"Don't trust the skull" - Final thoughts on Planescape: Torment

For information on this project, be sure to check my post, In search of narrative, character, and empathy.

Parts 1 and 2 of my Planescape: Torment analysis can be found here and here. Caution: minor spoilers below.

Planescape: Torment is a text-based RPG. True, it manages to squeeze every bit of isometric splendor out of Bioware's Infinity Engine. And yes, the game occasionally treats you to a pre-rendered cutscene. But these are merely window dressing. Planescape: Torment places all its narrative eggs in one giant 800,000 word basket.

If you experience the totality of PST--completing all the side quests, talking to all the NPCs, and generally adventuring your way to the end (there are eight different ways to complete the game, with three distinct endings), you could say you played the game...or you could just as accurately say you "read" it. Designer Chris Avellone's reliance on the written word is so intensive in PST that all the most pivotal moments in the game occur as conversations conveyed via text.

As a meditation on violence and its long karmic aftermath, PST is, surprisingly, a game that's mostly about talking to people, negotiating with them, or trying to understand their philosophies of life. Amidst all the gore, dangling limbs, and festering sores, this game wants to think hard about the meaning of existence and the emergence of hope through embracing our mortality.

We don't often think about "reading" games (aside from interactive fiction), but all my memorable experiences inside the world of PST are connected to what I can only describe as literary moments of resonance, surprise, humor, and recognition. The lateral, deconstructed narrative of PST encourages an approach to playing/reading that allowed me to piece together its fragments in my own way, returning to places of interest, skipping others, recovering the Nameless One's elusive identities, and generally constructing meaning in ways few video games have done.

Such a moment occurs in the Empty Tomb. Several strands of PST's narrative come together here as the Nameless One finally discovers the journal he's been seeking with all the notes to himself (the film "Memento" comes to mind here) in the form of stone tablets. In order to access them, however, he must die and be reborn several times. Each death takes him a step closer to his destination.

Finally, he discovers a startling warning written on a tablet (conveniently ignored by his sidekick Morte in the opening scene of the game). It reads: "Don't trust the skull." What to do with this information? What does it mean, and why did I write it? Can Morte still be trusted? Should I confront him with it, or just keep my eye on him? The game does not provide an answer, not does it insist on any course of action. Instead, the player must decide. Much later in the game, all of this will matter a great deal, and our understanding of Morte and his past will grow considerably.

The genius of Avellone's narrative construction is the way he ensures an advancing plot while offering complexity and resonance to the player who is willing to explore beyond the main quest and ruminate on how all this fits together. Other games have done this--subplots and side-quests are nothing new--but these rarely matter very much. Such activities often extend the game, giving the player more to do, but adding little real thematic substance. PST unfailingly utilizes such optional activities to add color, nuance, and complexity to the story and characters. Ultimately, the Nameless One will come to know himself--the central quest of the narrative--only by coming to know others. Getting acquainted with sharp-tongued Annah, for example, isn't necessary at all. But oh what you will miss if you don't!

I began this series looking for narrative, character, and empathy. None of those are possible in a game without ideas, and PST is full of big ideas. Essentially, the world of PST is in bloody tormented conflict between groups who see the world in very different ways. It's a war of ideas, and your navigation through this world will immerse you in these warring ideologies, all tugging at you to align with them. I found an especially poignant and relevant allegory in the collision between the Mercykillers, who fanatically insist on justice with no mercy and the Chaosmen who believe truth can be found only in a state of lawlessness and anti-authoritarianism. Both are wrong, of course, but they have arrived at their conclusions looking at the same set of realities.

Ironically, I found PST more compelling as a story than as a game. Time has not been kind to the Infinity Engine, and despite a certain old-school charm, it's a cumbersome interface to live in for a long game. Clicking to move from place to place quickly becomes tiresome, and if it weren't for the widescreen mod suggested by a couple of my readers, I would have probably torn my hair out in 640x480 chunks. Dragging my mouse cursor inch by inch across the screen searching for that one particular set of pixels to locate a door that doesn't appear on screen also frustrated me to no end. Funny how these things never bothered me way back in 1999. Guess I've gotten soft.

Imagine a game with the narrative and thematic richness of PST...inside a Mass Effect or Oblivion engine...well, I can dream, can't I? Fallout 3? Hoping beyond hope.

I've truly enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. Playing A Mind Forever Voyaging and Planescape: Torment has reminded me that video games possess the power to access those primitive places in our imaginations that treasure a tale well told with vivid characters and ideas worth pondering. The interactive dimension of video games--far more than their graphical prowess or user-interface--provides a level of immersiveness and player/character symbiosis that is unique to this medium. We already know these things, of course...but, perhaps, sometimes we forget.

