So I just beat this blind 5 minutes ago for the first time. Why does no other video game story come close bruvs?

le contriarian tip

>my feelio when a fag pervert slithered into my planescape thread to poop-pill me
thank God for GRIDS

So what's your favorite part?

was the fuck was his problem?

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For me, it's that memory shard in the Society of Sensation from the previous TNO incarnation.

If i wanted to read a book, i'd just read a book. There is basically no reason for this game to be interactive.

A lot of people really seem to like that part.

No book could feasibly offer so many alternate endings or dialogue paths

I really enjoyed the journey to get to Ravel. Not much combat and I got a shit ton of lore which is what I wanted. Really loved the part in the fortress of regret where you can get all 3 incarnations to join you as well. Using the bronze sphere after that just makes it great and the theme for the fortress feels inspirational at that moment to me.

I book doesn't give you the voice acting. The music. The art style. The dialogue options. The story decisions. Kill yourself.

I think with good reason. You're able to piece together that Deionarra was manipulated into her situation relatively easily, but I don't think the sheer reality of just how fucked up the pragmatic incarnation's actions are until that moment - the game does a great job at making the pain of your TNO essentially watching a car-crash in slow motion and remembering this entirely separate personality seem very visceral.

I'm annoyed by that faggot but wanted to spare him in my first run for the tattoo or sword, I forgot which. Anyway, Vhailor killed him so I didn't get what I wanted.

When it comes to japanese stuff Virtue's Last Reward comes kind of close, but you could argue that all the plot twists are twists just because the game is intentionally withholding certain information from you.

>trying to show mercy to criminals with a Mercykiller in tow
How did you not see that coming?

Public secret is Avellone took six months of his own time after pre-production was finished to flesh the game out. He's not the sole person responsible for PST being what it is, but played a tremendous role in it.

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I assumed my charisma would take care of that.

>mfw game has tremendous writing, but devs went out and said they only with the novel approach because written word was the cheapest asset they could produce and anything else would've required sprites, animations, backgrounds, etc

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Smart

A LOT of shit in PST came from concessions and compromises. Like how tattoos instead of armor because it means they didn't have to do additional sprite work.

Restrictions actually help the creative process. Meanwhile you have an open world game with full voice acting and facial animations and the story is totally generic and doesn't even compliment its sequels.

>you see a VN or a jrpg that has months of text and then you look at half those lines and they are just repetition, stating the obvious, "it can't be helped", "...!", "...so...we're on the bed now..." absolute trite

also the reason why numanuma sucked in comparison

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>yikes
oof

The thing is, restrictions sometimes do wonders if the author is decent. My favorite example is La Disparition (A Void) by George Perec, a huge novel with the most common vovel E being dropped from it both a restriction and a plot point.

Angels, ladies and gentlemen.

That sounds pretty neat but it's originally in french. I really can't imagine how a translation would work.

could TNO at the end of the game beat the Bhaalspawn at the end of ToB?

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>The Nameless One erases people from existence through mere conversation
>Transcendent Nameless One can unmake planes
Yes.

>Not committing to spelling his name Gorg Prc on the cover
Sellout

But why would TNO want to defeat his own child?

>try to place this
>min max autism gets in the way
>completely missed the golden age of pc gaming so I don't intuitively know what to click/do to get the game moving
I'm a millennial with the attention span of a zoomer. End me

>>completely missed the golden age of pc gaming so I don't intuitively know what to click/do to get the game moving

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Why would you even minmax in PST?
It's not like you're gonna die.

The Smoldering Corpse bar
'Longing', 'Regret'
Two Deaths as One
Convincing the paranoid incarnation to go to rest and merge
Opening the bronze sphere
Annah
This game is fucking good holy shit

Are you supposed to click on every square inch of every room? What am I missing? I can't find shit.

Hold Tab (Assuming EE)

This is actually one of the easier CRPGs to play.

Installing on my laptop now. What is EE? And is tab supposed to highlight things or what?

AROUND DEVAS NEVER RELAX

just play mage, and max WIS, INT, and CHAR in that order for dialogue options. It's a pretty easy game bro. Press TAB to highlight intractable objects.

People like you existed back then, too. We simply had manuals which were mandatory reads to get the basics because the internet wasn't a go-to solution.

>he doesn't know about THAC0 yet

There's a neat English translation by Adair that is kinda close to the original. Now if we're talking stuff like Russian translation, E became O (the most common vowel in Russian) and the text was altered accordingly, but it's still an interesting work to behold.

