks. The main attraction here is a guy on display who is ETERNALLY ON FIRE. This is the kind of off the wall thing that occurs all the time in this game. After speaking to his former lover, I learned that this guy is named Ignus and is obsessed with fire magic. Because of his experimentation, he has becomes trapped between this realm and that of fire. She also informed me that he prophesied my arrival and that I would release him from his torture. Obviously, he was not entirely right because I don’t know how to do this yet so she keeps annoyingly asking me “Are you going to free him go now?”

I also ran into another NPC who joined my party called Dak’kon who has a blade formed by only by his mind. Now this guy was pretty interesting. I convinced him to join my party by having a philosophical argument about what knowing yourself means. I repeated his own past words to him he had forgotten. Cool huh? He also has a disc that contains the “Bible” of his people with their history and philosophy. This translates to 30 minutes of me reading this history on the disc and telling him what I learned. I thought it was a great way to find his background story rather than mindless exposition and also allows a display of a wide variety of narrative voices.

[My new buddy.]

Continued chats with patrons didn’t reveal terribly much. I chatted with an old dwarf who told me of his faction and the barkeep who yelled at me for a previous incident. Apparently I trashed his bar in the past, left the mess, and left my eye as payment. To get the eye back I need to pay him back for the damages. Kind of like the Hangover, huh? And yes, you heard right, one of your accessory slots is AN EYEBALL. You can get several types of lenses later in the game with different effects.

After this, I hopped to another bar: the local Dustman hangout known as the ‘Gathering Dust Bar’. The main beats I hit here were talking to a young member doubting her belief in the Dustman philosophy and taking a contract to find out why the dead are walking in a crypt within the city. Obviously the Dustmen want people to stay dead, so let’s find out why.

This is where I left off and hope to pick up. I kind of want to power through the main quest to move on, but the side stories are pretty interesting. I may fast track the blog to reflect this and leave more to your experience if you decide to play this game, we'll see.

What’s next?

Life has slowed down a bit and allowed me to do some more playing. I meant to post this over the weekend, but I forgot to put it in the Dropbox. Oops. I actually have another post ready to go soon after about what I did this weekend.

I’ve also been having some trouble with screenshots where the sprites are missing. Not sure what’s going on. It doesn’t seem to happen all the time and my experiments haven’t shown any particular issues that cause it. I guess I’ll find out later. Let me know if you have any ideas or solutions, as well.

Next time I’ll talk about finding Pharod, my thoughts on gaming as an adult, and if I may have fallen out of unconditional love with Planescape.

--Backlog Killer

3.5 - In the Mean Time

3.5 - In the Mean Time

Hey guys. It's been a while since my last blog so I just wanted to post a quick one to let you know it's not abandoned already. This work week has been pretty tough and then an impromptu trip to Macau for a fight night happened which is pretty unlike me. It was good fun though: did some gambling, saw guys beat each other up, and spent some time with the wife. Now it's time to buckle down and get back into it... after Valentine's Day, that is.

Off the Record


As for Planescape content, I have just finished converting to a mage. This whole sequence was a fetch quest line that lasted about fifteen minutes and really had no purpose other than to comment on itself, which is pretty clever. Basically, this witch would give me a task to go to the market, I would go, and then I would come back. Three times. During this whole time my character had dialogue options that became increasingly annoyed. I didn't take these, but they were there. This is also the first game I've seen that comments on itself, even though another future Black Isle project (Icewind Dale 2) also did the same thing. I tried to find a screenshot of this but was unsuccessful. Here's one from PS:T where he's reiterating all the steps he took. I didn't choose the option to complain.

[Hey guys, what's the deal with all these tropes? (Seinfeld Slap Bass)]

Now that I'm a mage, I hope to show some delightful spell effects that were pretty incredible for the time. Lots of them combine full motion video with the in game engine to produce really clever effects. More to follow on that. I'll just say that it is pretty reminiscent of later Final Fantasy games with summoning powers.

