Planescape Torment Review

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            Planescape Torment

Review by ScoutMay 2005

What can change the nature of a man?

That’s a loaded question if ever there was one. It’s timeless and timely, a question meant to make you pause and reflect. It’s as important today as it was, say, in Aristotle’s time, and it will no doubt occupy a few of the better minds of generations to come.  It also just happens to be the central conceit of Black Isle’s 1999 CRPG Planescape Torment. It’s not the only question you’ll confront while wandering the streets, alleys, halls and crypts of this game, but it’s the central one, the big kahuna, and there is a scene later on where you will be forced to answer it. Which of the many possible replies you choose will say as much about your worldview as all the actions you have taken prior to this point.  This is pretty heady stuff for a computer game, more an issue for a philosophy class than an electronic entertainment, but since one of the game’s creators was a philosophy major, this is also the stuff of Planescape Torment.

Don’t approach this CRPG too lightly. It’s the gaming equivalent of War and Peace, slow to start, frustratingly obscure at times, yet once that great narrative engine finally revs up, it moves the player along with breathtaking authority. I’ve only played it once so far. Usually I play a game twice before sitting down to review it, but I’m not ready to reenter the world of Planescape Torment just yet. There’s something about this game. It’s disturbing, haunting and heavy. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

The game begins in one of the great settings of all time, a grisly mortuary reminiscent of the abattoir in Sanitarium but 10 times worse. Moaning zombies shuffle about, odd chaps in gray robes watch as other odd chaps vivisect corpses on bloodstained slabs, the dead bodies split open from crotch to jugular, the flesh and muscle pinned back to expose the rotting insides. You awake, blessedly intact, on one of those slabs. Floating next to you is a yammering skull. The skull seems to be talking to you.

Meet Morte, the disembodied, fleshless head who is your first and most steadfast companion throughout the game. Morte is a master of the wisecrack; a leering, lustful orb of bone with the nastiest set of chompers this side of the Styx. As he attempts to debrief you, you realize that you have no idea how or why you ended up dead on a slab. In fact, you have no memories at all. It’s the oldest trick in the storyteller’s book, starting out with an amnesia-afflicted protagonist. As trite as that might seem, it’s not a crutch but the main thread that holds this wildly phantasmagoric narrative together. Since you have zilch, nada, no memory, you are called the Nameless One. You’re little more than a hulking, wild-eyed savage in a loincloth, covered head to toe with scar tissue, trapped in a prison mortuary. Fun for the whole family, Planescape is.

Black Isle, developers of the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series, know their CRPGs as well as anyone, but in this game things are a little different. First of all, you don’t create a character; you are the Nameless One, end of story. You still have the usual ability to assign your character statistics and attributes at start up. You can pile up points in Strength to make a fighter, load up on Dexterity to make a thief and boost your Armor class or choose Intelligence if you lean toward a mage and are keen to recover your memories. But, unlike most role-playing games, there’s no choice of race or gender, no elves, fairies, ogres or haughty mandarins to choose from. You are the Nameless One and you start out as a level three Fighter, period. To make up for the lack of an open character generation system, once you begin to collect your party, Black Isle lets the Nameless One shift between classes at will, moving easily from Fighter to Mage to Thief and back depending on the story’s needs. As you advance in the game and start to level up, you will find yourself intuitively specializing. I spent most of my time switching back and forth from Mage to Fighter, sharpening my weapons skills and gathering cool pyrotechnical spells. About those spells … While wading into a fight with your axe swinging is always therapeutic, there is little to compare to launching a ball of pulsing light into the air, watching it rise, rise and then plummet, pounding your foe flat into the cobblestones. In fact, except for a latecomer to the party, these missile-type spells are pretty much the only ranged attacks available.

A good tip, at least for your first play-through, is to load up on as much Intelligence as you dare. While this will automatically boost your spell-casting skills and push you toward all things mage-like, it also opens up the maximum amount of dialogue choices, which in turn speed the return of your lost memories. Normally, dialogue choices aren’t such a big deal, but in Planescape Torment the word is a mighty thing. It’s spoiling nothing at this late date to say that the Nameless One can as easily vanquish an enemy with a few well-chosen phrases as a quick thrust of a dagger. Later in the game, this comes into play in ways hard to imagine. Don’t ignore Strength and Dexterity, as you will need them, but they will tend to build up as you progress. High Intelligence will help pave the way for the thinking player, and this is a thinking (and reading) player’s game. Feargus Urquhart, Black Isle’s division director for Planescape, hinted as much in a June 11, 2001 interview with Gamasutra when describing “the differences between the Baldur’s Gate series, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. All of the products use the same engine (the Bioware Infinity Engine), but all of them are seen as very distinctly different products. The way we think about them is along a line from adventure to hack-and-slash. Torment is almost an adventure game, Icewind Dale is almost a true hack-and-slash like Diablo, and Baldur’s Gate is somewhere right in the middle.”

Torment is almost an adventure game. While everyone and his grandmother likes to claim that his blood-soaked shoot-’em-up is really just a misunderstood adventure game, for once, there is some truth to this claim.

