Planescape: Torment

Out on GOG for ten bucks.
If I get and play this is it too outdated to enjoy or...?

bear in mind it'll be my first time trying it.

I haven't played an rpg in a while but I would think that there still would be a lot of fresh elements in this game, which by the way owned when I played it yrs ago

The game is a serious, all-time classic. But I will break it to you, the gameplay itself is not the greatest, it wasn't even back then. The combat and character progression (in terms of D&D rules and stats) is not as strict or complex as Baldur's Gate and not as fun as Fallout's. Torment leans much more towards BG, though, one of the game's chief mechanics is how far along you want to go on the good/evil and lawful/chaos scales. There's a conscious design decision that you can avoid a lot of the combat, and I'd even recommend you go straight to a magic/high wisdom or intelligence build for the best dialogue options; in some ways it's better to treat this as an adventure game.

Also, do you like reading in RPGs? This has an absurd amount of text - but what's crazier is that a lot of it is really good, as are the story and characterizations. You can click on lots of things and get lots of descriptions. There's lots of secrets and alternate paths to take, though it's more linear than the two mentioned titles.

My hesitation is that, if I remember right, you couldn't really get into Fallout, which uses a similar same 2D point-and-click engine and also had a dark, sometimes over-serious tone. But Torment has so much more going on creatively, in terms of fiction, thematically, and the variance in environments and people. The world of Sigil itself is so much more interesting than 99% of fantasy settings.

Short version: this game is really awesome and yes you should play it. I don't think Torment's story or inherent ingenuity will ever become outdated (ironic considering it starts with the old amnesiac cliche). I might pick it up in a few months just to not have to ever dig out my 6-CD swapping retail version.

(Actually this seems like a decent choice for a IPC revival, if you wanna put in the work again lol)

Yeah there is a fucking shit ton of reading and the resolution leaves alot to be desired. It should be smaller but its not and the screen looks kinda awkward compared to todays standards. But its still an amazing game and should be fun to play when you dont have to switch all the fucking discs out back and forth.

I'd try it. It's really dear to me - as someone who loves the fantasy genre and has reservations about how it's usually deployed it was pretty startling, and if you feel the same way, I don't think it'd date particularly.

I couldn't get into fallout either, but that's because the setting didn't do much for me - to enjoy this you basically need "reading a lot of weird cool fantasy literature" to be a big draw.

i played through it with a really high intelligence/wisdom and the amount of reading got to be too much. if i played it again i'd go with more average smarts so i wouldn't get so bogged down.

thanks for the heads up nhex et al; i'll put this on the list of future potential time sinks.

Also good positives: the character interaction is really interesting and fun to explore, cool plot twists and hilarious ways to kill yourself.

I couldn't get into fallout either, but I've made a start on this now, and am totally loving it.

i haven't tried this, but i saw it linked in various places:

http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2009/01/planescape-torment-fully-modded.html

you can skip the first two steps if you have the GOG version

i miss having a pc :(

alright, i'm gonna give it a try with the nhex changes and see where it gets me

Downloaded the GOG version and went through all the steps from Nhex's link and the resolution is great, the game loads smoothly and I'm gonna roll up a character here in just a sec. Kinda excited! How long of a game is this? A week? Two weeks?

I was going to say it's really really long, but then I realized my memories are totally colored by the crappy summer during which I played it, so maybe it wasn't as long as I thought. Also, all the disc swapping for each area made it feel longer too. Perhaps someone else could objectively assess it...

right at the very beginning, this is instantly awesome
also it's great to play a game that has NO LOAD TIME and is still fun

yay

This is probably my favorite game of all time

urg and it just crashed when i got out of the mortuary... hopefully not a replicable bug.

damn this thing crashes a lot

Really? Mine's been fine so far (apart from a recurring crash-on-exit, but that doesn't seem to do any harm).

yeah, i've had four crashes when i go into buildings.

my cd copy used to crash when I tried to enter the mortuary from the front door. easily gotten around, of course :)

WTF

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/09/planescape-torment-sequel/#more-137374

What can change the nature of a sequel?
Post-Planescape: Fargo Reveals The Future Of Torment

By Alec Meer on January 9th, 2013 at 5:00 pm

...RPS – Where are inXile up to in terms of designing this thing, given you’ve presumably incredibly busy with Wasteland? Will you be working on it concurrently with Wasteland or saving it for later?

Fargo: We’re very early in Torment’s preproduction right now. We have a basic story outline, design sketches of the major characters, and thematic concepts defined. Wasteland 2 is in full production and we don’t want to detract from that focus. But with that said, the writers on Wasteland are complete for the most part and the concept artists are not involved at this stage in the game. The guys working on Torment are no longer working on Wasteland 2 and I want to keep these talented guys busy for us. Typically we do begin design of the next game while the production team is working on the current one. This allows the team to take a nice break once they are complete on the current game and then come back to roll onto a design that is thorough and polished. The last thing we want to do is break up a winning team.

no kickstarter no credibility

read the link, they mention their plans

just bein sarcastic. but yeah, seems the time's right for it.

no kickstarter no credibility

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera

damn you, kickstarter.

honestly i'm a little burned out on these

no way am i funding another kickstarter from these dudes when they haven't shipped wasteland 2. the give-us-money email very patiently explained the nature of game dev cycles or whatever but fuck yall for real, where's my game and yall want more of my money?

let's see one of these games come out first b4 i chip in cash to a new one - so far is ftl the only kickstarted game to be a real success?

"This is better news than the PS4."

— ScruffTheNerfHerder

there's a ps4?

not really

Turns out they don't need adam's money now.

oh shit, that was quick

So, if they get enough K$ dosh, can they just buy the damn Planescape name and be done with it?

nah, they already asked Wizards of the Coast for permission and were rejected, i believe

so kickstarter gets kicked back like 5%? is that how it works?

http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/05/developing-planescape-torment-enhanced.html

Chris Avellone just got cancelled:

https://kotaku.com/multiple-women-accuse-games-writer-chris-avellone-of-se-1844135498

A digest of the accusations that are being levelled against him:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/he4fhh/chris_avellone_no_longer_working_on_dying_light_2/fvp5at8?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

Ah Christ, what a schmuck