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Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

Twee as gently caress posted:


why should I care about this?

PS:T was considered widely as the best RPG that came out that year, and has gained a large cult following since then.

This isn't entirely accurate. It's considered widely as the best RPG to come out in any year. Ever.

Also you should stop reading this now and go play/replay Planescape:Torment.

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Page Downfall
May 5, 2009
What are you doing with your life?

I mean like right now, this minute. Boot it up.

Here is a handy link in case you don't have it on your desktop ready to go :wtc:
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/planescape_torment

e:

Page Downfall fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Feb 21, 2013

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

goldjas posted:

While I really liked Torments plot and such (Planescape is fun, and they used it fairly well), I found the actual gameplay of it to be worse then similar games at the time like the Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale games.

Also I'm pretty sure I know 10 years olds that are better at math then Monte Cooke considering his design uh, choices in some of the games he made, although like mentioned earlier, he does think up some pretty cool poo poo some times so I guess the fact that he's involved at all is pretty much a wash.

So I guess while I'd like for the game to be good I don't care enough to throw any money at the Kickstarter is what this amounts to.

Yeah this is quite true. Like Morrowind, it's a lot of really good rpg stuff with a frankly bad combat system dropped on top. But this is a known thing. This is not like the old Fallout games, or Baldur's Gate where there is a hardcore of fans who want the combat to be just like it was when they played it over a decade ago.

I'm actually fairly excited about this, despite falling firmly into the camp (which I think includes most everyone who played PS:T) that feels there should never be a sequel made for that game.

I don't want more Planescape Torment, I want more games where there is back and forth between my characters personality as I project it on the world and how the world responds to me. I want more RPGs that think about how the very act of playing a game versus say, reading a book or watching a movie, can be exploited to better tell a story. I want a game that let's me a play an evil character that is actually devious or make choices with unexpected and unintended consequences that nonetheless feel like a natural part of the game world. And I want to play fantasy games that have a more interesting a creative story than Dragonlance vol 316 crossplatform edition.

Basically I want game like PS:T, but I don't really want another PS:T, and that is exactly how this project is being presented. I think that's why it has the Torment franchise attached to it. I'm not alone in this either, this is essentially why it's such a well loved game, and it sounds like these guys know that. In the case of Torment it's not about recreating the combat and spellcasting experience or revisiting beloved locations and characters at all, it's about recreating the storytelling experience and the way you interact with the world.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

Zombies' Downfall posted:

It isn't hate, it's concern that people are using Kickstarter to snatch up old properties to try and cash in on nostalgia. And until the studios doing it release good games to prove me wrong, I'm going to remain a skeptic.


You don't even need to look that far afield for an example; Alpha Protocol does some things well but it's a loving wreck compared to Torment, and while New Vegas is better in pretty much every meaningful way than FO3 it isn't exactly an epic feat to do that when 75% of the non-writing aspect of development was already done for you by another company. Gamers of a particular age are utterly consumed with nostalgia for things that they obsessed over as teenagers and college students, and will happily exalt anything their idols give them so long as they make a token effort to show camaraderie and speak their language.

Yeah these are good points. That was partly my reaction to this too, and it's also a little less obvious what we'll be getting compared to say the Double Fine kickstarter or Wasteland 2 or Project Eternity. There are clear expectations about mechanically how games like those work and the appeal is very much 'you boot this game up and it feels just like these games you loved years ago'.

But there's a lot more uncertainty how a Torment sequel might play, since I doubt anyone is longing for a lovely version of the infinity engine revived as a delivery vehicle for hundreds of pages of text.

It also seems that games that try to make writing and storytelling a design priority are a complete crapshoot, even at the best of times and from the best studios. And maybe this goes some way towards explaining why we don't see more games like PS:T rather than the typical 'decline of the genre' story we've heard with these other kickstarter projects.

I'm still excited anyway :v:

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009
Yeah it's true, and I know that since I played it whenever I mention the plot outline, or who TNO is, I mention that what really stands out how even though that's a tired trope, the game uses that and other cRPG conventions in novel and exciting ways to help tell a story.

The designers were obviously very conscious of the fact that we play essentially immortal characters the way we tend to save and load in cRPGs, for instance. Amnesia, similarly, is an easy way out of the fact the player enters a story with no knowledge of where their character has come from or who he is even though he is expected to take on and shape that persona, and provides something of a blank slate for the player.

The clever part of this isn't so much the commentary on these things the game offers but how it's carefully woven into the story, and the themes the game explores. It's like how a good epistolary novel exploits the fact that novels are told by the written word on the page - the people who made PS:T were very conscious that they are telling a story through a video game and have taken pains to exploit the conventions, limitations and the way the player interacts with the world to the advantage of the story.

And like the point Tunahead made above, a lot of the individual elements are pretty bland if taken alone.

Maybe dev diaries and the like will give a bit more of an insight into what's in store.

What I'm saying is I think we should be happy these guys have looked at PS:T, have a good sense of what made it a great game, and are now saying 'yeah we want to make something like that', because so far they're doing a good job picking up on what it was that made PS:T so interesting.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009
Woo emptied wallet.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

Brother None posted:

Update 2 is up

Appreciative bonus, stretch goals, housekeeping.

$1.25 million was the "gender choice at character creation". We passed it! So there you go!

This is really exciting considering the reservations you had about gender choice and making it more than just cosmetic!

