A Novel Approach to Video Games

Torment: Tides of Numenera is great at world-building and presenting unique, complex NPC characters. It does, however, share a drawback of its spiritual predecessor, Planescape: Torment, in that there's a lot of text to read. As with the prior game, I find myself skimming the dialogue until something triggers an update to the Journal, where I can get a more concise version of what's going on. It's still fun, but man, it's like reading a novel.

A New Torment

Once upon a time, I played through the highly regarded Planescape: Torment, although I have little recolleciton of having done so. (It's referenced on this blog, however, so it must be true!) Since it's a kind of spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, and since I'm a big fan of the Cypher System, I've had my eye on Torment: Tides of Numera for a while. The game was massively discounted on Steam, so I decided to pick it up. It's pretty cool to see Cypher represented in a computer game! I'm only about an hour into the campaign, but I'm enjoying it so far. 

An End to My Torment

I finished up Planescape: Torment tonight. In the final encounter, I talked the main villain into submission and then my character was dragged down into some sort of horrible hell-dimension. Somehow, it seemed a fitting end...

Progress!

I finished up the single-player campaign for the 40k mobile game Space Wolf yesterday (casualties were high in a scenario aptly titled "No One Lives Forever") and made some good progress on Planescape: Torment. I estimate that I'm about 80% of the way through Planescape. My goal is to have it finished up before Injustice 2 comes out in a couple of weeks...

Critical Mass

If I play a video game for long enough, I usually reach a "critical mass" point (or, to put it less charitably, the point at which I fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy) and decide that I'll actually finish the game even if I'm not really digging it. I think I've hit that point with Planescape: Torment. I still find it oppressively verbose, but as long as I can skim past the dialogue and focus on the snippets that are included in the main character's journal, it's bearable.

One criticism that is not likely to go away, though, is the setting. I'm about 20 hours into this game and I'm still traipsing around in Sigil. What's the point of using the Planescape setting if so much of the game is rooted in one city? Granted, Sigil is a cool and quirky location, but there's really no reason this game couldn't have been set in Waterdeep or Greyhawk or some other iconic D&D city. Are we actually going to see other planes in Planescape?

It's Torment Indeed

So I ended up shelling out twenty bucks for the PC version of Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition, and I can't say I'm in love with it. I'll try anything that resembles Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale (this game is built using the same engine as those two classics), but Torment is turning out to be slow and talky. I'm a couple of hours into the game, and I'm now wandering around the slums of Sigil (all the while killing the same bandits that keep respawning in exactly the same places) in search of information. Each new map brings about the same grim exercise in identifying every named NPC, initiating dialogue with them, and scanning through reams of text to figure out if they have anything truly useful to say. Not sure how far I will get with this game, especially with my copy of Tales From the Yawning Portal scheduled to arrive today...

Time to Torment Myself!

The enhanced edition for Planescape: Torment is now available. Can't wait to download it for my tablet!

Planescape: Torment

Yeah, so, I guess I'm going to have to get this...