I am looking forward to the full release of Torment: Tides of Numenera later this month. I know, technically it’s already available on Steam, but I don’t play early access games (I certainly don’t pay money for them) because if I’m going to be a beta tester, the developer is going to pay for the privilege. I want a full, properly-debugged game, not an “in-progress demo”. The game bills itself as the “spiritual successor” to Planescape: Torment, in the same way that Bioshock is a “spiritual successor” to System Shock.

But what of Planescape: Torment, the game it is a successor to? I was around when it released in 1999, and I saw the ads for it (packaged with copies of Baldur’s Gate, which was the Best Thing Ever!!!…in 1998), so I got a copy way back when. But in the time since, there hasn’t been much talk or hype about it. Even though Beamdog Studios recently released “enhanced editions” of Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, and the Icewind Dale series (more on that in another post, perhaps), Planescape : Torment has no such edition (though, to be fair, it’s so well made that any “enhancements” would only ruin it). I love Planescape: Torment, and anyone who played it (or reviewed it) will pretty much agree. But the younger generations, you kids, with your pokey-mans, will probably not recognize the name, because it’s gotten so little recognition since. Well, that’s what I’m here for!

In Planescape: Torment, you play as the Nameless One, an immortal amnesiac with scars for days, and a freaking novel carved into his back. You wake up in a mortuary, and have to find your way in a world you know nothing about. Along the way, you can acquire several party members, like a talking floating skull, a comely Tiefling Thiefling with a Scottish accent and a tail, a literal Succubus, a Githzerai voiced by Director Skinner of X-Files fame, and a crossbow-wielding gearbox that has excellent comedic timing, despite having no concept of comedy. There are others, but you should play the game and find out for yourself. The game is set in the Planescape setting of 2nd edition AD&D, with most of the action (early on, anyway) taking place in Sigil, the City of Doors, a nexus of planes with literally thousands of portals running through it. You can encounter Dabus (floaty men in strange hats), Abishai (Devils), ordinary humans, Tieflings (sort of like tainted humans), Aasimar (the opposite of Tieflings), and other random stuff just walking around on the street. You can even encounter the enigmatic ruler of Sigil, the Lady of Pain, although the manual makes clear that you REALLY don’t want to. The main objective of the game, if you can call it that, is to find out more about yourself, your past, and why you are immortal, and finally find a way to die.

Anyway, although the plot is very linear, the world the game puts you in is not. There are secrets and sidequests everywhere. The dialog reads like a novel. There are totally optional areas that have nothing whatever with the main questline. This is something that older games did more frequently and well than modern games do-take, for instance, Neverwinter Nights 2, a game which was released within a decade of Torment, but which is much more streamlined and linear-the plot is heavy-handed and contains many conversations you can’t skip-and very few areas in the game are optional. Although some areas have optional areas within them, virtually all the locations you visit are plot-critical and very few are totally optional. This simply isn’t the case in Torment, as a lot of areas are completely optional, and although the main plotline is linear, the game buries the thread so that you have to explore and find it. You never feel like you’re being led by the nose to an objective, and you’ll miss a lot if you don’t go around exploring. Even relatively minor, unnamed NPCs have unique dialogs that can lead to sidequests, or be part of a sidequest, or simply result in some interesting interactions.

Another thing I like about this game is that, unlike other D&D-based games, you don’t choose an alignment, but start as True Neutral, and drift towards an alignment based on your actions in the game. This means that it’s based on how you role-play rather than simply being a box you tick early on and forget about. Similarly, you don’t choose a class-you start as a fighter, and can later find trainers to become a mage or a thief, and you can go back and forth between classes as much as you like, although experience does not transfer from one class to another. If you spend a long time as a fighter, then become a mage, you will likely see a huge decline in you overall power. I find myself becoming a mage early in the game and sticking with it, because that’s the only way to acquire enough experience to be able to cast the highest level spells in the game. Every time you gain a level in your highest-level class, you gain a point in a statistic of your choosing: strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, or charisma. This allows you to really customize the Nameless one’s stats, in a way that wasn’t really possible in D&D until the release of the 3rd edition rules.

Graphically, the game is gorgeous, although it uses a modified version of the infinity engine (on which the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale games are built), so it might not seem so special to someone today. It has pre-rendered cutscenes, in the style of the Final Fantasy games, and some higher-level spells make use of them, making it feel like you’re really calling down some wrath on your enemies. It’s worth being a mage just to see the unique animations of the higher-level spells. One nice thing the game developers did, was add a feature where right-clicking with the mouse opened a radial menu and paused the game. From the menu, you could access your inventory, spells, quick slots, or attack menu (with choice of weapons)-if you so desire, it’s entirely possible to play this game with just a mouse. Dialog is in the style of Baldur’s Gate, which is to say you pick from a few choices anytime the Nameless One speaks, but unlike Baldur’s Gate your intelligence, wisdom, and charisma affect your dialog options. It really does pay to be smart in this game, and a high wisdom gives you an XP bonus as well as allowing you to solve some puzzles more easily.

In sum, this is definitely a game worth playing, especially now, since the release of Tides of Numenera is imminent. You can find a digital copy at gog.com, for cheap. It’ll run on most systems, and it’s really, really good.