Hello! Hi, how’s it going. So I’m writing this with the Google Docs editor. It’s kinda sweet. Only thing that sucks about it that it only displays one page, whereas OpenOffice had two pages side by side. So now I’m haunted by all the unused space on the sides of my page. Woe be to the 1080p

So I played Dragon Age II. And I beat Dragon Age II. Short review: it’s aight. Long review: you’re not getting one! I was tired of that game by the end of my 40 hour game in a way that DA:O took 160 hours to achieve. That’s as much commentary as you can expect.

But during and after, I had the itch. The CRPG itch. I wanted to play an actual, old school, balls to the dungeon walls CRPG. Something like Neverwinter Nights, or Baldur’s Gate! So I installed Planescape. After pirating it like six times and never once playing it, I bought Planescape: Torment off GoG sometime around Christmas when it was five bucks. Now that I’ve made a financial commitment, I feel it’s finally time to sate my curiosity. And, to motivate me, I’m going to blindly follow at the heels of his majesty @Video_Game_King and make a kinda-sorta Let’s Play out of it. Which I’ve never done, so it’ll be an adventure for all of us. No capture equipment means that you won't be given the pleasure of listening to my soothing, erotic voice giving commentary on the game. Instead this old style game will be given the old style treatment of a screencap let's play!

I spent too much time making that banner.

Remember how I said this would be a screen shot let’s play? Well, the thing is, I already have a few hours of the game under me and I decided to do this just now as of this writing. So this update is going to be an introductory/metagame post with a few stock images and no screencaps.

So first thing I did was install a whole clusterfun of mods to make the game look pretty and work better. They are here.

The beginning of Planescape, for me, was a series of false starts. First I made my character, played for ten minutes, then restarted because my stats sucked. That’s the kind of game, berks. More on that later. Then I played for an hour, killed a dude, followed a guide for a bit. Then I said “yo fuck guides” and reloaded until right before I killed that dude and went down a kind of different direction.

So I’m going to cop to the fact that I totally did read a “beginner’s guide” of sorts. It is here. But otherwise this playthrough is going to be totally raw, dawg! I will be relying on my wits and my charisma score to see me through this game unscathed.

You start the game making your character. This only means setting your stats. Not class, not sex, not alignment, not looks, and mostly important not your name. You start as a male, true neutral fighter and remain one until you train out of it. The stats are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, Wisdom, and Intelligence. I have no idea what each individual stat does in terms of dice rolls, because I have never played ADnD, which is the license this game uses. I don’t know how awesome or shit ADnD is. All I know is Thac0 is a scary phrase. For perspective, I grew up with 3.5 and now prefer 4E. Kinda hoping they get their online shit together for 5E.

What I can tell you is that, in this particular game, wisdom, intelligence and charisma all open up dialog choices, and wisdom gives an experience bonus. As well as some other shit but FUCK THE METAGAME! I’m not here to know everything before I play it! Except for the stuff I’m going to explain in the next few paragraphs.

If you’ve heard of Planescape, it’s probably been about two, related thing: the writing, and the stat importance. Now, from what I understand, in most RPGs you want to max either strength, constitution or, at least in 3.5, dexterity, with intelligence being for wizards, wisdom being for certain classes and saving throws, and charisma for *snrk.* Well, in this case it’s the opposite. Int, Cha, and Wis are the core important stats with constitution having its own special role. Strength and dexterity, from what I can tell, are only useful for fighters and rogues. I don’t know if this is an ADnD thing, but it’s not something I expect from any RPG. Yeah, you’ll get games that let you talk your way out of some encounters if you have a high speech stat, but from what I can tell you can not only do that to most of them in Planescape, you also get as much experience if not more for doing so. That’s some swag stuff right there.

My build (thanks gamefaqs!)

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 10

Constitution: 10

Wisdom: 18

Intellect: 17

Charisma: 13

I’m going to spec Mage as soon as I can. Apparently, ADnD only had three classes, mage thief fighter. Also, I’m going to be evil. Because I’ve heard that this is one of the few games that lets you actually be evil and pull some rank shit. I won’t be killing indiscriminately (killing quest givers never seemed a good idea), though, so expect a Neutral Evil outcome.

