A Love Letter To The Most Sophisticated Game I Have Ever Played … “When a mind does not know itself, then it is flawed. When a mind is flawed, the man is flawed. When the man is flawed, that which he touches is flawed. It is said that what a flawed man sees, his hands make broken.” – Dakkon … When I first downloaded and installed PS:T (this was many, many years ago), I was on an old-school CRPG playing spree, I deleted the game within the first hour of gameplay. I was not impressed. While games like Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate had captured my imagination with their simple-yet-homey 2D art styles and the intricate craftsmanship that had obviously gone into making them, Torment was somewhat of a deviant among deviants for me. I didn’t really get what all the fuss was about, it felt janky and unresponsive at times, and the combat was nothing to write home about. So, in my infantile ignorance, I had put it down. I had amounted its success to rudimentary, happenstance ideas. Maybe the brilliant reviews the game had garnered throughout the years were just people tripping on nostalgia, the over-the-top menu design and the evocative soundtrack bringing back certain parts of their childhood memories that worked as fuel for their fanatical admiration of the title. As a writer and game designer (or just as someone who has played a lot of games), you always feel like you can immediately tell whether you will like a game or not and, in most cases, you will find yourself being absolutely right. The logical mind has a way of constructing what the experience of a game would be like and what you could be missing out on – which isn’t much, usually. Usually, but not when it comes to Torment. After having finished the rest of the abovementioned games, my research and sense of completionism drove me back to Torment once more, the wicked and scarred face of the Nameless One (the title’s not-so-handsome protagonist) staring back at me from the game’s ridiculous cover art – and that’s when the fateful moment would come. I had decided that I would reserve my judgement, keep an open mind and finish this accursed game no matter how confused or bored I would get (and yes, I expected to get bored indeed. Very, very bored, in fact). I would find out the truth of the matter shortly after… … “There is no room for “2” in the world of 1’s and 0’s, no place for “mayhap” in a house of trues and falses, and no “green with envy” in a black-and-white world.“ – Ravel Puzzlewell … By the time I had finished the first quarter-or-so of the game, I was completely flabbergasted. Instead of forcefully experiencing what I had previously discarded as a sub-par product, I had found myself pacing back and forth in my room, wondering whether I was a good and moral person or not. “How did this happen?” I kept asking, having caught myself during one such episode, driven into deep thought and self-reflection. What was I doing, and why was I doing it? Never before had a game, a damned video game (of all things), incited this type of reaction from me. I had always thought of video games as, well – games. Mind you, I had played games in the high hundreds before this. I was what you could consider a true veteran of the arts. And here I was, caught with my pants down and my jaw hanging. This game, this thing, this seemingly ugly and pretentious-looking monstrosity, had turned everything I thought I knew on its head. I was stunned, seeing how Torment had the audacity to depart from all of the average gamer’s archetypal expectations and conventions. My mind was immediately brought back to Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, games that I had very much enjoyed just shortly before; games that I would have, most likely, rated far above it just a few hours ago. Now, they were not even competing in the same league. These were good games, don’t get me wrong. Very good games. But they were not great games. Torment was a great game. Not only that – it was iconic. It was legendary. It could very well be the greatest game I had ever played, and I wasn’t even halfway through. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that, through my ignorance, I had not seen its incredulous potential from the day I first played it. It was funny how I was *this close* to deleting and never playing what would quickly become my favourite game of all time. But I could not bring myself to put the blame solely on my ignorance either, for Torment wasn’t great because of what it did (in this sense, it was average), but it was great because of how it did it. It had absolutely no respect for absolutely anything, and it was beautiful, like a breath of fresh air coming in through the window of an old, decrepit home. Wizards, dragons, barbarians and pious assassins and their mundanely grandiose quest-tasks were replaced by evocative, deeply philosophical questions that would send the ill-prepared mind reeling at every corner. That’s when I knew that I had treated this game unfairly. I had judged it according to the foundational expectations forced unto me by similar titles, when what this game so badly wanted was to just rip out of its own skin – to claw its strange fingers out of what a video game was supposed to be, out of your monitor, grab you by the neck and shove self-reflection down your throat the only way it knew how – by making you feel. … “Then you are blessed, blessed! Remain nameless, and you shall be as a spirit on the planes, untraceable, untrackable, unseen, undiscovered… A name chosen, a name given… it allows others to find you and hurt you.