Anybody else here who really loved Fallout but didn't like Planescape: Torment? No? I thought so. I'm a kind of freak, I know.

Planescape: Torment (1999) was Black Isle Studios' second game after Baldur's Gate to use the Infinity Engine. Similarities end here. Instead of choosing between races and classes you are stuck with The Nameless One, or TNO, who for me only was TUB, The Ugly Brute. He is scarred over and over and wears tattoos instead of armor. You get some points to distribute on TUBs stats, that's all there is to character creation.

TUB has lost his memory, that's why he is nameless, and he has also lost the ability to die. At the beginning of the game he wakes up in the mortuary, and whenever he gets killed he will return there. A weird story twist, but an excellent way out of the usual "die and reload" routine. You can play this game without ever saving and reloading except when you pause playing.

Back to the mortuary. It is a big black structure with all the architectural charm of a pregnant spider, as your floating skull sidekick Morte describes it. It is run by the Dustmen, nice people in grey robes who think that everyone would be better off dead. The menial tasks are performed by zombies and skeletons. One of your first quests will be fetching needles and embalming fluid for a woman with talons for hands who will then stitch the scars on your chest, giving you a hitpoint boost.

That is the world of Planescape: Torment, a world were items are retrieved from entrails (your entrails), a world that is permeated by the stench of decaying corpses. I didn't like this world, I didn't want to explore it, not a good premise for playing the game.

And as I have already hinted, I didn't like the main character either. Amnesia can be an interesting plot twist (pity Shadowrun for the SNES didn't make more out of it), but you have to care. I didn't. I played the game for about two thirds, then I lost interest completely. I didn't even read up in a guide or walkthrough what was really the deal with The Nameless One. I just didn't care.

The AD&D heritage with which it is burdened is not to the advantage of the game either. I never understood the general idea of licensing these rules for a computer game, they were created for playing at a table, to make it easy for you when you have to calculate everything by hand. When the computer does the math for you, they only make things confusing. I sure don't like it that your gains at levelup are rolled, and I preferred Fallout's karma system to AD&D's alignment.

The game uses the Bioware Infinity Engine that was introduced with Baldur's Gate. It is heavy on graphics, heavy on dialog and fills no less than four CDs. Not a bad game, but not as memorable as the Fallout games were.

Links about Planescape

• Planewalker

  Planewalker is the official fansite for the Planescape setting produced originally by TSR, then by Wizards of the Coast. We've kept the fires of the Planes alive for over a decade now in one form or another.

• All Things Planar is mostly about collectibles

Links about Planescape: Torrent

• Planescape: Torment Fix Pack

  This Fix Pack fixes many bugs in Planescape: Torment that were not fixed by the official 1.1 patch.

• Walkthrough by Lisa Shea

  Try not to read ahead! This game has ton of neat surprises in it. If you have any tips to add in, be sure to email me! I'll be sure to credit you in the notes!

• Steve's Guide to Planescape: Torment

  Planescape: Torment is a brilliant fantasy computer role-playing game set in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons™ Planescape multiverse. You take on the role of The Nameless One, a formidable being—yet unaware of who you are, and how you happened to awake on a cold metal slab in a surreal mortuary… shades of Gene Wolfe!

• GameSpot's Game Guide to Planescape: Torment

  What can change the nature of a man? In GameSpot's role-playing game of 1999 Planescape: Torment, you portray The Nameless One, an imposing, grey, and highly complex tragic figure who you guides through the city of Sigil in search of answers to the most mysterious question of all: Who am I? During the course of the role-playing adventure, you'll encounter friends, enemies, and friends who soon become enemies. To assist you in your travels, we've crafted this extensive game guide filled with everything you need to survive the dangerous worlds of Planescape.

• On Bookstrike

  Although sites dedicated to this game already exist out there, I just completed this game and feel like contributing something to the Planescape community. Consisting of Torment Info, Cool Stuff, Game Extracts, Hints & Cheats, Sounds & Music, Useful Docs and Files, Wallpapers and numerous walkthroughs, Torment has a lot of fan work done for it.

• Water of the Styx won the fansite contest back in 1996.
• GameJag used to have a very extensive Planescape: Torment site. Maybe it will be back.
• Planescape: Torment Mods, including the two created by the original dev team (Leprechaun Annah and Easter Egg Morte), but many others as well.

Reviews

• Enjoyable, but not really gripping, Eric Beymer thinks:

  As much as I enjoyed playing Torment, it just didn't capture my long-term attention like many of the RPG's I have played in the past. Maybe I'm just an old die-hard shoot the evil wizard, rescue the maiden in distress player. The level of detail is absolutely fantastic, the story line is great, but it just didn't reach out and grab me.

• Enjoyable moments, but I was happy to be done with it, is James Schellenberg's bottom line.

  The AD&D system is mostly impenetrable, and when I did finally comprehend what was happening, I found that it made the focus of the game on numbers, not on what was happening with them. I'm not asking for total transparency, but something a little less mechanical. On a different note, I was unable to find any easy way to transfer inventory between the characters in my party, which was massively irritating. A few other niggling problems frustrated me along the way, and I've already mentioned my frustration that there wasn't much to do with your high-level character at the end. In general, I find CRPGs get bogged down in the process with not much reward at the end for the hours of obsessive preoccupation.

• Perhaps the best RPG he played, Steve Metzler says:

  Torment is a dark journey into the soul of The Nameless One, a soul that is seeking release from the immortality that binds it to this forsaken place. If you don't like your games on the heavy side (laced with pathos and wry humour), with lots of dialogue and lengthy descriptions of characters and places, then it may not be for you. For me, this has to be one of the best RPGs I've played to date, perhaps the best.

• Truly a masterpiece, Home of the Underdogs says, and a must-have for every RPG fan.

  Although Torment is not a "free-form" game in the same way that Morrowind is, it still offers a good range of options and alternate paths—many of which are dependent on your character's alignment, which is in turn influenced by your behavior. You can be anything from a do-gooder to absolute evil—it's all up to you. Your actions will lead you to one of the game's multiple endings, each of which nicely ties together loose ends, but not all of which is wholly satisfying. With the best writing I have ever seen in an RPG game, Planescape: Torment will leave you deep in thought long after the game is over—that's how profound and fascinating the story really is.

PS:T is completely missing the sole part that defined the RPG-character of the TES games, in PS:T you play a predefined character with amnesia and to find out who he is is the main story of the game. The few choices you can make determine not much more than the loot you get, there is only one real consequence: If you didn't raise your Wisdom high enough, you may not like the only variable part of the ending.

Great story, great characters, great game, but not much opportunity to role-play, and very different to the openendness of Fallout AND TES, too different to fall into the hands of any Fallout 3 developer.—JOG