LogFAQs > #895283974

39. Morte (Planescape: Torment)

"Hey Chief, you okay? You playin' corpse or you puttin' the blinds on the Dusties? I thought you were a deader for sure."

Morte's weird. Might be the weirdest RPG party member I've ever encountered. He's a floating talking skull that never shuts up, makes bad jokes, annoys everyone around him, and most importantly, has an unwavering and unexplainable loyalty to the main character. No matter how much you abuse and insult Morte (assuming you're playing a jerk Nameless One), he never turns his back on you. This aspect of him only gets more mysterious when you find out that, when informing you of a message from your past life wrote down to be delivered to your current incarnation, he leaves off the last sentence of the message - "Don't trust the skull."

For most of the game you only get hints of Morte's involvement in the overarching plot, and the hints you get are always completely at odds with his goofy exterior. After a while you aren't even sure what he is, his claim of being a magical construct turning out to be a lie. It's only very late in the game where you fully learn that Morte's external personality hides deep feelings of guilt and regret due to his actions essentially causing the entire plot of the game. If your Nameless One doesn't help him overcome his issues and give Morte some peace then you're a bad person and I'm not sure we can be friends.

I think I would find Morte's jokes to be significantly more obnoxious than I was when I was younger, but considering that one of his special abilities is to annoy an enemy so much that they start acting stupid, that just means the writers were doing a good job. Planescape: Torment is a fantastically written game with many great characters, but out of all of The Nameless One's party members, Morte will always be the most memorable.
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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.