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Matt Chat 23 on Planescape:Torment
Hi, folks, it's time for another Matt Chat!
This week, I look at one of the lesser known but still excellent CRPGs of the "Platinum Age," the term I used in my book for the late 90s era of CRPGs. Planescape: Torment is one of Black Isle's best, based on the Infinity Engine. Black Isle had achieved fame before for their fabulous Fallout series, and their roots go back even deeper (as Interplay, which created Bard's Tale among others). Of course, they'd go on to create the party-based Icewind Dale series.
Enjoy the video! This one went smoothly. The only challenging part was getting the Fallout footage. For some reason, that program really hates FRAPS, and I'm not sure how else to record it. I had to run it in Dosbox, and that obviously led to its own set of problems. I guess that will preclude me from covering Fallout anytime soon.
Comments
Well the results of opening
Well the results of opening the sphere are as follows:
1. gameplay - you get 3000000 xp + the tattoo of torment comes off Nameless one's arm and becomes an ultra powerful spell
2. story wise: here's the dialog:
MASSIVE SPOILER
"I had absorbed the ‘good’ incarnation, but he had been but an echo of my first incarnation, and doubtless not all of that incarnation’s memories had survived. But I had a record from the first incarnation, the sensory stone journal I had found for Pharod. It was time to make use of it.
As I held the sphere up this time and examined it, I felt the memories of the first of my incarnations stirring within me, but it was not an insistent or driving force — it was calm, like the thoughts of a man walking across a great distance to speak to a friend he hadn’t seen in ages. As I felt his presence in my mind, I saw the sphere in a different light — not as ugly, or hideous, but as something precious, like a newborn child — the sphere was the repository of my last moments, before I met Ravel on the Gray Waste and asked the impossible of her.
I knew why I asked her. And I knew that all I needed to do was touch the surface of the sphere with both hands and feel regret, and the stone would open itself to me.
The sphere wrinkled in my hands, the skin of the sphere peeling away into tears and turning into a rain of bronze that encircled me. Each droplet, each fragment that entered me, I felt a new memory stirring, a lost love, a forgotten pain, an ache of loss — and with it, came the great pressure of regret, regret of careless actions, the regret of suffering, regret of war, regret of death, and I felt my mind begin buckling from the pressure — so MUCH, all at once, so much damage done to others… so much so an entire FORTRESS might be built from such pain.
And suddenly, through the torrent of regrets, I felt the first incarnation again. His hand, invisible and weightless, was upon my shoulder, steadying me. He didn’t speak, but with his touch, I suddenly remembered my name.
…and it was such a simple thing, not at all what I thought it might be, and I felt myself suddenly comforted. In knowing my name, my true name, I knew that I had gained back perhaps the most important part of myself. In knowing my name, I knew myself, and I knew, now, there was very little I could not do. The first incarnation’s hand was gone from my shoulder, and he was watching me with a slight smile.
“That was my name all along? But if I was—”
The first incarnation held his finger to his lips, silencing me. He nodded at the symbol on my arm, as if indicating I should make use of it.
The symbol — the symbol of Torment — seemed brittle somehow, as if it was only barely holding itself to my skin. Unconsciously, I reached out and peeled it from my arm. It gave way with a slight resistance, like pulling off a scab. As I held the symbol, I knew I could harness its power. Holding it and invoking its power would summon all the pain and suffering from my past incarnations upon my foes. It no longer ruled me."
Overall this is the end of Nameless one's quest - he comes to know himself at last - a complete person. Also by knowing your true name, you can force his mortality to join with him. The massive XP bonus is the result of regaining all lost memories, and this as close as the game gets to a perfect ending. Its not required but it makes sense of the orb which you spent half the game carrying around and chasing.
END OF SPOILER
Sadly, I can't get my
Sadly, I can't get my intelligence high enough to check out the sphere. I managed to merge with the other two, but according to walkthroughs I need an int of 21, and the highest I can get is 19 without having to do a big portion over again. I'll just have to watch what happens on a YouTube video. ;)
If I had known before, I could have easily brought a bunch of rats with me. Guess that's what I get for not using a walkthrough.
* Edit - been searching, but can't find a YouTube that shows what happens when you use the sphere correctly. Anyone?
Fallout
I just purchased Fallout from GOG, and I'm running it in Vista x64 with no problems.
Yes it is. :) A few tips. If
Yes it is. :)
A few tips. If your INT isn't around 25 then you will be hard pressed to absorb the practical incarnation. Stock up on fried cranium rats, they give a short lasting INT boost from the vendor that has a stall I believe at the smoldering corpse bar. Chew on those rats, like its the last meal of your life. I bought about 15 I think but i was playing a dumb fighter.
The paranoid one can be talked into letting you absorb him if you choose the dialogue option in which you speak the secret language of the linguist that he killed.
Then the globe will react.
If its all too difficult for you I'll explain what happens, and paste the appropriate dialog tree.
I only absorbed the good
I only absorbed the good one. I still won. Is the orb really that critical?
You can either kill them or
You can either kill them or absorb them (the incarnations), but they cannot live. Its imperative that you absorb them because then you get to open the golden orb of Pharod. Did you absorb them?
