[Bloth]

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Angels grown fat and strong on the misdeeds of man, fiends turned to charity and benevolence by a mis-spoken word. I watched love bloom in the brambled heart of a withered hag and observed a seed of law slowly drowning in an ocean of chaos. All those moments will be lost in time, more blood shed in the blood war. Time to pay.

What can change the nature of a man?

[.Volsung.]

I remember a man who once jumped into a pool of torture, pain and rebirth. He thought it would cleanse him, but instead he lost himself. Every moment of what seemed an eternity, harm and lies sprouted from his pores. People bent to his will, so powerful were his whips and chains. And then, their lives were lost, and their souls consumed. He held destruction on one hand and redemption on the other. And with him, he brought torment to all around him.

[secondchildren]

slimgrin said:

I tried it for 20 minutes and bailed because of the gameplay. Sorry guys. When I'm older and wiser maybe. ›››

Look, let's just been honest: PT is totally outdated. Like Cory said, the mech and combat are cluncky, the visual cannot compete with any modern game, and the gameplay is nothing that you are used to. Especially, if you've never played Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale series so..... I understand. Entirely.
Playing PT nowadays (especially for a young person as you are) is just exotic and elitistic. More likely playing an indie game like Botanicula. PT is not a game for the mass, even if it had his bright moment in 1999. I played it very recentely for the first time, 3 years ago I think. But I've also played BG and IW series for years, and I'm addicted to Black Isle games so, I knew what I was waiting for and I knew what I was about to play. I mean... in the sense of gameplay and mechs.
And god knows how hard the gameplay and fights are in that game!

Can only suggest you to play, becoz, if you can go over those "flaws" and old fashioned game, you won't be disappointed.

Blothulfur said:

What can change the nature of a man? ›››

This nails PT sense

[.Volsung.]

Come on secondchildren, sure PS:T uses an old graphical engine and "old school" gameplay but all Infinity Engine games have beautiful, pre-rendered graphics that look better than many modern 3D games. It does use sprites, which I suppose are not acceptable for modern players, and yes they do look outdated and the animations are stiff. But I don't see that as a problem. Especially for Role-Playing games.

Dragon Age: Origins


Planescape: Torment


From a similar perspective, not much of a difference.

Now yes, the combat is clunky, but so is the combat of many modern games.

I agree though, PS:T is not just for everyone. But I think "old" gameplay and graphics are not a strong enough reason to NOT play this game

[227]

I liked the ending and thought it was happy. I'm kind of twisted when it comes to that kind of thing, though.

.Volsung. said:

I agree though, PS:T is not just for everyone. But I think "old" gameplay and graphics are not a strong enough reason to NOT play this game ›››

Especially given the fact that, aside from those two things, the game is as close to perfect as anyone has ever gotten.

Anyway, the graphics may be sprites, but I find the overall art design to be fantastic, complementing the dark grittiness of the game perfectly. Maybe it's just me, but good art design trumps a lack of shiny graphics every time. The game just takes longer than a half hour to get into.

When I first tried it, I gave up before I had even gotten out of the mortuary. Eventually I willed myself past that point and found one of the best games ever made. Good rule of thumb: If you order a pizza right after you start playing a game and end up giving up on it before that pizza has arrived, chances are you haven't seen anything that game has to offer. Like if someone played Witcher 2 for twenty minutes, chances are they'd think it's one of those "run down a corridor, cutscene, repeat" RPG games. Games rarely put their best foot forward or betray their brilliance early on.

[Pangaea]

Well said Volsung and 227. Didn't have any problems with the graphics in P:T. They look wonderful, and crucially, every area is unique - unlike modern games with re-used areas time and time again. The screenshot above shows well enough how beautiful the graphics can be in the game.

The combat was more problematic I must admit, it was very clunky to use spells in particular, and nobody would auto-attack unless I ordered them to some target. Quite awkward to say the least. It also took me a couple of tries before I got into the game. Based on my own experience you need to get out of the Mortuary before the game starts to shine. From there on it sucked me in like a maelstrom and I played through many a dark hour. Speaking of which, it was bloody scary to play in some of the places in a pitchblack room!

It isn't for everybody, though. The game is roughly based on text-based communication and little combat, which flies right in the face of how modern games are made, with action action action all the time, and focus on graphics instead of story and gameplay. Planescape is unique in more than one way, but its story is unparallelled in the gaming world. Modern games can't even jump up to hit Planescape Torment in the stiff toenails.

