Planescape: Torment has been high on my playlist ever since I first heard about it. Recently, it's been placed next to Disco Elysium as one of the few most important narrative RPGs ever made, and previously it just was the most important narrative RPG ever made. It was not, however, highly anticipated enough for me to understand that I'd be immersed enough to play for over 6 hours on my first session.
The artifice of digitized tabletop campaigns comes in the idea of adapting an infinite playground without the restrictions of scheduling or prepping a campaign. It's about the splendor of seeing and exploring a place, doing anything and talking to anybody and being shown a reaction for every action within the bounds of the world. Torment delivers little such agency to the player, or to its protagonist. Even in death there is no autonomy, as the Nameless One finds himself stuck in an endless loop of dying and reawakening only to wander the land and attempt to find himself over and over again. He has already accomplished the feats you expect from a power fantasy campaign, only in ages past, long before the game ever took place.
The game takes place in the most boundless setting in the D&D universe and beyond, as Sigil, the city of doors, lays firmly in the center of the multiverse itself. The narrative, however, makes Sigil a claustrophobic and restrictive place. The first you hear about these doors, it is from an NPC's paranoid ramblings about being trapped, unable to return to her true home after decades of wandering the city, fearful that any door or archway will open up and devour her as it sends her someplace worse. The city rearranges itself around its occupants, constant construction making the streets feel almost sentient as they shift themselves, even the most experienced explorers of the planes unsure of what form it will take next.
Torment is not for everyone, and much like most of my other favorite games it doesn't care for being traditionally "fun" or action-packed like its contemporaries in the Baldur's Gate series, rather reveling in its subversions of the medium as an art form rather than a plaything. Its real game starts in understanding its philosophy. Listed among the most profound games of all time by academics and essayists, its mechanical choices inform its main themes on human nature and what immortality really means as we're forced to face our past choices and repeat an endless cycle. Is it better to leave behind a life full of memories, content with the limits of mortality, or live forever but inevitably forget yourself in the cycle of searching for some deeper meaning to it all?
The artifice of digitized tabletop campaigns comes in the idea of adapting an infinite playground without the restrictions of scheduling or prepping a campaign. It's about the splendor of seeing and exploring a place, doing anything and talking to anybody and being shown a reaction for every action within the bounds of the world. Torment delivers little such agency to the player, or to its protagonist. Even in death there is no autonomy, as the Nameless One finds himself stuck in an endless loop of dying and reawakening only to wander the land and attempt to find himself over and over again. He has already accomplished the feats you expect from a power fantasy campaign, only in ages past, long before the game ever took place.
The game takes place in the most boundless setting in the D&D universe and beyond, as Sigil, the city of doors, lays firmly in the center of the multiverse itself. The narrative, however, makes Sigil a claustrophobic and restrictive place. The first you hear about these doors, it is from an NPC's paranoid ramblings about being trapped, unable to return to her true home after decades of wandering the city, fearful that any door or archway will open up and devour her as it sends her someplace worse. The city rearranges itself around its occupants, constant construction making the streets feel almost sentient as they shift themselves, even the most experienced explorers of the planes unsure of what form it will take next.
Torment is not for everyone, and much like most of my other favorite games it doesn't care for being traditionally "fun" or action-packed like its contemporaries in the Baldur's Gate series, rather reveling in its subversions of the medium as an art form rather than a plaything. Its real game starts in understanding its philosophy. Listed among the most profound games of all time by academics and essayists, its mechanical choices inform its main themes on human nature and what immortality really means as we're forced to face our past choices and repeat an endless cycle. Is it better to leave behind a life full of memories, content with the limits of mortality, or live forever but inevitably forget yourself in the cycle of searching for some deeper meaning to it all?