“ – Reekwind … I had always been intrigued by philosophy, and as I dived into Torment’s world and what it had to offer, I kept being surprised at the sheer depth and volume of true knowledge (and even wisdom) that permeated its body. It was unlike anything else. It carried its faults and imperfections with the greatest grace, making them feel like they were part of the design of its world rather than dumb chance and general lack of polish (though, arguably, these could very well apply). Even parts of the game that are broken and completely bugged out feel like they are natural happenings within Torment’s world, because it carries absolutely no ambition of being perfect. No, none at all. On the contrary, the game wants you to know just how imperfect it is – and just how imperfect you are as well. There are a few key gameplay moments that make PS:T what it is, each one increasingly intimate, profoundly personal and mind-altering, be it having the opportunity to talk to aspects of your past lives, exploring a brothel of intellectual lusts, the seemingly mundane fact of remembering your true name, or seducing a hag-sorceress that could unmake the world as you know it. We will not be discussing those today, of course, as I would count spoiling these experiences for you (if you haven’t yet played the game) as sin worthy of sending one to the lowest circles of hell itself… … “An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path, right? He wasn’t certain of which direction to go, and he’d forgotten both where he was traveling to and who he was. He’d sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him. She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: ‘Now your third wish. What will it be?’ ‘Third wish?’ The man was baffled. ‘How can it be a third wish if I haven’t had a first and second wish?’ ‘You’ve had two wishes already,’ the hag said, ‘but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That’s why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.’ She cackled at the poor berk. ‘So it is that you have one wish left.’ ‘All right,’ said the man, ‘I don’t believe this, but there’s no harm in wishing. I wish to know who I am.’ ‘Funny,’ said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. ‘That was your first wish.” – Morte … The philosophical impact of Torment cannot be understated. It is an intimate journey into the concepts of life, death, meaning, justice, time, alternate worlds and, finally, the ultimate liberation of the human spirit. But this is not what makes it special. There are books out there who would do a great job scratching this itch, especially when it comes to philosophical matters. So what makes it all work? Why is it so special? Because Torment, a game from 1999, achieves full mastery at what most modern games (to this day), despite their greatest efforts, miserably and hopelessly fail at – making it personal and making it matter. As this game unfolds before you, every nook and cranny is teeming with potential and knowledge. Whether or not its general teachings are directly given to you as the player on a silver platter, it has evocative moments that send you down very interesting avenues of thought. It is all thought-provoking without being pretentious and over-the-top in its presentation. It doesn’t care about what you think of it – and it doesn’t care about your ethics or sensitivities – it only cares that you do think. As an experience, it masterfully facilitates scenarios and intricacies that force the player to go beyond the characters of the game (as wonderfully relatable as they are) and emphasize with them whether they might be an empathetic person or not. It makes you feel as if the issues and dilemmas presented to the characters are yours as well; it makes you question your integrity in your own journey of life. It doesn’t sugar-coat or debase or water down the truly big and important questions of life: “Why are we here?” “What is the meaning of life?” “What is good and bad?” All of this culminating to the single, heart-rending crescendo of a question the grand narratives of this game are primarily focused on building towards: “What can change the nature of a man?” By all means, you should figure that out on your own. It’s where the fun is. Ultimately, the beauty of Planescape: Torment is a very subtle one, with even its many humorous moments being laden with a sort of old, gentle sadness and undeniable melancholy that pervades its fantastical and strange world. The learning curve of the game is more intellectual than mechanical. A person willing to question the world (a seeker of truth, by definition) will find it to be an immensely rich and memorable experience, while the unprepared mind will be swayed against it by its own ignorance and incompetence (as was mine). … “Immortality is only a word. All that exists can die. Every living thing has a weapon against which it has no defense. Time. Disease. Iron. Guilt.” – Coaxmetal … It has been 12 years now since I first experienced Torment. I can freely say that no other title (even its many spiritual successors) has even come close to the grandeur and unpretentious greatness of this game. If modern RPG classics like Skyrim, Disco Elysium and the Mass Effect series are the peak of the mountain, then PS:T is the gem hidden somewhere in the far clouds above them, standing tall and unrivaled to this day. Simply put, if you hold yourself in high regard when it comes to being an enjoyer or connoisseur (or even a creator) of wonderful games – if you have not taken the time to see this one to the end – then you have not known the greatest RPG that has ever been made.