[Corylea]

Pangaea said:

Modern games can't even jump up to hit Planescape Torment in the stiff toenails. ›››

[Gibb_Geralt]

.Volsung. said:

Come on secondchildren, sure PS:T uses an old graphical engine and "old school" gameplay but all Infinity Engine games have beautiful, pre-rendered graphics that look better than many modern 3D games. It does use sprites, which I suppose are not acceptable for modern players, and yes they do look outdated and the animations are stiff. But I don't see that as a problem. Especially for Role-Playing games.

Dragon Age: Origins


Planescape: Torment


From a similar perspective, not much of a difference.

Now yes, the combat is clunky, but so is the combat of many modern games.

I agree though, PS:T is not just for everyone. But I think "old" gameplay and graphics are not a strong enough reason to NOT play this game ›››

I'm sure if you got a terrible distorted image of Battlefield 3 and compared it to a modded 1080p Doom they'd look similar aswell.

Don't be silly, DAO didn't look all that good for it's time, but it beats PST and every other IE game into the ground. And why shouldn't it, it's got a decades advantage.

[Norlak]

Gibb_Geralt said:

I'm sure if you got a terrible distorted image of Battlefield 3 and compared it to a modded 1080p Doom they'd look similar aswell.

Don't be silly, DAO didn't look all that good for it's time, but it beats PST and every other IE game into the ground. And why shouldn't it, it's got a decades advantage. ›››

I think he was talking more about the enviroments. Compare the crisp details of the pre-rendered art to the smudgy and squashy textures of the 3D models in DA:O.

LOVE TO THE TWO BTW!

[.Volsung.]

Yes, I wasn't comparing only the technical aspects of either graphical engine. But being pre-rendered, the backgrounds of the Infinity engine DO look like present day, real time 3D graphics. It is amazing that such graphics can be processed now on real time, but my point is that Planescape Torment and ALL other Infinity Engine games still look beautiful. Which takes us to the other, more important dimension: the aesthetic quality of graphics. PS:T and other infinity engine games are almost hand crafted, full of little details and subtleties.

I didn't feel like I had to post a particularly sharp and big screenshot of Dragon Age: Origins,as almost everyone is familiar with it. It was also not too easy to find a good screenshot of the "tactical" view. Maybe it's just me, and a few others, but I do find Planescape: Torment a lot more beautiful and aesthetically pleasant than most modern games.

Saying "old school" graphics look bad is like saying high definition movies in 3D "beat to the ground" black and white movies, or old style animation. They can both be amazing, however, as with games, older movies payed more attention to art, without being "über high definition".

[Gibb_Geralt]

If we are talking artstyle, then i agree. I was under the impression that you were trying to compare the graphical quality of the two games. PST definitely gives off a unique and atmospheric artstyle. Definitely prefer it to DAO's artstyle, despite DAO being one of my favourite games ever.

[.Volsung.]

Gibb_Geralt said:

If we are talking artstyle, then i agree. I was under the impression that you were trying to compare the graphical quality of the two games. PST definitely gives off a unique and atmospheric artstyle. Definitely prefer it to DAO's artstyle, despite DAO being one of my favourite games ever. ›››

I was comparing BOTH. And the truth is that the backgrounds, NOT the character sprites, DO look awesome even for today's standards (unless you are allergic to 2D or something).

Just look at that PS:T screenshot I posted and whatever your favorite DA:O moment is. 3D games started looking as good as pre-rendered games only recently. A good example is Myst: pretty much everything was pre-rendered, and it looks almost photo-realistic. Saying it looks worse than a modern 3D game is simply, well, I have no words for that.

And finally, maybe it's just me but I don't have a problem playing old DOS games, with visible pixels and a 256 or 16 color palette. It's just a different artistic and visual style, for hell's sake. Wouldn't you laugh at someone if they said photography is "superior" to, say, impressionism, because it is "higher resolution" and "more realistic"? What about impressionism vs. cubism? Certainly cubism sucks because it has, among other things noticeable edges.

[Pangaea]

It's definitely not just you Volsung. I love the pre-rendered graphics and artstyle in PST too. Every nook and cranny is unique, and every area is different. I don't intend to talk down DAO, because it was a good game, but it wasn't interesting to walk around, the environment was a bit dead (compare this with TW1 for example), and I got so bored with hacking seemingly endless streams of enemies apart I didn't even finish the game. I liked the roleplaying part of it though.

