Spoilers!
So, imagine that you would wake up one day, but instead of seeing anything familiar you are met with the smell of death, formaldehyde, and when you slowly open your eyes, the sight of a large mortuary. You can hear the dragging footsteps of lazy feet all around you. But they are slow, uneven and almost rhythmical, like they’re walking in a pattern. You slowly sit up, but your body seems sluggish and you can’t remember where you are, how you got there, why you are there or even, to your horrific realization, who you actually is.
Suddenly a hoovering skull is coming your way and you can’t shake the feeling that this skull might know you or… that you should know him.
And that’s how one of the best games in the world starts, and that’s not the strangest part, oh no.
Morte, the skull that you meet there in that Mortuary, tells you where you are and joins up with you. He helps you escape the dirty and filthy place, and as you venture through it, you soon realize that it’s taken care of by zombies and skeletons. Both old and fresh to broken and whole ones, each slower than the next.
This game has really good graphics, great illustrated pictures with description of all things you can meet, epic dialogue and texts overall. On top of it all, some the spells looks more like a Final Fantasy game than traditional D&D game. It is a real written masterpiece in the game world that hasn’t been seen since in my opinion. The game has a really nice story and some parts of it makes me shiver when I play it. I has played it once before but it was this time around that I actually understood all of it and got the real concept of the game, or at least I think did, in my opinion.
I played this game as a mage, a really intelligent, really weak (had 3 in strength), charismatic and wise mage that would save everyone that needed saving but still be able to strike a hard blow to those who are greedy, nasty or just evil without really thinking much about laws nor people around, well besides my companions. Especially Annah, my hot and confident tiefling. The characters in this game are so well written and the voice actors just nails every single character so well that it feels so real.
And thanks to my character being so intelligent and wise, I could get the most out of this game in story. I could ask deeper questions, I could solve things better and I could learn things, like languages. But in some cases when talking to certain characters that needs translating, it is better to let your companions translate. You might learn something new about them. But you should talk to them now and then anyhow, they can teach you things about them that you didn’t know and even about yourself.
Some more really memorable characters to mention, that is actually the rest of the followers you can find. Like the lovely Fall-From-Grace that is voiced by the all talented Jennifer Hale (so is the ghost Deionarra), Morte, who is voiced by Rob Paulsen, Ignus, who is voiced by Charles Adler, Dak’kon who is voiced by Mitch Pileggi (The man who plays Skinner in the X-Files series), Nordom who is voiced by Dan Castellaneta, (who is the voice of Homer Simpson) and some others. There are some really big names in there.
In my party I had my dear bad mouthed tiefling Anna, the healing succubus Fall-From-Grace, the always talking, insult tossing flying skull Morte, the Justice impersonated haunted armor Vhailor and my cute, fearful “cubed” warrior (Modron cube) Nordom and of course my own personal, ever so gleeful pet, my Lim-Lim. Who was with me to the almost very end only to die a tragic death. Also sadly I had to trade away the fearful human mage who’s always burning bright (literally), Ignus and the faithless Githzerai slave Dak’kon.
I used a few mods in this game, like the heavy fixpack by Qwinn that fixed a whole lot in the game and the ‘Unfinished Business’ mod that restores many things into the game that was left out by various reasons.
The mods can be found here:
– PS:T – Fixpack
– PS:T Unfinished Business
– PS:T Tweaks
And I followed this really handy installation guide:
– Torment Guide
All in all this game is a truly epic journey that everyone should play. The game gives you a lot of things to think about, like morals and the facts of life. One question in particular stands out and the game sort of revolves around it and the answer for it.
The question being, “What can change the nature of a man?”
Well, what’s your answer? Leave a comment.
I Hate Loading Screens 
Planescape: Torment, the game that I never played myself but has so many memories from. Sat and watched someone play this at times, read some of the dialogs etc first hand without touching the controls even once. 😛
I like your description in the beginning of the post, gives a feel of the game if you ask me.
