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Rumination Analysis on Planescape Torment
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the reason Planescape Torment Enhanced Edition exists is perfectly obvious, so i can play it on the toilet on my ipad
Eh, I just bring my laptop lol
Lore, you are mistaken about one thing - what was done to Ignus was not done by the Practical Incarnation, he admits that he doesn't know Ignus or anything about him.
Right, that would be the paranoid incarnation.
Exactly.
@@MaZeW1 it was just another incarnation.
One of the best RPG ever made, for the plot, the dialogues, the settings, the characters, the idea behind the whole story, and some other reasons... Very very nice, unique experience of playing.
you missed one of the NPCs that can join your party, The Mercy Killer Vhalior
I remember an old module for Neverwinter Nights 1 where through Dante's Inferno your character goes on to save the Nameless One
Last time, when the FO2 rumination released, I was a day into my FO2 replay.
This time I'm 2 days into my PS:T replay. This is indeed a disturbing universe.
Same!
Even though I dont appreciate all of your content (Just because you discuss games/movies that dont peak my interest), I find it astonishing that you don't even get half the reqognition you deserve. You're content is as fun as it is in-depth. Love the way that you (sometimes over-)analyze the subjects :p. Keep up the great work.
All the best,
Yannick
a little clarification on the confusion about why you don't forget when you die in between incarnation and also
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT (about a game from 1999):
this is indeed the last incarnation, since your tracks have been covered. pharod, the deva and ravel are dead, sou you can no longer find your way to the fortress. however I don't think this is the reason you keep your memories. It is said in game that you've been to the fortress before, have been defeated by TTO and lost your memories because of that. but this is not the only cause of the amnesia, since you know that shadows have killed you in sigil before you wake up in the mortuary in the begining of the game. from talking to morte and deionara, I get the idea, that you can just lose your memories. this is why morte plays dumb in the beginning because he is not sure whether you will remember him THIS TIME. and ultimately the goal of TTO is to erase your tracks and kill you enough times to forget again, so you can no longer find him in the fortress of regrets
TNO loses his memory only, if he's killed by a shadow or TTO. This is stated by TTO during the final confrontation, if I remember correctly.
If the UI was too small, that's because you were playing the game at too-high a resolution. And if you want the one big reason why the Enhanced Editions are worth buying, it's because they enable you to play these games at modern resolution without completely ruining the scaling.
There has been a font and UI scaling fix for the fanmade widescreen patch for ages...
No reason to buy the "enhanced" edition at all.
Very nice video! I'm also working on my own 'ruminations' on the game in written form and will post them here if it is something you are interested in reading in a future time. I like the way you deal with the aspect of emotional abuse and this is certainly a huge undercurrent to many of the characters' conflicts. Perhaps one of the biggest underlying themes of the game in my view, however, and one of the most interesting ones as well, is the notion of mortality as a flipside to identity and individuality: one of the main driving conflicts regarding the Nameless One is that each following incarnation is supposedly weaker and less aware than the last, the edges that define his character are trickling away and eventually he would essentially be no one. To me this echoes what Borges wrote in The Immortal, which I'll quote next:
"Taught by centuries of living, the republic of immortal men had achieved a perfection of tolerance, almost of disdain. They knew that over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men. As reward for his past and future virtues, every man merited every kindness -- yet also every betrayal, as reward for his past and future iniquities. Much as the way in games of chance, heads and tails tend to even out, so cleverness and dullness cancel and correct each other. Perhaps the rude poem of El Cid is the counterweight demanded by a single epithet of the Eclogues or a maxim from Heraclitus. The most fleeting thought obeys an invisible plan, and may crown, or inaugurate, a secret design. I know of men who have done evil in order that good may come of it in future centuries, or may already have come of it in centuries past... Viewed in that way, all our acts are just, though also unimportant. There are no spiritual or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; given infinite time, with infinite circumstances and changes, it is impossible that the Odyssey should not be composed at least once. No one is someone; a single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world -- which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not."