I'm super loving exciting about this and it makes me really really happy to see people backing up the old 'PS:T is the best RPG ever' stuff you see around the internet.

e: also I think the last $20 tier just went.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

Klyith posted:

That said, it's pretty much "reading a book: the game" and not for everyone. Don't bother to look for interesting combat tactics because there are none. Supposedly they'll do better for this one, which wouldn't be hard because it's impossible to be worse, but I would not give a poo poo if every combat was a 10 second rock-paper-scissors minigame if the writing is equal to the original.

I played a tabletop session where combat was handled by a RPS minigame. It was awesome.


People say this all the time but I think it unintentionally makes what's a really fun part of the game sound dull (why play a clunky game that's like a book when I can, you know, read a book?).

Think of it more like bringing back the non-combat side of pen and paper RPGs, wrapped up in an awesome well crafted story. I remember reading many years ago some article on a gaming site (I think it was about Neverwinter Nights) talking about how in a pen and paper RPG, you can have entire session with not much combat and have a great time, explore the world and characters, solving puzzles or whatever. In a computer RPG, the player get's bored if there's just 15min of non-combat sequences.

The text in PS:T is like taking all that cool character and world exploring, story telling side of RPGs and making it an exciting part of playing an RPG again on your computer.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

the black husserl posted:

Torment is nothing like a book and its a really dumb thing to say just because the game features a lot of dialogue. The combat, inventory mechanics, art, interactivity, and sense of exploration are all crucial.

Yeah again, this. Don't get the wrong impression anyone who hasn't played/got far in it! It's a really good game.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009
I can't imagine coming away thinking 'drat that was good' if you just read all the dialogue out of context of the game and gameplay mechanics. Like Boogle said, at least read an LP instead.

The only way it's really like a book is that there is a lot of text compared to most games. But you make choices, explore, find and manipulate weird objects, and then the world responds to you and that's as much a part of the story as any vignette of text is.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

Noricae posted:

Yeah, Planescape: Torment is text and writing heavy but it's not exactly linear in dialogue (not in story - which is a perfect way to give an open ended feel and the story actual meaning) and the environment explorations are important. The gameplay apparently is not exactly easy either - I've been trying to get a friend to play the game for years now and the furthest he got (recently) was getting stuck and not able to kill anything in an underground crypt and not being able to leave either because he did something weird (that is, suck ;)). So it's not so easy for the box bashing platform fps lovers I guess, who dumped int and wis.

*FFS don't read spoilers if you haven't played this game*

You clearly know this so it's not the issue, but it sounds like your friend got stuck around one of the sections where you have to die to advance, but it reminds me that there are two places (iirc) where this is the case. However there is a dialogue option at the end that shows up only if you died one or fewer times. Do the current recommended mods fix this? I dunno, I always thought the idea of having a special response based on that in the end game was pretty cool, and it was shame it was effectively hidden from the player.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

Quarex posted:

Wing Commander?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen

In case you missed it, this one is happening.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009
Such dickery. Too bad they hold all the bags of cash.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009
Reminds me of the Bond style Snake Eater intro. It should be like that.

"Some day... you'll feed ... on a tree froooog"

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

general chaos posted:

From the video: "...a more nuanced system, even more nuanced than Planescape's. It doesn't judge your motivations, but your actions."

I can't make much criticism now, because as in all things writing - it's the execution that matters more than anything, but I really have to nitpick this one line. One of the things absent in modern games that try to present choices and that made the original Torment so great was the (lie) and (truth) modifiers in many dialog options. Allowing you to alter the intent behind what your character is saying. A good character could pretend to be working for an evil entity before betraying them, or an evil character could lie to a quest-giver in order to manipulate them for their favor. It's very different from the Knights of the Old Republic evil option of "Not only will I refuse your quest, but I demand that you fork over your earthly possessions!"

Returning to that concept of deception was one of the things I was really looking forward to in a spiritual sequel and I wanted to know if I'm looking too deep into this line and that lying and manipulation could, in fact, be part of one of these tides.

But that ideas and motivations had meaning was a running a theme in PS:T. So occasionally you could effect the world just by choosing the same dialogue option but with [Lie] before the text. It sounds like they're going for a different direction in this sense, but I'd be surprised (and a little disappointing) if the situations your describing, manipulating people through dialogue choices for example, aren't highlighted as 'actions with consequences'. Influencing what someone thinks, especially if it has wider consequences is definitely an action.

It's a valid concern, but it might not be as worrying as it sounds.

Page Downfall
May 5, 2009
Haha drat they are going to get all of the nerd money.

I'm a little surprised they didn't hold out for the final week push with Avellone.

I agree with the guys saying so long as we don't have too many egos fighting for creative control, and Colin McCombe is given strong creative/editorial control this should all be excellent. And you heard it from Rope Kid, big (and really good) rpgs typically draw on a lot of writers. Games are more readily compartmentalised as far as writing goes, the way subquests and characters are handled, unlike say, a novel.

Really I think a lot of fans should be happy about way the extra writer stretch goals are shaping up after all the initial concerns about doing the writing justice.

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Page Downfall
May 5, 2009

Oasx posted:

I can agree that Torment's combat is the worst among the IE games, but overall i think it is pretty decent and fun despite its flaws. Also physical attributes are actually really good in combat, apart from a few good spells like cloudkill, being a fighter with top Con and Str makes surviving combat a lot easier i think, especially in a place like the fortress of regrets where you as a single mage have to rely on luck to survive, i generally found mages and spellcasters to be of less use in combat.

On the other hand the high level magic had badass animations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcGC2byVmoA

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