So I think that’s it for this one. If I had been taking caps this entire time I would go into detail about what actually happens in the first hour or so, but I didn’t and I doubt a summary would have done much for your enjoyment. Also, I can’t remember in great detail what it is I did. Expect a synopsis and less bullshit next time! If I do this. Which I probably will because I want to play this game but I need something to motivate me before I get bored and start playing some mindless action game. I don't want that. Except I kinda do, which is the problem. Ahhh!

Man, I feel compelled to read this (since you @replied me and everything), but as I haven't played Planescape, I can't. All I can say is that your banner and Let's Play thing reminded me to finish my damn Katawa Shoujo Let's Play Banner. (I'm getting pretty anal about getting the text right.) Oh, and the review of that game. Should probably get on that first.

Boring. Keep trying though, you've got a ways to go

@Getz said:

Boring. Keep trying though, you've got a ways to go

I can't tell if you're being serious or a dick.

@Video_Game_King said:

@Getz said:

Boring. Keep trying though, you've got a ways to go

I can't tell if you're being serious or a dick.

Sorry I was being a dick.

Yes you can do incredibly evil things. If you can stomach them.

Planescape uses a very heavily modified version of 2nd ed AD&D. 2nd edition in general has a ton of classes (with even more sub classes/kits). But combat in Planescape isn't that great (as trying to sneak out of the morgue may have shown you). But you do get FF type high level spells, so there is that. Planescape is really the first game where talking to your companions is incredibly important to basically find out why they are willing to follow around a heavily scarred amnesiac victim all over the nine hells.

Thac0 is actually pretty simple really. D&D ceased being good the day it became more about money and getting mmo players to buy it than it was about being a cool game with a deep set of rules to play with friends. But yada yada yada. Good luck being a fighter who has no stats useful to being a fighter though, hopefully you can go priest/mage sooner rather than later 0cause that's the only classes you got the stat line to be good at.

Tears in my eyes, people. Tears in my eyes.

@Karkarov: Yeah I know. Thankfully they give you a pretty good fighter companion to start with, so the mortuary was fine.

@endaround: That is the impression I've gotten, So far every battle has been clicking on one guy, wait for him to die, and then click on another, hoping the pathfinding wouldn't screw Morte up. But sneaking out of the mortuary was as simple as talking to the door man.

@Video_Game_King: I was just making a reference to your Temple of Elemental Evil Let's Play. Just something about LPing an old DnD game made me think of you.

@Getz: First one, you know? I'm still struggling thinking of ways to make this interesting.

Mage is a weird choice to be honest, since most of the high level stuff is virtually useless due to boss immunity and resistances.

Enjoy, anyway.

@Beforet said:

@Video_Game_King: I was just making a reference to your Temple of Elemental Evil Let's Play. Just something about LPing an old DnD game made me think of you.

I'm surprised that anybody besides @Mento and @ArbitraryWater bothered reading. (@Hailinel doesn't count, since I can only remember him showing up once to point out how fucked I was.)

Well, summoned here I am, at the accidental or perhaps intentional behest of @Video_Game_King, here to comment on my "Favorite game of 2011 that didn't come out in 2011"

The beginning of PS:T is kind of confusing and occasionally boring, but once you figure out the structure (Talk to literally everyone who seems unique, run back and forth, do quest get rewarded with dialogue) it becomes a lot more enjoyable. If you think about it too long, you'll realize that a good 75% of the game is just fetch quests (in that they involve you running back and forth), but they happen to be fetch quests with some of the best writing in a video game. The other 25%, the combat, is just a really bad version of Baldur's Gate. Without any sort of equipment, enemy or class variety it's less strategic and more boring than anything else, despite the presence of Final Fantasy style spell animations.