[Corylea]

.Volsung. said:

Wouldn't you laugh at someone if they said photography is "superior" to, say, impressionism, because it is "higher resolution" and "more realistic"? ›››

*smile* Great analogy!

When slogging through Orzammar, it was the same thing over and over and OVER again, enough so that I was ready to scream, and I say that as someone who loved DA:O and played it three times.

P:T, on the other hand, had something new and different around every corner. I was completely awed at the creativity of an idea like The Brothel of Slaking Intellectual lusts and blown away by how many mini-stories were tucked into the sensory stones at the Civic Festhall.

P:T just drips creativity, whereas most games have one or two really creative moments, with a lot of ho-hum in between.

[Gibb_Geralt]

.Volsung. said:

I was comparing BOTH. And the truth is that the backgrounds, NOT the character sprites, DO look awesome even for today's standards (unless you are allergic to 2D or something).

Just look at that PS:T screenshot I posted and whatever your favorite DA:O moment is. 3D games started looking as good as pre-rendered games only recently. A good example is Myst: pretty much everything was pre-rendered, and it looks almost photo-realistic. Saying it looks worse than a modern 3D game is simply, well, I have no words for that.

And finally, maybe it's just me but I don't have a problem playing old DOS games, with visible pixels and a 256 or 16 color palette. It's just a different artistic and visual style, for hell's sake. Wouldn't you laugh at someone if they said photography is "superior" to, say, impressionism, because it is "higher resolution" and "more realistic"? What about impressionism vs. cubism? Certainly cubism sucks because it has, among other things noticeable edges. ›››

Well then no, i can't agree with you on both. Artstyle, yes; technical prowess, hell no. The technical graphical quality of PST is vastly inferior to DAO. It's not different artistic and visual style, it's the limitations of tech that were present in the 90's. Black Isle didn't choose to go with that texture decal and limited color pallette, it's all that was present at the time.

If you prefer the "Limited tech" graphic quality, then that's nice. But it's still technically inferior to any modern game, and if you can't get around that, then there really is no reason to discuss this any longer.

[Pangaea]

I don't care one atom about the "technical quality" of graphics in a game. If it looks good and feels good, it's good. The environment in PST is definintely good, across the board really, while I can't really say the same about DAO. Some places were pretty dull graphically (or artistically rather).

This topic has steered a bit away from PST Ending reactions, however.

[Bloth]

Which of your companions facing up to the Transcendant One struck you the most? Grace trying to see beyond the cloak of shadows and brambles, Nordom making a nonsensical sacrifice when his life has just begun, Annah fierce and fragile as ever?

For me it was Daakon, the only companion whom the Transcendant One would not face personally. That quiet determination, the acknowledgement of his doom, I don't know why it resonated so strongly with me but the hairs on the back of my neck rose when I saw him overcome by shadows. The Transcendant knew what he carried in his hand and feared to face him alone, Grace was correct, for all of its power the creatures was a coward.

[Corylea]

Blothulfur said:

Which of your companions facing up to the Transcendant One struck you the most? Grace trying to see beyond the cloak of shadows and brambles, Nordom making a nonsensical sacrifice when his life has just begun, Annah fierce and fragile as ever?

For me it was Daakon, the only companion whom the Transcendant One would not face personally. That quiet determination, the acknowledgement of his doom, I don't know why it resonated so strongly with me but the hairs on the back of my neck rose when I saw him overcome by shadows. The Transcendant knew what he carried in his hand and feared to face him alone, Grace was correct, for all of its power the creatures was a coward. ›››

Damn. I don't remember their reactions in detail.

Wait, this means that my memory of my first play of P:T has faded enough that I can play again*. Joy!


*I guess there are advantages to being as ancient and decrepit as I am.

[Wichat]

Just a question... The Lady's sent me to a laberint. I've found the exit but... now I'm alone! No one companion with me. Anyone does know what it happens?

[Bloth]

Three reasons why the Lady will maze you:

1. You worship her.
2. You kill too many of her servants or innocent civilians.
3. You try to challenge her power, by worshipping opposing powers such as Aoskar (God of portals).

Your companions should be where you left them when you were mazed.

WARNING! The Lady of Pain does not grant second chances, do not cross her again or she'll cast her shadow over you.