A Mind Forever Voyaging and Planescape: Torment are precious reminders.

Image courtesy of Mr-Nick at DeviantArt.

Comments

[Ben Abraham]

Spoiler warning might be a good idea. Then again... it is such an ancient game.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm intrigued by the game, especially its Momento like elements (I thought that was one of the most convincing movie twists of all time!) I think that your experience with the interface is a similar sentiment to one expressed by Leigh Alexander when she talked about 'going soft' in terms of difficulty in the Castlevania series of games. She found incredibly hard one particular reissue of an older one.

Is PST abandonware yet?

[Michael Abbott]

Good idea about the spoiler alert, Ben. I'll add it as soon as I post this. PST is not abandonware, but it can easily be found at a discount. If you decide to try it, be sure to download the official 1.1 update, as well as the Torment Fix Pack by Platter available here: http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/Torment/index_mods.php

Enjoy!

[JC Barnett]

Partly inspired by your retrospectives and partly forced due to my XBox dying on me twice in a row I've been replaying Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams and finished it just yesterday. Another great game with story and characters to enjoy at a level deeper than most games go these days. If you're looking for your next retro-playthrough, consider this a recommendation!

[Daniel Lopez]

G'day,
Thanks for posting all that up - it really took me back. I also played PST when it was new; and I couldn't agree more. It's a real masterpiece of the gaming art. I remember joining the Anarchists, subverting the Mercykillers, chuckling at the general breakdown in the plane of order, and generally being able to immerse myself in philosophical debates that I felt had some real significance.

By way of contrast, I'm presently playing a game that dryly informed me at the start that if I harmed non-combat players, animals or even corpses "the game would end - we don't do that in this game". For fuck's sake!

Anyway, good on you for the write up. I think the game's worth a look for anyone, however dated it is. It's up there with the Fallout series in my book.

[Michael Abbott]

Hi JC. Worlds of Ultima is one I've never played. The whole Ultima series, I'm ashamed to admit, is a big hole in my experience. I played Ultima IV and enjoyed it. But I think I got on board the series so late--and the quality sagged as it wore on--I guess I've never taken the time to explore it as I should. The Martian Dreams title sounds like a good one to jump back in with. Any game with both Buffalo Bill and Sigmund Freud in it must at least be interesting!

Thanks for your kind words, Daniel. Agreed about Fallout. It was a real toss-up for me choosing between PST and Fallout 1+2 for my series. Maybe I'll come back to Fallout again later. It could be interesting to revisit those just before Fallout 3 is released. I know there are a lot of Fallout fanatics who are *very* nervous about that game. I'm personally very excited for it.

[J Chastain]

The reason people are nervous about Fallout 3 is that Bethesda doesn't do what Black Isle did. The first two Fallout games and Planescape: Torment were made with the intent of creating carefully designed locations that presented scenarios that could be solved through a range of choices. The stat/skill systems (more in Fallout than in PS:T) allowed a good range of actions to be performed, but the general lack of nuance in the ways you could express yourself was compensated for with those meticulously designed dialog trees you spent most of PS:T reading. Options, usually based on stat checks, (such as instantly snapping a guard's neck) could be placed in the dialogs when the engine wouldn't allow for the communication of that idea through action alone. Persuading a character to see your way of thinking was direct: if you had the requisite INT and CHA, you'd select the most persuasive dialog option and see if it worked. Persuasion in Oblivion is handled by fiddling with a little minigame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PxalKSg7PA
The dialog system is even simpler than it was in Morrowind (where NPC interactions were basically akin to navigating wikipedia:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrhV1zpywYQ

Most interactions are limited to options like "YES, NO, TELL ME WHERE TO FIND X."
Fallout didn't let you wander through the empty desert to get where you were going. The overworld map interface was there because they knew it would be impossible to fill the dead space between detailed locations with much of interest. The scale of Bethesda's ambition has always far exceeded their writing abilities. They enormously expand their gameworlds, filling them with sprawl (the "countryside") that's populated with not a whole lot of content. This is meant to be justified by the expense and beauty of their graphics engine: "you won't mind wandering with nothing to do but swat random monsters if the hills and trees are this pretty." I don't care if some people want to play that kind of game, but that's not what Fallout was. They're a pretty bad candidate for developing a game where player choice makes more than a superficial difference in the storyline.

I'm not thrilled by the aesthetics of what's been shown of Fallout 3 so far, either. The post-apocalypse of the first game was drawn from some very specific influences: A Boy and His Dog (both the story and the film,) and George Miller's Mad Max movies. The ruined cityscapes of Fallout 3 recall no source older than Gears of War. The fact that there's a "toaster gun" weapon makes me immediately suspect that they've totally misunderstood the ironic humor of the old games and gone instead for all-out camp.

