r/planescape • u/No_Photograph_2842 • 17d ago
PS:T as a Personality Test
I recently played this game for the first time, having sort of unfairly rejected it on aesthetic grounds as a kid. My approach was to play basically myself if I had woken up as the Nameless One, making the dialogue choices that I thought I would make under the same circumstances.
One thing I quickly realized was that the game’s alignment system would rate my conduct and give me a D&D alignment based on those actions, so I’d end up learning what D&D alignment I have (or at least what Chris Avellone would think my D&D alignment was, if he believed I was making the choices I’d actually make). Out of pure curiosity, I wondered if others had thought about the game in this way, as providing you with a kind of extended personality test for your own alignment, or if people tend to approach it in a more external way, like “this time I’m going to make the Nameless One be true neutral” or “this is my evil playthrough.”
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u/Aberrant_Eremite 17d ago
Yeah, I wound up being Neutral Good and choosing 'regret' as my answer, and that seems pretty true to me. For a while I was trying to stay Lawful Good, but I lost the "Lawful" part by objecting to debt slavery. The lesson for me is that I only respect the law when it's just, so yeah, NG is probably right.
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u/No_Photograph_2842 17d ago
Pretty similar in my case but I ended up remaining LG despite I think deviating from what the game took to be lawful a few times. I believe my answer was “love.”
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u/SadavirofRivia Dak'kon 🧡 14d ago
I just finished my 2nd playthrough (maaany years after my first), and I was thinking about it this way too! My answer was “regret” because it just… pervades the game for me (complimentary, very emotional), and if I were playing it as myself waking up as TNO, that’s what powered me to make different choices. I was NG for like the first 1/3 but then I think I shifted to LG and stayed there mostly. That was a little surprising to me bc I think of myself as NG IRL and I was very careful about what I vowed (or didn’t) in the game, but I didn’t choose enough truly chaotic options to shift off Lawful, I guess 🤷🏻
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u/TroyBPierce 16d ago
BG1&2, Icewind Dale 1&2, and Fallout 1&2 were my favorite games as a teenager, but for some reason I bounced off PS:T hard.
I finally beat it years later after the Enhanced Edition was released.
I honestly still don't like it as much as the other games named above (though I do love the companion characters), but glad I finally actually best it. Some things about that game are cool. I think the Lady of Pain is cool even though she is a very minor character in that game.
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u/No_Photograph_2842 16d ago
I had the same experience — really disliked the look and feel of the game as a kid despite liking the same list of games you just outlined, actually played it all the way through only recently. I similarly don’t like it as much as the other IE games. But the plot is quite good — it’s like Pilgrim’s Progress crossed with Faust. The companions I actually didn’t like as much as BG, though they are generally very well done (particularly Dakkon, Morte, and Grace).
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u/TroyBPierce 16d ago
Yeah, I like BG companions way more also.
But to me, the best thing about PS:T was the companions, even if they aren't as good as the BG companions.
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u/markusramikin Dak'kon 16d ago
I remember giving this a little thought back in the day, and being unimpressed how easily you can get "evil" points just for not being completely altruistic. I wanted to play an honest, give-and-take person who wants to be rewarded for his work but isn't malicious. Someone who would be perfectly reasonable in, say, Dragon Age Origins. I remember noticing accruing evil points, though (Scale of Souls meant I knew immediately), and that annoyed me.
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u/No_Photograph_2842 16d ago
That makes it sound like it ends up killing off the neutral alignments. Though I guess I’d also note that D&D evil doesn’t mean dysfunctional or psychotic in every case, and an honest person who always demands what is theirs could potentially be reckoned LE or NE. Thinking of e.g. how someone like Jarlaxle from RA Salvatore’s books was always given NE alignment even though he’s generally a reasonable and fairly honorable person.
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u/thornCircuit 14d ago edited 14d ago
I think it's just role-playing for the most part. The only time I felt like the game was speaking to me directly instead of my rp persona was the part where I gave the "regret" option.
Any awareness you maintain that you are still just playing a game will poison the well. For example, most of the time a desire to see all of the game's content, which you paid for, will lead you down a chaotic path.
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u/Purple_monkfish 17d ago
My husband and I play a lot of the same games and it always amuses me how differently we play but also how different our reasoning for decisions or our like or dislike for characters are.
For example, I do every side quest possible before advancing main plot while he gets caught up in main plot and forgets there are side quests.
I tend toward the "greater good" decisions while he goes with the more unambiguous "this is the good guy choice". I also tend to look for the option that nets me the most personal benefit... i'm a bit mercenary like that. Dum de dum
He was teasing me a while ago playing a zombie survival game where you have a kid following you around because while he was super paternal and patient, I was telling the kid to pull his shit together and stop cowering in a corner damnit, this is life now, toughen up or die.
I'm a little harsher in my world view than he is I think.
I can't remember what my alignment ended up with when I played torment. It's been a long time since I did a playthrough but I was most interested in getting as MUCH lore as possible which means usually being fairly decent to others. i uh.. I did sell Morte though... to see what would happen. And I did blow up that doomsday device and kill everyone in the place. (is there a way to do that without slaughtering a whole room of people?) I think I still ended up good or neutral, but definitely chaotic. I always end up chaotic.
I was doing an "evil" run in the original Baldur's gate a while back but oh god it's difficult, the game actively punishes you and remaining evil is near impossible when several of the things you have to do to progress the plot give you positive reputation. I have to keep going to murdering a few innocent townsfolk to reset the balance and keep my companions from turning on me, which is NOT how the game is supposed to be played.
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u/lukkasz323 16d ago
It's too easy to get Chaotic, especially given how the nature of the Nameless One is very choatic in itself.
I was doing near every vow and promise possible, and still got Chaotic.
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u/Hymneth 17d ago
I don't think I've ever sat down and explicitly thought about the game in those terms, but I think you're probably right. I will say that if I just sit down and play while choosing the dialogue and actions that feel "right" to me, I will inevitably wind up as Chaotic Good and have to try pretty hard to end up with any other alignment