More to follow in a few days. Now I'm off to cook dinner and do all that stuff.

--Backlog Killer

3 - Portal to Another World

3 - Portal to Another World

Alright, I am knee deep in Planescape, but I’ve been doing some mundane ‘gaming’ tasks to change my character into a mage that I won’t go into a lot of detail about. I generally try to avoid this kind of approach to games, but because the combat is a bit lacking and the spell effects are so cool, I figure it’s worth it. For this post, I will show a little bit about my character and what’s happened, explain what I like about the technical aspects of the game, and a little bit about the (ugg) ‘metagaming’ aspects I’ve been thinking about after playing a little.

Hello, My name is: ____________

[Here is my particular generic avatar]

You may see some strange stuff going on with my character here if you are familiar with your typical RPGs. These games usually begin with making characters that are super specialized to facilitate playing through a tough and balanced game based on combat. These characters include a brick fighter (Built like a brick shithouse and dumb as one too) and a super smart mage to maximize damage output. This is not one of those games as the motivations are a bit different. PST requires you to build your character for maximum story experience. A bold move then and something I could never imagine now.

I imagine my build is not ultimately Min-Maxed for it, but I don't want to get into powergaming. I have put points into skills not usually worried about in this kind of game. 18 in Intelligence is not too strange, especially as a mage. In Torment, intelligence not only determines spell effectiveness, but also dialogue choices that can reveal parts of the story that would otherwise go unmentioned. This is crucial as most progression, story, and experience rewards come from conversation. The 14 in the otherwise useless (in CRPGs) Charisma stat is also unusual. If people like you, they will be more open with their info so that you may learn a little more about them and yourself.

I didn’t even bother with other normally useful stats such as strength (responsible for hit points) and dexterity for avoiding hits because, guess what, you can’t die! So, don’t worry about it. (More on this in a later post.) The lack of brawling power is also remedied by the NPCs that fill out your party later. Many found near the beginning are quite competent in combat and can really take you through almost any situation.
This unusual build should give a good indication of how different this game is compared to others in terms of character creation.

So what have you been up to?

I mentioned last post that you wake up in a place called the Mortuary. A facility used to inter and cremate the dead is a very provocative place to begin a story based around a character that can’t die. It is run by a faction known as the ‘Dustmen’ who tend to hold a somewhat Platonic idea of reality being a farce. Only what is known as “true death”, a complete absence of sensory perception and sensation, is the escape. Oblivion. Needless to say, this group wouldn’t really care for somebody who can’t die as this goes against their entire philosophy and goal of the group. Your first action item is to escape this building filled with these crazies. The good news is options are already very numerous, showing the thought that went into this game.

To get out you have several choices. Many NPCs hint at the existence of portals that exist everywhere and are activated by ‘keys’. Keys can be anything from a scrap of paper, a physical action like snapping, or simply having a certain memory in your mind. This puts the potential number of portals somewhere around infinity. As Sigil is the ‘City of Doors’, this really brings loving attention to the unique gameworld and its rules. At least three NPCs in the Mortuary will talk about the existence of a secret portal on the first floor to get out of the building and how it is opened. Another potential route is just leaving through the front door, but this is more dangerous because it is locked and requires talking to the ‘Dusties’ face to face. You can always fight them and just take the door key out of their cold hands, but what fun is that?

On previous playthroughs I found the key to the portal (A finger bone) locked in a desk on the top floor by bashing it open. I was too weak and unable to force open the desk this run, but with my superior intelligence (The character’s I mean…) I was able to trick a Dustman into thinking I was lost after a funeral and got myself escorted out.  The sheer number of ways to get out is pretty impressive itself, but the amount of content put in this area is as well.

