Beaten: Apr 28 2022
Time: 15.6 Hours
Platform: Mac
I just replayed Planescape: Torment, and I’m glad it held up for me as well as it did. Not that I played it for the first time all that long ago, but I’ve played (and replayed) many more CRPGs since then, and it still made me feel something none of them quite hit. That being said, I don’t want or need to spill more ink in aimless praise of Torment. It’s good, fun, and timeless, and you should absolutely play it. Instead, I think I’ll ruminate on a recent facet of its legacy that I don’t think quite gets its due: the newish trend (ish) of hyperlocal adventure games.
The particular games I’m thinking of are Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero, and Norco. All of these games, just like Torment, place more of a focus on an artsy bookishness, a strong prosal (like, prose-al. I don’t think it’s a word but) identity, than any specific mechanics beyond genre convention (KRZ/Norco with adventure game mechanics, Disco with RPG framing and mechanics). Torment absolutely focuses more on its D&D roots than any of those games engage with really tough puzzles or combat, but you can easily tell that it’s not about that.
That being said, I think Torment’s combat gets a lot more flak than it deserves tbh. It’s not as fleshed out in RPG combat as many of Black Isle’s or Obsidian’s or Bioware’s other games, but it’s still rooted in that same rtwp style. It’s clunky where the other ones are, it’s smooth (mostly) where the other ones are, and mostly it’s just pretty fun, if a bit on the easy side comparatively.
This is where Torment’s more obvious legacy comes from, games like Tyranny or Torment: Tides of Numenera. Talky RPGs with less tidy themes and slight less words for days, but also combat as a true component of gameplay. These games get away from the hyperlocality that played a part in making Torment feel so unique, though. That’s where those first three games really get it right, imo.
More than just being books with games attached, they’re incredibly deliberate in their literary themes and the way they explore a place, a city or region or highway. You see into every crack, every nook, just enough people’s personal problems that you get a sense that yes, this is a living, breathing, Place.
Purely speaking about RPGs, I think Baldur’s Gate 2 and Pillars of Eternity 2 also have *a place in them that’s almost this well fleshed out, but they also have many other smaller places in them. You’re exploring a whole countryside, an archipelago, that happens to have a big interweaving city inside of it. In these hyperlocal games, the city is the setting, it is* what you explore. Planescape ends with a few disconnected places, but 80% of the game is exploring Sigil, the City of Doors, and that’s what stuck with people.
There’s a third pillar of Torment’s influence, and that’s KOTOR 2. Influence is kind of a weak word though, instead it’s like a Star Wars themed remake of Torment fit inside of a stark-eyed takedown of everything Star Wars as a cultural idea ever held dear. But seriously, there’s even more direct parallels than I remembered lmao.
Anyways, yeah, Planescape: Torment has a wide ranging legacy with a high hit rate of games that are good to great to Amazing, and is maybe more important than the walls of text praising it would even have you believe!! If only chris avellone wasn’t a PoS aha
Time: 15.6 Hours
Platform: Mac
I just replayed Planescape: Torment, and I’m glad it held up for me as well as it did. Not that I played it for the first time all that long ago, but I’ve played (and replayed) many more CRPGs since then, and it still made me feel something none of them quite hit. That being said, I don’t want or need to spill more ink in aimless praise of Torment. It’s good, fun, and timeless, and you should absolutely play it. Instead, I think I’ll ruminate on a recent facet of its legacy that I don’t think quite gets its due: the newish trend (ish) of hyperlocal adventure games.
The particular games I’m thinking of are Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero, and Norco. All of these games, just like Torment, place more of a focus on an artsy bookishness, a strong prosal (like, prose-al. I don’t think it’s a word but) identity, than any specific mechanics beyond genre convention (KRZ/Norco with adventure game mechanics, Disco with RPG framing and mechanics). Torment absolutely focuses more on its D&D roots than any of those games engage with really tough puzzles or combat, but you can easily tell that it’s not about that.
That being said, I think Torment’s combat gets a lot more flak than it deserves tbh. It’s not as fleshed out in RPG combat as many of Black Isle’s or Obsidian’s or Bioware’s other games, but it’s still rooted in that same rtwp style. It’s clunky where the other ones are, it’s smooth (mostly) where the other ones are, and mostly it’s just pretty fun, if a bit on the easy side comparatively.
This is where Torment’s more obvious legacy comes from, games like Tyranny or Torment: Tides of Numenera. Talky RPGs with less tidy themes and slight less words for days, but also combat as a true component of gameplay. These games get away from the hyperlocality that played a part in making Torment feel so unique, though. That’s where those first three games really get it right, imo.
More than just being books with games attached, they’re incredibly deliberate in their literary themes and the way they explore a place, a city or region or highway. You see into every crack, every nook, just enough people’s personal problems that you get a sense that yes, this is a living, breathing, Place.
Purely speaking about RPGs, I think Baldur’s Gate 2 and Pillars of Eternity 2 also have *a place in them that’s almost this well fleshed out, but they also have many other smaller places in them. You’re exploring a whole countryside, an archipelago, that happens to have a big interweaving city inside of it. In these hyperlocal games, the city is the setting, it is* what you explore. Planescape ends with a few disconnected places, but 80% of the game is exploring Sigil, the City of Doors, and that’s what stuck with people.
There’s a third pillar of Torment’s influence, and that’s KOTOR 2. Influence is kind of a weak word though, instead it’s like a Star Wars themed remake of Torment fit inside of a stark-eyed takedown of everything Star Wars as a cultural idea ever held dear. But seriously, there’s even more direct parallels than I remembered lmao.
Anyways, yeah, Planescape: Torment has a wide ranging legacy with a high hit rate of games that are good to great to Amazing, and is maybe more important than the walls of text praising it would even have you believe!! If only chris avellone wasn’t a PoS aha