I'm still playing and enjoying Planescape Torment. I'm about halfway through now, and at a point where I can begin to appreciate why this was game was considered so innovative in 1999 and why for many people it's still a favourite today.
For one thing, for its time the reliance on combat is low, with non-violent solutions not only provided but promoted.There's a freeform quality to the way you're able to approach playing, it too. Although the story itself seems basically linear, I'm currently in a chunky midsection of the game where you have no real overarching task other than exploring the city, talking to people, and doing subquests for them at your own pace.
Almost all of the subquests are dialogue based, and can be quite diverse - among the usual fetch quests you're asked to investigate a murder by interviewing chief suspects and deciding who was behind it, talk someone out of their depression, and help to free someone who's been wrongfully enslaved and put up for auction.
In some ways the game that it most reminds me of is Shenmue. The way that the two games play is not all that alike, but they both offer a type of gameplay which hadn't been commonplace before - where you inhabit a small, dense, fixed location and live out a day-to-day existence in a quasi-simulation, rather than working your way through levels beating up or blowing up everyone in sight.
It's a cool game, and I'm enjoying it. A lot of its ideas still feel fresh today.
For one thing, for its time the reliance on combat is low, with non-violent solutions not only provided but promoted.There's a freeform quality to the way you're able to approach playing, it too. Although the story itself seems basically linear, I'm currently in a chunky midsection of the game where you have no real overarching task other than exploring the city, talking to people, and doing subquests for them at your own pace.
Almost all of the subquests are dialogue based, and can be quite diverse - among the usual fetch quests you're asked to investigate a murder by interviewing chief suspects and deciding who was behind it, talk someone out of their depression, and help to free someone who's been wrongfully enslaved and put up for auction.
In some ways the game that it most reminds me of is Shenmue. The way that the two games play is not all that alike, but they both offer a type of gameplay which hadn't been commonplace before - where you inhabit a small, dense, fixed location and live out a day-to-day existence in a quasi-simulation, rather than working your way through levels beating up or blowing up everyone in sight.
It's a cool game, and I'm enjoying it. A lot of its ideas still feel fresh today.
Comment