The first NPC you meet in the game is Morte, the floating skull. He simply wants to escape the Mortuary and needs your help… because you have hands. He also reveals the first part of your quest which is actually a note, presumably from yourself, tattooed on your back! This reveals that you were in possession of a journal that will tell you a bit about yourself and your sordid past. The problem is that it was taken from you by a guy named Pharod. The first order of business is to find this book and hope that it gives you some more clues about your identity.

[I think this is the first game I've where the main quest is given from myself.]

After meeting Morte, I met a Dustman known as Dhall who catalogues all bodies brought into the building. He obviously knew more about me than myself and dropped hints about how my past is quite checkered. It is important to note that this conversation took almost five minutes to get through. Not because of voice acting, but because of the sheer amount of text I was reading! And I'm a fairly quick reader.

I also met an anarchist dressed as a zombie spying on the Dustmen who can be convinced to disguise you as a zombie for a sneakier approach. I met an embalmer who sparked memories indicating that in a previous life MY character had been a dustman raising the dead. A ghost, who apparently was my lover, appears at a grave to berate me for abandoning her. (She also taught me to raise the dead!) A dustman who turns out to be a wererat if you break his neck shows up. (He doesn’t die, just transforms) There is an incredible amount of stuff going on just in the first hour!

At this point I broke off the story train to do the gamey stuff I mentioned before and will pick up after my conversion to the Mage class with some details about it.

Huge devil in all these details.

One thing I had forgotten about Torment what that it is one of the most detailed games I have ever played.

The Infinity Engine is commonly praised for its detailed, hand-drawn backgrounds and effects for the time. This game takes it to the next level with novel length descriptions for actions, characters, and set pieces that are not easily expressed through sprites or other graphical means. An example: In the mortuary where you wake up at the beginning of the game are dozens of undead servants conducting simple mundane tasks for the Dustmen. When moused over, these have the description of “Zombie Worker” or “Skeleton Worker”. In any other game I wouldn’t even bother to interact with them because I’m sure the feedback would be something like “The zombie stares silently at you.”  Nothing more to do here. Planescape has other ideas, though, with a different detailed description of literally every zombie and skeleton in the building. Here’s an example:

[Such a loving description for a useless NPC.]

This continues throughout the game with detailed descriptions of individual citizens, monsters, and objects that otherwise look the same on screen. This was essential for building a world when the game was made because graphical capabilities were not what they are today. I would even argue that modern graphics are a bit overrated and count for too much these days. The reality is that the mind’s eye will always be more powerful than any processor or video card. Unfortunately, it is also a reality that extended reading may be declining and these kinds of artful descriptions will be forever abandoned in favor of shorthand graphical improvements.

I don’t want to get too in depth here because too much has been said about this, but, having played through several generations of video games, I’ve developed a bit of an opinion about this graphical progression. It seems to follow a sort of diminishing returns model where graphics that really boosted your imagination are now hindering it. Up to a point, they were essential for functionality of a game. Look at graphics comparing Atari to Nintendo, or even NES to SNES. These jumps showed an immense change in the detail of sprites and graphics that just make it easier to identify objects as they appear on screen. Pixelated masses turned into cartoon sprites that were at least recognizable at a glance. Now systems are moving into ‘realistic’ graphics that take a whole other step out of imagination. I used to translate sprites from Super Mario Brothers, or Pitfall, or other games into a more realistic form of reality in my mind. Now there is no need. It is simply there on the screen.

Planescape: Torment really appeals to me in that I can see a small representation of what something is supposed to be but still have the ability to imagine it as it would appear in reality. This makes a huge difference to me. I don’t want the graphics to BE the reality, I want it to be a window into the world where I can take it the rest of the way because, let’s face it, my imagination is better than any graphics card.

I hate to get postmodern but when I am looking at something super real, like Skyrim, I am aware of me using a controller or keyboard to play the game on a screen. When I am doing most of the heavy lifting with my mind, I really feel engaged in the game instead of watching a monitor. I honestly feel more immersed in Zork than many modern games that have come out. This translates into voice acting vs. text, as well, so don’t get me started.

