Found out recently that an enhanced version of Planescape: Torment was on the way to various platforms (including my platform of choice for this game, the iPad), which I and many others have been hoping and waiting for for years. Thanks, Beamdog.

What is PS:T? Just a classic D&D-based Infinity Engine story and dialog-rich RPG many believe to be the best RPG of all time. Be that as it may, but I certainly want to give it a shot. 

And so I am. I’ve only barely begun, especially for such a vast game, but so far I find it rather compelling, in particular the story and its central mystery, and all the talking you get to do, indeed lots of dialog. I shall now venture forth further into the strange world of PS:T and return to tell the tale. Keep the lantern burning, epic tales ahead.

A deserted British town, a strange light that seems to guide you, visions of past events involving the people in said town, a Lovecraftian ethereal and nearly incomprehensible event that leaves many questions unanswered. Welcome to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

It’s a game that bears a strange relationship to Gone Home, because they’re both so similar and so different. The game mechanics are very similar, then there’s a mystery at the core and it’s intertwined with the mundane; you’re placed in a world looking for answers slowly piecing together what has happened in much the same way, slowly getting to know a set of key people. Heck, they both even involve finding out what happened to missing people. They both also possess a strong sense of place; lovingly crafted settings that are characters in their own right.

But the differences that do exist permeates the experience and make the games feel very different overall. Gone Home is confined to a single dark house in the middle of the night, involving a single family, whereas Rapture has a fairly large open area, much of which is in daylight, involving an entire village, though you only get to know and know of some of them. Gone Home is grounded, tight and ultimately rather mundane, and everything is ultimately explained, and Rapture… well, it’s a bit out there, metaphysical and open-ended. Naturally they feel very different though they do play similarly.

I wouldn’t call either objectively better, but their differences ensure many will prefer one over the other, and while I myself enjoyed both I do like Rapture a fair bit more.

It is beautiful and atmospheric, tragedy and darkness are present and also hinted at, but it’s not an overshadowing feeling as is the case with Gone Home, and I love the way they contrast the mundane and recognizable with the transcendental and beyond human comprehension. It’s original not just as a game, but as a story as well.

Oh, and the soundtrack is great, occasionally stunning even.

I’d go so far as to say that I love Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.