If any game puts numbers in front of me, I will pathologically seek to optimize it.

>what to click
Every sprite with a name, everything that you can open
>minmax autism
Pretty simple to minmax Torment
Be mage, pump Int/wis/cha to around 20-22 without equipment, dump everything else, start pumping str or con once you have 25 with equipment in these stats (after Ravel so don't worry about it), congrats you won, read all the dialogue and didn't miss anything.

Only game that comes close is Soul Reaver and even then it's a long shot

First time I played the game I went Warrior route, full str/con. Missing out on many parts of the story was so visible and intriguing, that next playthrough i went with Mage and HOLY SHIT. The writing is so unbelievably amazing. Dak'kons Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon was probably the best written part of any videogame ever.

He can only convince planar-borne into unexistence.

Planars don't have the natural-born birth cert like primes

Optimize cha/int/wis, the rest does not matter at all. There aren't enough points until the very end to get those maxed out (which you need) and have other stats at a level where they will be even remotely useful
who needs combat stats when you can cast spells

Right, user, and Calvino should have left every page of the Invisible Cities blank.

EE is Beamdog's Enhanced Edition. If you attained it legitimately, it's probably rhe version you have. It has a simoler, more modern UI. And yes, tab highlights interactables.

simpler*
I'm not spelling similar like a phonetic redneck

Alright yeah the tab thing is a game changer. I can work with this. Thanks

Story wise yeah, easily, not only is TNO easily more powerful than a lesser tier god, he now remembers all of his past lives and has the accumulated knowledge to just debate Charname into non existence if he wants to.
Gameplay wise, TNO and his pals would get wrecked against a good late BG1 party even in the fortress of regrets
Fucking Planescape combat swear to me mom

The part when you find out why you're being stalked by shadows. Then you realize that most of the people who helped you find the truth are dead, and that one way or the other you're going to be the last incarnation.

Also, all of the crazy sidequests. The girl who got portaled to Sigil by accident and developed a phobia of doorways because they could be portals, the modron maze, solving the dodecahedron, coming back to the bar and meeting Adahn after bullshitting him into existence - the writers put in the time and effort to add in all kinds of stuff even if a lot of players might never see it.

On my first playthrough I carried the sphere with me all the way to the end of the game because it seemed too important to throw away, and I was right. Feels good man.

>the modron maze
Fuck that part
Fuck. That. Part
>lol guys, what if we made a random maze with the exact same shitty encounter, not once, not twice but 61 fucking times and then a boss lol
>oh yeah and add the exact same dialogue each time you enter the rooms, that way it will reset the music too
AAAAAAAAAAAAAH

most vidya stories are absolute garbage. they all are full of cliches, melodrama, archetypes and lack any subtlety. pst has the dubious honour of being the only video game written by someone who clearly has a basic understanding of literature, rpgs and philosophy, so simply by virtue of meeting such basic standards, it blows everything else out of the water.
don't trust the skull
memory shard

modron maze is cute because it's an obvious parody of dungeon crawling in rpgs, it's pretty much designed to be utterly annoying, repetitive and boring.

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I understand the 'joke' but fuck this part anyway, especially when all the other infinity engine games have great dungeons and pst has none, it was the opportunity to make one, the maze itself isn't that bad of an idea after all.
That fucking 8x8 square, what were they thinking,
yeah we got it, it's repetitive, just take me to the fucking boss already aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

He just wanted to go back to the Q continuum

Also in the same 'parody' vein, the dialogue with the 'elderly hive dweller' (I think) who apparently met the avatar from Ultima is pretty fun

That's just because the book is fucking terrible. Honestly, Torment would have worked better as a novel if it were written by a competent writer.

All of those game but Persona are good, that's not the point.

No that's bullshit, building your character and experiencing the universe through his eyes is impossible with a book
There are a lot of dialogues that play out differently depending on your stats, playing the game as a low wis CE thief is a completely different experience and story arc than playing it as a wise genius LG mage
This game allows you to treat your character, your companions and the world as you see fit, can't do any of that shit with a book.
Planescape was written to be a videogame, and it will always work better as a fucking videogame, stop spouting this retarded fucking meme, it is stupid as fuck.

What are the other games with similar level of writing? Besides Pathologic (which is along with P:T one of examples of "ludonarrative harmony") and maybe SH2 nothing comes to my mind.

I'm assuming you played Kotor 2 too, right? It does something similar making a typical RPG mechanic into a plot point

Posting a Planescape comic from one of the official books.