In any case, I encourage you to continue playing. I admit I used a guide from time to time so I could be sure to see everything (as there are parts of it that are very old game-y in that saying the wrong thing can get you to miss quests or otherwise), although it's still more about the experience and the story than the gameplay. For that, you'd have to play the other infinity engine games (which, perhaps unspokenly, are fully endorsed by myself)

I have also been summoned. But I got nothing to say about this game. It's one of my more egregious gaps, considering I've played almost every other IE game.

I would've suggested picking an opponent for duelling blogs, but then you're kind of stuck at their pace at that point. And that's no fun.

@Mento said:

I would've suggested picking an opponent for duelling blogs, but then you're kind of stuck at their pace at that point. And that's no fun.

Not really. Keep in mind that you finished Temple of Elemental Evil long before me (even if I finished it the far more awesome way). And why don't you take him up in this duel? Or will you go with my suggestion of yet another Katawa Shoujo comic :P?

@Video_Game_King: 150 hours of Xenoblade later and I'm about done with RPGs for the year. For now, I just want a dumb "hitting things" game to cool off (is Darksiders 2 out soon?).

I ought to get around to writing this week's blog, though. Whatever it is. I'd say it's probably going to seem rushed at this point, but when is that ever not the case? And yeah, probably another comic for that one porn game with the disabled ladies. Why not. Our continued coverage of that game no doubt keeps ZombiePie happy.

None of this has anything to do with Planescape, sorry Beforet. Uh, use Morte? He seems fun.

I should probably get to work on my "next" blog, too. (I have blogs written for weeks, but I need to maintain that.) Should I stick with my coverage of Kirby's latest outing, or just replace it with pleas for @ZombiePie to get into Katawa Shoujo?

@Video_Game_King said:

Pleas for @ZombiePie to get into Katawa Shoujo?

Not going to happen though it seems Sweep is playing it.

@ZombiePie said:

@Video_Game_King said:

Pleas for @ZombiePie to get into Katawa Shoujo?

Not going to happen though it seems Sweep is playing it.

I shall make it happen. There are already two mods who have played it. Sooner or later, they shall convert you.

@Video_Game_King said:

@ZombiePie said:

@Video_Game_King said:

Pleas for @ZombiePie to get into Katawa Shoujo?

Not going to happen though it seems Sweep is playing it.

I shall make it happen. There are already two mods who have played it. Sooner or later, they shall convert you.

You'll have as much luck as me convincing you to create a Twitter account.

Look I don't want to. Okay?

@ZombiePie:

So by your logic, if I created a Twitter account, you'd play Katawa Shoujo? (THIS IS ALL YOUR LOGIC; YOU CANNOT FIGHT YOUR LOGIC.)

@ArbitraryWater said:

Well, summoned here I am, at the accidental or perhaps intentional behest of @Video_Game_King, here to comment on my "Favorite game of 2011 that didn't come out in 2011"

The beginning of PS:T is kind of confusing and occasionally boring, but once you figure out the structure (Talk to literally everyone who seems unique, run back and forth, do quest get rewarded with dialogue) it becomes a lot more enjoyable. If you think about it too long, you'll realize that a good 75% of the game is just fetch quests (in that they involve you running back and forth), but they happen to be fetch quests with some of the best writing in a video game. The other 25%, the combat, is just a really bad version of Baldur's Gate. Without any sort of equipment, enemy or class variety it's less strategic and more boring than anything else, despite the presence of Final Fantasy style spell animations.

That's kind of a relief, actually. I wanted to play Baldur's Gate after this, but I was afraid it was going to be more of Planescape's combat. For PST, I plan on avoid as many battles as possible, which is why I'm specced the way I am.

I don't know how I'm going to schedule all of this. Ideally I would like to do a daily thing, but I don't know how often I'll be able play and write. Or if I burn out quickly one day and have no material to use. I'll figure it out!

I played this a couple months ago. Don't worry about stats very much, the game is 95% reading and 5% combat.

@Beforet: I was hammered when I wrote that, I didn't mean for it to come out so bluntly. What I meant to say was "Good luck and keep working at it" cause good bloggers are few and you seem like a decent sort.

@Getz: D'awww! =3

Well shit, now I have a standard I need to maintain.