The Digital Antiquarian - 08 Jun 2026

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Now, I don't want to jump all over Chris Avellone and his friends for this. I believe we should weigh intent at least as heavily as effect when passing judgment on anything, and the intent here is as sweet in its way as it is perchance inadvertently revealing. If the "babes, babes, and more babes" guy from the pitch document is the person these lads were with their peer group, then the wide-eyed romantic who came up with Fall-from-Grace and Annah was likely the person they became alone at night after their buddies had gone home. I remember seeing the girls I crushed on - the ones I really crushed on, that is - in much the same way when I was their age or only a little younger. To my teenage eyes, they were well-nigh celestial beings whom I wanted to shelter from the ugliness of the world (not least all those other guys who were better at sports than I was) and commune with in a way that transcended sex (not least because I was none too confident in my own abilities in that department in comparison to those other guys). It's a phase a lot of us go through, but also one that we hopefully outgrow. The problem with such attitudes is that they still preclude one from seeing the object of one's fancy as a fully-realized human being with a full measure of agency in her own right. Men have been using these velvet cages, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, to hold women down since time immemorial. The women of Planescape: Torment contribute to the sense of a writing team who are punching a little too far above their own weight - or, maybe better said, their life experience.

The overwriting and the gawkiness are present in the main plot line as well. Below is a short extract from the game's turning point, a long-sought-after and predictably prolonged dialog with Ravel Puzzlewell, a witch who knows much about The Nameless One's real nature.

"A shadow with substance, a-seeking that which casts the light. I know you more and no... know..." Ravel pauses, her eyes dimming. "No more than I know the nature of ANY man. Crossed pasts have we... a man tainted with un-death, still feeling the pangs of separation, and an old withered crone, now all-imprisoned. Seems it that we are a-meeting for the first time? No, no, not, not... knot?" Ravel seems confused for a moment, then shudders, as if throwing off a weight. "Knot at all. An echo of a future meeting this is... or a past meeting, depending on which way time is facing."

The first thing we notice here is the inverted sentence structures of Yoda-speak, a kind of default setting for mysterious and profound characters in way too many games. It serves to remind us that, for all their aspirations toward Philosophy, these writers are better versed in the works of George Lucas than Aristotle or Nietzsche.

Meanwhile all this punning on "know" and "no," "passed" and "past," "not" and "knot," is the sort of thing that clever and ambitious young writers often turn out, and grizzled and remorseless editors draw a line through just as quickly. For it works only on the page (or the screen, in this case); if it was spoken, as we're supposed to imagine dialog being, it would all fly right past the interlocutor. In the end, then, the only purpose it serves is to point out the cleverness of the author, which isn't - or oughtn't to be - the purpose of writing anything. If we keep at it long enough, most of us writers learn to nip such cherished little darlings in the bud before they can pull our readers out of the story we're trying to tell.

And now, looking back on what I've written, I see that I've been hard on Planescape: Torment, harder than I really intended to be. And yet there are criticisms I haven't even gotten to yet. For example, I haven't mentioned how unsatisfying and annoying the combat is - yes, it does exist, and is actually quite extended and extensive at times, such as when you have to leave the streets of Sigil to delve into its tombs and sewers, or when you leave Sigil's dimension entirely during the last quarter or so of the game. (Never fear: the other dimensions you visit are if anything even bleaker than this one.) Ironically, the same changes to the Infinity Engine that make this game feel more personal than the likes of Baldur's Gate also serve to explain why Bioware made the choices they did for their own, more conventionally combat-oriented CRPG. Here, the close-in camera makes it harder to keep track of what is going on during a fight, even as the other interface changes make it harder to micro-manage your party when you really need to. Most of the standard CRPG elements - character levels, ability scores, spell books, etc. - feel like phantom limbs here; tragic psychodrama makes a strange fit with the power fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons. The final impression which I just can't escape is that of an engine and system of rules which are badly out of sync with the game they're being asked to present. If you want to call that further evidence of subversive intent on the part of the development team, be my guest. I just call it unfortunate.

For all that, though, I don't want what I've written to read as an invalidation of the experience of those who have played Planescape: Torment and felt a wind of profundity blowing through its dreary environs. I've felt the same wind myself. (And no, I'm not talking about our friend Reekwind.) As you learn more and more about The Nameless One's endless cycle of pain and suffering, both caused and endured, themes and ideas that games seldom touch on begin to emerge. One particular question is brought up again and again: "What can change the nature of a man?" To its credit, the game never offers a definitive answer, but two possibilities come to the forefront: "Regret" and "Belief." As Saint Augustine tells us, these are two sides of the same coin: the weight of Regret engenders Belief, while our Belief fills us with Regret for all the ways we fail to live up to our moral potential. Thus the need for Confession to cleanse our souls and be worthy of that which we believe in... and so the cycle continues.

In a revelation that genuinely shook me, you learn near the end of the game that resurrection isn't free, that every time The Nameless One is brought back to life on his familiar mortuary slab after a failed combat or some other misguided escapade, the life of some other poor mortal schmuck is taken in compensation for his rebirth. The "best" ending has him breaking that cycle by recognizing, acknowledging, and internalizing the suffering he has caused, looking that unwanted self-knowledge and its terrible consequences straight in the face. What follows is by no means conventionally happy, but it is the only fitting way to bring his story to a close. Kudos to Chris Avellone for not chickening out at the last minute, as other game designers have done.