To me, the Nameless One's amnesia is not just the product of not remembering but the product of not being either, he is the newest iteration of a person whose 'soul' has left him (he is said to not have a soul in the game) because in this infinity proposed through the notion of immortality, there are no longer any boundaries that can define who he as a character is. Death becomes a condition for his individuality, and this is why immortality is his torment. I think something similar plagued the practical incarnation's mind, after all he was obsessed with finding who he was and that is why he went through all the work of manipulating people to further those goals - the condition of being someone again.
Regarding Deionarra, you touched briefly on a thing that has been occuring to me recently when thinking back on her. She is probably one of the most classic characters in the game, inasmuch as she responds to the old archetype of the 'blind oracle', who can see deeper than any normal man can but at the cost of being blind to the present. It is mentioned by her father that she would so often focus on the future and on what her vision would tell her of things to come that she'd miss what is blatantly there in front of her, and on the other hand she too seems to be the only one capable of reading the Nameless One's fate opposite to many other seers you come across in Sigil. This makes me wonder, too, if she actually fell in love with a *future* incarnation of the Nameless One that would eventually come to be, and saw the Practical Incarnation as that same one despite not realizing that this incarnation needed to cease to be before the next one could exist in his place. A very interesting character all in all.
For Dak'kon, I do think that part of his torment comes from his captivity but I do also agree that his condition as a slave is not specifically what torments him: he was tormented before he became a slave, in losing awareness of himself, his beliefs and cultures. As he states himself, he does not *know* himself, and that is the source to his conflict. In a more present-day read, his conflict is that of a loss of cultural identity, and is probably one of the most interesting iterations of the matter that I've come across in any medium.
And one thing that you did not mention is that despite the game treating really serious and grim issues, there is also a surprising amount of humour in it. It's really, really funny in fact, whether through banter of through the sheer absurdity of certain encounters we come across. This is interesting because it does make the scenes and conversations that deal with the subject matter more directly pack a much harder punch in turn. Of these moments, probably the most hard-hitting is that of Deionarra's sensory stone, where we see how she deludes herself into helping and caring for the Practical Incarnation despite us knowing full well how blatantly he is manipulating her. Many brilliant moments like this throughout, all of which really make it my all-time favorite game.
Pretty sure that the entity that trained Ignus was a different one from Practical One. The implication I've always got from the game was that there were dozens of different incarnations and the 3 you meet near the end are just the most significant ones to the player character.
I only now realized how much they joked on the "talk to everyone", I totally forgot about it. I mean there are few points where you die if you do that. Same goes with the option of gathering more people for your team, as some of them can turn on you later on
I always liked the interpretation that the previous incarnations are a retroactive cascade of isolated aspects of current nameless one's personality shattered, not by the mechanics of peeling away his mortality, but by those intrinsic to eons of sporadically amnesiac lives. You can assert this to them and absorb them into yourself at the end.
Also, I think if you talk to pox, the collector outside the mortuary, he tells you that sometimes you remember yourself and sometimes you don't. This lends some credence to the idea that there is a time threshold for making it back to Ei-vene at the mortuary, past which you will loose your memory. Especially if you consider that the alley of lingering sighs can only be accessed via the tenement of thugs with the help of Annah. You probably were there, unenbalmed or treated for some time before she found you. The other possibility is something I vaguely recall deionarra and the paranoid incarnation saying at the fortress of regrets, which is that since the transcendent one is weakening, the shadows are also weakening and have lost their unique ability to hard reset you.
About deionarra, she seems to be in love with all the incarnations because either true love transcends time and space (lame) or your full unshattered soul is present even when memories are not because it exists intact outside the material realm. This also sheds some light on Ravel's (as in un*ravel*) "love" for nameless one.