Indeed, one of the driving ideas behind Planescape is the opportunity to consistently use brains over brawn. You can react by force at the first sign of trouble, or you can puzzle your way through the dialogue, reading between the lines, divining the character’s motivations, trying to persuade instead of pummel. To this end, there’s a lot of extremely well-written dialogue to wade through and even more if you tilt your gameplay to exploit the game’s adventure flavor. Many of the quests have a puzzle quality to them; there is a lot, lot, lot of reading and yet if you pay attention and listen carefully and act on your hunches, you’ll be surprised how much combat you can avoid. NPCs will engage you in surprisingly deep discussions, especially those associated with the main quest.  Even the one cathouse in the game is called the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts. The maidens therein engage their patrons in philosophical discussion and debate instead of sweaty, impersonal boot-knocking. Your own party is a gabby bunch, quickly falling into witty repartee if you ignore them too long. Some of the conversations are serious, some lascivious, especially those featuring the beautiful Fall-from-Grace as the topic.

Choices abound, and they’re all yours to make. Your good/bad alignment is set to neutral at the beginning and, depending on your responses and reactions, shifts toward the light or the dark. A tip to the player wanting to play nice: Sigil, the Planescape city you start out in, is a tough neighborhood. Don’t be afraid to practice some prudent self-interest, especially at the beginning. Grab what you need when you need it. The alignment needle moves slowly off its default slot, and you can get away with a lot of mischief before you start to register as a selfish rogue. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to burnish your reputation later.

The interface is a bit complex but well thought out. For instance, when you enter combat, you can manually right-click anywhere on the playing screen to summon up a game-pausing World Screen Interface, basically a movable menu of action choices of which weapon to wield, spells to load, or special powers to implement. Also included are inventories, maps, journals, talk icon, stats, and portraits to allow you to move from member to member and assign tasks before launching your attack. Once the bookkeeping is finished, return to the main screen and then click on the enemy. All of these options are also permanently available at the lower left corner of your screen. The choice is yours, though I found myself using the World Screen since I didn’t have to cursor down off the playing area to set up my attacks. Movement is strictly point-and-click and reminiscent of Baldur’s Gate’s navigation scheme, though when you depart a building, your party automatically follows instead of remaining behind.

Many of your encounters, if handled wisely, will trigger flashbacks for the Nameless One. As well as filling in the blanks about his enigmatic past, these flashbacks give him skill points. What is different in this game is you are retrieving skills, not building or learning them. The Nameless One has lived countless lives, fought countless battles and has been-there-done-that times ten. What the player is doing is tracking down and uncovering a mystery instead of building a character to save the world.

Also unique to Planescape is the small fact that the main character cannot die. Your party members can snuff it permanently, but the Nameless One suffers no such fate. When he falls in combat, he returns immediately to the game, inventory intact, first back in the Mortuary and later on at particular points depending on where he is in the game world. This is a stroke of brilliance on the part of the developers, an organic solution to one of the central paradoxes of gaming, reloading after the main character dies. This is something I’ve resented since I met my first grue in Zork, the sudden dump to the menu so that you can reload your last save. Developers are aware this is a sore point, and many automatically return the main character to a prior load point, but still there’s something inherently cheesy about using the die/reload strategy to get through a game. It’s become such a tradition that most gamers barely notice it. But in Planescape Torment the Nameless One cannot die.  He can only be temporarily put down. No matter the damage, no matter the foe (with one very special exception), he will revive. In fact, death often works to the Nameless One’s advantage, advancing the story at some points and even functioning as a fast mode of travel at others.

All of this merriment runs on the same engine used in the original Baldur’s Gate, Bioware’s now-dated Infinity Engine. Unlike Fallout, with its strictly tile-based engine, the Infinity Engine allowed (forced?) the artists to deliver fully rendered backgrounds onto which maps could be laid and then the whole thing tweaked and retweaked for maximum effect. In Planescape, the artists really gave their imaginations free rein, conjuring up one beautifully deranged area after another. Buildings jut out at crazed angles, carved stone pillars that serve no possible purpose rise high out of sight, web works of cables stretch from roof to roof, stairs are built of rotted boards or carved from living stone, underground crypts glow with jewel tones, pathetic creatures hide out in gigantic skulls, robot-savants tinker endlessly with a viciously lethal maze.

As gorgeous and fitting to the concept of the Planes as all this is, for the player it’s a little like moving half-inch high people through the world’s most psychedelic carpet. Due to this strict 2D, isometric viewpoint, the amount of detail can be disorienting at times, and it takes a while to get a feel for how to get around in this lavishly rendered multiverse. You need to keep a sharp eye on the screen just to get from point A to point B. Later, when the maps open up, it gets less tedious to move around. There’s a reason the developers didn’t let you utilize the maps at the outset, though.  It’s important for you to physically accompany the party as it cruises Sigil, engaging in a hundred minibattles and chatting up the denizens, running their quests so that you can uncover and utilize the skills you’ll need for the later, more challenging parts of the game. There are countless nooks and crannies in this game, and exploring the different areas is half the fun. You would be cheating yourself by skipping across maps too early. Mind-melding rats, a pregnant alley, weeping stones, riddling skeletons, a prostitute who specializes in heaping foul insults upon her tricks, a madman mourning his lost fork, a crazed hag who will literally thrust her claw into your guts and rummage around inside … these are only a few of the encounters that await the thoroughly snoopy player.

