"What can change the nature of a man?"
Many things can and I would say that Planescape: Torment is among them - if nothing else it is a deeply memorable experience that sticks with you for a long time after it's finished. One might be inclined to argue that it is as much a book as a game, what with the majority of the contents taking the form of reams of wonderful dialogue, but I think that would be doing the interactivity of the thing a disservice. It is through player choices that the story becomes your own, the conclusion becomes one of your making and is all the more affecting for it. I felt so much more engaged with the Nameless One's plight than I ever have in any game that has allowed for a blank slate character to worm your own personality into. I think this is as much to do with the games premise, a fundamentally human search for identity, as it is the wonderful writing.
But ah, such wonderful writing it is, among the best in video games by no small margin. My favourite example is a scene that takes place in the private sensorium (where memories, experiences, sensations are stored in stones for the perusal of all) - if you've played the game you'll know exactly the one I mean. The scene is told simultaneously from three separate perspectives, only one aware of the others, and it is utterly gut-wrenching, an absolute marvel. I wish that I could write like that. The phenomenal writing is extended to the characters, each fascinating in their own right and with a depth that comes to surprise you; there are no shortage of secrets to be uncovered here. The way the story unfolds, re-contextualising things that you have heard before as you gradually piece together who you are, who you were - it is sublime (of course then there's also the gleeful post-modern stabs at videogame idiosyncracies - take the Modron cube, a pocket dimension serving as mechanical auto-generating dungeon parody of the archetypal RPG).
Consider the setting itself, the city of Sigil and the planes, very loosely something out of D&D but turned on its head, perverted and twisted and endlessly interesting. Sigil exists beyond the wants and needs of the player. Or does it? What footprint have your past lives left behind that you are not yet aware of? How much of this was shaped by you? Explore Sigil's streets and you'll find that each person has their own story to tell and that every one of them is in some way meaningful. The sheer scope of the setting is impressive too, Sigil is connected via portals to all the planes of existence and so the potential of the game becomes bigger than is ever truly possible. Whether or not these portals actually exist in-game is moot - in the player's mind the whole place is steeped in possibilities, pregnant with potential and the lingering unknown - more captivating than any stolid truth could hope to be. It doesn't need to exist for the player to wonder what might await them at the end of any alleyway.
Ultimately, Planescape serves as a moving meditation on any number of themes - the ties between memory and identity, the indivisibility of the self, the inescapable clutches of mortality, the sting of regret, egocentrism, self-sacrifice, cruelty, kindness and the irreducibility of life. That it manages to do so by keeping it all inextricably tied to player interaction and choice and to be so deeply affecting in the process is a remarkable achievement and I suspect that I may not get the chance to play anything quite like this for a long time to come.
"Endure. In enduring, grow strong."
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