Malekith

I think you feel they are forgivable because you feel that the game makes good on them in other areas. I think that's what you said even. That's not a good basis to judge these aspects on though. I have to concede though that, say, combat in no IE game is terribly exciting. But Icewind Dale had interesting setups of combat, while BG2 had "combat puzzles" that you could either enjoy or loathe (I enjoyed them). I wouldn't say that PS:T's combat (a ****load of enemies just rushing at you) is up to par here. That's not exactly what I meant, sorry if I wasn't clear enough. I reiterate: Torment attempts to satisfy in all three areas. Maybe that's why we disagree. I enjoyed IE combat more than any other game i played, to the point that i prefered it from Turn Based( i loath realtime twitchy combat).Maybe that's way i don't have a huge problem with P:T combat. Yes, it was unexciting compaired to the other IE games, but it was way more fun than combat in WItcher,DA:O,NWN2,Vegas and other games that i also liked. As for the other,NO game attempted to satisfie All 3 categories of gamers. It cannot be done. That a game has combat doesn't mean that it's a priority. Sure, they want what combat there is to be fun, but that's it. Diablo 3 has story,and i don't believe that the makers intended for that story to be terrible. But that doesn't mean that Diablo 3 was ever intended to be a game for a narrativist audience. P:E was aimed for a narrativist audience and not for a gamey one.

Ok, i'll wait for it. I asked because the combat wasn't so bad.It wasn't stellar either, but it wasn't so much worse than BG1. The basic problem was that most of the combat was filler. P:T has high amounds of trash combat and in fact would be a much better game with less combat. That doesn't make it worse than DA:O which have the excact same problem. 90% of the combat is filler between the next cutscene. Torment:ToN will improve by having LESS combat (but better). So in many aspects it will be more of a "visual novel" as some people like to say than Planescape:Torment ever was. The other IE games had very similar combat but their combat was leagues ahead because of these problems. Torment's worst sin was that it had way to much combat in a game that it wasn't about combat.

No, I just expect them to say "this game has a good story but not good gameplay" rather than "this is a masterpiece! All video games should follow this example. It's also a work of art". This game has a good story but not good combat. Happy? But is a masterpiece. Let me ask you a question. Tell me 3 games that you consider to have good gameplay according to you.

Matter of taste i suppose? Or are you saying that all the Torment fans out there had a mysterious specific learning? I have zero knowlege of many things Junta talks about. I think Torment fans are the people who looked beyond specific rules or mechanics in Torment, and liked it for the atmosphere, the sense of discovery in a new and strange universe and the writting. They immersed themselves in the story of the Nameless One and not on the "gamey" aspects. While others focused on what they thought D&D was about, solid mechanics, combat gameplay and found it lacking.

As for the ending. MCA had planed another ending that got cut due to budget reasons. You could accept to not fight the Trascended One and just go away. In the ending cutscene you would wake in the Mortuary,without memory, and you see a flying scull approach you. Morte looks at you sadlly and then smiles and greets you, and the game ends.

Then New Vegas was worse, because I have no desire to explore the **** brown, empty desert with trade mark **** Obsidian gameplay. And Obsidian knows ****ty gameplay. I've tried Alpha Protocol... Yes the gameplay was ****ty in both New Vegas and Alpha Protocol... No dispute here. Obsidian can not into gameplay. The diffirence is that the rest of the game (writting, quest structure, story,etc.) are very good whereas Bethesda's games have equally ****y gameplay with terrible writting, crap quest design. Read the post above your's.In fact Bethesda's games are terrible except ONE thing. Excploration. If you can play their hiking simulators base solelly on the sense of excploration more power to you. But except that i can't see what else they do good. Fallout New Vegas would be equal to the first two Fallouts if it was isometric and turn based. Fallout 3 would be terrible either way.

He didn't compained about no gameplay, he complained about plot holes and no strict rules. Also Planescape's gameplay wasn't so bad as people make it sound. Dialog IS part of the gameplay after all. In that aspect Torment has the best gameplay from every RPG that came out. The combat wasn't so bad.It wasn't stellar either, but it wasn't so much worse than BG1. The basic problem was that most of the combat was filler. P:T has high amounds of trash combat and in fact would be a much better game with less combat. That doesn't make it worse than DA:O which have the excact same problem. 90% of the combat is filler between the next cutscene. Torment:ToN will improve by having LESS combat (but better). So in many aspects it will be more of a "visual novel" as some people like to say than Planescape:Torment ever was. As for your other point i have no idea of Hindu faith, but even without such knowlege i found the game terific.