Your own party is hardly the picture of normality, either. There is Morte, of course, who is with you from the start. His mouth is his weapon, his curse and his gift. Much like Grumpos in Anachronox, Morte has the ability to befuddle a foe with a burst of taunts.  This is especially useful against powerful mages who cast devastating missile spells. Turn Morte loose on one and watch the enemy’s spells fizz and misfire time and time again. Almost as powerful are Morte’s chompers. He can often chew through a small gang of lesser foes all by himself while the Nameless One stands aside and watches.  Dak’kon, an ancient Githzreal warrior, is a bit deceiving. Mysterious and hypermoral, he is trained in the martial arts and yet is oddly vulnerable to attack. I often found myself healing Dak’kon in the heat of battle while sturdy little Morte battled on unfazed. Still, Dak’kon is valuable if only for the fact that merely talking to him allows you to shift from Fighter to Mage and back at a moment’s notice. There’s much more to Dak’kon than that, much more to all of the party members than can be covered here. Spend as much time as possible talking to and interacting with them, and you’ll be rewarded.

The third indispensable party member is Fall-from-Grace, a winged succubus of one of the feuding demon classes responsible for the endless war raging beyond Sigil out on the Planes. Fall-from-Grace, sold into sexual slavery by her own fiendish mum, subsequently freed herself through her wits and went on to operate the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts. She’s a stunning if ultimately platonic beauty with a cool aristocratic bearing, a heart of gold and an unerring judge of character. The Nameless One could do worse than to listen to her wise and compassionate advice. She rarely steers him wrong.  She’s also a powerful healer and a decent warrior. I kept her near at all times and came to depend on her feedback, savvy and healing powers. Having her with you at the last part of the game results in some surprising revelations as well.

Other, lesser (at least for me) party members were Annah, a young Tiefling, half-human, half-demon with a bad crush on the Nameless One. A thief by trade, she is handy at the onset but tends to be a liability in the tougher battles. Of course, I chose to leave her behind a lot, so she had little chance to build her stats. I’ve read of other players successfully building her into a formidable opponent. In Planescape Torment, it’s the choices you make as a player that shape how game unfolds, not the game shaping how you play. Ignus, a mad mage literally consumed by a fire fetish, can toss a mean fireball, but he was too unstable and unlikable for my tastes. There’s funny, cool, geeky Nordom, a rogue computer/robot you find at the end of a grueling quest. He’s a delight to talk to, and his stats will rise just by interaction with other party members. He is the only one who can use ranged weapons, so if you feel especially in need of a talking, crossbow-wielding box on legs, make it a priority to find and use Nordom. His hyperlogical observations on the effects of Fall-from-Grace’s sexuality on adjacent males are priceless. Finally, there is Vhailor (who I confess I missed altogether), a dead Mercykiller who is haunting his old armor. Apparently, he’s a tank and a half with a rigid moral code, and though he is worth his weight in a battle, be sure you don’t commit a crime while he is around or you’ll quickly find yourself fighting for your life. 

As in any CRPG, there’s a vast arsenal of spells and weapons at your disposal. You can earn them through quests or by stealing them, buying them or finding them. Armor doesn’t play a large part in this game, though. In fact, my main character spent most of the game in a ragged loincloth, only once donning a robe and only then as a disguise in the Mortuary and not as a protection. I think there was a cracked breastplate available to the Nameless One, but all of the rest of the armor was for other party members only. Fall-from-Grace, due to her healer status, and Annah, a vulnerable thief, had the most armor available to them. The Nameless One gains some protection through rings and bracers and tattoos (more on those later), but mostly he survives by his wits and his wisdom. If your idea of role-playing is to create a creaking tank of metal with which to plow through ranks of enemies, you’ll have to do some rethinking for Planescape Torment.

Not to say that cultivating fighting skills isn’t essential. But fighting is merely one tool among many. This is one of the few games where magic is as attractive to the general player like me as melee action. Some of the spells are just dang cool. Work your mage abilities up to level 8, then stand back and watch Mechanus’s Cannon in action.  I won’t spoil it for you, but this spell is to opponents what Sherman was to Atlanta. There is the lethal Deathbolt, the dazzling Meteor Bombardment, and the crème de le crème, the Rune of Torment itself. Sure, you can kill foes with weapons, but with some of the higher-level spells, you can level every creature on your screen, serving up 100 points of damage with no chance of the baddies making a Saving Throw. This makes taking the path of the mage more attractive than usual.

I found I used magic more and melee less in this game than in any other CRPG I’ve played, mostly because of the fireworks associated with casting a spell. The shield and protection spells work so well that I found myself casting every one my party had before entering the bigger battles. Due to the underlying intricacies of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons system of gameplay, I lacked a firm grasp of the nuts and bolts of exactly what was happening with saving throws and such, but the head designer, Chris Avelone, and his staff did such an excellent job of converting this system to compelling gameplay that I didn’t feel the need to address the finer nuances. It was the characters I was interested in, them and the epic story in which they moved.

