Morte and Murray

Can a man ever change his nature, even if he lived forever? Wouldn't he just make the same mistakes over and over again? If so, immortality would be a curse.

Two works come to mind that approach this question head-on, with very different conclusions. One is Planescape: Torment, the dark, brilliant 1999 computer RPG. The other is Groundhog Day, the 1993 philosophical comedy with Bill Murray.


In both works, the protagonist must repeat the same actions endlessly, but for different reasons. In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors (Murray) is cursed to wake up at 6:00 on February 2nd every day for infinity. In P:T, the Nameless One (he has forgotten his name long ago) has had his mortality removed. He can die, but he will eventually regenerate. If the death is harsh enough, he'll lose his memories, and the game starts after such an experience. You'll soon find out that there's virtually nothing you can do that you haven't already done thousands of times.


Thus both characters are immortal, although neither can truly progress until they change their nature. It's fun to watch Murray's character evolve over the course of the movie, from joy at the lack of consequences, to despair at his predicament, and eventually to selflessness and thus his redemption. Many see the movie as a religious parable, but I think it's rather the pressures of a mainstream release that necessitate a happy ending. It's a great movie (Murray is excellent), and definitely thought-provoking, but as a morality tale it provides a fairly simple prescription; to change your surroundings you must change yourself.

The Nameless One's goal is equally simple, yet nearly impossible: he wants to die (an ironic premise for an RPG, to say the least). The game stresses that there is no simple epiphany that will allow him to do this. Over the long course of his life, he has had many personalities, from saint to deranged psychotic. No matter how strong or smart he gets, he's been stronger and smarter, and it hasn't helped him one bit.

Here's my favorite experience in the game, and a pretty major spoiler (although nothing should stop you from playing this game). You learn that you were first cursed by a hag for failing to answer a riddle correctly, "What can change the nature of a man?" This point comes up repeatedly, and you have plenty of time to prepare the correct response to her question. When you finally meet her again, she does indeed ask it a second time, and you carefully pick the answer from an extensive list. But there is no right answer! The riddle is a ruse; you were cursed because you asked to be cursed, and the hag did so because she once loved you. There are no ultimate truths, and the only demon haunting you is yourself.

One crude but effective summarization of existentialism is that only you can give meaning to a life that has none intrinsically. It takes Connors years (presumably) to give meaning to a single day. The Nameless One's curse is that his life can never have meaning. That's why the question "What can change the nature of a man?" is a joke. The Nameless One has no hope of changing his nature, because he has no intrinsic nature (that's why he's nameless).

Connors eventually breaks free from his cycle, and the Nameless One (with a LOT of effort) dies and falls to the underworld. I find the endings of both works to be more ambiguous than they seem. What's really to stop Connors from falling into the same ego-centric habits on February 3rd?

In the Planescape universe, death is not a ticket to oblivion. The underworld is engaged in an eternal war between chaotic evil and ordered evil (perhaps one of the most dismal allegories for human existence). The Nameless One has broken his own cycle, only to find that the world itself has its own cycle which is far more dire. If Groundhog Day is hopelessly optimistic, than perhaps Planescape: Torment is hopelessly pessimistic.

No matter which conclusion you favor, Groundhog Day and Planescape: Torment each deserve more than the status of cult classic. P:T is especially underrated these days, and any RPG fan should definitely take a look.