Planescape: Torment

aka: Last Rites
Moby ID: 648
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Waking up on a stone slab in a morgue, which the zombie workers just pushed into the room, a big man with a face deformed by scars, his back marked by strange tattoos, looks at the dead bodies scattered around the room through the dim light, unable to understand who he is. He is sure that he is dead, yet he is also sure that he moves, thinks, and feels. Memories of love, a woman's face, good and bad deeds of his life - all his past appears in a flash, only to be replaced by the dreadful reality of the mortuary.

His journey begins with only one goal: he must learn his name, find out what had happened to him, and which forces prevent him from dying in peace, like all other human beings. The Nameless One opens the doors of the mortuary, only to dive into a world full of fateful encounters, strange characters, broken hopes, despair, and hatred. Piece by piece he shall solve the puzzle and re-discover his own past.

Planescape: Torment is a role-playing game that uses a heavily altered variation of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition rules. It is set in the Planescape, the exotic AD&D setting which is composed out of various "planes" of existence, with unique characteristics to each. The game features the party-based, "real-time-with-pause" combat system which was previously employed in Baldur's Gate.

Character growth is handled via the standard AD&D attributes, which can be raised and modified in the game. Abilities that are not exclusive to combat, such as Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, play a special role in the development and outcome of many of the game's conversations and quests. Dialogue options may become available only if the corresponding character parameter is sufficiently high. The outcome of the final quest and thus the ending of the entire game also depend on the way the player has been shaping The Nameless One during the journey.

Various fairly exotic characters - including a talking floating skull and a winged succubus who runs a "spiritual" brothel - will join the hero on his quest. These characters belong to the traditional AD&D classes of fighter, mage, thief, and cleric. The Nameless One himself starts as a fighter but is able to become a mage or a thief if he meets certain requirements and completes certain quests. The hero is unable to wear armor but can enhance his defenses with special tattoos.

Though combat occupies a significant portion of the game, much of it is dedicated to acquiring experience through exploration of the Sigil, the game's main "hub" town, and performing quests for its inhabitants. The game is notable for containing a very large amount of in-game text and conversation.

Spellings

  • 异域镇魂曲 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 異域鎮魂曲 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

143 People (137 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 61 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.2 out of 5 (based on 372 ratings with 20 reviews)

The best game I have ever played to date.

The Good
Sometimes games can transcend the medium and rise above the level of a pastime relegated to spotty teenagers. This is one of those times.

I am not one to award the title "great" to anything, and only on a few occasions before now have I declared anything the "best" of its type.

But this is the best game I have ever played to date. If this game's contemporary, Ultima 9: Ascension, tells future designers how to make an engrossing 3D world simulation, this game tells designs how to craft a story that is best suited to the medium.

For one, unlike many games of the genre the characters that can adventure with you are crafted -with- the story, not written in to function as pack-mules or combat satellites. When something happens in the game, chances are one of your companions has something to say about it ranging from helpful advice to wry commentary on the unfolding situation. Your companions will continue to play a role in the story even after they have joined the party, quite rare for a game of this type. It works so well it makes me wonder why it isn't done more often.

This is the only game I have seen to this day that differentiates between a honest-to-god threat and bluff, and vow between a lie. Not only to words have meaning, so do the meaning behind those words. On a similar note this game possesses some of the best written dialogue I have seen anywhere, not since Ultima 7 has even the most inconsequential character been so well written.

Some AD&D purists might not like the fact that the game plays pretty fast and loose with the rules. Maybe they would be happier with Baldur's Gate, in my opinion the most overrated game in the last few years. In P:T the rules serve as a backdrop, not a backbone. In that way this game, though single-player only, feels more like a good pen&paper session with an experienced DM than any CRPG I have ever played.



The Bad
The manual is justifiably skimpy on details about the game setting and historical information. Considering your character plays an amnesiac it would be inappropriate to include a Planescape Campaign handbook with the game. However, the manual is absent of any information regarding the way the rules work, considering that the game is based on the AD&D ruleset this seems almost unforgivable. While the game is still playable without understanding what your THACO actually means, it does detract in minor ways from the playability.

The interface is a little clunky, though I did get used to it soon enough and it never really hindered gameplay.