There are factions to join in Planescape Torment. Before you can join up, you have to fulfill a series of quests to prove yourself and in doing so prove to the faction recruiter your worth and belief in their system. Dustmen, those robed figures you meet at the beginning of the game, are dedicated to the True Death, the final cessation of all emotion and attachment. Sort of like a cross between Goth and Buddhist, they strive toward peace through death of self and death of body. Then there are the Godsmen, super Dale Carnegie types, believing in the power of positive striving. Stoic, good-hearted workaholics, they hole up in a big foundry, which is like moving to Pittsburgh for the air, but it seems to work for them. By the way, you can get a lot of goodies if you are a Godsman.  The Sensates were more my style, though. They believe that life is best experienced by … well, by experiencing it. They throw themselves into the raging sea of sensation and build their bodies and spirits by interacting with the multiverse around them. The Anarchists are sort of the unfaction, dedicated solely to doing away with all factions. They are attractive in that they have the ability to infiltrate any other faction. Become an Anarchist and you have access to several factions at once, though you don’t get the special abilities, just the lesser perks. Finally, there are the Xaositects or Chaosmen. As the name suggests, they aren’t much for Robert’s Rules of Order. They drift through the Planes doing whatever occurs to them. I imagine them skateboarding around Sigil at night, tagging walls with runic symbols.

A device unique to Planescape Torment is the use of tattoos.  Tattoos come in two flavors, Stat Tattoos that make you tougher or faster or smarter and Event Tattoos that do all that as well as document your journey through the Planes. You can buy Stat Tattoos anytime if you have the cash, but you can only purchase an Event tattoo after you have completed a specific quest. For example, you get access to the Tattoo of the Joining, which brings you more friends, only after you have completed a quest to bring two would-be lovers together. You get the Tattoo of Trist’s Savior, a tattoo that protects you against paralyzing attacks, when you help a slave gain his freedom. All but one tattoo can be purchased from Fell’s tattoo parlor in the heart of the Hive. Fell is a fallen Dabus with a bit of history of his own and, depending on which party member is with you when you go to him, your visit will be either uneventful or tension-ridden. A Dabus, by the way, is a supplicant of the Lady of Pain, the invisible, statless goddess who rules Sigil and keeps it separated from the rest of the Planes. Cross her once too often and no matter how powerful you think you are, you will pay the price.  The robed, floating Dabus do her illogical bidding, moving buildings and streets at her whim. Fell has left her service and gone into business on his own and for some reason escapes the Lady’s famous wrath.

Only the Nameless One, Dak’kon and Annah can wear tattoos. Since there is little to no armor in this game, tattoos act as a substitute, imparting myriad abilities and some weaknesses to the wearers. It’s especially compelling to return to Fell’s shop after several completed quests and see his inventory stocked with new tattoos reflecting your actions during the interim. It would have been easy to just use generic armor in an RPGs-R-Us approach, but the developers put in the extra work and creative muscle-flexing it takes to rise above the pack and in doing so created something special.

Planescape is very, very special. Some might say it’s too bizarre and weird, but I found it a refreshingly deep and thoughtful interlude in an otherwise cookie-cutter world of Samegaming™.  There’s much more to this game than I have described, so many locations and creatures, quests and odd dialogues that it would take 10 reviews to cover them all. There’s the sound design, the writing, the cutscenes, the voice acting, all of it top-notch, first-rate. For the hardcore AD&D gamer who loves nothing more than to carefully gauge each move based on that famously complex system, there is plenty to chew on. For those, like me, who just want a great gaming experience, there is little to compare to this game. Fallout 2. Morrowind.  Even those towering achievements don’t approach the sheer imaginative scope and depth of Planescape Torment. If computer games developers ever hope to stake their claim in the mature artistic mainstream alongside painting, music and literature, it won’t happen by coming up with ever more capable engines, sweeter eye candy or addictive gameplay, though it won’t happen without them either.  It will happen by drafting all of the above into the service of compelling characters such as these, characters who make you care about them, characters who send you pawing for the reload command because you simply cannot possibly conceive of moving another inch without them. Planescape Torment accomplishes all this and more, capturing the player’s heart and intellect, taking him on a long, fraught journey through one of the most unique settings I’ve experienced in any medium and wrapping it up in a stunning, jaw-dropping finale.

So. What can change the nature of a man? The answer to that is for each of us to discover on our own, but by the end of this game you’ll have a good idea where to look. Yeah. It’s really that good. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Black Isle Publisher: Interplay Release Date: 1999

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

Pentium 200 MHz with MMX (Pentium 266 MHz with MMX recommended) Windows 95 or 98 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended) 650 MB free hard drive space 8X CD-ROM DirectX 6 or higher DirectX certified sound and video card 4 MB SVGA video card

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Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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33 Responses to Goons Loom at Infinity Ward

  • Meho

    So, you make your company a billion in profits in two months. Next thing you know, you’re investigated for insubordination, sued and sacked. Also, your team members are threatened by men looking like thugs yet not wearing uniforms. I guess Pandemic studios are now happy they were acquired by EA and not Activision. They just lost their jobs after making two moderatly successful games.

