Since noone else will take it upon themselves to bash the original game's story I cannot resist :) Just a shame the site doesn't have downvotes :)
Honestly, the story of the original was total shit - it just got the medicocrity appeal nailed. I lost count of how many times it pushed the inane "death may be better" spiel, and how I never got to point out how moronic the "logic" of it was. The whole reasoning was that you lost more and more memories (lost "yourself") and caused so much suffering to people around you that gee whiz, maybe you might have more fun rotting for eternity. Of course, death kills ALL your memories and making others suffer is basically just a bonus - and every egomaniac knows that life is everything and will sacrifice millions of children to live ten seconds longer - it's just common sense!
But people absolutely love some "death isn't so bad" propaganda, the vast majority of people are so terrified of death they won't even admit they are afraid of it - and will just regurgitate some nonsense about how it's inevitable. The weather is also inevitable, but people spend more time complaining about that than about death - death bitching is completely taboo in society because the fear is so all-consuming. But what truly annoyed me was that I never got to play the egomanic angle, and to mock the feeble nobodies that think death is ok, making the whole story a propaganda piece to celebrate human weakness.
The whole focus of my character should be to continue exploring immortality, and especially in such a fantastic setting with infinite possibilities he could chase all kind of possibilities to attain it, possibly even rising to some sort of god-like state. Instead I never got to explore this - at all. My character was some tired weakling that thought he had tried and failed too many times so now he was out on the lamest quest of his life, talking to clowns that praised suicide and listening to how HORRIBRU it was to be immortal. By all means, bring it on - but to do so without letting me mock it is not cool.
So with a shit story why did I enjoy the game? Well, certainly not because of the graphics - they were also shit. Some of the music was really good but the actual good pieces played like once or twice, so I maybe got to enjoy ten minutes of good music in the game. But it was the level of reactivity that impressed me, the sheer number of odd objects to be manipulated with unexpected results, obscure sub quests to discover, obtuse dialogue lines appearing from some semi-bizarre thing I tried earlier - the game was full of this and I absolutely loved it. It also provided me with the bare minimum of acceptable "evil" options, it was never truly satisfying or dark enough but at least I got to create someone I could approve of - which was really, really rare back then. Oh yeah, the companions were shit as well, except for Ignus. Ignus was a good kid.
This being said I am extremely positive to Torment - Tides of Numenera, a game I am 99.x percent certain will crush the original, and I love everything I am hearing about it. I am rooting for the 4.5 goal and I actually think it will make it - this will be a spectacular game :)
@noclue_27 @Morbissus Gaming was so shit back in his days it didn't take much talent to stand out - and when the quality improved he just couldn't keep it up - and now he is more behind than ever.
@Fooljeff Just read it, Garriott hyperbole bragging about how he is doing things and pretending he is a visionary - only to come up with another shit game.
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