In the unpatched version of the game there are a few minor dialogue bugs involving the improper resetting of conversation trees, but no plot stoppers to speak of. One technical issue that does deserve mention is that when the game has been running for more than a few errors most players experience a game-killing slowdown. Although there are a number of temporary fixes for the issue the only real way to get around it is by saving and restarting the computer. Annoying, but infrequent enough that it is only that, an annoyance. At the time of this writing there is no patch to correct this issue, but Black Isle Studios has promised that one is forthcoming.

The Bottom Line
An excellent adaptation of the TSR Planescape Multiverse and a wonderful example of how to tell a story with an interactive medium.

To speak too much of the story itself would be a crime, suffice to say that your character awakes on a slab in a Mortuary in a strange city with no memory to speak of. From there he embarks on a quest to discover himself and learns about the nature of man.

Windows · by Patrick Mills (36) · 2000

The intellectual's rare delight, the gamer's pleasant surprise

The Good

The science fiction and fantasy genres are unfortunate, because they tend to attract mostly second-, third- and lower rate artists who populate it with their mediocre work. There is, however, a great redeeming feature: these genres allow gifted creators to tell a story that simply could not be told outside of the genre realm. And such is the story of Torment.

A video game like no other, Torment (I will refer to it only as Torment, because that seems to be its real name; after all, we do not call it 'Forgotten Realms: Baldur's Gate', do we?) tells a tale of a man who can not die. Somewhere, somehow, he lost his mortality and with it, apparently, his memory and even his name. All he has is a vague feeling of emptiness and sorrow. His quest is obvious: try to find out what happened to him and, eventually, die.

All RPG heroes search their world trying to become someone. The Nameless One's journey goes exactly in the opposite direction – he desperately struggles to become no-one. This alone makes Torment unique. But there is more to the game than just an inventive storyline.

The setting of the game suits the story and its themes perfectly. Planescape is just what its name implies, a series of worlds, planes of existence, each with their own attributes, and most of the game takes place in the city of Sigil in the centre of all planes. It is a crossroads, a place of many doors and a cage, all at once. Everything eventually appears in Sigil. It is, also, a city that for the same reason serves as a net in which all the scum of the planes tends to catch. The game's world is dirty, the game's world is crude and brutal. There is no elegant sword-fighting to be seen in Torment, there are only maces, heavy axes and stilettos. Forget potions that restore health, be prepared to use a needle and thread to stitch your wounds and wrap yourself with bandages, dirtied with age and use. You start the game on a slab in a mortuary, surrounded by dead bodies in various stages of autopsy, zombies and a floating, talking skull, who will become your first party member.

Party members in Torment are one of the greatest things this game has to offer. There are relatively few of them (nowhere near Baldur's Gate standards), but they are easily the best written, most complex and most memorable characters I have ever seen in any video game. Each and every one of them has his or her own reason to follow you, a reason they may not necessarily share with you when you first meet. Each one of them is psychically broken in some way, each of them is a tormented soul. They have their own peculiarities, they react to your quest and to each other, their and your fates are intertwined. You can (and should!) talk to them and who knows, perhaps you can even help them solve their own problems while solving yours. They are a strange group of eternal losers, but the emotional attachment you build up for them during the game is unusually strong.

So many superlatives and yet I still have not mentioned the single best thing about Torment. The Final Fantasy series (especially FF VI, FF VII and my favourite FF VIII) has shown us that a video game may engage the player emotionally. Torment shows that it may engage the player intellectually as well. The game is well known for unprecedented amounts of written text, pages and pages and pages of interactive dialogues with innumerable branches. This is a game for people who like to read, and surprisingly enough, not only is there a lot to read, but the writing quality is exceptionally good. The writers have a taste for very short stories and tales, and you will come across many of such stories in Torment, told by people on the street and in bars. Some of them may be tangential to the plot, some of them crucial, some of them are crucial but at the time you read them, you won't realize it. Some of them are about your companions, some about the person you were. All of them are well written, some I would even call concise masterpieces. All the major characters also have a distinctive voice, their own peculiar use of language and methods of expression. I think that if you took a random line spoken by any of the major characters out of context, the speaker would still be clearly identifiable. And the greatness of Torment lies in the fact that under all this extraordinary writing, there is a soul and a real intellectual depth.