    Seriously, breaches of contract and stuff, yeah, I can get behind that but having people threatened and reporting “insubordination” sounds like some proper gestapo shit. One would think that after making the fastest selling entertainment product in history, Infinity Ward would be given SOME credit by their Activision Overlords, but I guess Bobby Kottick was serious about the air of fear and uncertainty he wanted to prevail in the Activision cubicle farms. A fascinating story, can’t wait to hear the rest!!

  • Andrew

    Harsh.

    I’m a little wary calling out anything too early but Activision isn’t exactly know for it’s good closure policy of studios, and removal of staff in the past.

    What transgressions they’ve done as publisher-owned, slightly-more-independent-perhaps CO’s – who knows? Will we ever know? 🙁

  • ajax19

    Now that is how you handle insubordination.  Send in security and throw their asses into the brig (i.e., fire them).  I reckon this will be a long and ugly process as most HR-related matters are.  As an attorney, I have had the (dis)plesure of reviewing various HR complaints and matters in my day.  Needless to say the things people do at work simply boggle the mind.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    It is awfully shocking that Infinity Ward, of all studios, would be made an example of with goons and firings. They’re kind of a golden-egg-laying goose.

    Unless of course West and Zampella were actually doing something wrong/unethical/illegal, in which case I’d have to side with Activision. But if some of the tweets are true, and A/B is just trying to bring a rogue studio to heel, there are gentler ways to do it.

  • Meho

    The plot, apparently thickens:

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/activision-holding-back-mw2-royalties

    “Website BingeGamer (via VG247) was told by a collection of unnamed sources that not a single penny of the $1bn generated by MW2 has been seen by Infinity Ward. ”

    This is still filed strictly under rumours and speculation but, if it’s true, then it’s fucking bizarre. I mean, I know IW are part of Activision, yet you’d expect their contracts to involve some bonuses on top of the salary should their games do well..

    “The report also states that the “insubordination” IW bosses Jason West and Frank Zampella appear to have been sacked for was caused by secret discussions with rival publishers.”

    Because in corporate America the only secret discussions allowed are those between the senior staff at your company.

    OK, some more linkage:

    http://www.bingegamer.net/2010/infinity-ward-has-not-received-royalties-for-modern-warfare-2/

    Also, just for completion’s sake, a now legendary tweet by Tim Schafer regarding this situation:

    “Getting mad at Activision for this kind of thing is like getting mad at an ape for throwing feces. It’s just how the beast communicates.”

  • Meho

    So, what do we know after one day?

    Activision has indeed sacked West and Zampella. Infinity Ward is supposed to be working on DLC for Modern Warfare 2 as we speak. There will be a Call of Duty title in 2010, made by Treyarch. There will be another Call of Duty title in 2011 although it is not yet clear who is going to be the developer. Infinity Ward is now temporarily headed by Activision’s employees Steve Pearce and Steve Ackrich but Activision also announced that a newly formed studio, Sledgehammer Games will be handling future Call of Duty games and will be “extend(ing) the franchise into the action-adventure genre”. Sledgehammer is headed by former Visceral Games executives Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey, which, upon playing Dante’s Inferno, I am not sure is the greatest idea ever…

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    1UP says: “In addition, they have formed a new business unit dedicated to publishing an annual Call of Duty game.”

    Isn’t that just so Activision?

  • Andrew

    Oh! Oh! I can name them! Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: 2010 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: 2011! 😀

    Oooh, wait, but we need other genres, wow! so much chance to have the “Call of Duty: ” namers busy for ages 😀

    Sigh.

  • Mat

    That’s abit unfair, Andrew.

    Aren’t you forgetting “Call of Duty: Modern MMO” and “Call of Duty: Panzer Tankz Mini Kartz Racer!”?

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Kotaku’s really trying to help Activision out: new titles and box art.

  • Toger

    I’d play the Wolveriiiiiiiiines version! 😀

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Hey, the Keeping The Peace version has my childhood neighbors on the cover!

  • Meho

    Modern Gwarfare has practically infinite potential for cross marketing!!!

  • lakerz1

    Call of Duty: Corporate Clusterfuck

    LOL

  • Mat

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/infinity-ward-bosses-suing-activision

    This isn’t looking like a story that will go away anytime soon.

  • Meho

    No, it won’t. More info:

    http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1074524p1.html

    and

    http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1074657p1.html

    Choice quotes:

    “The lawsuit states that in the wake of Modern Warfare 2’s success, Activision refused to honor the MOU or the Emplyoment Agreement with West and Zampella, and instead launched a “pre-textual investigation against West and Zampella to create a basis to fire the two co-heads of Infinity Ward before the first Modern Warfare 2 royalty payment.”

    “”West and Zampella were interrogated for over six hours in a windowless conference room; Activision investigators brought other Infinity Ward employees to tears in their questioning and accusations and threatened West and Zampella with ‘insubordination’ if they attempted to console them.”
    ”

    Anyway, after reading the court document, I’d say it’s ironic that West and Zampella are fighting to retain control over Modern Warfare brand even though I imagine they are sick to death of it by now…

  • ajax19

    It’s not so much ironic that they are fighting to retain control over Modern Warfare brand even though they are likely sick to death of it by now, but rather very tactical.