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because of voice acting

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>sudden NTR
This doesn't update my journal

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Building a character sure, but seeing something through someone else's eyes works best with books. You're overstating how important your choices are. A lot of the time your choices have narratively inferior/superior outcomes. You could accomplish most of the effect by increasing the scope for a book and exploring more of The Nameless One's lives.

They're demons and devils. What were you expecting here? Undying love and devotion?

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Ultima V is still the best written RPG.

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I've kept hearing of this over the years, many times, but no one's ever posted any example of the game's writing.

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You guys have no idea how happy this influx of planescape threads has made me, you guys a great.

Sell me on this game Yea Forums, people praise it's writing all the time but what specifically is great about it? What is the game about even? People here praised the writing in The Witcher 3 too (before it got hyper-popular everywhere else) but I didn't care for it

No, it would just be yet another 'interesting but underwhelming' fantasy book because you'd really need a godly fucking writer to make it work as well as the videogame does. And godly fucking writers don't exactly write D&D fantasy books, no disrespect.
PST is a marvel of storytelling. I can't even list all the parts that would work like shit or feel cheaper if they were simply narrated to you and you had no stake in the dialog at all. Can't roleplay reading a book.
If I want to read D&D lore dumps about a universe or character, I go do exactly that. If I want a well-crafted d&d story that takes on different nuances if you look at it with different characters and role-play accordingly, I play Planescape.

Mask of the Betrayer

A boy falls in love with a girl.
Unable to confess, he is gifted with by a deus ex machina with the girl's phone number. Never minding the strange area code, he immediately calls her, and is overjoyed to find out that she has a crush on him as well.
But, the next day, when he recounts the previous day's confessions to the girl, she only looks at him with a perplexed expression. After some investigation, he finds out that the girl he called is not the same girl he fell in love with. In fact, she doesn't exist in this universe at all. She is the girl's alternate universe counterpart, who has fallen in love with the MC's own AU self, who too is blissfully unaware of her crush.
Hijinks ensue as the two strike up a deal to give each other their darkest, most private secrets in order to equip the other with the weapons they need to conquer the heart of their other selves. While the two chase their respective loved ones, DRAMA ensues as they begin to fall in love with each other instead and question the NATURE of LOVE.

Wait a minute, that's the plot of that shitty anime made by Shinkai hack.

That really changed the nature of a man.

>oof
cringe

The setting is unique, and the writer is good enough to not become mary sue level god bending shit to pretzels to fit his needs.

The non-essential quests focus on the setting and not on the writer shit.

The standards of the story are held to book standards and not to hollywood script standards.

What does "simply narrated to you" even mean? Why would it have to be a "lore dump"?

>And godly fucking writers don't exactly write D&D fantasy books

I thought it was clear I was talking hypothetically. Sure, it would have been unlikely for someone like Gene Wolfe to literally write a Torment novelization.

was it the shadow ending, the silent king ending or the regretto ending?

Because you have to look for the details in game, they are not handed to you in madatory exposition dumps
On my first playthrough I played high wis high int high cha and basically leared almost othing from Ravel because if you explore you can piece out the story yourself
It's doable in a book, sure, but in terms of pacing you would be left with either a lot of cryptic and seemingly unrelated conversations to mimick that, or a lenghty lore-dump-and-plot-twist when coming to Ravel. I didn't read either novelizations, but that's pretty much all I expect from them.
Of course, if I was a godly writer I'd probably be smart enough to figure out something better, but I'm not. Plaescape is almost perfect as a videogame, and would be absolutely perfect if it had IWD or BG combat, that's all there is to it, turning it into a book would only weaken its storyline.

By "writing" I mean the overall construction and execution of the game's plot, characters, and themes. It's written in the faux-medieval prose you would expect from a D&D nerd in the 80s. It's hard to give examples without spoiling things, it's best to play Utima IV and then go into V with as little information as possible.

because no niggers, females, chinks or trannies were involved in writing it

Spoil away, Ultima is just one of those games that I never saw any appeal in.

you didn't play a lot of games? that's the only explanation. There's a ton of games with rich story like Torment's. You just don't know how to look for games.

Not OP, but give examples

Idk mucabout the wtory, could someone wpoil it to me? Like, doesn't itnjuet go like, boo hoo I did bad shit in my previous life, I overcame my wrongdoings and now I am ready to cuck myself into eternal suffering as my punishment, being the good little goy I am?

