RPGWatch Torment interview

[Tale]

Hurlshot isn't saying PS:T didn't sell because it was dark, he was saying because it wasn't typical medieval fantasy fare, but was still recognizeably fantasy. And trying to say that just because FO3 could sell (in today's market, which is notable different from PS:T's) that it is somehow comparable to PS:T's chances is ludicrous. Simply because of sheer contrast to typical CRPG conventions FO3 promises that will make it appeal to different crowds than traditional CRPGs.

[Kelverin]

Gromnir - Your bait and switch tactics fail, stop trying.

 

I do believe that Hurlshot nailed it. Out of all the DnD settings that they could have used, BIS choose the least well known. What type of source material was available at the time? An appendices, and maybe a source book?

[Gromnir]

Gromnir - Your bait and switch tactics fail, stop trying.

 

I do believe that Hurlshot nailed it. Out of all the DnD settings that they could have used, BIS choose the least well known. What type of source material was available at the time? An appendices, and maybe a source book?

 

 

this is you being ironic, right? paragraph 1 makes complaint... then you does in paragraph 2 what you accuse us of... neat. you trying to one-up each o' your previous posts... get worse and worse?

 

and as for tale response, we does think that fo3 will be useful to dispel myths. ps:t were portrayed as different. fo3 is portrayed as different. both is 'possedly dark. both is atypical crppg fare. if simply being dark and unfamiliar were the problem with ps:t as many have suggested, then should that not spell doom for fo3? no? fo1 and fo2 didn't sell all that great after all. if fo3 sells as good as the first two titles, it will be considered as big a failure as were ps:t, given the 'mount o' money that is going into development and the multiple platforms it will be available 'pon.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tale]

That's it children. You're both going to your rooms without any dinner. I mean it, no cheez-its for either of you!

[Gromnir]

That's it children. You're both going to your rooms without any dinner. I mean it, no cheez-its for either of you!

 

 

Gromnir worked at a Juvenile Hall in Northern California for a year and a half while we were in law school... cheez-its or strawberry pop-tarts were common bedtime snacks. am not a fan o' either such foodstuff no more. see some crazy kid's room smeared with poop and pop tarts/cheez-its a few times gives one a real adverse reflex reaction afterwards.

 

nevertheless, if kel not really wanna discuss issue he/she raised initially or how he waffles and wiffles, then Gromnir sees no need to chase him 'round no more. give him/her one more free shot if he/she feels need.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited July 30, 2007 by Gromnir

[Tale]

Oh, of course. It's all his fault. Gotcha. He started it.

[Gromnir]

where we say it was his fault alone? is a reading comprehension issue or is you too being purposefully obtuse? Gromnir were happily beating on kel every step of the way. clearly we were involved... but he ain't contributing no more, so what is point? am not apologizing for nothing and am not playing victim as some others do.

 

*shrug*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Brother None]

Wow, uhm, without being snide or anything, you guys planning to discuss the interview at any point in this thread, rather than this mud-slinging?

[Kelverin]

Gromnir were happily beating on kel every step of the way.

Only in your imagination friend. You still have not proved a thing.

[Noceur]

Well, you only had one main PC to play, the Nameless One. And he looked like a corpse. I bet that had a lot to do with how well the game sold.

While you could play like a Knight in Shining Armour, you couldn't look like one. And you certainly couldn't play female. And no Drizzt. (Hehe, just kidding).

 

I remember that even the PR mentioned he looked like hell and smelled of embalming fluid.

 

Personally, I found large portions of BG1 to be dull and only a year or so after I bought it did I play it through. PS:T I've played through about 3 times (i.e from beginning to end). The reason for this is because there's a lot of story there to find, and some different paths you can take. The NPC's in your party are characters you can talk to, which is a big plus, and wasn't in BG1.

To this day I haven't finished BG2. I'm not sure why... I mean, I played through the NWN 1 OC

 

Anyway, in BG1 you could play and look like your classic fantasy hero and villain (well, look like one at least...) and you did so in a classical fantasy setting. And you could play female. I'm not sure that the female crowd was large enough back then that it mattered for sales, though.

 

Sounds shallow? Welcome to planet Earth.

[Gromnir]

Wow, uhm, without being snide or anything, you guys planning to discuss the interview at any point in this thread, rather than this mud-slinging?

 

that was kinda our point.

 

nevertheless, as to the interview, this is well-trodden ground and chrisA has said little that is new... though your contribution to the thread is notable in that it seems that chrisA will finally admit that mechanics were clunky/bad. is maybe a good way for collin to get his name back into public conscious just in time for his book... but that might be just our cynicism speaking.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Azarkon]

PST combat was simply, for the most part, bland; saying that it's great combat is ludicrous, but I can see an argument for saying that it's adequate for a game that purposefully de-emphasises combat. Maybe MCA's argument for why PST combat was fine is that combat simply isn't a big part of the game. Maybe the dull combat was supposed to encourage non-violent solutions. Maybe it's supposed to reflect numbed out violence. Maybe MCA just wanted it to be different than other IE games so as to emphasis the strangeness of the planes. Of course, this could just all be apologetics and BIS might've simply failed to deliver the combat they wanted to deliver. We don't know, but the important distinction is between whether PST should've had great combat. Would that have added to the game - made it more worthy?

