Torment
"What can change the nature of a man?"
Been replaying Planescape: Torment. Arguably the best plot in any game I've ever played - that is, best in a literary sense, not a gaming or movie sense. Mafia has an awesome movie-style plot, Arcanum has an awesome game-style plot - but Planescape makes you think.
The premise: A man wakes up, covered in scars, in a morgue. He was taken for dead, and brought in by zombies. He soon learns, via a message tattood to his back, that he is immortal. Immense damage causes him to lose his memory. The game is laced with themes - a big one is reincarnation, and its effects on self-image. What if other people recognized you from your past lives? And you learned that each one was different - some good, some tremendously evil and manipulative? Where does your past end, and you begin?
It's magnificently well-done. Each incarnation you learn of is clearly you - but twisted slightly. The paranoid schizophrenic who leaves traps for you, the intellectual, the manipulative and charismatic murderer. But more than anything, the question of how the cycle can be broken is well-done. The game has no "good" endings. The best you can get is killing your own mortality, and getting sent to the equivalent to hell.
Thoughts I'm pondering:
Does the concept of immortality have any meaning? How do you know you can't die? Obviously, you don't know until it's too late - for all we know, I am immortal.
In a karmic-rebirth style system, what responsibility do you have for your past?
What can change the nature of a man?
Been replaying Planescape: Torment. Arguably the best plot in any game I've ever played - that is, best in a literary sense, not a gaming or movie sense. Mafia has an awesome movie-style plot, Arcanum has an awesome game-style plot - but Planescape makes you think.
The premise: A man wakes up, covered in scars, in a morgue. He was taken for dead, and brought in by zombies. He soon learns, via a message tattood to his back, that he is immortal. Immense damage causes him to lose his memory. The game is laced with themes - a big one is reincarnation, and its effects on self-image. What if other people recognized you from your past lives? And you learned that each one was different - some good, some tremendously evil and manipulative? Where does your past end, and you begin?
It's magnificently well-done. Each incarnation you learn of is clearly you - but twisted slightly. The paranoid schizophrenic who leaves traps for you, the intellectual, the manipulative and charismatic murderer. But more than anything, the question of how the cycle can be broken is well-done. The game has no "good" endings. The best you can get is killing your own mortality, and getting sent to the equivalent to hell.
Thoughts I'm pondering:
Does the concept of immortality have any meaning? How do you know you can't die? Obviously, you don't know until it's too late - for all we know, I am immortal.
In a karmic-rebirth style system, what responsibility do you have for your past?
What can change the nature of a man?