Planescape: Torment is the first game of any stripe that I know of since Infocom's Trinity to unabashedly don the mantle of Tragedy in the classical sense. Although Chris Avellone's understanding of what that means is perhaps less nuanced than that of "Professor" Brian Moriarty, the author of Trinity, his take on it is more searingly immediate. For Trinity is the tragedy of an entire civilization, bereft of any characters at all who aren't bit players, while Planescape:Torment is the tragedy of an individual whom we come to know all too well. Regular commenter P-Tux7 asked in response to the first article of this little duology of mine whether "it is right to punish someone who doesn't remember doing the crime," whether "someone can ever become not the person who did the crime," and whether "justice demands an equivalent amount of suffering." Such questions constitute the essence of tragedy, which writers have been struggling with as long as the written word has existed.

Despite all its granular failings of execution, then, Planescape: Torment leaves us with much to ponder, regarding both the nature of a man and - on a slightly more plebeian note - the nature of game design. Some of the themes that this game broaches are among the most profound we can wrestle with as human beings. The story of The Nameless One rhymes with the myth of Oedipus, who also looked terrible self-knowledge right in the face and had his soul shriven to the core. Or we might choose to read The Nameless One as a Christ figure, who redeems his fallen companions through a supremely unselfish final sacrifice. But there are likewise obvious parallels to Eastern religion and philosophy, which stress the need to escape the very same eternal life that Christianity purports to offer us. Meanwhile the existentialists among us must ponder whether a Nameless One who can't remember the actions of his previous incarnations, who possesses no obvious continuity with his previous selves, can be said to truly be the same man at all. In fact, can any of us be said to be the same person we were when we were younger? After all, time is a river that changes all of us second by second, and, as Heraclitus told us almost 3000 years ago, it is impossible to step into the same river twice. Any game that can make its player ponder such thoughts as these is not to be dismissed lightly.

At the same time, though, Planescape: Torment belongs to a category of critic's darling that always seems to get my curmudgeonly dander up (and tends to land me in hot water with some of my readers): games which are said to be so ridiculously effective as stories and settings that any gameplay inconveniences that dog them pale into insignificance by comparison. Grim Fandango is one of these: we're told to forget the clumsy interface and nonsensical puzzle design and just enjoy the ride with a walkthrough by our side. Final Fantasy VII is another: forget the endless cavalcade of tedious random encounters and the fact that you can win all of them just by pounding the "attack" button over and over and enjoy the story. No matter how hard I try, I can't see my way to giving games like these a pass. I love a good story and setting, but the fact remains that interactivity is the defining attribute of a game. It seems to me that it needs to work well too if we are to start throwing around accolades like "masterpiece."

Much of what strikes me as flaws in this particular would-be masterpiece could have been fixed with a little more time and some more judicious oversight. The writing could be pared down at the same time that it was polished up; 800,000 words are not needed to convey a vivid sense of place and atmosphere, only a subset of the right ones. The tedious combat could be overhauled or perhaps eliminated entirely. Indeed, I sometimes think that my ideal Planescape: Torment would be a ten-hour point-and-click adventure game that doesn't waste my time with unneeded mechanics or unnecessary talk, that makes every moment count. I doubt that Chris Avellone would go that far, but, again, I sense that he may just agree with me about some of the game's infelicities. It's just that he would prefer to improve the other systems rather than narrow the focus to the core story. "If the moment-to-moment gameplay is lacking," he says, "then you've failed as a game designer. The combat was pretty weak, and I did feel it could have used more dungeon-crawling areas for players to explore and have fun in in addition to having fun exploring the conversations in the game." Who knows? Maybe that would work too.

For when it comes right down to it, I still don't know quite how to feel about Planescape: Torment; when I called it confounding at the start of this pair of articles, I meant it. I first tried to play it not long after it came out, only to give up after a few hours, bored by the depressing setting and all of the people there who never shut up. I returned to it in order to write these articles, and my sense of professional duty carried me all the way through this time around, even though I was once again bored for much of the time. Still, I'm glad I stuck it out, glad to truly know one of the most celebrated computer games in history. Yet I must confess that I'm equally glad to be done with it. I am of the opinion that the most fundamental responsibility of a game, before theme and meaning can even enter the discussion, is to entertain or at least interest its player. Planescape: Torment failed that test too often for me to call it a great game. If you want me to call it a brave and intriguing one, though... well, that I can definitely get behind. Seldom has any group of creators in this field challenged the expectations of their audience so thoroughly. And that in itself is a brave feat well worth applauding.

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Sources: The book Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs by David L. Craddock; Computer Gaming World of March 2000 and April 2000; the 2015 GamesTM special issue on "controversial" games; Retro Gamer 113. Plus the materials found in the Brian Fargo Collection in the archives of the Strong Museum of Play.

Online sources include Soren Johnson's interview with Chris Avellone for his Designer's Notes podcast, a Last Game Standing interview with Avellone, and Guido Henkel's pictures and memories of posing for the Planescape: Torment box cover.

Where to Get It: Planescape: Torment is available as digital purchase from GOG.com in an "enhanced edition." Buying it also gives you access to the original version.

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Original: https://www.filfre.net/2026/06/planescape-torment-part-2-to-the-desktop/