那时我回顾了玩过的所有角色扮演游戏，找出所有我已经看腻了的东西，然后想出些新的办法来解决这些问题。当时我感觉每次死亡之后重新读取游戏的过程简直就是浪费时间。理想情况下你希望玩家能一直玩下去，直到他们想退出为止。于是我就产生了这么一个想法：我要做一个不朽的角色，然后把死亡做成游戏和机制的一部分。跟标准的存档，死亡，然后读档的流程比起来，这应该会是一个更有趣的体验。

I looked at all the RPGs I had played up to that point, identified all the things I was tired of seeing and just looked for new ways to get around them. It just seemed like loading your game up after death was a huge waste of time. Ideally you just want the player to play until they feel like quitting, and so it occurred to me that if I made an immortal character, and made death a part of the game and mechanics, that it would be a more enjoyable experience for players instead of the standard save, die, and reload.

Chris Avellone,
《异域镇魂曲》首席设计师

Chris Avellone,
Torment's lead designer

你将在一个奇妙的世界中旅行（尽管黑岛拿到授权的《异度风景》本身就是个奇物，但是想把这样一个不起眼的蒙尘 IP 打造成一个有待探索的独特世界，这仍然需要高超的技巧和才能）。你会读到一个以哲学思辨为基石的伟大故事——一种电子游戏中十分稀少的特质。你会遇见电子游戏中最棒的队友，还能看到异想天开的对话和复杂的对话树。

《异域镇魂曲》也并非全无缺点。在超过 800,000 词的剧本之外，你还必须经历大量的战斗。因为很显然，玩家对杀敌升级永远不会厌烦（另外还需要刷到更多的点数加给感知（Wisdom）和魅力（Charisma），这样才能解锁更多绝妙的对话）。

所有这些让人懒得动脑的战斗都是由无限引擎（Infinity Engine）所驱动，使用一个让人很失望的可暂停即时制战斗系统。从好的方面来看，游戏中有受到《最终幻想 7（Final Fantasy VII）》所启发的绚丽魔法动画，所以如果你看烦了人物之间互相敲打，那就放一个魔法，然后欣赏烟火表演吧。

You'll travel an interesting world (while the setting is a licensed oddity, it takes considerable skills and talent to turn an obscure, dusty IP into a one-of-a-kind world ready to be explored). You'll read a great story with philosophical undertones – a rare treat in video games. You'll meet the best party members I've ever seen in a computer game, and you'll have fantastic dialogues and complex dialogue trees.

On the downside, despite featuring over 800,000 words, you have to fight a lot because apparently killing things to level up (and grinding to put more points into Wisdom and Charisma to unlock more awesome dialogues) is what players can't get enough of.

All this mindless slaughter is powered up by a rather underwhelming RTwP system that comes with the Infinity Engine. On the plus side, it has spectacular spell animations inspired by Final Fantasy VII, so if you get bored watching toons whacking each other, cast one of the spells and watch the fireworks.

黑岛（Black Isle）尝试开发过两款其他的《异度风景》背景游戏，最终两款游戏都取消了。其中一个是受《国王密令（King's Field）》所启发的 PlayStation 游戏，由 Colin McComb 监制。

Black Isle tried developing two other Planescape games, both of which were eventually cancelled. One of them would be a PlayStation game inspired by King's Field, to be directed by Colin McComb.

说到《最终幻想》，有一种看法认为《异域镇魂曲》对日式 RPG 的致敬不仅仅体现在魔法效果方面，《异域镇魂曲》本身实际上就是款巧妙伪装成西式 RPG 的日式 RPG 游戏，就是为了骗一骗那些不愿意屈尊去玩主机游戏的玩家。

幸运的是，《异域镇魂曲》中的故事、对话还有角色塑造太优秀了。即使你痛恨可暂停即时制战斗，即使你会嘲笑那些因为爱丽丝（Aeris）^[2] 之死而痛哭流涕的人，你仍然会爱上《异域镇魂曲》，并且会希望自己能够丢掉记忆重新体验一次初见的感觉。

模组：

Ultimate WeiDU Fixpack：修复了大量 bug。

Bigg's Widescreen mod：让你可以在任意分辨率下运行游戏。如果安装了这个补丁，记得同时安装 Ghostdog's incredible UI，这能解决菜单的显示问题。

Qwinn's Unfinished Business：恢复了一些在开发期间被删减掉的任务、物品和对话。

Speaking of Final Fantasy, it can be argued that Planescape: Torment's, um, homage to Japanese RPGs goes a bit deeper than the spell effects and that it is, in fact, a JRPG cleverly disguised as a WRPG to confuse players who are too cool to play console games.

Fortunately, the story, dialogues, and characters are so good that, even if you hate RTwP with passion or laugh at people who cried when Aeris died, you'll still love the game and wish you could lose your memories to experience it all over again for the first time.

Mods:

Ultimate WeiDU Fixpack: Fixes hundreds of bugs.

Bigg's Widescreen mod: Allows you to run the game in any resolution you desire. If you install this, then also get Ghostdog's incredible UI mod to fix the menus.

Qwinn's Unfinished Business: Restores several quests, items and dialogues that were cut during development.

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² 译者注：《最终幻想 7》中的主要角色之一。