    According to the court papers and West and Zampella’s side of the story, this MOU gives them control over “Modern Wafare” and rights to certain royalties that were due in the next few weeks based on the sales of MW2.  Control over MW is their biggest bargaining chip here.  They file a law suit asking for that and the money and then when it comes to time for settlement talks they use their (alleged) leverage over one leg of Activision’s admitted three-legged stool as a way to get more money from them. 

    They are suing for $36 million worth of damages, if they “agree” to give unfettered control of the MW series to Activision, they stand a better chance to see more of that $36 million.

    Complains in law suits are often like this.  They ask very everything and anything, because it’s much easier to amend and pare things down than to amend and try to add things be it damages or additional claims.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I honestly wouldn’t have expected THIS level of greed, even from Activision. I mean seriously, the game made TWO BILLION DOLLARS, people. There’s enough to go around.

    Infinity Ward is wholly owned by Activision, but I imagine all of its employees will probably quit in the next several months. I also wouldn’t be surprised if West and Zampella start a new studio and hire them all back. Doubtless all employees are bound by non-competes, but those are notoriously difficult to enforce, especially in the games industry.

  • Mat

    The overriding feeling I get from this is is that, not for the first time, Activision are just swinging around their weight like some 500lb Gorilla, and whoever gets caught out by it.. well, tough luck.

    This whole situation just smacks of arrogance. Arrogance that they’ve become no strangers to in recent times.. such as slapping a £55 RRP on Modern Warfare 2 in the UK (that thankfully few if any retailers actually stuck with).

    With all this re-structuring (read: milking) I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s afew concerned faces at Treyarch, too.

  • Bowbe

    Ok…aside from all the nerd rage that the “awesome” management of Infinity Ward got fired by their owner corporation lets analyze a few facts.

    Infinity Ward was successful at creating a pretty good fairly engaging and scary single player game. That grossed an estimated 1.5-2.0 billion dollars in the first two months of release. About the third month we realize that the monolithic statue that is Infinity Ward has feet made of clay (about January 2010) when their various patches for the multi player FAIL to stop all sorts of hacks/cracks/cheats that absolutely ruined the game.

    In November 2009 the entire games industry is hailing them as the 2nd coming (again). Their reviews are 9.5+ on every site.

    Now its March 2010 and metacritic fan ratings push the game to a 5.5.

    This same management everyone has hailed were also grossly negligent in releasing multiplayer that was hacked/cracked/and full of about as many horrible cheats as I have ever seen in more than a decade of online gaming. The managment that allowed their code to be accessed by hackers to “look for bugs”. The same hackers who have destroyed the multiplayer experience. I’d fire them too. They really aint worth that much $ in the grand scheme of things and if they broke contract or NDA with another company/entities they DESERVE what they get.

    As for that billion plus it is just a gross. As someone who works in games publishing let me clarify how this works. 60msrp. Retailer keeps $30.00 of that to keep the lights on in their store. Microsoft and Sony have licensing agreements for their perspective consoles that pay them around 1/3rd of the profit up till a game makes “platinum” status then the rate goes down. Its like a movie studio. So of the $30.00 left over after Walmart, Microsoft/Sony get $10.00. Uncle Sam/the Queen/your National Tax Collector gets $10.00 in varied corporate tax, leaving Activision/Blizzard $10 to divvy up as they chose to the creative studio (Infinity Ward). So a big chunk of change but not a Billion dollars. More like $167 million. A very decent chunk of change for sure. But when you consider blizzard/activision gets to keep about $32 million a MONTH from World of Warcraft, its not that impressive.

  • Bowbe

    Likewise since West and Zampella were dumb enough to allow their code to be distributed onthe net I wouldn’t trust them to put out another game that wouldnt be just as messed up as this one was. There were high school kids playing MW2 two weeks before it came out for peets sake. Whent hey logged in after “buying a copy” all their perks were still there. All their points were still there. Now invariably when you play you will see hundreds of players with prestige 10, earned through boosting. The boosting service is SOLD FREELY for about 2000 microsoft points or 3 months live subscriptions.
    My point is, Activision’s strongest case is that someone willingly let a flagship game of their Christmas lineup be hacked and passed about for free diminishing its value and that its value continues to diminish. Someone has to staunch the gouts of blood because quite honestly, folks who prefer a clean multiplayer game will never trust Infinity Ward again. If West and Zampella couldnt or wouldnt find the person(S) responsible for all that out and destruction of their lucrative multiplayer IP then Activision has every right to punish them financially and legally for ruining their good name. You notice the hacking and cracking is very difficult on WOW, it is strictly enforced and checks and balances are put in place to protect the fans. Infinity ward didnt do this or has thus far failed in its obligation ot the fans. Someone has to pay. Simple as that.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    We’ve all seen that pie chart, Bowbe, but I doubt the studio leadership was fired for shipping an exploitable game.

    Are you actually suggesting that Activision fired senior management because of problems with free DLC? Or that Activision cares that there is cheating in the game? Activision sees no revenue from online play. They could care less whether or not it works.

