You see a heavy-set man with sharp features and a pained expression.

Posted on | Sunday, 21 November 2010 | No Comments

I've been playing Planescape: Torment for about an hour and in it's brief time with me I'm already impressed. For what is, at least now, a medium so set on the visual I don't think I've ever read so much in a game - and certainly not this volume in any capacity for quite a while.




Reading a description such as that above evokes something that seeing it cannot - especially given the limitations of technology. Pairing the artistic vision of the designers with the players imagination creates something more tangible than one or the other alone: coupled with some good voice work and intelligent writing PS:T has already made an impression.

I am, from what I can tell, undead; cursed to be reanimated with no knowledge of who or where I am. I've met a talking skull who assures me that he is dead and a spectre who is, should I believe both her and a 'dustie' my "long lost love." The spectre has already told me my future which, unsurprisingly, sounded pretty grim; there's more than a hint of dramatic irony in the game even at this early stage and I get the impression that a lot of what I'm seeing early on will be hugely important come the crux of the game and that this spectre's plain sightedness is either true; in which case I wonder about the cycle of rebirth that my character seems to be trapped in as an indicator of determinism or, should it be untrue, am I breaking, what the ghost describes as, "my destiny"? Or maybe she's just lying, in which case, who is she? And by extension - who am I?

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