We have seen many amnesiacs and their quests for identity in video games, but in Torment, the amnesia is used in a radically different way than in, say, Sanitarium. In other such games, the goal is to find out who you are. In Torment, the question of who you are is irrelevant - who you are is defined by your actions. You are trying to find out who you were. This is not just playing with words; your past keeps catching up on you in the Planes, you always run into people, demons and spirits who had known you before, who had talked to you, who had loved you, who had wanted to kill you, who had been betrayed by you, who had died because of you. That is the Torment of the title: The Nameless One is crushed by the weight of his previous lives and by his ignorance of all their deeds, good or evil. The game repeatedly asks its famous question, 'what can change the nature of a man?', and I would like to stress that this is not just showing off, giving a fast food philosophy to the hungry masses (anyone remembers the Matrix film series?), the question, the most important question in the whole story, actually forces you to think. The game deals with highly abstract concepts on almost every step. You can even join various factions in the game, if your vision of the world harmonizes with their beliefs! Do you believe the meaning of life is experiencing the world as much as you can? Join the Sensates. Do you think you are in this existence only waiting for your True Death? Join the Dustmen. Do you believe that order and lawfulness restrict your freedom? Join the Anarchists, or, actually, don't, just kill a lot of people and annoy everyone you meet, because a faction of anarchists is something of an oxymoron, isn't it? The Nameless One has an AD&D alignment, but it is not chosen on the character generation screen - because that does not really make sense, does it? Your actions choose your alignment, not the other way around.

But wait - did I mention the game is actually a lot of fun to play? Did I mention that your party members every now and then lead hilarious conversations with each other (I admit the endless Annah-Morte bickering wears thin after a while, but Nordom's bewildered observations of the world around him are pure comedy gold)? Did I mention that this is not only a game where you can stumble upon a playful Franz Kafka reference, but also a game in which you can buy a harlot's services for your floating skull friend and spend some time wondering what exactly are you paying for? Did I mention there is a randomly generated dungeon in Torment that is actually a very gentle parody of randomly generated dungeons, for the hardcore gamers in the audience to enjoy? The game is not a dry intellectual debate, the game of course knows that its main purpose is to entertain, and it entertains. There are many levels on which you can enjoy the story of The Nameless One.

There is only a handful of games that have made me cry. Torment is one of them. The game is highly original, extraordinarily clever and utterly fantastic in many, many ways. The whole dramatic finale, with its wonderfully simple and soothing music and unbearably beautiful sadness, is one of the most memorable and powerful scenes in gaming history.

Torment is a rare gem, a piece of true art in a field overgrown with weeds.



The Bad

First I would like to say that no matter how long this section is, I still consider Torment one of the greatest games ever created. What I would like to do in this section is to point out that this greatness completely overshadows a rather large mistake made by its creators - an unfortunate choice of game engine.

From one perspective, the choice makes perfect sense: the Planescape setting is a licensed AD&D setting and the game is played by AD&D rules. What the makers did, therefore, was reach out for the engine that powered the successful Baldur's Gate, another AD&D license. Just a few tweaks were needed and the engine was ready - allowing, probably, more time to spend on art and writing. The problem is that the gameplay of Baldur's Gate and of Torment is vastly different.

Let's face it: Baldur's Gate was about combat. You kill some things, level up, find a clue, move on. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy Baldur's Gate (I did), but it is clear the game focuses on fighting. Torment, on the other hand, focuses on dialogue. There are fights in Torment, and they are fun, too, but they are of secondary importance - as they have to be, obviously, when your main character can't die. What is the point in fighting an immortal? What is the point of fighting if you are an immortal? Yes, these are precisely the kinds of questions Torment likes to ask, but it still means the choice of game engine is very peculiar. Killing beasts to level up in Torment is a complete waste of time. I haven't counted, but I think that throughout the whole game, you get much more experience by talking to everyone you meet and choosing wisely in dialogues than by slaying everything you see. And, to be perfectly honest, experience and levels are actually quite unimportant in the game. You level up - so what. You're not there to kill an evil wizard and save the world. You're there to kill yourself. There are some very cool high level spells with special animations and FMV and all that, but by the time you are at a high enough level to use them, there is no one to use them against, so why bother, really?

Also, as an RPG game, it has serious balance issues. The game is pretty much designed to be played with a mage character who is good to people. Mages get the best items and the best dialogue options; Dak'kon, the mysterious and silent warrior, becomes a really interesting companion only if you are a mage. And they are much more powerful than fighters. There is the option of playing as a thief as well, but I honestly don't think anyone really does that, unless they have played the game already five times and are getting bored. With alignment, the situation is very similar - while it certainly is possible to play the game as an evil character, it won't be much fun and, in fact, largely goes against the whole storyline.

