Dec 3, 2008

"What can change the nature of a man ? "



Modern computer games are a narrative wasteland.
Oh, there are exceptions, I know. But nowadays most games emphasize better graphics, faster, more frenetic, gameplay, and a healthy dose of the �old ultraviolence�, to quote Anthony Burgess. An actual storyline more complex than �kill the badguy� has gone the way of the dodo and OS/2.
But a brilliant storyline is just one of the things that placed �Planescape: Torment� among the greatest games, and made it perhaps THE greatest computer role-playing game ever made.
�Torment� was a commercial flop, regrettably. The game was set in the obscure Dungeons & Dragons �Planescape� setting, which lacked the popularity of the �Forgotten Realms�. Add ugly cover art and an ineffective marketing campaign to the mix, and �Torment� failed in the marketplace.
But the game itself was unlike anything else, before and since.
The player character was the Nameless One, a gray-skinned, black-haired, tattooed, hideously scarred giant of a man. At the beginning of the game he wakes up on a morgue slab, with no memory of how he got there, and no guide but a wisecracking, floating skull and a paragraph of cryptic instructions tattooed onto his back. Soon the Nameless One (and the player) learns part of the truth; he is immortal, and cannot permanently die. Yet with every death he loses his memory anew. In previous lives he has been a conquering general, a desperate thief, an archmage of power, a noble hero and a despicable villain. Yet why has this happened to him?
And why do vengeful, murderous shadows chase him from life to life?
So the Nameless One�s quest is simple. He must find himself, and to do that, he has to answer the riddle at the core of the game: �What can change the nature of a man?�
And yet it�s the player who will answer that riddle, not the Nameless One. The Nameless One begins as an empty shell; it�s the player�s choices that will make him good or evil, weak or strong. In most D&D based RPGs alignment means nothing. Good or evil, the goblin hordes still need slaughtering. But in Torment, the Nameless One can make actual moral choices. He can befriend his companions, freeing them from their doubts and torments�or he can sell them into slavery. He can listen to and learn from other characters in the game�or he can dominate and terrorize them.
What can change the nature of a man? The player�s choices will determine the answer. That alone takes “Torment” from a mere game, almost to the realm of art.
And the Nameless One makes his choices fantastical, phantasmagoric world. Most of the game is set in Sigil, a perfectly round city set atop an infinitely tall spire, a city ruled by an enigmatic, all-powerful figure called the Lady of Pain. The city lies in the Outer Planes, realms ruled not by physical laws, but by belief itself. If enough people believe in dead trees, they can bloom again, and belief can reshape reality itself.
Some wags nickednamed the Planescape setting “philosophy with dice”, and “Torment” carried that tradition admirably. While there’s combat aplenty, the game’s most dramatic, exciting, and thought-provoking moments lie in the conversational trees. The Nameless One can argue a despairing warrior-mystic back to faith, for instance, or speak with a living weapons factory bent on destroying the universe. He can argue with a riddling skeleton among a nation of Undead, parley with a collective of psionic rats, and convince a fallen angel to repent and turn back from leading an army against the gates of Heaven. Belief, philosophy, and good and evil are not intangible concepts in “Torment”. They are real and powerful and shape the fabric of the universe.
And the Nameless One has the most bizarre and fascinating band of supporting characters in RPG history. There�s Morte, a floating, disembodied skull with a wisecracking wit (astonishing, since he doesn�t actually have a tongue). Annah, a fiery tiefling thief with green eyes and a waving tail (superbly voiced by pop star Sheena Easton). Dak�kon, a grim warrior-mystic who has lost the knowing of himself. Fall-From-Grace, a reformed succubus who now runs a salon called the Brothel of Intellectual Delights. Ignus, a pyromanical mage burning, literally, with the force of his madness.
And Ravel Puzzlewell, the witch of the Gray Waste, who grew so wise and so powerful and so mad that she tried to unbind the multiverse itself, the woman who asked the Nameless One the vital question:
What can change the nature of a man?
So play your first-person shooters, if you must, and run down cops in “Grand Theft Auto 37: More Fodder For Incumbent Politicians”, and let your brains rot away bit by bit.But can you answer Ravel’s riddle? Do you know the answer?
Perhaps you should play “Planescape: Torment” and find out.



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