Planescape Torment Question

[Anubis]

Got a question for all of you out there who have played (and recommended to me in this thread) Planescape Torment.

I was reading around for some broader views on the game a couple of weeks ago, as part of a drive to learn more about a bunch of classic RPGs that I have never played (a drive which resulted in me buying Planescape, the Icewind Dale games, the Baldurs Gate series, the Neverwinter Nights series, and Arcanum Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura). Unfortunately, during this process I inadvertantly stumbled across a Planescape spoiler - namely:

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I know the "Nameless One" is somehow you

Knowing that, and due to the fact that my batch of games is still in the process of arriving, I haven't yet started any of them, and have been mulling over exactly what to do about it since. My original plan was to play Planescape first, but I'm not sure if that's the best idea anymore considering it sounded like a pretty big spoiler.

Those of you who have played it, have I inadvertantly ruined the game for myself or is it not as big a deal as I am fearing? Do you think it's still worth me playing the game first, or should I go through all the others first and come back to it last when it's not at the forefront of my mind so much (though I doubt I'd forget it completely, sadly)? Is it even worth playing the game at all now (though I highly doubt I'd just ignore it now I've bought a copy) - is it truly as huge a deal that it's basically ruined everything?

Advice appreciated! Not knowing the game, I'm not entirely sure exactly what it should mean for me.

[M.Steiner]

First of all I haven't played the game myself so you'll have to wait for someone who has to properly answer your question but I decided to click your spoiler tag since I doubt I will play it now. (Not that I don't want to play it, infact I would love to be able to, but as I've said a few times before I always have a hard time when it comes to trying such old games unless I have already played them when they first came out. Not for lack of trying, I just get too put off by dated graphics & gameplay that it just results in me giving up :/

Reading your spoiler.. If it's anything like
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl spoiler:

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Finding out that your character (the "Marked One") is actually the Strelok character you've had a quest to kill in your PDA since the beginning of the game

or in The Witcher

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When at the end of the game you come to the realization that Alvin was the Grand Master

I'd say go back to it later when you've either (hopefully) forgotten about it or it's just not at the forefront of your mind as you say. If I had known either of those things above before I had even started the game for the first time it would not only have ruined the reveals themselves (and as for the latter, one of the coolest twists in a video game) but I wouldn't have been able to help myself from questioning stuff throughout the game from already knowing it, and viewing things differently than how I would had I not known.
If that makes sense heh. One of the reasons why I absolutely hate spoilers for tv shows and never read them unless its by accident. It's like.. if you hear that an actor is leaving a show before you have seen their on-screen exit you then start watching their character differently as you're always expecting something. Then you start trying to guess how, why, what etc. (More shows should take note of what the LOST guys did for this reason. Watermark all of the scripts with their names n shit and keep most of the actors and press in the dark as to what's going on so hardly any spoilers leak out. Keep things a surprise like they should be which in turn leaves room for lots of speculation. Rather than be like (new) Doctor Who and have things like Tennants exit public knowledge long before we've seen it, when we can expect it and even know who he was being replaced by = <censored> stupid lol.)

[Whizbang]

I don't really see how that's a spoiler. You play as the Nameless One and you know that from the very get-go. I can't really see how that's a spoiler. Now, had it contained backstory and plot devices then yes, it would have been a spoiler. Buy saying that you are the Nameless One isn't a spoiler.

[BlueFlames]

Advice appreciated!

Stop reading about the game and just f'n play it. Then, you won't have to worry about spoilers.

Also, Mechanus is absolutely right. On the character creation screen, your name is locked in as, "The Nameless One," and in the first dialogue sequence, immediately following character creation, you'll be informed that you're called, "The Nameless One," because you cannot remember your name (among other things). Knowing that The Nameless One is your character isn't like someone walking out of the first screening of The Empire Strikes Back, blathering on about Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father, ruining a major plot point for everyone within an earshot. It's more akin to someone walking out of Return of the Jedi and hypothesizing that maybe Luke Skywalker was one of the protagonists of the original trilogy, ruining absolutely nothing for anyone, anywhere, ever.

[Stracius]

You begin the game as a corpse with no memory. Nameless One is appropriate, nothing is given. I don't even recall that it has anything to do with the plot. There could be some subtle reference that I'm forgetting, but it's been a few years. The story has more focus on how/why you came to be than who you were... hehehe. Actually, I won't say anymore than that because then it would be a bit of a spoiler.

You're fine. Play it first and enjoy the game. I know you will.

[Anubis]

I think perhaps I'm misremembering in that case, since I wasn't meaning the main character. I was meaning what sounded like the final boss.

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I think it said he was your mortality or something? A part of you at the very least.

Clearly I have confused the names in my head, which is unsurprising since I stopped reading as soon as I realised the article contained spoilers. Does that change anything - still not a ruinous spoiler?

Also BF, I was reading about the game in order to try and decide when to play it, having just ordered it I wasn't intentionally reading spoilers or plot details (as I hate doing that for RPGs). I was reading a broad thread about what order people would recommend playing Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape in, and someone decided to throw that little tidbit in amongst their reasons

[BlueFlames]

I think perhaps I'm misremembering in that case, since I wasn't meaning the main character. I was meaning what sounded like the final boss.

