From: "Jacob G. Corbin" 
Subject: Re: (urth) game, bowie, Knight
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 04:25:31 -0500

As long as we're on the subject of games, I played one a while back (as I
was rereading NEW SUN, in fact - confluence!) that I think folks on the list
might get a kick out of - "Planescape: Torment".  Technically, the game is
fantastic; lovely evocative graphics, haunting music, and
decent-to-excellent voice-acting.  But the story - as PC games go - is
marvelous, and clearly heavily influenced by the heavyweights of what we
might loosely call "dark fantasy" - Peake, Carroll, Moorcock, and yes,
possibly even Wolfe.  The neat trick of the game is that it can be gotten
through almost exclusively through dialogue - mad twitchy button-pushing
skillz are wholly unnecessary - and the wonder is that much of the writing
is actually pretty good.  You play an amnesiac immortal who awakens in an
interdimensional megalopolis populated by illicit arms-dealing angels,
hive-mind robots, cultists of various stripes, and even a pregnant sentient
city block.  There're also very strong (and not wholly ironic, either)
Christian overtones, for those of you whose fancy that might tickle.  The
proceedings resonated very nicely with NEW SUN, especially inasmuch as the
ending was left pleasingly ambiguous.  Good stuff, and a deal at the 5-odd
bucks it can be had for at Best Buy.

Jacob G. Corbin


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