What annoys me about all this is that for us, gamers who have played Baldur's Gate and lots and lots of other RPGs, this doesn't mean anything. We can adapt quickly. But for newcomers to gaming, Torment has to be confusing at first, which is a terrible shame, because it really is a perfect showcase of what games as an art form can do. The first thing you see when you start a new game in Torment is one of those character creation screens, but what no one tells you in it is that the only important stats in Torment are wisdom, intelligence and charisma, in this order. The rest of them you can safely ignore. And then - sweet! I have found an item that raises my THAC0! But what the hell is THAC0, anyway? Is it better to have it higher or lower? This information may very well be somewhere in the manual (my used copy didn't come with one, so I don't know), but my point is that for the Torment game experience, the information is still completely irrelevant. There are stats and numbers everywhere, but, as I said, the game all boils down to three. You don't need a Swiss army knife to cut an apple in half.

And just one more thing - my favourite party member, Nordom, is extremely well hidden. You can (and I did, the first time) finish the whole game and have no idea he even exists - to reach him, you have to buy an optional, fairly expensive and seemingly useless object, activate it somehow and go through at least two optional dungeons that are so maze-like you can easily miss him even there. A tad too complicated, don't you think? In Torment, you see, there are four companions who form the core of your party, and I guess everyone plays with them, at least the first time. You have three choices for the fifth companion (you can't have more than five), two of whom are certifiably insane and not particularly pleasant characters to spend time with, let alone have in your party, and one who is lovable and funny. Guess who is the hidden one?



The Bottom Line

Unless you're uncomfortable with reading lots and lots of text, Torment is a gaming experience you definitely shouldn't miss. This is, without any doubt, one of the greatest games ever created.

As a postscript, some practical advice: there are both official and fan made patches widely available on the internet that repair lots of bugs and typos left in Torment (as many other ambitious games, it was rushed to the market by the company before it was really finished) that you shouldn't play without; there are also ways to decrease the interval between party members' banter, which is set far too high by default and unless you decrease it, you will miss lots of great conversations. There is also a very nice resolution patch, because 640x480 doesn't look very good on a modern monitor and the playing area really is too small. It also solves a problem that already plagued Baldur's Gate - what is the point in creating pretty prerendered backgrounds full of impressive architecture if you can only see them one tiny screen at a time? As a side effect, with this patch, you sometimes see things in cutscenes you were not supposed to - actors preloaded in memory safely hidden off-screen suddenly become visible. So beware if you're uncomfortable with that.

What more should I say? See you on the Planes.

Windows · by plumifrons (95) · 2008

The darkest, most innovative and best CRPG experience ever available, a true classic! while a bit lacking in the combat side...

The Good
Extremely dark macabre theme and atmosphere (which may be offending to others ;) and great plot. The most innovative gameplay provided ever in a CRPG game, great graphics, special effects, sounds, music and everything! Lots of dialogs instead of combat, a true RPG (Role-Playing!) experience rather than mindless level ups. A lot of depth, variety in gameplay and thus replayability. Good cutscene and decent ending, some beautiful high level spell animations.

The Bad
A lot of dialogs instead of combat, the variety in monster and combat style is a bit lacking, some high level spell animation is NOT really well-done, and copies a lot from asian RPGs. Some slow down (even after patch, caused by memory leak?) and bugs which will stop/crash the game. Cause loss of sleep (which great game do not? ;)

The Bottom Line
The best CRPG in recent times, great fun to play if you can accept the deeply dark and macabre settings and some dark humors. The experience is unlike any other games of its kind, and the end result is a true piece of art, an instant classic in the CRPG genre. Everyone, CRPG fans or not, who do not feel offended by the frequent reference to death and darkness, or do not feel the only fun in computer games is endless hack-n-slah and bashing monsters, should immedately go out and grab one (if has not already done so) and you will be hooked in front of your computer for hours to come!

Windows · by DarkTalon (156) · 2000

[ View all 20 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Advise Indra was here (20756) Nov 6, 2010
Some new revelations. The Fabulous King (1332) Sep 29, 2007
For you Tormented souls DJP Mom (11333) Aug 13, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Planetscape: Torment appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Add-ons

For both St. Patrick's Day and Easter of 2000 the developers released a pair of character add-ons: Leprechaun Annah and Eastern Egg Morte. These change all the graphics and animations for said characters and, in Morte's case, add new sound samples that were left in the cutting room.

