Planescape: Torment - One Of Dragon Age’s Big Influences?

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a new article about Planescape: Torment, and it's influence on Dragon Age.

If you looked at the two games side-by-side, you wouldn’t necessarily know it. Dragon Age dresses in prim and proper fantasy garb while Planescape Torment slips into gnarled, otherworldly skin and acts like its magnificent eccentricity is as normal as a stroll in the park. And sure, Planescape’s personality is utterly brilliant, but it’s hardly all that defines it.

“I mean, we’re not gonna have a Modron wandering around in Dragon Age,” Laidlaw qualifies. “It won’t fit the world. But we can still look at our characters and say, ‘Are they intriguing enough? Do they offer wildly different perspectives?’”

Perhaps even more exciting, however, is the prospect of choices heavily inspired by Planescape’s exceedingly multifaceted approach. That, claims Laidlaw, is the real meat of this Dragon Age-Planescape sandwich, and he’s quite happy to offer variety and choices with real consequences – even if that means many players won’t see a fourth of the game on their first playthrough. He continues, growing ever more animated:

“The big thing Torment brought to the table was offering a lot of solutions to problems – really cool solutions. Not everything was fighting. Oftentimes being persuasive or having certain stat checks might take care of it. It was like, ‘I have a wisdom stat of 25, so let’s shortcut the entire ending.’ I really like that kind of stuff. It also did a great job of acknowledging the path you chose in the game.”