In one part of the post you’re talking about your character being able to strike a hard blow against those that are greedy, nasty or just evil, “besides my companions” and then mentions Annah, was she your favourite companion or did you have another one? What was it that made you enjoy your favourite the most?
And the question at the end is very interesting, how can we change?
Through strong emotions and conviction if you ask me, you need to be ready to change, to believe you can change and most of the time the will to change comes out of strong emotions like fear, love, hate etc.
LikeLike
Nice post about one of the best games ever created. Ah, the question… after many years I still don’t know the answer. In the game, I always answered “regret”. If I were to play it today however, I think I would answer “nothing”. But I don’t think there could ever be a single true answer. We know what The Nameless One once gave as answer to Ravel, and also what the original incarnation thought, but the game never proves either of them to be true. Funny how this game, after more than 10 years, can still be thought provoking. Here’s hoping that Tides of Numenera can live up to that!
LikeLike
Yeah, I agree with you there, let’s hope that Tides of Numenera can tackle the epicness that is Torment.
LikeLike
And btw, I forgot to ask… what was *your* answer? 🙂
LikeLike
My answer, after a lot of thinking, is ‘belief’. That anything felt strongly enough can make someone change. The proof? Adahn.🙂
LikeLike
Wow loved that start!! 🙂 Very imaginative! Should maybe do that a bit more often with RPG’s like this with so much atmosphere! And the Skull sounds like a pretty fun companion, I imagine it is quite a jokey/sarcastic skull for the players enjoyment?
The graphics do look very nice. From that first picture, gonna gather its mainly a kind of… Slanted birds eye view camera for the game? But even then you can still see the level of detail gone into the environment! It looks shadowy and my curiousity is peaked by what one could find if they search long enough! Maybe some secrets. Reminds me a bit of an old board game I used to play too, although the name escapes me…
Woo! Intelligence is always best for these kind of games IMO, with lots of dialogue. (For example I always get the extra dialogue option Perks in Fallout 3, cause I wanna hear everything a character has to say and have the widest variety of responses!). A Mage sounds like a good choice too, especially if you have such a large group/team. All around blasty fun and can pretty much dish out and take most things thrown at the Class (Taken examples from other games with Mage’s anyway).
Ohhh, yeah lots of well known voice actors! I love hearing familiar voices on characters, as an actor will always have that memorable voice you recognise from somewhere or other! (I bet Homer’s was easily recognisable :P). Those characters all look beautifully detailed too… Gotta admit, the one that looks like a TV with arms and legs is a bit… Strange 😛 What was he like? And always need a bad mouth person! Always has their own funny (albeit bad worded!) opinion on things! Great that it has mods too to clean it up a bit. Shows gamers loved it a lot, and would gladly make the fixes to improve it a second time playthrough if they wished for it. Especially with computers getting more and more sophisticated nowadays, making older games obsolete. (I’ve lost a few games to the new OS’s, and no fixes have existed for them sadly 😦 ).
What can change the nature of a man? Hmm… I think that depends on what a man finds most important to themselves. They say a leopard can’t change its spots, but you can definetly change the way people look at those spots (If thats a good analogy). Although to make a change permanent you have to find something you can believe in and would do anything to keep that.
Another great review and an interesting looking game! If I got the chance, I would definetly give this a play. With the mods also, as looking at the mod pages they sound like they fix a lot. Looking forward to the next review!
LikeLike
Thank you, maybe I will.
Yeah, the skull is a really nice character with lots of things to say. And hitting on all the ladies, especially the zombie ones.
It is a sort of top-down isometric perspective, like in Baldur’s Gate, only a bit closer.
The cute little modron is one silly character. Would never believe that the voice of Nordom is the same as that of Homer Simpson. Really nicely done character all in all.
And interesting view of that question 🙂
LikeLike
Cool!
Oh God, thats… Kinda weird, but adds a fun character to listen too! I imagine the zombies reactions are a bit… Random too?
Ahh right okay, waiting to try that still.
Yeah! Can ya hear the Homer similarities or?
Thanks 🙂
LikeLike