I also feel that what could be said has been said. It's been a while since I've played PS:T, and I suspect I could identify a lot more weaknesses about it (possibly also some strengths) if I had a better recollection of it. The dime novel thing is mostly not an insult. I'd call it common sense. If you think you have an interesting story to tell, maybe even a thought-provoking one, and you don't want to be limited in any way by more or less arbitrarily defined rules and mechanics, putting it into a book would be understandable. Of course, if you just happen to work in video game development, it's also understandable that you'll try to make it into a game. I don't mind ambitious ideas and I've actually backed Tides of Numenera in the hope that they will succeed where Torment failed (putting that story into a corset of solid rules). I think that the Numenera setting has "softer" rules to permite the DM to focus more on storytelling. That is among the reasons it was chosen for a Torment game.

The thing i would love to have is the ability to interact with the environment through dialog.Snaping necks,stealing etc. And descriptions through text.

I agree with all you have said except that you don't want P:E to be like Planescape. From the IE games i hope is Torment that Obsidian takes the most. A BG2-P:T mix would be my dream game.

This is from another poster in other forum. He talks about the Witchers. Some people don't consider them RPGs because of the combat. And in truth, they aren't.They are action/adventure games. But that depents on your definition of what an RPG is. "Ok Bros, it is time for me to make a shocking revelation. You see, Polish RPG scene has very little to do with cRPGs - in fact until not so long ago cRPGs were seen as reterded offshoots of the 'proper' P&P RPG systems. Why this is important? Bacause when Polish devs talk about RPGs, their complexity and paving new paths they don't think of 'worthless and boring' games of yesteryears such as Ultima, Wizardry, Eye of Beholder, Dark Sun, Arcanum and stuff like that. They think more about all the fun adventures they had with Warhammer, Earthdawn, Vampire, AD&D... with a twist. RPG scene here has utmost contempt for rulesets, tables, digits, dice and all that nonsense - instead they focus on storytelling. Yep, in their eyes cRPGs should not about 'tactical combat' (there are wargames for that) nor about boring character progression (every shooter has that) - all RPGs are means of telling an interactive story. And this is exactly the mindset behind TWitcher 1 and 2 - to make the most appealing interactive story there is. I have to say that while in this they may follow Bioware, they do a much better job than them. And yes, as far as storytelling is concerned they are doing much more complex RPGs than anyone since Planescape. Apart from that the devs are very lax on combat system. They do not really enjoy the old 'proper' RPGs where nothing happens - again the purpose of an RPG (even P&P RPG) is an adventure, not rolling dice. And so they take hints from the games they do relish: hack&slasher, fighting games and other stuff they play on their consoles - stuff they can have fun with - stuff their audience can appreciate as well. Lads, there's no way CDPRed will make a proper 'Codex approved' RPG - they simply do not care and they are not suicidal enough to shoot for such a small niche market. At least in the one facet their picked (storytelling) they prove to be fairly competent so far."

The problem with this is that every consumer has different expectations. Case in study: Torment. If you go from a "gamey" perspective the game is weak, and many people couldn't get into it for that reason. If you go to have an adventure(not strictly games here,you can have that mindset when you read a book,watch a movie,etc),the atmosphere,the story,the themes make this game a masterpiece.For many people Planescape:Torment is the best RPG of all time and a work of art,something no other game has managed to achive. That has also to do with what YOU personally consider an good RPG, and what value in your games most.

Junta,a little of topic but do you read books? Fantasy novels in particullar? If so and you haven't read it already try the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. I think it will be right up your alley.

As someone following him on Twitter since Wasteland 2's kickstarter, I find the "us vs them" is a rather frequently occurring perspective that comes up from his twitter feed. I also don't consider it simply tongue in cheek. It's a specific tweet done to rally those that (for whatever reason) are hostile towards DLC and microtransactions, and presents it in a way that such things must be mutually exclusive to a strong single player narrative. We both know it'd be an epic field day if a Frank Gibeau made a silly tongue in cheek tweet that in some way could be perceived as a slight against Kickstarter or one of the projects that used it. What if it isn't true? Can't argue with what you say. But you mentioned having liked New Vegas DLCs. Wouldn't you prefer an expansion with all the content at half the price? DLCs are a form of microtransaction in bigger scale. Having said that i too find Fargo a little too antagonistic against the "others", but it is a good marketing strategy with all the hate against the publisers nowdays. Fargo bets that a significant part of his audience considers modern games inferior and hate publisers, and that the part who likes them wouldn't be interested in his games anyway.

By the same critiria P:E should also fail.

Pointing to Tides of Numenera is not concrete evidence that people who enjoyed Planescape would back it. Torment: Numenera *already* looks a hell of a lot better then Planescape was. In what excactly?

Fastest kickstarter ever.

