Amnesia: an overused storytelling technique?

[Jakob Rosenblatt]

Amnesia is a commonly used (imho overused) storytelling technique.

In a lot of cases it`s simply applied to (a) hide poor character development or (b) to overleap the difficulties of finding a proper and believable beginning to a story

But the exception proves the rule: A game that made an ingenious use of amnesia was "Planescape Torment". Simply one of the best games I have ever played. It may sound odd, but it was the first and only time that a computer game really touched me emotionally. Kieron Gillen wrote (in [1]):

"It’s the archetypal videogame story of an amnesiac hero trying to discover what’s going on, favoured by developers since the beginning of time as a means to make the hero’s perspective of the world be identical to the players. But Planescape is the total exemplar of this plot. The issue of identity and memory permeates the entire tale rather than acting as a mere introductory tool."

Gillen`s conclusion:

"Irony – a game all based on amnesia turns out to be something you’ll never forget."

He further states:

"While we’re a long way from the videogame equivalent of a Tolstoy or a Dostoevsky, for what it’s worth, Planescape is as close as we’ve come, and worthy of real literary consideration."

p.s. If you want to play it, you should use the high resolution/widescreen patch [2].

[1] http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/09/...e-torment/ [This essay is very interesting but contains fairly heavy spoilers]
[2] http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/05/...andscapes/