This must be the ESL incarnation

see

>most vidya stories are absolute garbage. they all are full of cliches, melodrama, archetypes and lack any subtlety. pst has the dubious honour of being the only video game written by someone who clearly has a basic understanding of literature, rpgs and philosophy, so simply by virtue of meeting such basic standards, it blows everything else out of the water.
I agree, but it's also because the story deals with the ludonarrative dissonance in a mature way befitting of gameplay mechanics

One of the few times I've wanted to punch a hole through my screen.

Why was Annah so shit compared to the rest of the party members?
The rest all has some sort of depth or reason to join the nameless one, but she is just a tsundere catgirl tomboy thief

Every groups gotta have one

Pathologic blows it out of the water because stories with a tangible connection to the real world will always be more compelling than any fantasy. It's like comparing Kafka to genre fiction.

youtube.com/watch?v=OZOuy4YM0AI

>Why does no other video game story come close bruvs?
because they're far ahead of planescape's reddit trash.

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The point is you aren't allowed to talk about things you like because they're popular?

KOTOR2 (with the fan patch) and Mask of the Betrayer are the only ones I've played that come close.

Although my ending for Mask was annoying for roleplay reasons, that ending got cut for time or something iirc.

Shame Persona 2 has the worst combat of any RPG I've ever played and I say that as a huge ass SMT / Persona fan

>t. bing bing wahoo

it's still better than planescape's god-awful gameplay.

And immersion, atmosphere.

I'm just going to judge a book by its cover here and say no.

He forgot the face of his father.

i'm just going to judge your taste and say you need to return to r*ddit.

>replying to shitty bait

>The rest all has some sort of depth or reason to join the nameless one
That's the point, she's a foolish girl like Deionarra that doesn't know why she loves you and follows you. Annah is the chance to make up for what you did to Deionarra or do it all over again if you're a bastard.

God no. Though why the fuck Planescape didn't just whole sell copy BG2s combat I'll never understand

There is not enough content if you think about it. BG2 is glorified dungeon crawler. But we barely have anything in planescape.

uh, yeah, it is. planescape's "gameplay" is braindead click-to-win garbage. at least p2ep has some challenge to it.

>at least p2ep has some challenge to it.
You can literally beat the game with the starting personas, mate. You're arguing with a legit fan of SMT and Persona games who has played them all multiple times so you can't bullshit stuff like that with me
I more just mean the pause and placement system

i'm not saying p2ep is hard, i'm just saying it's not completely braindead like planescape.

It literally is

PST came before BG2 you fools

Biggest question
Why we still don't have more cRPG or RPG in Planescape settings? Yes-yes I know but exactly in Planes.

it isn't. are you sure you're not confusing it with p2is, which actually is braindead?

Jesus, it really did. Huh. Well it still should have copied BG 1

WOTC dropped the setting when it bought TSR. PST was actually released after the tabletop line had been discontinued. It's a hard setting to run/write for and most people just want generic fantasy anyway.

Based Vhailor.

turns out philosophy is worthwhile pursuit

Nah, both are pretty brain dead. The hardest thing to do in either P2 game is figuring out the combo action stuff and that's not remotely interesting to do really.

>Conspiracy Theory: The Game
>Exploring the Existential Crisis of Ontology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
Gonna go with the second one.

>tfw finding combos in Xenogears

WIS is the only one you really need. Int and Cha help sometimes but they're not necessary.

Grace>any other woman in gaming

This is fact

This.

I don't think people know how to write/design for it.
You have to have a good knowledge of the setting, and to do that you have to have a good knowledge of mythology and philosophy.
The whole thing literally takes places in metaphysics: heavens and hells, limbos and nirvanas.

It's a great setting for anti-materialism though. What's the point of grinding for loot or becoming filthy rich and owning castles, when you're walking next to gods and demons at a bar. Better to pursue Truth and pick It's brain while it sits across from you than to mindlessly produce/consume.
Though it's a lot easier to write a game for the latter than to write for God or a god.

>mfw the script text ripped directly from the game and gently touched up as prose is a vastly better novel than the actual novelization

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iirc to hit everything, you need 24 wis, 23 int, and 18 or 19 cha. But that includes the points you can pick up just before the end.

Annah is cuter

Which games are these even? lmao

>Conspiracy Theory: The Game
that's reductionist

Yeah, I'm just shitposting. Deus Ex is a good deep game both in terms of story and mechanics.
Planescape affected me more personally in my life and worldview though, that's why I place it higher on the pecking order.

fair enough brudda

Well-written fantasy has a human connection as the challenges faced are often representations or manifestations of our own challenges, and thus it is quite real world. There's a reason myths have been so central to human society for all of history.