Cover

So who is the guy that appears in the box covers and ads as the Nameless One? Game director Guido Henkel himself (with some heavy makeup and after some digital post-production of course).

Cut content

One feature that didn't make it into the game from the vision document was the ability to change the character's smell.

Cutscenes

In the initial concept for the game the title screen menu was to have an additional tab for viewing the cinematics. Though it was removed for reasons unknown it still made its way into some manuals which state the title screen should have a "Visions" tab for movies.

Development

The creator of the Planescape campaign universe and former TSR creative guru himself Zeb Cook, contributed to the creation of the game along Colin McComb, (who took the Planescape banner at TSR when Cook left), and Guido Henkel, designer of the Realms of Arkania series.

Language

Morte If one is to believe a certain motion-picture-like print ad that ran in late 1998 (you know, the ones that go "so and so present a so and so production starring...") you'll find that Morte's last name is "Rictusgrin".

Music

The music that plays in the Civic Festhall is from the 2nd movement of Vivaldi's concerto for two oboes in D minor.

Novel

There is a novel based on the game written by regular Planescape suplement writters Ray Vallese and Val Vallese. The novel was later included for free with copies of Planescape: Torment when bought from the Interplay Store. A soundtrack CD is also available.

Trailer

There is a promotional trailer for the game featured on earlier Interplay titles like Baldur's Gate (NOT the one featured in the game's page and which includes gameplay shots), that includes completely unseen CGI footage that doesn't appear in any of the game's cutscenes. The trailer shows, among other things: the Lady of Pain floating around, Nordom in the Modron Cube, the Iron Golem roaming a forest, the Nameless One at his tomb, Hargrimm casting a spell, Ignus being consumed (probably his origin?) and several other creatures plus many POV sequences which show places and scenery (you know, the ones that get triggered when you first travel to some location). Rumor has it that this is actually a mix of sequences made solely for promotional purposes and stuff that was cut out of the game for space considerations. In any event, save for a part of the shadow world intro, this is all unseen stuff.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 2000 (Issue #188) – Role-Playing Game of the Year
    • March 2000 (Issue #188) – Best Character of the Year (for Morte)
    • March 2000 (Issue #188) – Best Art Direction of the Year (for Morte)
    • October 2004 (Issue #243) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #45 Top Game of All Time
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 06/2005 - #2 Likeable Secondary Character (for Morte)
    • Issue 11/2005 - #3 Game Which Absolutely Needs A Sequel
    • Issue 12/2006 - #8 Hype Disappointment (the number of sales was disappointing in relation the quality of the game)

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz and SDfish

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Related Sites +

  • Alphabetti Spaghetti: Planescape Torment - Fully Modded!
    A complete, step by step guide to installing, patching and modding the game for WinXP systems.
  • Bootstrike.com - Planescape Torment
    Has walkthroughs, downloads, cheats and lots of cool stuff, including the story of Planescape Torment.
  • Hints for Planescape: Torment
    Excellent question and answer type hints to help you solve the game without spoiling the whole thing for you.
  • Matt Chat 63
    Video interview with Chris Avellone about the development of Planescape: Torment
  • Planescape: Torment Fix Pack
    An unofficial Fix Pack that fixes many bugs in Planescape: Torment that were not fixed by the official 1.1 patch.
  • Planescape: Torment Walkthrough
    A walkthrough of the game
  • Planescape: Torment website
    Official Planescape: Torment website, archived at planescape.outshine.com
  • Planet Baldur's Gate
    Another Planet, this one covers Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur's Gate II and the Throne of Bhaal, and Icewind Dale. Files, forums, articles, help, walkthroughs, news, and links populate it. A typical Planet site.
  • Torment Wiki
    A wiki-based encyclopedia about Planescape: Torment, with walkthroughs and descriptions of locations, characters, items, creatures and more.
  • What's in a face?
    Guido Henkel's blog post about the Planescape: Torment cover shoot.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 648
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by DarkTalon.

Linux added by Cavalary. Macintosh added by Foxhack.

Additional contributors: xroox, Dr. Elementary, Kalirion, Zovni, G. Ganesh, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Jack Lightbeard, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Lain Crowley, FatherJack, Sith Wist.

Game added January 2, 2000. Last modified March 14, 2024.