Long one.

So, that’s it for this first part. I hope to have completed more of the game for the next one, but I just haven’t had much time. Work and life have a lot to demand and that’s the way it is. I hope this posting schedule is ok for the few readers there.
If you have any feedback, feel free to leave comments and also recommend this blog to other people if you like it! It will really help me out by giving me motivation to get through this task and push my writing as well.

2 - Planescape: Torment

2 - Planescape: Torment

Here we go.  

I'm very excited to get started with this game which is a good sign as I haven't really been looking forward to playing games from my backlog for a while.  I really think this blog may have me on the right track, so let' jump right into the game info.

A classical background.

Planescape: Torment is a computer role playing game developed by Black Isle Studios and published in 1999 by Interplay.  Black Isle are responsible for many other modern RPG classics such as Fallout 2 and Icewind Dale.  Interplay is no slouch either, having published Baldur's Gate, the Freespace Series (also on my list), and Giants: Citizen Kabuto.  The game runs on the Infinity engine used to make Baldur's Gate offering a strategic isometric view, the ability to pause combat at any time to assign new orders, and is known for detailed hand drawn backgrounds and assets.  This rich tradition of quality and gameplay continues through this title.

[The classic isometric view of the Infinity Engine]

Torment takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting of Planescape in which all possible planes, both physical and non-physical, touch at the central city known as Sigil. This gets pretty deep and can be read about here.  For the purposes of this game, suffice it to say that the city is filled with interesting people and creatures from everywhere, quite literally. This sets the stage for one of the most interesting and freshest settings for a fantasy role playing game.  Instead of dwarves and elves who look like they were rejected from a Lord of the Rings spinoff, you encounter mages trapped in the plane of fire with eternally burning and blistering skin, legions of undead living in a secret society beneath the city crypts, and the spawn of demons who are just trying to make an honest (or dishonest) living.

You are The Nameless One; an amnesiac who literally cannot die. Your quest is simple: Find out who you are. Throughout your journey you will meet characters you have interacted with over the course of many lifetimes. This is where the genius part of the game comes in my opinion. Through all of your lives, you have had thousands of different personalities and everyone will react to you differently based on when they met you. Skulking thief, powerful mage, and berzerking warrior, you've done it all. In some lives you have even been completely insane! Your experience earned from finished quetss and combat doesn't come from new experiences, but from remembering old ones. This is where we will begin.

Where did you dig up this particular gem?

I remember the exact situation buying this one.  I had saved up the money I was earning working part-time at a certain high profile electronics retailer in my town.  I had enough to buy one new game and was in the mood for an RPG.  It was 2000 and my choice was between Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale, another infinity engine game. I remember standing with my buddy at Babbage's (A PC Game store for kids who are too young) in the mall and being unable to decide. I asked the fat guy at the counter which one was better and he said something like "Well, Icewind Dale has good combat, but if you don't mind reading, Torment has an awesome story". I figured I was up to the challenge of reading a video game and bought Torment. Boy howdy, was he right.  This game has a TON of text to read. It's pretty much a text adventure with a clunky visual UI that just serves to get you from conversation to conversation.

[The part of gaming that has gone the way of the Dodo.]

I did finish the game within several months and enjoyed every minute of it. I have not played it since and have forgotten almost every detail of the plot, so it's almost like I'm playing it for the first time again. Most people beg for this kind of opportunity.  When I saw it go up on GOG.com, I snapped it up immediately to play. Two years later, here we are.

I would like to say that Good Old Games almost always includes lots of great extras with their games. PST is not forgotten and includes a PDF scan of the manual, wallpapers, an avatar set, and the complete soundtrack which is excellent. Check it out for a great value.