 

Personally, it's debateable. I don't quite fall into the "if every part of the game is good, then the gane must be good" camp of game design. I think a game is more than the sum of its parts, and that at times it's necessary to sacrifice certain features in order to emphasis others. Would PST have been the same experience if it had awesome tactical combat that made TBS fans drool in ernest, or would such things have diluted the focus of the game, which was on dialogue and storytelling? It certainly might have sold better, but in terms of the game as a cohesive unit, I'd argue that it'd have been a betrayal of PST's motifs to spend more zots on combat that could've been spent on quests, puzzles, and roleplaying choices. Lest we forget, combat is not a necessary component of RPGs, and in some sense PST was an experiment in getting away from the classic mold of RPGs-as-tactical-combat-simulators, even if it's only because combat was intentionally an afterthought (which to me is the most convincing explanation since, as it's been pointed out, the BIS devs were quite well aware of what good tactical combat looked like when they made IWD).

Edited July 31, 2007 by Azarkon

[GreasyDogMeat]

One regret I've had is that I didn't pick PST up sooner. I had seen the game's box back when it came out, and the ugly scared face and strange locations just didn't strike me at the time. A few years ago I finally picked up a copy and it is one of the greatest CRPGs I've ever played.

 

As for the lacking combat... really, big deal. It was an absolute breath of fresh air to play a RPG focused on story and dialogue with emphasis on wisdom, intelligence and charisma over strength, constitution and dexterity stats. It really hit me how well written the dialog was when I'd be exploring areas, doing nothing but talking for hours on end and not feeling an itch for a combat encounter.

 

The problem wasn't that people were disapointed with lackluster combat... it was that no one bought the game, or they didn't give the story a chance.

 

It is kind of annoying that Chris mentioned clunky mechanics as a problem with PST, when I thought the mechanics were fine, yet the recent NWN 2 is one of the clunkiest games I've played in a long time. The lesson, IMHO, was not learned.

Edited July 31, 2007 by GreasyDogMeat

[Noceur]

Actually, even Dexterity is used in at least one dialogue. Probably Strength and Constitution too. I would probably have played the game even without any combat. Then again, this might prove that the combat wasn't that great in the game. Although I never had any problems with it. Heck, it even had awesome drawn out Spell effects, like that dragon throwing a meteor and stuff.

[GreasyDogMeat]

Yeah, dexterity, gave the ability to catch pick pockets and learn from them, but it wasn't as important as the other three stats were.

 

For me, the most important aspect of a RPG is the story. If the story is great then I'll be able to overlook other flaws of design or lackluster combat. Temple of Elemental Evil is, IMHO, the polar opposite of Planescape Torment. Great combat, but absolutly terrible dialogue and voice acting. The combat, as good as it was, just couldn't make up for the other short comings in the game, while Planescape's storytelling and dialogue more than made up for the lackluster combat.

Edited July 31, 2007 by GreasyDogMeat

[Pop]

I liked PST, but it wasn't huge for me. I can really appreciate what it brings to the table that nothing else does. However, as far as IE games go I played BG2 first and it's my favorite of them all, which is problematic, as the cracks in earlier games seem pretty glaring to me. Both BG1 and PST, for example, lack the pacing of BG2. It's nice to be able to go off and do your own thing, that's what made Fallout so nice, but it felt like you could go through hours of gametime in PST while getting nowhere and gaining nothing. I didn't have the patience to scour the NPCs walking the streets to find the unique characters that factored into the plot. I wanted to know what the hell the game was all about, with the shadows and the memory loss and all, but whereas in Fallout you can intently go pretty straight into the main quest, PST's campaign was pretty meandering and drawn out.

 

Add to that the feeling of being completely unprepared for anything and everything, and my disorientation with the UI and the tight resolution (all those busy Sigil streets convey the feel of an actual crowded city, and all the confusion that entails), and when I played through PST I'm pretty sure I didn't catch at least 50% of the game. I only encountered Dakkon, Morte, Annah, Falls-From-Grace, and Ignus, and I don't think I completed anything character-specific with any of them throughout my play, and even though I know the characters are well-written, perhaps better than any other CRPG companion in any game, I didn't actually like any of them,

and they died at the end, just as I was warming up to a few of them, which left me feeling hoodwinked

. I look at screenshots and say "what the **** is that?" When I got to the end of the game I didn't know the ghost lady was there, adding to my confusion. It didn't help that I was a thief, the most useless D&D class ever. And the game's enough of a slog that even though I know there's so much I missed that I'd like to explore I still can't justify to myself all the wordy fetch quests and the rat-tail collecting and the join-this-faction-to-use-this-item and zzzZZZzzz. It's frustrating. That's another reason I like BG2 - Once you get out of the first dungeon (easily modded out anyway) the game opens up. PST feels cramped the entire way through. It's got all the wide-openness of Icewind Dale and the 30 page to-do lists of Morrowind.

Edited July 31, 2007 by Pop

[Brother None]

Part 2 is up, perhaps this time it's good enough for Gromnir? Ha, good fun!

[Kelverin]

"RPGWatch Message: Some maintenance actions are taken.

This will take a short while to complete after which we will be back again."

[Musopticon?]

Btw, Kharn: Send a pm to Guildmaster if you want to change your nick.

[Brother None]

"RPGWatch Message: Some maintenance actions are taken.

This will take a short while to complete after which we will be back again."

 

It's back now.

 

Cheers, Musopticon

[Kelverin]

"As a final treat, Chis sent over the original Vision statement used to pitch Torment to management for development back in 1997."

 

NICE

 

 

[Musopticon?]

No problem.

[Meshugger]

Did anyone read the 'Bad Ending' in the Original Vision statement? It was kind of sad that they didn't implement that one, since it would've been pretty easy to do so. But i was glad that they at least didn't do the 'Happy Ending'.