    You’re free to be an apologist for Activision if you like, but your analysis of WHY Zampelli and West were fired doesn’t seem very plausible.

  • Bowbe

    What isn’t plausible about shopping your parent companies Itellectual Property to hacker sites to look for bugs? Thats pretty cut and dried and thats what they did. That would be me posting up chapters of a book for WOTC/Hasbro on a torrent account while also submitting it for publication. You do that in any job you get fired. I’m not apologizing for Activision, I’m pointing out issues of corporate and leadership related negligence that will get you fired.

    Gay bashing. Infinity Ward had two instances of that with this game, once with the youtube vid, 2nd with the in game “joke” about don’t ask don’t tell. Did I think they were funny? Sure because I have a sense of humor. If you work for a big ass company (Bank of America being one) and make a similar joke even on your facebook page outside of work guess what? Fired. Thats corporate culture now like it or not. Unless your a rapper that is.

    Activision may not “make” the dough off the online play as you say but lets call an apple an apple shall we. How many people actually bought the game PURELY to play the 10 hour single player game? 1/10th of the sales maybe? You buy COD games for the online experience. Their negligence ruined the online experience and tell me it hasn’t been ruined after you’ve been buried in three dozen care package strikes. COD MW1 didnt have those issues. This one is rife with them. If your sitting with friends and 8 out of 10 of them agree the online blows and you were on the fence about buying it for yourself are you still going to buy it for full price? No, you’ll pick it up used and Activision certainly doesnt get any $$ off a resale. Check your worship of Zampelli and West at the door please.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Please. I didn’t know Zampelli and West existed until last week. As for the grammatical wasteland that are your comments, if you worked in game publishing then you would know that once a game is bought it’s bought, that its tail is going to be about six weeks, shorter for a game like this because door busters see around 85% of the profit on Day Zero and Day One. You’d also know that as consumers, gamers are mind-bogglingly stupid, and will cheerfully buy games despite warnings of issues just because they’d always planned to.

    Given that Zampelli and West are now suing, insisting that Modern Warfare is their IP, I’m guessing that they probably didn’t knowingly damage it. But who knows? Maybe Activision, a company that has spent the last five years exploiting franchises, closing studios, firing people without reason, arbitrarily raising prices, making stated company policy that an atmosphere of skepticism, pessimism, and fear was desirable at their wholly owned subsidiaries really is the affronted party here. Time will tell.

  • ajax19

    I don’t think anything is “cut and dry” here.  I don’t think anyone is worshipping either of these guys either.

    The only thing we’ve seen to date are Zampelli and West’s allegations set forth in their complaint and the brief, vague comments by Activision about “insubordination”.  That term is incredibly vague and can mean just about anything in the corporate/HR world. 

    Given that this is now in litigation, rumor and speculation is all you’re going to get until more papers are filed.

    As for their claim for damages, the $36 million they allege includes far, far more than just the royalties they think they are owned.  It’s a combination of things.

    As for the value of MW2 and the money Activision made off it, Activision has already announced that the game was incredibly successful and one of the main reasons behind its success last year.  Regardless of the exact total revenue Activision saw as a result of sales (I’m sure it’s easily found in their public filings) it was a significant portion of their overall revenues.

  • Bowbe

    Haha Steerspike. The only point I was trying to make is that if a parent company wanted to axe these guys they have ample reasons to use as their excuses for termination, most of which would stick.

    Thats ALL I pointed out.

    Leaked versions of the game two weeks before release showing you have no control over your own in studio employees or you willingly leaked the game (Check).

    Inability to control the rampant cheating on multiplayer with 2 patches that did not work resulting in dillution of your IP(Check).

    Use of illigitimate 3rd party hacker sites as “sub contractors” to your IP (Check).

    If this was done without the knowledge of the parent company that (Also) could result in a clause for breach of contract.

    Negotiation in private with a rival entity (Allegedly in this case EA?) for re-entry into the EA fold? Didn’t these bozos pull a similar stunt with EA to break from EA and go to Activision in the first place? Thats the big stinker here according to a lot of other sites that are just as informed as the rest of us.

    The rest of us meaning… people who were not in the meeting. I cherish every time someone allegedly or directly affiliated with the “fired side” tries to win the court of public opinion with their lame twitter and facebook updates.

    Is Activision trying to get out of paying their 10% to Infinity Ward? Probably. In this economy anything is possible, especially where stock splits and shareholders are concerned. Certainly not painting them as good guys here, just pointing out several “grounds for termination”.

    You say cool stuff like “Do you honestly believe Activision cares about cheating” Maybe “Activision” doesn’t but the Blizzard wing sure seems to when it comes to cheating in their flagship product.

    You also swing around big numbers like 2 billion dollars and then when I point out the number they recieve is much smaller you go in with the “We’ve all seen that pie chart…” and “Doorbuster specials”. So which is it? They made 2 billion or they suddenly lost their ass on the first two days of sales while Walmart and Uncle Sam reap the reward of Infinity Ward’s valliant effort? Maybe everyone hasn’t seen that pie chart.

