Torment I just finished Planescape: Torment and...

[Beastro]

Martial arts schools do the teaching.

Yes, a good thing we've had those are arms reach for children to flock to for the hundreds of thousands of years Mankind has existed.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Bullying is useful for upholding group culture, making people realise they're not the centre of the universe (can be useful for kids spoilt rotten by parents and then brought back to earth by classmates, happened to my nephew, lovely boy now, was behaving in a highly narcissistic way prior to going to school), and forms part of a culture of camaraderie and competition. Children shouldn't be bullied by adults, and the bullying they receive from children should be monitored and moderated by adults. But to eradicate it entirely, if even possible, would be very bad. The last thing the West needs is to become even less masculine, even more governed by effeminate sensibilities. Bullying doesn't just teach you to resist bullying, it teaches you not to be a faggot, retard, autist or pussy in general.

Sometimes children are bullied for things they can't help, which is when an adult or older kid should step in. But sometimes they are bullied for things they can and do change. Bullies are mostly testing people, testing to see if you act like a fucking autist or a pussy or something else bad, and they can teach people to be less retarded and less of a pussy as long as the bullies don't go too far, and as long as the victim has some intelligence or spirit in them. Maybe my experience was better than most because the school was mostly for rich kids and the bully in my year was a charismatic humourist rather than the physical violence type. I was incredibly grateful when he would take the piss out of all the lisping kids, god DAMN listening to them was irritating and it was a vindication every time he mocked them. If you have no bullies eventually everyone WILL turn into a lisping soyboy faggot.

Here's an example, the bully in my year was something of an obnoxious showman, and wanted to do a massive flamboyant arcing swing with his hockey stick in hockey practice. I was standing next to him on the other side from his stick and the ball, so when he said I should move out of the way I refused, because why should he push me around? So he whacked the ball, swung his stick all the way round like he warned, and I still had a slight dent in my shin-bone years later. I spent the rest of that session mostly kneeling on the pitch but I didn't whine about it, it was my choice. And that's a good life lesson, delivered in a safe but effective manner - sometimes people will try to fuck with you, and sometimes not backing down involves pain that you shouldn't shy away from. That's a lesson no amount of censorious anti-bullying schoolmarms could have imparted.

Anyway I was an autist at school (and a faggot until I prayed to Jesus and gave myself electric shocks to purge the sinful thoughts but that's another story), but because I wasn't a pussy or a retard I didn't get bullied, or at least only a bit because you have to bully autists and faggots a little bit. So the moral of the story is, you can be a faggot, retard, pussy, or autist if you want, just as long as you don't combine too many of those at once.

As for adults who get hurt by bullying on the internet....

 

[Beastro]

Sometimes children are bullied for things they can't help, which is when an adult or older kid should step in. But sometimes they are bullied for things they can and do change.

They're also maladjusted assholes that need to be brought in line by other kids, which is why learning how to deal with bullies as a kid crucial in order to know how to face such crap further on in life.

Many aren't simple testers, they're predators probing for the weak, easy targets to attack. Learn to be able to be enough of a threat and they'll go looking for easy prey, which then kids learn a lesson in protecting others from.

Bullies are not in and of themselves a good thing, the lessons that come from dealing with them are what's important in the same way all involuntary challenges imposed on our lives are.

Maybe my experience was better than most because the school was mostly for rich kids and the bully in my year was a charismatic humourist rather than the physical violence type.

Most were the typical cornering and mocking type with a few pushes here and there.

They were dealt with by attacking them, even if I wound up in trouble for bringing it to violence. The teachers and principles knew the usual suspects and knew me enough to know what would bring me to do something like fighting. They'd make it clear they had to to enforce the rules, but showed it as a formality with nothings held against me, while once news got back home about the context of what I'd done, things were made up for the silly school punishment and encouragement to wear it as a badge of honour for putting a bully in their place.

The context in which I was raised was to not tolerate that shit and shut it down, even if I wasn't the one being targeted while realizing that no good deed goes unpunished.