[Michael Abbott]

J Chastain: Thank you very much for your thoughts on this. Up till now, I didn't clearly understand the concerns Fallout fans had about the upcoming Bethesda sequel. You've articulated those issues in a way that helps me better see where all those concerns are coming from.

I personally enjoyed Oblivion, but for me it was a sort of sandbox RPG that provided a very different role-playing experience than the Black Isle games. If Bethesda continues down this road, I can see how that might morph (or perhaps distort) Fallout 3 into something very different from its predecessors.

What I keep hearing Bethesda say is "different can be better," but it's unclear if "different" means Oblivion-esque, or if it means a thoughtful update to a classic RPG. I guess we'll find out. Again, I appreciate you standing in for the legion of Fallout fans and helping me see where you're coming from.

[Angela]

To take things on a bit of a tangent for a moment. I did wonder if any of you have played tabletop RPGs--of which Planescape is one.

I'm a tabletop RPGer of old and though I do love video games, I have never found a video game RPG that I can connect with as well as tabletop gaming. Obviously one would assume this is down to the open ended and human participation of the tabletop game over the closed console or computer RPG, but video games are getting better (imo).

Anyway, just wondered what peoples thoughts were re the tabletop vs console / computer RPG were.

[GilbertW]

I'm an old D&D player myself, and you make a good point, Angela, about live gaming vs. computer gaming. In the case of Planescape: Torment, oddly enough, I found that game preferable to any live session I ever had playing in that universe. It may be down to the peculiar world of Planescape and a lack of imagination from any of our DMs, but Black Isle really nailed the bleakness and other-worldliness of Planescape and brought it to vivid life. Probably heresy to say, but I like it better TSR's campaign. I can hear the guns loading and pointing in my direction now!

[Michael Abbott]

Hi Angela! I was an occasional tabletop D&D player myself. I always enjoyed it, but didn't live near anyone who was really into it growing up. Played a little in college, but again, small school and few players.

So for me, games like Wizardry and A Bard's Tale were my access pass to computer role-playing and games like Final Fantasy, Earthbound, and Chrono Trigger (to name the obvious ones) kept me going on consoles.

I've watched my students play D&D (which is enjoying a bit of a comeback around here lately), and I must say I'm a bit envious of the fun social gaming environment they've created. Wish I'd had that when I was their age.

[Chris]

Great summary of Avellone's style. I'm more and more impressed by his work as I encounter other RPGs that attempt some of what he managed to do so well. Mass Effect is in many ways its own creature, and while it is an enjoyable experience on its own, it in no way conveys the "otherworldliness" that Torment does so amazingly well.

There is, I suspect, an argument in here for the subtleties of the written word - and the literalness and "beat you over the head" grandiosity of high-poly character models, shaders, and volumetric fog. In the end, I suspect that Torment will only find its comparison among other text-based RPGs. In fact, I wonder if *any* game with Mass Effect or Oblivion's engine can ever match a text-driven game's attention to subtlety, even with a similar plot and narrative style. That's up for discussion I suppose, and I shouldn't be comparing apples and oranges, but I really get the feeling that the 'dated' Infinity Engine gives the game a much more genuine feel than you might have consciously appreciated. Try to imagine "A Mind Forever Voyaging" without the text parser and a graphical adventure in its place: it would be terrible, I think.

In fact, this makes me want to write a little article on art mediums and the imagination...

[Michael Abbott]

You should definitely pursue that article, Chris. I often think about radio, which I have always been a huge fan of since I was a child. I recall sending away for cassette tapes of the old great radio shows like The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, and The Green Hornet and listening to them in my room at night.

Something about this medium taps into what you're getting at I think, Chris. It's not just the "use your imagination" part (which is obviously key), but it also brings us back to the primacy of the word. Performance and characterization are also pivotal in radio. I wonder if there are things we can learn and bring into video games from this, the most underrated of all media (in my humble opinion).

If there's a way I can be helpful with your article, let me know. Maybe a virtual conversation would be interesting, something along the lines of what N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totillo have done. It might be an interesting way to explore these ideas and finally collaborate!

[Chris]

Heckuva great idea. It made me think of a radio drama of "The Lord of the Rings" performed by Rob Inglis, which is nothing short of amazing and far outclasses the modern film adaptations in terms of attention to detail and in-worldliness. I'll e-mail you this week.

[hellyes]

You can use the cursor buttons to scroll, sorry if others already mentioned that.

[Capt_Poco]

Why do people get so excited over a text-adventure with bad graphics?

[OmarDa]

Did you bother to read the 3-part essay explaining *exactly* why?