    Sorry dude but I’m not trying to sell a bunch of conflicting stories to win an internet argument with you. Note that when combing through my “gramatical wasteland” I again only point out reasons Activision could use to get rid of anyone affiliated with Infinity Ward that they wanted to, and all would be good and legitimate reasons in my book.

    Infinity Ward started with great IP and the potential of a great product with this one. Single player was amazing, but I buy COD games for the online play. So do a lot of other people. I ain’t the greatest at the game but I finish in the top 5 on most rounds and thats good enough for me. CODMW (the first) played for about 6 months solid, had few errors, but bad lag during certain times of the day. There were almost no cheats except for a few wierd places on a couple maps where you could walk the sky and the game was frequently patched and regulated. That was in the day of “good Infinity Ward” They were unshackled by those evil opressive bastards at EA and they were out to make a good name for themselves right?

    This new game was a mess from the get-go that benefitted from lots of hype, fat reviewer scores and millions of dollars in advertising. My friends and I played for about two months almost nightly till all the care package nonsense and the modded guns started showing up everywhere.

    Even in the beginning there were the “turn invisible cheat” in the Afgan map and “unlimited ammo cheats” and “hide down the smokestack and rack up a million kills cheats to get all your nuke patches and what not. Allowing prestige points in private matches? Wow, a booster’s paradise. Thats horrible game design right there. All that is on Infinity Ward and not Activision. They are the studio they designed it, put it out flaws and all as a finished product.

    Too cheap for dedicated servers with that “2 billion dollars” your talking about? Way to piss off the PC gamers and console gamers alike. I should have known something was up when the “online agreement” page flashes by faster than a booster on crack with all run/sprint/knife/akimbo shotgun choices selected. Is that crap Activisions fault or Infinity Wards? Probably a combo of blame in that reguard.

    We waited and checked status of updates/patches and all that came up was “oh we’re working on it,” all the hack tools were available for it before it even launched. Youtube has had daily exploits posted up. People send you messages to you in game wanting 2000 microsoft points or 3 months subscription to LIVE in exchange for 10th prestige.

    All the bells and whistles that should have made the game great are meaningless now thanks to the cheating. All that stuff you strive for as a gamer went up in smoke almost overnight once the non-stop care package exploits were in full swing. I don’t blame Activision for that. I blame Infinity Ward for allowing that to happen on ALL platforms of the game and will likely never buy a game from them or another entity run by Zampelli and West again. IW ruined its reputation with this gamer for sure. I can buy $60 worth of real bullets and have an awesome afternoon at my local gun club instead.

    You are right about one thing though. Gamers are dumb and will knowingly buy a game that is going to break their heart because they “hope” that all the bs will be fixed the next time they play, or when the next version comes out but just like Madden, it never is.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Now THAT’S a good response, Bowbe! I don’t agree, but I respect the use of logic and the lack of bile.

    Allow me to rebut…

    Blizzard can care about cheating until the universe dries up; the position on one game (where cheating might impact PAYING customers) doesn’t dictate company policy. I didn’t intend to imply that Activision doesn’t care about cheating regardless of game, only that they don’t care when it comes to MW2.

    Never argued that Activision couldn’t produce reasons to fire West and Zampelli. Particularly if they were talking to other publishers – which wouldn’t surprise me. Total breach of contract. I never said Activision was acting illegally. The only point I wanted to make was that if I were Activision, and I was faced with losing a studio that just made me *coughcoughcough*illion dollars (no need to incite you further), I might have approached with a different tone…

    along the lines of…

    “Hey, guys, I know you’re looking and I don’t want you to leave us.  How can we work this out?”

    Instead of sending thugs to the office and firing the leads.

    As for the litany of exploits you list, yeah, it’s a broken game. Most games that ship are broken. But the industry doesn’t care about quality – on account of the gamers are stupid thing. All they care about is dollars, and MW2 made a zillion of them. They’re not selling Toyotas, you know. No one dies if a game is shitty.

  • Mat

    The bug issue with MW2 is an interesting one for sure, particularly when you consider what the reaction to so many glitches and cheats would have been if this was Treyarch’s year on the job. I was late onto the World at War scene so barely experienced much of the multiplayer myself, but I noticed the game received one hell of a tough ride from the community about the bugs in the multiplayer. I can’t recall many if any of them being as high profile or consistent as some of the floods of MW2 glitches that have appeared.

    Infinity Ward didn’t come up with anything like Nazi zombies either, and if COD4 is any indication, are nowhere near as supportive of their products with DLC either as Treyarch.

    Still, I don’t really think this is about calling Infinity Ward “awesome” or siding with them against Activision for the sake of it.. or “nerd rage”. IW might have published a buggy as hell game (serves them right for being arrogant over not releasing a beta) but this is just one in an increasingly large number of PR balls up’s by Activision. As Steerpike says, there are surely other ways of dealing with stuff like this other than sending the heavies in and coming out with comments about “subordination” and the like. This is video games development, not an episode of 24.

    Just as an aside, I’ve pretty much called time on Modern Warfare 2 myself now, although that is less to do with the games bugs than it is to do with the simply awful “community” that follows that game around..

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