Here's an example, the bully in my year was something of an obnoxious showman, and wanted to do a massive flamboyant arcing swing with his hockey stick in hockey practice. I was standing next to him on the other side from his stick and the ball, so when he said I should move out of the way I refused, because why should he push me around? So he whacked the ball, swung his stick all the way round like he warned, and I still had a slight dent in my shin-bone years later. I spent the rest of that session mostly kneeling on the pitch but I didn't whine about it, it was my choice. And that's a good life lesson, delivered in a safe but effective manner - sometimes people will try to fuck with you, and sometimes not backing down involves pain that you shouldn't shy away from. That's a lesson no amount of censorious anti-bullying schoolmarms could have imparted.

When little I made up for lack of knowing how to fight with the eagerness to do it. In Junior High I found bullies complacent expecting punches to be thrown when I'd get up close verbally sparring before grabbing them in a rear naked choke as they laughed before realizing they were passing out.

That shit scared the teachers over me cutting of the blood to their head, but I made it clear I knew what I was doing and didn't hold onto it once they weakened.

Of course this was back in the 90s and early 2000s before people really lost their shit, though my cousins boy kept getting into fights when little and didn't run into too much real trouble, even if things were shitty for him and he was often a bully himself at the time.

If you have no bullies eventually everyone WILL turn into a lisping soyboy faggot.

That we can agree on.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

After that experience I wanted to share this with someone else and also wanted to ask, do you think it's worthwhile to continue with Torment: Tildes of Numeria?

Nope.

Yes, Numenera is a good game, I finished it at 88 hours or so. Different setting obviously but overall a pretty similar game at its core. I recommend it and I'm also a fan of PS:T.

To both: why?

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

To both: why?

It has an interesting setting that they explore quite a bit in depth. The merecasters are a highlight, you feel as though your choices truly matter and affect the story in various ways. The tides system gives a feeling of depth and choice as well. If you like Planescape I see Torment as a true sequel and much more of the same, but with a twist. I don't care what anyone says, it was good.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

To both: why?

It has an interesting setting that they explore quite a bit in depth. The merecasters are a highlight, you feel as though your choices truly matter and affect the story in various ways. The tides system gives a feeling of depth and choice as well. If you like Planescape I see Torment as a true sequel and much more of the same, but with a twist. I don't care what anyone says, it was good.

As always, your positivity is infectious and potentially dead wrong. But now I want to give it a shot. On sale. A big sale.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

As always, your positivity is infectious and potentially dead wrong. But now I want to give it a shot. On sale. A big sale.

It's an opinion, it can only be potentially wrong if your tastes differ greatly than mine. If you enjoyed PS:T, loved talking to every NPC, getting lore, backstory, making choices in dialogue, exploring the setting, then you will like or love Torment. Torment takes all that from PS:T and trims it down to almost a theme park (in a good way) of interesting things to explore. You may find a strange object to interact with, then a strange person, find a side quest, and generally do a lot of interacting with interesting things. So if you enjoyed those aspects of PS:T you should greatly enjoy Torment. It's a true sequel and more of the same, but as I said, with a big twist.

 

[Neanderthal]

Just don't expect an interesting protagonist or companions like in Torment, also the central story in Numenera is not personal like in Torment nor half as interesting.

 

[MRY]

PS:T is the autobiographical account of a young man who sacrificed everything in his life to achieve greatness, only to realize that what he lost in the process was gone forever, leaving behind only haunting shadows.

TTON is the autobiographical account of a bunch of middle aged cast-offs of such a figure of greatness, longing at least to have a legacy.

Not really, but it's a funny (?) deconstruction!

 

[Daidre]

I was really impressed by P:T in high school but Torment: Tildes of Numenera ended up the only RPG that I dropped solely because of writing in last 10 years or so. After paying full price for it.

If in things like POEs I can at least click through pointless and self-indulgent walls of text to get some fun (gameplay) after, but in Numenera there were no "gameplay-after" to find in 3 hours I wasted on it. Even VNs I could read sometimes in right mood is usually less offensive in interactions+events/word count proportion.

 

[Kev Inkline]

How did you finish it with 88 hours of playtime...? I finished it in 25 including the uninstall.exe part that followed.

I'll address this old conundrum:
He did it with 14 different playthroughs.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

MRY

We could probably go on forever with this argument, but allow me to make two simple observations here.

To me, there's two dimensions to art. One, the objective quality of the content, which gives a sort of "practical" purpose to art, in that art then becomes a mean for personal and intellectual growth.