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I think it said he was your mortality or something? A part of you at the very least.

Okay, that is a rather substantial spoiler. There's still a lot to be had from the game, but somewhere around the half-way mark, you're going to have a moment of, "Oh! That's what I'm working toward!"

Now, the thing about these games and spoilers is that because the series are both finished and very old, there's very little compunction about posting spoilers. To go back to the Star Wars analogy, I can post about Vader being Luke's father because there's hardly anyone who wants to see the original trilogy, spoiler-free, who hasn't already done so. Likewise, Torment has been around a long time, and while it wasn't a huge hit originally, by one means or another, it's been pretty widely played now, so there's not too many total newbies reading forum threads about it. As a result, I have to repeat my advice to stop reading about these games and just play them.

As to what order to play them, I'd say the factors to consider are overall quality and the length of each game. The Baldur's Gate series will be the longest, by far, with BG2 weighing in at two to five times the length of any of the other games individually (two hundred hours without the expansion or about two hundred and fifty with it). BG is good enough that you'll want to reach the end, so I wouldn't recommend playing it at a point where there's a serious risk of burnout. Torment is by far the best of the bunch, and one of the shorter titles of the lot. If you think that with six to seven hundred hours of gameplay sitting in front of you that there's no risk of burnout, I'd save Torment for last to end on a super-strong note. If you think that there is risk of burnout, then play Torment first, so that you're guaranteed not to burn out, while in the middle of that one. The Icewind Dale series is by far the worst of the bunch. It's combat-focused in an engine where combat is not its strength (I wrote a lengthy article about that specific issue a while back), and unlike the other games, where the writing makes up for any mechanical weaknesses, the story in Icewind Dale is a weak thread, only there to string the combat encounters together. If you're going to burn out, burn out on Icewind Dale, because if you miss the ending, you're not missing much.

Oh, final note: In Torment, if you decide to play a mage, make sure that you find and use a scroll of Mechanus Cannon. It's one of the high-level spells that gets its own thirty-second cutscene, and the cutscene was so good that I house-ruled the spell into my tabletop 3.5e D&D campaign. I'd link to a video, but if you do play as a mage, it'd spoil the experience of casting it for yourself. If you don't play a mage, then a quick YouTube search for "Mechanus Cannon" will turn up a video of someone casting the spell against a poor, unsuspecting shmuck walking down the street. (There's a lot of this kind of thing in Torment actually. I also made a whole set of items, based on the description of Mempa's Biting Ring, which is mechanically little more than a Ring of Protection.)

[Anubis]

I think perhaps I'm misremembering in that case, since I wasn't meaning the main character. I was meaning what sounded like the final boss.

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I think it said he was your mortality or something? A part of you at the very least.

Okay, that is a rather substantial spoiler. There's still a lot to be had from the game, but somewhere around the half-way mark, you're going to have a moment of, "Oh! That's what I'm working toward!"

Now, the thing about these games and spoilers is that because the series are both finished and very old, there's very little compunction about posting spoilers. To go back to the Star Wars analogy, I can post about Vader being Luke's father because there's hardly anyone who wants to see the original trilogy, spoiler-free, who hasn't already done so. Likewise, Torment has been around a long time, and while it wasn't a huge hit originally, by one means or another, it's been pretty widely played now, so there's not too many total newbies reading forum threads about it. As a result, I have to repeat my advice to stop reading about these games and just play them.

Right, so it's kinda half as I feared then. Substantial, but happily enough not to the degree where it makes playing the game worthless. I suppose that's the best I can really hope for in the circumstances.

What you say re: spoilers for old "classics" makes sense - sadly, being too used to the fact that for newer games that just isn't done I didn't really consider the possibility of it occurring before I started reading. Lesson learned for the future I guess - just a shame it had to be learned the hard way. Don't worry though - as soon as it happened, I stopped reading stuff about any of them for fear of the same thing happening!

With regards to the order, I'd tentatively set on Torment -> Baldurs Gate -> Icewind Dale before I ran across that spoiler. Effectively a transition from story heavy to combat heavy over the course of my playing through the collection. I may now change that though and swap Torment and Baldurs Gate around. We'll see - I'll have a think. I think it might be better to delay it in light of the above, but in truth Torment is the one I want to play most right now - so I'm not sure it'd be the best idea to do otherwise, and risk spending my time on Baldurs Gate thinking of another game instead of focusing solely on the one in front of me.

Happily, I highly doubt that burnout will be a concern, as whilst I am indeed buying a large stack of very long games if I feel that I'm tiring out I'll intersperse other games (of different genres) between them to prevent that. Whilst there may be a delicious 700 hours of gameplay in total, the fact that it's not all a single game will help. I definately wouldn't, for example, start Torment if I was already feeling sick of the system from Baldurs Gate - I'd take a break between them and come back for Torment in a month or two's time.

(Also, thanks to yourself and everyone else for their two cents on this )

[Stracius]

Spoilers aside, it is still a game I go back and play often; replayability is often my highest benchmark for the quality of a game. You might have missed a touch of the surprise, but that's not going to break what makes it great. Not by a long shot.

Less talking, more playing.