The best RPG I ever played. Period!

I cannot agree with you more. I have enjoyed RPGs for decades but this was and is the RPG for me. Even the story was something that I had not encountered before.

Nice to see yet another of these articles. I'll just keep saying keep them coming :)

Though in case of PS:T, I'll also point to another one I stumbled into several years ago (hm, last article on that site is from 2.5 years ago, wonder how long till it'll vanish for good). Most notably the last 2 paragraphs:

"Somehow, despite its flaws, Planescape feels more endearing than most every big budget title made today. While almost every modern game feels so focus-tested they never leave players any doubt as to how to progress, and feature perfectly crafted difficulty curves to climb, they are also so slick, shallow, and risk-free as to risk losing all sense of emotional connection. By not challenging us to do anything other than sit and follow a straight line of breadcrumbs from opening tutorial to three-stage last boss, so many games have lost their sense of adventure, of risk, of discovery and accomplishment. And while Planescape is not, by any means, perfect, it is something more interesting than almost every game found today. In not doing all of our thinking for us, by not rushing ahead, by not laying its entire story out in front of us from the opening scenes, Planescape feels less like an interactive movie, as most games of today are trying to be, and instead creates the feeling of wading through a dense, dusty, 1,000 page fantasy novel. It meanders and sprawls and hints at two dozen paths before finally working its way back, brilliantly, to an answer that’s been staring us in the face the entire time.

It can be musty and poorly paced, but at its core Planescape is something shocking: a truly wise game. Its maturity is not based on its sex or language or vaunted moral choices, but on the wisdom of knowing how painful it can be to know one’s mistakes, and the terror, the necessity, of facing the consequences of our actions. It is a game that knows that the only way out of our problems is to pass through them, and the only way to make peace with the world is to make peace with ourselves. And most incredible of all, instead of simply telling us these things, it forces us to trudge through and disentangle them for ourselves over the course of its 40+ hours. By its ending, when all its pieces are in place and one practically feels the sensation of turning pages with the clicks of a mouse, Planescape presents what is easily one of the most moving closing passages of a game in memory. While it has multiple endings, its best is reached when the player avoids a final boss fight altogether; the game is, after all, about saving oneself, not saving the world. And when it closes, it does not try to market for a sequel, tease with a rushed finale or infuriate with a sudden stop. It ends, in a way no game seems capable of these days, with a resolution. It closes its back cover on itself, and it leaves us gaping."

Absolute masterpiece and got the best EnhancedEdition Beamdog has delivered so far.
Well, I would have preferred not doing an EE, but rather a new engine remake with at least a 50 Mio Budget, because the game deserves it. Well, and even if one wants EEs, of course it would be cooler if the other Beamdog EEs would be on the same level...

...anyways: Fellow users, give PSTEE higher ratings. Original PST had the 5.0/5-rating it deserved. PSTEE right now hasn´t even reached 4.0. And it really is ways more comfortable to read and the new interface is doing it good justice.

Hm, now I want to try Planescape, but it`s not sold here on GoG anymore. That`s sad.

Even word MASTERPIECE doesn't describe how great this game is.

Thanks. Well, then I have to wait for a sale with decent discount for PT.
It`s sad, that older games nowadays are locked behind some kinda "Enhanced Edition Wall".

I'm glad I'm not the only one to be startled by that bit. Here are the TToN credits according to MobyGames: https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/torment-tides-of-numenera/credits

BEST GAME EVER!

Couldn't agree more. The original games should of course be available for sale, but the thundercunts in beamdog didn't like that I suppose, and would prefer to sell their inferior product for twice the price without being compared to the original game, and lose sales to them.

A terrible shame, and I look forward to the day these talentless hacks go bankrupt.

It isn´t inferior or a sidegrade. One can call the BGEEs these names, but not PSTEE.

I hardly ever read gaming magazines or similar back in the days, had no access to the internet and just learned about games when friends were playing them or when I saw them in the store. I was familiar with Baldur's Gate at the time and I was impressed by its engine and production quality, but the game hadn't gripped me enough to fully play through it. Then I acidentally discovered PS:T among the budget edition titles in a random electronics store when I was buying a TV or something like that, and I had never heard of it before and had no clue it was related to Baldur's Gate, but it looked similar and at the same time more intriguing to me, so I bought it and started playing, and I became so fascinated with it that I played on and on and eventually completed it, and I didn't even notice or mind its flaws in the combat system, or that I was reading most of the times, because the story and setting were so refreshingly different and gripping. All the text and the world building it accomplishes were actually interesting, for a change, not the usual fantasy tropes that I already knew in and out, wrapped in lots of unnecessary drivel. And it breathed atmosphere, also thanks to Mark Morgan's brilliant soundtrack, and the overall darker tone.

Credit were credit is due though, I think a lot of what made PS:T interesting to play is also due to the Planescape setting by David Cook, and that I didn't know it before. Admittedly, the writing is pretty good, too - my impression after all these years and the newer games Chris Avellone was involved in, is that he has a tendency for flowery prose, and not always in a good way, but in PS:T it worked well enough. I think what helped immersion a lot, is how the story is presented, because it starts right in the middle of things, the main character already has a story to discover, but due to the amnesia he's just as clueless about it as the player. So there's always a mystery surrounding it, and at the same time, you make progress with every new bit of information you learn. This became so enthralling to me that it hardly ever felt boring that the usual 'progress by combat' of the average RPG was often replaced by 'progress through conversations'.

PS:T definitely influenced the writing in some other RPGs like NWN2's Mask of the Betrayer or the premium module Witch's Wake for NWN, and probably many others on a smaller scale. But I don't perceive its influence on the RPG genre to be as strong as I would have hoped for. Even to this day, it seems more like the exception to the rule, and most RPGs still follow the Baldur's Gate way instead and don't really do anything as daring as PS:T did. I also didn't really like what Chris Avellone wrote for Pillars of Eternity, in that game the wordy, flowery prose didn't fit in and actually bored me to death. And I have yet to fully play Tides of Numenera, but I didn't like the beginning at all. The approach it takes seems rather contrary to what made PS:T great - which was not its word count, but the fact that you found yourself in a thrilling situation right from the start. Tides of Numenera on the other hand starts with making you read lots of unconnected text fragments before you even know who you are playing and why you should care about them. I get that it's an alternative approach to create your character by way of CYOA decisions, but I just didn't think it interesting enough to spend so much time with. It's a very slow start, compared to PS:T's in medias res approach. I once likened it to the idea of PS:T not starting in the Mortuary but in the Sensorium of the Civic Festhall, with the player being required to click on all the sensory stones and read through these experiences by other people, before even learning what "Sensorium", "Civic Festhall" or "sensory stones" are, and nothing of it has a clear connection to the character you're playing. Imagine if PS:T would have begun like that - it wouldn't have drawn me in at all. And that makes me wonder a bit whether the creators of Tides of Numenera actually understood why PS:T worked so well. Regardless, I still plan to give it a second chance some day.

Anyway, where do I get my cheque from the PR department? (Or will it be denied to me now, because I didn't embrace Tides of Numenera enough to create further sales?) ;)