She is also immortal and I super like the idea that her disguises are actually her own shattered psyche distributed across space rather than time and she has this power because she exists outside time and space as it exists in the inner planes because she is from the gray waste. As such, at the moment you ask her for immortality, she will have known all your chronologically distributed incarnations as a spatial cascade not unlike her own and, to your point about emotional abuse, in that moment fallen in love with you in this twisted way where she needs you to suffer endlessly to realize the person she fell in love with, knowing full well you will hate her, but deriving perverse pleasure from the sado masochistic act of lovemaking. Sorta like V and evey in v for vendetta.
I def agree that your practical incarnation is the main villain. Distinct from v and evey, this is the incarnation that brings you to Ravel's level and ultimately in his romantic manipulations of her, which she knowingly gives into, the incarnation she loves. If the duration of nameless one's immortality is a sado masochistic act of love-making, these interactions are the orgasm(gross, sorry) and the only time ravel may ever have felt a connection with anyone other than her sisters in that they both existed outside of time with full acceptance of their many selves as cold and removed exercises in the suffering of existence layed out before them in space like chess pieces. When she speaks to you about this incarnation in her maze she does so wistfully. Up until this point, she was really the villain, and after it is either yourself or left ambiguous.
I think it is pretty scathing commentary on abusive love in a power coupling and Deionarra is the furious "idiot" who represents what would have been the real damn thing in the life lust for knowledge and power has destroyed and she knows it and can never let you go. She is by far my favorite character. Her furiousness when you first meet her and the sad refrain as she resigns herself to your amnesia for the 3rd time before detaching again and presenting the demeanor that will help your quest. The acting is phenomenal and the writing is just divine.
I'm actually of the opinion that good endings exist. If you formed deep enough connections with any of the characters, such that they would literally go through hell to see you again, that is good. Granted, there might be the tiny detail of being trapped in the blood war as a mortal... but I can ignore such minor details.
Also, as part of the setting, it should be noted that very powerful wizards can actually teleport in/out of the hells, as they are just planes.
I don't know if the Lady of Pain is imprisoned or not. However, an interesting thing is the Outlands are directly below Sigil, and there's a giant (infinitely tall actually) tower in the center that it's over... don't worry about that part. Anyway, as you approach the center of the Outlands (which is also infinite) you start losing the ability to do magic, starting with the weakest spells (1st level) but eventually going to the point where 9th level spells and supernatural abilties don't work. And then... in the very center... the power of gods stops working. Obviously, magic still works in sigil, but it is noted that deities don't go to Sigil. At least, nobody but the Lady of Pain, who is maybe a deity... but maybe just someone at a deific level of power. There isn't really a point here, just stuff I found interesting.
Also there was one more character you missed (he wasn't very well fleshed out though or I didn't find it so it wasn't a big deal, and he was also hidden behind a door that has a portal that permanently? takes you away from the area where you can get him)
Also, there is a direct suggestion that you can somehow just fight your way out of Blood War or atone long enough to be free - and you can convince The Transcendent One to merge with you by promising him that together you will be powerful enough to do that.
There's a theory that the "missing" magic of the Outlands in the region of the spire is actually focused into Sigil.
btw, how the immortality works: 30:10 there is actually a working script in the game files (i've seen it myself) which, upon Nameless's death, picks a random npc (starting from the least important) and kills it. i am not sure whether it's actually in use, but I faintly remember, when I was a stupid kid, repeatedly dying in Sigil, so many times that i depopulated it (it was like 50 or 60 times just in the first Sigil area), and subsequently died permanently next time i got killed by the thieves there =D
Ravel - It's pronounced as you would "unravel" without the "un". Because that's why she's named that way, doing the opposite of unraveling, doing raveling, and doing it damn puzzlewell.
I just finished the game yesterday and was looking for reviews, retrospectives and analysis online. I stumbled across your video and loved what you had to say on it.
I will check out your other videos, particularly the ones you referenced.
28:00 I always thought/assumed/headcanoned that each "incarnation" had more than one lives and deaths, and that the "personality" is vanishing slowly across them until it's completely gone and a new one starts forming, which now has several lives and deaths of continuity, before the same thing cyclically happens to it too. so i thought there's nothing special about the current "incarnation", just its turn to have its few lives.