And then, there's the raw "experience" of art, the aesthetic quality, where art is enjoyed for its own sake, regardless of the content, so to speak.

Now, for me, the issue is that the pleasure and joy we derive from art is tied to the intensity of our experience of it. I'm taking this argument to a different direction here but i think this is related to the issue because our experiences are at their greatest from the time we seemed to know the least, namely, when we were children.

This is something that has been bothering me for a long time, ever since i became an adult in fact. The things we love most are the things we experienced when we were young. Not to say to say we were completely oblivious to questions of quality even when we were kid, but this problem seems to introduce an element of relativity in art, since the reason we love something is due to what seems to be nothing more than a mere accident.

So what is quality then? My adult brain tells me that Baldur's Gate wasn't as great as i remember it. The writing was sort of pedestrian, the gameplay wasn't all that and all in all we are talking about a glorified toy, since this is what video games are if one wants to be honest. Yet, i can't help being inundated by waves of nostalgia when i see the game. Just the sound effects alone give me a type of pleasure that shouldn't be there. There's something wrong in this, some illegitimate, because it brings into question the validity of art, and the seriousness we attach to it, for if what is great is what gives us the greatest pleasure, and if what gives us the greatest pleasure is only what we were fortuitous enough to experience as children, what's the point then?

It is to escape this dilemma that i am repudiating any notion of art being enjoyed for its own sake and i'm focusing only on whatever it is in art that transcends our experiences and which is objective, universal and eternal, and that something can only be found in the classics. There's a "timelessness" in certain works of art that cannot be found in artistic productions that are tied entirely and purely to a particular "experience" which in itself is tied to a specific time and place. By the time we are dead, the memory of something like Torment will be lost forever.

And don't misunderstand me here, because i am somewhat reluctant to abandon those personal experiences, which, despite being subjective are among the few treasures some of us possess, but the ephemeral nature of those experiences is a problem, and the lack of objective content makes me wonder whether the normal thing to do would be to "put away childish things", except replace them with what? Maybe that's the issue with modern culture, the real reason people are so attached to infantile things. Because the things that could give us meaning in our adult life have been removed from us, so that our adult life becomes a kind of battle where we strive to extend our childhood in the midst of the dry existence our adult duties impose on us.

This thread is fantastic, I spend all day thoughtfully reading it. Dear sir Lyric Suite, I've registered on Codex specifically to say how inspiring and delghtfully deep your (especially quoted parts) replies in this thread are. I haven't read this kind of sane opinion about videogames and art in general for - maybe - years. I also can't help but noticed your quoting of Schuon somewhere, so I suppose I dig what you meant by "whatever it is in art that transcends our experiences and which is objective, universal and eternal, and that something can only be found in the classics". I think the uniqueness of PS:T is that young Avellone have somehow captured the gleam of Great Something that is honestly alien for videogames, especially today, but is well known for certain poets like Trakl of Celan.

Thank you all people so much for this thread, I suppose my decade-long hunger for anything that could match Torment is strangely resolved. Somehow...

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Thank you all people so much for this thread, I suppose my decade-long hunger for anything that could match Torment is strangely resolved. Somehow...

Stay hungry. Disco Elysium comes out in less than a month.

 

[S.torch]

Glad to see that theres people who still find this thread useful

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Thank you all people so much for this thread, I suppose my decade-long hunger for anything that could match Torment is strangely resolved. Somehow...

Stay hungry. Disco Elysium comes out in less than a month.

Wow, this look pretty impressive! Visually it is like a crossover between Shadowrun: Returns (which was sadly linear as fuck) and PoE (which had no problem with visuals, only with everything else). Gameplay description reminded me of Inquisitor (tried to play it because of Daemonica, wonderful weird previous game of same creators, but it was so outdated and broken). Hope for the best!