Onward

The game opens with you simply waking up on a slab in a huge building known as the 'Mortuary' after being brought in by the caretakes, known as 'Dustmen' after dying yet again.  You are accosted by a disembodied skull known as Morte and begin your adventure.  Check in next time when I will have some play time under my belt and some experiences to share.

While waiting, check out the intro to the game here.

1 - The Start of Something

1 - The Start of Something


Now what’s this business with all these games?

I had a problem. That problem has led to another problem, albeit a less serious one, that haunts me to this day: my backlog of games that I intend to destroy.

I have always loved playing video games, maybe too much at times, but I feel like I’m your typical guy.  I’ve been married almost three years, have a decent job, and rent to pay. I do live abroad in Hong Kong, so maybe that’s unusual. I went through a pretty rough period of time that I may talk about in the future several years ago. This lasted two or three years and was pretty devastating in many ways, but that’s the past.  This blog is not exclusively about that period of my life, but it did lead to what it IS all about.  During my time spent attempting to understand what was happening to me and getting things in order, I amassed an insane amount of games through easily accessible services such as Steam and GOG.com. I intend to finish these and complete the pact made with my wallet now that I have recovered.

[A small selection of the gems in store for me.]

The reasoning behind these purchases lies within the introverted tendencies of those times. (I’ll go into these in another entry to keep from getting too heavy now.)  I found staying home relatively better and would sink into the world of PC games and books to take my mind off what was going on.  I would see games in sales that struck my fancy or reminded me of better times that demanded an immediate purchase with no further thought.  These are still on my shelf and in my list taunting me and reminding me of not so happy times. I wanted to start this blog to make a semi-structured way to complete this task, practice my writing which has suffered since I have recovered, and maybe inspire others to do the same thing as I know many people have this problem. I also want to thank the recently defunct CRPG Addict blog as another inspiration for this blog and how fun and useful it can be.  Be sure to check out his past entries for very entertaining thoughts and retrospectives on classic RPG games for the PC.

So how will this go down?

I intend to choose a game at random from my backlogged list that I will compile to show you in the notes for this posting. Once I pick a game out of the hat, I intend to complete the game or play it for at least five to ten hours to give it a chance before moving on.  These games are from no particular genre and are from many different time periods.  There is no unifying factor and should provide a great variety for me as well as you readers out there.  For games that I own more than one game in a series of, the series will be in the hat and I will play the first one I have not completed (e.g. Ultima 6 first as I played and mostly finished all I care to of 1-5.)  I do not want this blog to become a job to create another item in my life to be too stressed about. I just want something fun to help me out and, hopefully, provide you with some entertainment.

Check here for a full list of games.

I will begin with an introduction to each game chosen with some background, fun facts, and reasons why I initially made the purchase (if I remember).  I want to mess around with different formats and find what works best, but the content should always be the same.  I will inform you of my progress in the game (including some spoilers that I will tell you about), post some pictures of interesting things, and weave in some interesting stories from the past about my experiences.  These will probably lead to a lot of my thoughts on gaming in general including my bias towards older games which I’m sure will reveal itself.

I also reserve the right to talk about other topics as I see fit. Hell, it’s my blog right? The overwhelming amount of content will be about the subject and I hope you enjoy it as much as I like playing these games.

[My gaming throne.]

So what now?

Well, I’m already breaking my rules for game number one.  At work I like to listen to podcasts about comedy, games, and music.  One of my favorite podcasts, called Watch Out For Fireballs, is a discussion on classic games; their impact, their legacy, and the hosts’ thoughts on design and game play. For an upcoming episode, the hosts (Kole Ross and Gary Butterfield) will be covering Planescape: Torment which I have fond memories of.  This will be my first game and a posting about it will be coming soon.  After it is completed, I will be doing a random draw.

I hope you enjoy reading as I am very excited to begin posting and digging into this project.  See you on the other side for the modern classic RPG -- Planescape: Torment. It is available from GOG.com for a good price of $9.99 for such a meaty game if you want to play along. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys games of any kind, really.