A succubus who doesn't do what succibi do seems like it would be a pretty good reason for why she's nerfed. Sure you have spell abilities out the wazoo, but you're basically starving constantly (by not using your wazoo to feed on innocent souls), so it makes sense you wouldn't be all that effective.
Upon opening the bronze sphere I would say that by becoming whole and regaining your name you effectively become the very first NO. And by extension have to be punished for the evil of that life. I would go even farther and say that in that moment you also become responsible for the sins of the incarnations you've spawned. And if anything, what was done to deionarra... There can be only one punishment (the worst part of it? Practical one was right in sacrificing her. Its only by her power you escape the trap in the fortress). Then again I'm of the opinion that all the blood war is nothing in the face of someone who conquered eons of regret and pain and despair as you're made aware by the bronze sphere. NO smiles and goes to the war confidently. He is whole and by his experience made more powerful than he ever was.
RIP the Keeping Perspective videos, which I've never seen and probably never will.
27:40 if you talk to Ravel enough she tells you her spell is growing weaker and this is why you retain your memories.
OH MY GOD I HAVE WAITED FOR THIS FOR SO LONG
Ah, that Skyrim video, that's definitely one of his most memorable ones....
How I missed this gem rumination is beyond me. Extremely well done Lore.
About to watch this, and I'm so psyched. This is my favorite game of all time. \o/
Nice!
I was in that morgue for like an hour when I first played. Not because I was stuck, but because there's a deceptive ammount of stuff to do in basically every single location. I tend to experiment a lot in crpgs. Lots of "What if I do THIS! Damn, reload."
OMG! YES! I wanted so much for you to talk about this! :D
Still love the game... unlike Bioware repeated topics Planescape Torment is never patronising you as being the smartest, wisest, strongest, most humble being in existance... it gets cynical in fun way.
By the way can we count on Project Brazil Rumination in possible future?
I like how, the reason the practical incarnation failed to regain his mortality was that he didn't have the trust of the people he brought with him. He saw them only as tools, so they didn't have his back when it mattered.
1:06:03
"So, you like donuts, eh?"
"Um-hmm."
"Well, have all the donuts in the world!"
*Several hours later.*
"More!"
"I don't understand it. James Coco went mad in fifteen minutes!"
There's another way to get a nonstandard game-over: Become the king of Silent Nations. SIt on the throne forever and lose your chance to ever becoming mortal again. Enjoy :)
So the Nameless One is similar to the Jedi Exile, in a way?
kotor 2 is called planescapee with light sabers for a reason. it takes some beats from torment but does it's own thing.
Just as I'm working! Good timing Arche.
And my tormet is picking Strength, and Dexterity as main stats the first time I played it. Wish I knew back then how important Wisdom and Intelligence would be for this particular game.
Mine was getting to the 2nd to last room of the game and not having the stats to reach the final boss. Yeah. You can play the game any way you want, as long as you don't try to be alright at everything and make up for your weaknesses with your party.
Long time no speak.
I would actually like to know more about why you do not like the idea of ideas shaping reality in the literalist sense? (That is to say the idea/belief precedes reality, rather than the more conventional other way round.) For myself, as a student of modernist literature, this is one of the more important subjects to be explored in modern era in fiction and philosophy, from George Berkeley to Nietzsche to Satre, and generally the entire field most commonly called existentialism. In fact, it is one of the central themes of the works of Jorge Luis Borges, one the past century's most indispensable writers, and in particular his story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" which you can find free online if you look in the right places.
I bring up Borges in particular because Planescape: Torment, whether intentional or not, is probably the closest the medium of "Games" have come to replicating the style and soul of his work, not just in regards to Berkeleyan Idealism, but also textual non-linearity, paradoxes, meta-narrative and meta-textuality (and generally everything meta), and many of the other “weird” (as you call them) literary techniques you find in Planescape: Torment, but fairly few other games. (I’d actually recommend anyone with a few spare minutes look him up.)