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Glad to see that theres people who still find this thread useful

Thank you for creating the space for so many interesting thoughts to fill)

Also I want to add something about Numenera. For me, the experience of playing it, comparing to Torment was like...say, comparing David Lynch (PS:T) with any movie Tarantino did after the "Kill Bill". What do I mean: while you (me) watching it, it is nice and fun, joyride and goog trip, but moments after the ending (ok, maybe an hour after) you (me) is like: - Wait...wtf was that abomination I spent three hours of my life too look at? So, Numenera was like that for me. I like it in progress (The Endless Gate quest was wonderful, the Bloom was okay, though very claustrophobic), but after my Golden Tide Ending I was guided into, I was unsatisfied and don't have the wish to replay this beautiful crap.

Anti-climactic ending in general, as I see it, is the main problem of contemporary games (RPG/Adventure/Action, no matter) which try into narrative. It seems like the developers just don't know how to do it properly. BioShock: Infinite is the rare game, for instance, which left me without sleep with heart poundering. Most of the other narrative games hade like - meh - above sescribed late-Tarantino effect after the ending.

(sorry, I'm narrative-fag who likes his Ancient tragedies )

 

[MajorMace]

BioShock: Infinite is the rare game, for instance, which left me without sleep with heart poundering.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Thank you all people so much for this thread, I suppose my decade-long hunger for anything that could match Torment is strangely resolved. Somehow...

Stay hungry. Disco Elysium comes out in less than a month.

Wow, this look pretty impressive! Visually it is like a crossover between Shadowrun: Returns (which was sadly linear as fuck) and PoE (which had no problem with visuals, only with everything else). Gameplay description reminded me of Inquisitor (tried to play it because of Daemonica, wonderful weird previous game of same creators, but it was so outdated and broken). Hope for the best!

Wasn’t Inquisitor an action RPG? Disco Elysium has almost no combat. It’s supposed to be like Planescape: Torment meets True Detective by way of The Hangover. If the developers can deliver on even half of what they’ve promised, Disco should be able to scratch that PS:T itch.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Wasn’t Inquisitor an action RPG

Yes, and because of Action part it was a disaster. But you play as a Inquisitor detective, walls of text, etc etc

It’s supposed to be like Planescape: Torment meets True Detective by way of The Hangover

Em...

 

[Verylittlefishes]

BioShock: Infinite is the rare game, for instance, which left me without sleep with heart poundering.

What?)

 

[Verylittlefishes]

PS:T is the autobiographical account of a young man who sacrificed everything in his life to achieve greatness, only to realize that what he lost in the process was gone forever, leaving behind only haunting shadows.

TTON is the autobiographical account of a bunch of middle aged cast-offs of such a figure of greatness, longing at least to have a legacy.

Not really, but it's a funny (?) deconstruction!

It is very interesting, but still there are questions: if it IS Avellone's (who was 28 at the time) autobiographical account, what was it all about IRL?) Probably silly question.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Also I was kinda surprised how much was borrowed from the "Pages of pain" by Troy Denning. Basically every location in the first half of the game is present in the book. Yes, I know, Sigil is a small town (lol) but still.

 

[hexer]

PS:T is the autobiographical account of a young man who sacrificed everything in his life to achieve greatness, only to realize that what he lost in the process was gone forever, leaving behind only haunting shadows.

TTON is the autobiographical account of a bunch of middle aged cast-offs of such a figure of greatness, longing at least to have a legacy.

Not really, but it's a funny (?) deconstruction!

It is very interesting, but still there are questions: if it IS Avellone's (who was 28 at the time) autobiographical account, what was it all about IRL?) Probably silly question.

People quest for immortality in various ways. Some want to have children, some want to go down in history as being famous, some have faith in the afterlife and some want to get rid of mortality altogether

Anti-climactic ending in general, as I see it, is the main problem of contemporary games (RPG/Adventure/Action, no matter) which try into narrative. It seems like the developers just don't know how to do it properly. BioShock: Infinite is the rare game, for instance, which left me without sleep with heart poundering. Most of the other narrative games hade like - meh - above sescribed late-Tarantino effect after the ending.

If you haven't played them yet, I strongly recommend you play Final Fantasy X and Nier games.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

If you haven't played them yet, I strongly recommend you play Final Fantasy X and Nier games.

Sorry, I really can't stand the JRPG visual style(

 

[hexer]

If you haven't played them yet, I strongly recommend you play Final Fantasy X and Nier games.

Sorry, I really can't stand the JRPG visual style(

Too bad! Those are some of the games I consider to have better stories than PST