Ahhhh.................. That
Ahhhh..................
That is the sound of Matt *finally* beating Planescape: Torment, and what a fantastic ending it was, too!
I had a moment of panic when the game started crashing towards the end; I couldn't re-enter the mortuary. I tried and tried again, crash crash crash. I had this dread that I was again screwed, and would just have to settle for not beating it despite all my effort.
Fortunately, I browsed online and found somebody else with the same problem--the solution was to let Pox "make me a deader," essentially killing me so I woke up inside the mortuary. Cheap trick, I guess, but it let me bypass the bug and finish this kick-ass game.
I already recognized this game as superb, but finally being able to complete it has raised the bar even more. Definitely one of the best CRPGs out there, particularly in terms of character and story. It really felt like a true RPG, with lots of difficult choices and many roads I could have taken. I decided to kill the Deva, the Practical Incarnation, and the Paranoid Incarnation...Just didn't like the idea of letting them live. :) I also chose to fall in love with Annah and resurrect her at the end. Maybe selfish, I know, but hey--she was hawt. :P
And here I was thinking to
And here I was thinking to give MMORPG's another shot.
I played Guild Wars for several afternoons before becoming bored with the endless grind. I thought it must be like that because its free to play, perhaps WoW, Warhammer or Conan are better.
Apparently not.
And here I was thinking to
And here I was thinking to give MMORPG's another shot.
I played Guild Wars for several afternoons before becoming bored with the endless grind. I thought it must be like that because its free to play, perhaps WoW, Warhammer or Conan are better.
Apparently not.
Worth Waiting For
Yeah, in my opinion the best adventure games don't make you resort to hints. Most seasoned adventure gamers don't need hints to solve puzzles. They need hints to find the bloody puzzles, or at least to figure out what to do next to make the game advance to the next plot point. That is just piss poor design, I'm sorry. I don't expect a game to hold my hand, but I should at least have a pretty clear idea of what I'm supposed to be doing and whether I am ready to solve puzzle X or whether there's an exit or object I need that I just can't see because it's tiny and I have no idea I should be scouring the area.
There's absolutely no excuse for it because the way has been shown (by Ron Gilbert and Her Interactive among many others). It's easy enough to include a task list or journal of some sort, working it into the storyline. It's also nice if the characters' heads move towards objects or exits, or if you can hold down a key to get a highlight around the objects or exits. I also appreciate it if the character will say something like, "I don't have what I need yet" or some such to let me know -- okay, Matt, forget about that puzzle for now, you'll come back to it later. I can't tell you how many hours I've wasted trying to solve some puzzle, only to find out after consulting hints that I didn't have a necessary piece of information or that something else had to be done first. The "casual adventure game" has nailed this problem six ways to one--and I love it. No more frustration or drudgery; just going from puzzle to puzzle and having a blast, with the added bonus of a good story and fun characters. Needless to say, I'm a big fan of this genre and have collected bunches of games.
It's also necessary to have some reminder system or at least a "nudge" system in place; some way you can figure out what to do next if you're stuck. In some of the Nancy Drew games, you can call your friends, who will often give you hints in a wonderfully indirect way. Then you're like, "Oh!!" and can rush off to do the next thing. That's a lot more fun in my opinion than having to go online for hints. Once I have to do that, my interest in the game drops by 50% and if it happens again, I typically forget about playing the game seriously and just walkthrough it whenever I get stumped, because it's obviously just poor design. No point in getting more frustrated.
I would never resort to hints just to solve a clearly defined puzzle, though. That's just lame.
Apparently, it was designed (or co-designed) by one of the big Planescape guys who had worked on the tabletop campaign. At any rate, if you really read the text and so on, this FEELS like a real role-playing game with a kickass dungeon master.
I don't care so much about the 100+ hours as long as that time is spent doing worthwhile things and not just "farming" or "grinding." I think you should be able to complete a main quest in under 48 hours, perhaps even 24. The extra can be spent exploring optional areas, developing extra skills, just doing fun stuff. This is a win-win situation.
Welcome to MMORPGs.
WoW is literally one quest after another like that--fetch this, kill X of this, escort Y to Z, gather X of Z, on and on. Ultimately, it's little more than just updating cells in some giant database somewhere. As far as the quests or creatures, "Only the names have changed." Indeed, you might kill 20 turtles in one area, then go somewhere else where it's the SAME DAMN TURTLES but now they're reddish instead of greenish and have bigger stats--and now you have to kill 40 of them. Groan, somebody gag me with a vorpal sword already. The MMORPG is about three things: lather, rinse, repeat. Oddly enough, you never can get rid of that stinking cloud stench.
I kid you not, many of my friends into the game talk about doing their "chores." These are "daily quests" where they literally do the same damn quest over, and over, and over, everyday to "grind rep" or gold so they can get an item that's only marginally better than the one they have. Where's Matt--oh, that dude used his dust of disappearance!
I've *had it* with online gaming. Nothing but a bunch of idiots, kids, lifers, and griefers. You'd have more fun in a laundromat with a roll of quarters and a detergent dispenser than playing that crap.
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