I highly suggest you watch Noah Gervais-caldwell's video on planescape. Only the first half if you aren't interested in hearing his take on torment: tides of numenara.
such a great analysis!
I love the game because it makes you put into perspective. That immortality is maybe not that great. Because at the end he walks away to fight in the blood War which is what he was trying to avoid in the first place. Those were his first steps in a new life. And you could tell he grins. He was a little bit happy.
Really good video, mate! I'm surprised you didn't mention Vhailor, or the fact that Nordum was voiced by Dan Castellenetta (Homer Simpson...weird for weird's sake).
Thank you for doing this Rumination.
Could you do an analysis on the animated series "MONSTER"? I believe it aired in the syfy (what a horrible namechange that was) channel some time ago
OMG OMG OMG! I'm so happy to see this
I would love a lorerun of this game from you, I know it won't happen but still...
I have never clicked on a video faster than this one. Go Planescape!
What did he say about Dragon's Age? Stomping the blade? Is that something in that game?
In the CRPG phase and I'm a console gamer.. I just bought the game on my phone as I'm watching this. Thank you.
Well lucky you, when I first played I was stuck in the morgue for almost 2 hours just wandering around and talking to every guy, exhausting their dialogue choices trying to find a way out, almost made me give up. But it get better after I got the hang of it.
Maybe the practical incarnation had a similar idea. If I give myself amnesia.. I might not have to pay for my crimes.
Stuck in the mortuary only for 20 minutes? A full exploration is more like 3 and a half hours.
A another rumination! Arch you spoil me rotten ^_^
Level 20 in every class? But how many classes is that? I'd love to play 5E with 240 class levels, but in 3E I'd only get 220.
I agree about TNO being the Final Incarnation. The Transcendent One is breaking the links that a later amnesiac incarnation would need. Dhall, Pharod, Ravel, etc. To tie that in with "weird for weirdness' sake", as a comedian once said, "I kinda like it when things get weird, y'know? I like it when all the cards are on the table."
I like to think of Planescape: Torment as what it would be like to be a protagonist in a CRPG. Your life is a Groundhog's Day, but each incarnation is forced to act in a wildly different manner to get all of the romances and endings. Save-scumming would do terrible things to one's memory recall. It's very funny to me that this Enhanced Edition has a massive amount of Steam achievements that require multiple playthroughs.
As for your questions about why characters, like Deionarra, are drawn to TNO and believe themselves to be in love with him, I'd point to KOTOR II. In that game, with its own Ravel and deconstruction of what was becoming the BioWare formula (and, therefore, the industry standard) of a wish fulfillment power fantasy who's sexual catnip, the Exile is a black hole that (meta)physically draws tormented people towards him. Deinorra's emotional state reminds me of what psychologists call "erotic transference".
EDIT: Well, I wasn't expecting you to say basically the same thing, later on, even with the metaphysical joke.
What's your opinion on Disco Elysium?
Was great. Would have been greater if it was two times longer :D
Any long-time Lorewalkers want to clue me in what he used to say in place of "weird for weird's sake"?
Anime.
What is considered weird for weirds sake for you?
Hitchikers guide to the galaxy would be a good example
Thats definiton of postmodernism.
You lose your memories when you die in the fortress of regrets.
I'd like to see someone TRY to take over Sigil from the Lady of Pain.
Graham Cavan Impossible
Ravel tried. That's why she was mazed.
Never gonna happen. 😜
What if practical one's torment was the belief that he does not matter? That even if he dies he himself will just be over written.
No way Deionarra could have met the original incarnation, she isn't old enough.
I always assumed we got the Blood war started, which is why we get sent to it as punishment.
Uh, just a heads up, outlier is not pronounced "out-lee-er". It's "out-lai-er", as in, something which lies outside.
