From time to time, we get to see some of the behind-the-scenes quirks of our favourite games — debug menus, unused dialogue, scrapped environments and so on. Given the scope of 1999’s Planescape: Torment, it was packed with gems like this, including the unfortunately-named character “Testocles”.
Beamdog’s Julius Borisov recently provided some insights into the inner workings of Interplay’s seminal title. In order for the developer to create the Enhanced Edition, they first had to spend time getting acquainted with the ins and outs of the codebase.
And part of the meant meeting a colourful debug character, Testocles.
His name hints his true purpose:
Like many cRPGs of its time Planescape: Torment was filled with text, however the conversation mechanics of PST take speech option outcomes to the next level. In Planescape: Torment, the Nameless One can not only gain XP during conversation, but also be granted extra stat points, new abilities, or have his class change between fighter, thief and mage.
That’s not all he could do, however:
Testocles’ dialog text tree is full of choices ranging from the aforementioned ability to make the Nameless One change class to a simple demand that the test character fidget.
Borisov’s blog post contains a few more interesting tidbits, so give it a read if Planescape holds a special place in your heart.
Developing Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition — Found Artifacts and Oddities [Beamdog]
Comments
One response to “Meet ‘Testocles’, Planescape: Torment’s Long Hidden NPC”
So by “Hidden NPC” you mean “Developer debug NPC that pretty much any decent sized RPG will have”?
Yes, of course it has one of them. Why is this:
a) a surprise?
b) interesting in any way?