No Excuses: Planescape Torment released on Good Old Games

Unless you live under a gaming rock (or are one of them console only folks), you know Good Old Games shut down for a week last week. Many felt they were dead, and it stirred up all the existential scares created in the modern PC market, where one day we will be unable to play our hard-bought games on modern computers. Bad taste or no, as a marketing campaign it managed to get Good Old Games a lot of press, and not just from fanatical devotees like yours truly.

When they relaunched with Baldur’s Gate as a leadoff title, we all knew what was coming. Six Atari-Hasbro titles, which meant six D&D properties. Which meant, eventually, Planescape: Torment.

Unfortunately, now is not the time to write about what I would call possibly the best game of all time. At the moment I am currently plowing through the history of the Infinity Engine (expect a piece on Baldur’s Gate shortly, followed by the other games), and, alas, I am not yet at that pinnacle of storytelling, Planescape: Torment. All I can offer you is a retrospective over on Rock, Paper, Shotgun written by Kieron Gillen, a promise of a future retrospective that is less focused on the game and rather on its importance, and the fact that my release day foldout four disc set is sitting in a place of honor on my dresser.

If you haven’t played it, you owe it to yourself to. In terms of narrative, especially narrative native to a video game, no game has done it better. And now you have no excuse not to play it.