Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The most fevered highs of Kickstarter mania seem to have died down – unless you’re making an Android phone in a box, anyway – but there’s one game project that I’m quite sure could incite the same mania as Doublefine’s adventure and Wasteland 2 did. Chris Avellone, he of Black Obsidian, Black Isle and, of course, the lead brain behind Planescape: Torment, has been making noises for a little while know about his interest in a crowdsourced spiritual sequel. Proving rather adeptly that he is much smarter than I am, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier got in touch with Avellone to ask just what it is he’d do if given the chance. Avellone replied with a long, careful brain-think, chewing over how similar to PST it could/would be, what he’d change, what kind of setting, and how different the methodology of creating it would need to be from a traditionally-funded game.
Read the rest of this entry »

The wait for Wasteland 2 will be long, because the promise is great – but so’s the risk. We don’t really know what we’re getting at this stage, or indeed from any of that first wave of Kickstarted game projects, but an announcement that another veteran of the delectably dark Planescape: Torment (plus Fallout 2) has joined the swelling development team at Inxile adds yet greater hope. Chris Avellone is already on board, and now so’s one of his former comrades. Colin McComb was one of the designers on those Black Isle greats, and joins what’s now a dozen-strong writing team on Wasteland 2, reports bossman Brian Fargo. McComb’s also written a whole load of fantasy tomes that I can’t tell you anything about, but you can find out more on here.
Read the rest of this entry »

Oh my goodness, this had better not be a tease. Chris Avellone has told GamesIndustry International that he’s “very tempted” to start a Kickstarter for a sequel to Planescape: Torment. Oh God, oh God, you have to do this, please, please, please. Cough, decorum. PlaneScape: Torment has of course been scientifically proven to be the best RPG of all time, with experts demonstrating that anyone who doesn’t like it is a giant idiot. The thought of more of this fantastic story, from the brain who wrote it, is like concentrated Christmas. Although… he adds, “I don’t know if I’d want to do it as a Planescape game.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like Obsidian headbrain Chris Avellone’s earlier talk about getting ‘Kickstarter fever’ based upon Double Fine’s happy day (they’ve now passed $1.3 million in funding by the way – which, as Tim Schafer notes, is more than the budget for Day of the Tentacle and almost that of Full Throttle) wasn’t idle chatter. Obsidian have just posted a forum thread asking for community suggestions as to what they should make, were they to start a Kickstarter-funded game. Obviously this is purely theoretical right now and there are absolutely zero guarantees, but as they’re clearly feeling out the ground here, you should go and make sure that the ground they feel is green, pleasant and potentially profitable. And, ideally, old-school RPG-shaped.
Read the rest of this entry »

Eek. We might be about to find out if Tim Schafer’s crowd-funding of a game is one-off lightning in a bottle, or a viable alternative for developers to work outside of publishers. Chris Avellone, the lead developer of isometric RPG classic Planescape Torment and current creative director of Obsidian Entertainment, responded to Michael Antonelli’s suggestion on Twitter that “I’d kickstart $500 for an old school isometric RPG. For Planescape 2? $1000” by stating:

Hmmmm. I admit, I’ve got Kickstarter fever now. I feel like a bunch of doors suddenly appeared in game development.

I took his temperature, readers, and he was boiling hot.

Read the rest of this entry »

They said it couldn’t be done. We’re still not sure how it was done, but we called it. One of the most infamously impossible to release games of all time is now available to play on modern PCs. Good Old Games are probably forgiven all their recent naughty doings by securing one of the finest RPGs of all time, Planescape: Torment. It’s $9.95, and just over a GB to download from their re-launched website. Unless you managed to get the mysteriously released boxed copy from Amazon last year (which was a completely unpatched version), this is the first chance to get the classic RPG in many years. We’re chasing GoG for more details about how they secured this, and check out Kieron’s superb retrospective of the game. Also, take a look at Alec’s guide for getting the game to run in enormous widescreen-o-vision. Planescape’s back!

This retrospective post was originally published on RPS in 2007, and we repost it here to celebrate the arrival of Planescape: Torment on Good Old Games. It was first written by Kieron for PC Gamer. Some spoilers follow, but nothing absolutely critical.

Ignored by the gaming press upon release, only receiving warmish reviews that stopped well short of open adulation and the victim of one of the most ill-judged marketing campaigns (“A corpse with irresistible sexual charisma”) in history, Planescape Torment is the classic Underdog. Inevitably, it became the (relatively speaking) commercial runt of the Baldur’s Gate litter. In the years since, the coin of its critical worth has accumulated to the point where aficionados regularly cite it as the greatest of the PC RPGs. In fact, it’s rehabilitation has gone too far, with its name being a simple byword for narrative excellence without anyone really feeling the need to say why. There’s more here than dogmatic romantic myth.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just picked up from Richard Cobbett’s twitter, it appears that Interplay are re-releasing Planescape Torment. Its release date is listed as the 30th October and the price is a – not-much-change-from-the-nature-of-twenty-quid – 17.99 of your Earth pounds. In fact, it appears to be a whole load of Interplay other material too. It’s a surprise to see a decade-old game released at a mid-range price… but it’s also one that I find hard to argue against. A game that’s still placing high in all-time lists, that’s been unavailable for years, that goes for full-price when it turns up on eBay and hasn’t been superseded in any way. If the gaming equivalent of the Beatle’s price never going down and this means that Dan Gril has no excuse but to finally return Alec’s copy to him. Hand it back, you bast.

And by “own” I mean the publishing rights. Come on, fess up. You need to tell Direct2Drive, or perhaps GoG.com. (Via Blues.) Then the mighty classic can be re-released. More important information below.
Read the rest of this entry »

Click the pics to embiggen

“What can change the nature of a classic RPG?” Answer – a resolution-tweaking mod.

A couple of you have previously pointed out The Gibberlings Three‘s marvellous Infinity Engine res hack in our comments, but though I cooed with interest and immediately saved it to my bookmarks (three times, it appears), I’ve not had a chance to take a look until now. Yesterday, though, was Finally Replaying Planescape Torment day for me, and word of a resolution-raising tool that saved this incomparable tale of destiny, identity and tragedy from pixels-the-size-of-fists graphic-o-horror excited me enormously.

Turns out it’s a thing of beauty.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was passing through RPGCodex and noticed something you can file under either “Huh?” or “Blimey!” depending on how you’re wired. It’s a Speed run. Of Planescape Torment.

That’s the first of seven parts. Total time? 1:01:06 and he didn’t even skip the final movie. If only the resolution was a little better, then you could actually pause to read the text and have a Torment-in-miniature experience. I suppose I should get around to writing something about the joys of watching other people play games – my brother and I working through Lucasart adventures, flatmates doing Resident Evil and so on.