I dont think this game is put on a pedestal because of Final Fantasy 4. I am a 20 year old guy who discovered PS: T in 2011 when i was a younger and modern era was already on the edge.
I think big story based RPG were inspired by books... I don't think they needed other games for that idea. Only in the early 90s with Amiga, improving PCs and more capable consoles more became possible. Like Ultima. Like Amberstar and Ambermoon.
Btw while i liked the (underrated) Arcanum, the story was pretty much fantasy drawer c5, only with a technology twist. And PsT wasn't. The Ui just isn't relevant for judging the game.
i think the fan rewrite of the novel is better
I hate "first" comments but I feel like I have to... Nah fuck it! Good video though mate.
Boyan Dimitrov Say it...SAY IT!!!
Did you miss an NPC?
Wait, what? The novelization kinda contradicts the game? How? It was 98% just a copypaste of a path you can actually take through dialogs in the game... So how can it contradict the game (besides taking another of the built-in routes, different from the ones you know)?
The first 3 minutes this made me not want to watch the last hour. This is my second time watching this, and honestly, you get SO much about this game wrong (about the story and characters) that's it's embarrassing.
I tried watching even after the 8min "feel free to stop watching here", though it seemed like he missed a lot of fairly obvious things to create the issues he had, but then he immediately demonstrated that he completely missed any themes and meanings of and through the game, by claiming there are no good endings.
If one thinks that hell isn't satisfying closure for millennias of causing pain, that finally being whole and yourself again after all of it, and choosing to accept the inevitable consequences to end both yours and the universe's suffering, does not far outweigh any punishment... If he missed that, the game's overarching theme of regret, what could he possibly contribute of value? Discuss characters and plots with philosophical and metaphorical implications he very likely missed? He actually thinks the idea of FFG rescuing TNO is a concept not just worth mentioning, but his serious vision of a strawman? I'd rather not waste an hour.
To attempt being constructive: It's not about different opinions, it's about missing the blatant points to have an opinion of. I've seen a lot of takes I disagree with but can respect, because they're just seeing things in a way I didn't, or distributing their importance differently. But even in a small time frame this man is confidently interpreting his absence of that understanding, of that common frame of reference for what the game factually is, does, and attempts. It almost feels like I'm being subjected to gaslighting.
What can change the nature of a man?
Lore, you point out inconveniences with the UI, fonts and graphics and yet you disregard Enhanced Edition which deals with all of those issues (especially reworked UI and highlight feature are great).
I mean, why :D
Well, I had finished recording this literally the day the enhanced edition came out. So...
This is one of the game that everything said about it made me want to not play it and this just reinforce that.
The problem with emotional abuses is it hard to say it is there. Right now we have people that talk about emotional abuse because a person says something they do not agree with. They use that to try to remove freedom of speech.
Kotor 1 was the moment you stopped being evil?
Haha, this game has probably the most boring evil in rpg video games. It doesn't have the bite it needs to feel significant.
For the majority of the game I agree with you but he's referring to a specific choice made late game regarding Zalbaar and Mission.
Ah, this one. Since I wanted Mission to be older and a romance option (hell lot better than Bastilla) I was bit sad with it, but then as an evil person I would rather take her, kidnap and turn into my disciple or sex slave, killing her seemed like a waste. But I can see why some would see it as a world changing evil choice.
Forcing Zalbaar to kill her is worse than killing her yourself.
I don't think so, I think fate worse than death is more evil than simple kill.
just couldnt get past all the reading i mean the text is microscopic also so screw that
chaz what are you doing here then?
But wasn't Final Fantasy VI the first one to focus on the story?
After 10 minutes I almost fell asleep, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT NOTHING, BORING, STUPIDY TRYING TO BE WISE BUT PLANESCAPE IS KING OF STORYLINE ,Whether you like it or not, you're a fool, NIER GESTALT > NIER AUTOMATA , KOTOR 2 IS VERY GOOD , MASK OF THE BETRAYER BEST DLC EVER MADE.