Not everething modern is excrement. Every modern RPG is below the IE games? Hell yes. I liked NWN2, Mask of the Betrayer, DA:O, New Vegas, Wither 2. None of them comes close to BG2 or Torment. Mask of the Betrayer comes closer.In fact if not for the awful camera and controls it would be on par with Black Isle games. But other than that that five games we hadn't have a good RPG the last years. And if NWN2 OC is a good RPG is dabatable by others That's so wrong it isn't even funny. Other than BG2 I would play NWN 2 over any Infinity Engine game. Better gameplay, better graphics, better characters in your party for the most part, better customization, actually mostly faithful to the source material, not so anti trope it is a trope. I am sorry but it takes more than a "story" to be a good game, but while we are at it the story of NWN2 is actually perfectly fine anyway. I would rather play any of the elder scrolls games from Morrowind up than any of the Infinity engine games, Mass Efffect 1 is a better game than any infinity engine game, Witcher 2 is better than any infinity engine game in all but the story department, Dragon Age: Origins IS an infinity engine game just with better gameplay. There are many games these days that even blend RPG elements I would rather play than any infinity engine game too. Such as Dues Ex HR. I am sorry but games have gotten a lot better since planescape torment and I dare say planescape torment would have been better as an adventure game to begin with. It's mechanics are total garbage and it is un-fun to play. Meanwhile why is planescape even a part of the name it isn't faithful to the source material, it was money wasted on a license they went out of their way to not use and or butcher. And by the way the story isn't that good, it isn't bad, but it is no where near what it needs to be to carry the broken mess that the mechanics are for anyone who has any standards of what is actually fun to play. In fact if I were to do a thesis on how not to make a RPG I would use Planescape Torment as my topic. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera It seems many people disagree with you. As for the rest of your post, let's agree to disagree. You are the person who said once that DA2 has better gameplay than IE games. Your tastes are completelly ****ed up alien to me. We'll never agree.

I expect it will beat Project: Eternity as it has a stronger name behind it. I'm not so sure. After all Obsidian is a bigger name than inXile and successor to IE games (Torment included) is no weaker pitch than successor to Torment. But Tides of Numenera has a better pitch(video, artwork etc.)

Yes, my problem with most moderm games is not the content per se( at least for Obsidian titles) but the gameplay. I like isometric ,party, preferable 2D, story focused,text heavy with no twitchy gameplay. The farther a game moves from this, it will be more dificult for me to enjoy it. I'm an Obsidian fanboy, but i prefered their games when they were Black Isle. To like a game that is first person, with twitch gameplay the other aspects of the game must be exceptional. Bloodlines comes closer. It's one of my favorite games, but i can't replay it for any reason and thats because of the gameplay, whereas i have replayed BG2 around 60 times (i know i'm sick),and Torment once a year. From Troika i prefered Arcanum to Bloodlines. I'm not really one of the "hardcore" Codex crowd, i prefer RTwP than TB, not i have a problem with TB. But realtime actiony combat feels like a chore to me. I don't understand how TB feels boring to some people when Twitchy means doing the same thing again and again and again 90% of the time.

If you talk strictly about story,i sort of agree. As i said the reason i don't rate MotB higher is the 3D camera and controls. If someone made Mask of the Betrayer as a BG2 mod i would have rated it just below Planescape. That is subjective, but i hated Witcher's actiony combat. Bloodlines have a similar problem. Boring combat, plus in the last part of the game Troika droped the ball and made it a series of boring combat encounters, similar with what happened to KotOR 2.

Not everething modern is excrement. Every modern RPG is below the IE games? Hell yes. I liked NWN2, Mask of the Betrayer, DA:O, New Vegas, Wither 2. None of them comes close to BG2 or Torment. Mask of the Betrayer comes closer.In fact if not for the awful camera and controls it would be on par with Black Isle games. But other than that that five games we hadn't have a good RPG the last years. And if NWN2 OC is a good RPG is dabatable by others

BG1 was indeed not a bad game. In fact was way better than modern RPGs. But compaired with the other IE games? As for explorability as one of the good things in BG I hated it, you liked it, and that's why the OP said its debatable. Was the wild areas more "realistically" empty in BG1 than BG2? Yes. Was that a good thing? Many say no, some say yes. Debatable.

From modern RPGs i agree. Way better. From the other IE games? No.

We will agree to disagree then.For me Planescape:Torment is the best RPG ever made. I personally like BG2 slightly better but i'm aware that it is because of nostalgia as BG2 was the first RPG i played. I played Torment 2 years ago so there are no rose colored glasses in my case. It is a masterpiece. Thats the reason i'm so excited about P:E.BG2 with Torment's writting and story(i hope walls of text included,i love them) and a couple of IWD dungeons? My dream game. Also, i'm curious. Tell me 3 games that have better story and atmosphere than Torment. I would like to play them For the complain that some people have that Torment was like a book, i don't see them complain for the modern game's direction "games like a movie". For me for a game to be more booklike is way better than the whole "cinematic" excperience, and a wall of descriptive text is way better than a cutscene