Posts Tagged ‘Black Isle Studios’

Planescape: Torment’s Enhanced Edition released

What can change the nature of a game? It’ll take more than high-res support and a scalable UI to change Planescape: Torment, but why would you want to muck with its guts? Black Isle’s RPG is still a fine thing, and the Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition [official site] simply makes running it on modern systems less of a faff. A worthy re-release! Our Alec told us all Wot He Thought of the Enhanced Edition back in March but it actually only launched last night. Break out your gel pens and start updating your journal. Read the rest of this entry »

RPS Feature A retrospective of torment

Raised By Screens, chapter 17 – Planescape: Torment

Raised by screens is an intermittent autobiography, structured around the PC games I played in my youth. Most instalments are currently only available to RPS subscribers, but I shall compile them somewhere once the series reaches its eventual end.

Some spoilers for Planescape: Torment’s ending follow.

Too many games now, too many websites, too much happening each and every day. I mean only ‘too much for me personally to keep pace with’, not that this is inherently a poor state of things. I think about how I came to play Planescape: Torment, and how differently that might happen today.
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Brrrrrr! Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition Blows In

Chilling conversation.

There is a man, I like to think, a man named Dale. His cool demeanour is known throughout his small home town in the American Midwest. Now, Dale’s not unfriendly by any means, he just doesn’t have time for idle chit-chat. He mostly comes into town on business, breezing through with a tip of his hat. Icewind Dale, they call him. Dale doesn’t understand why he’s seeing online ads calling him Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition. And he’s out now? Heck, Dale’s been out since the Nixon administration.

No Dale, you silly goose! Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is a revamped re-release of Black Isle Studios’ old Infinity Engine RPG from 2000, and it launched yesterday.

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Gleaming: Icewind Dale’s Enhanced Edition

It's sleeping, okay?

They don’t make ’em like the old days, but they do revamp and remake ’em like the new days. After fancying up BioWare’s two olde Baldur’s Gate games with Enhanced Editions, Beamdog have now turned their revitalising eye to another Infinity Engine classic. Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is a shiny new version of the fantasy RPG by venerated Fallout creators Black Isle Studios, with a reworked UI, new quests, items, and spells, plus six-player cross-platform co-op multiplayer.

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RPS Feature Not At All Plain

One Of Dragon Age’s Big Influences? Planescape Torment

Like our fair, occasionally fire-breathing John, I also recently saw Dragon Age: Inquisition in action, and – against all odds – I came away very impressed. Dragon Age: Origins was a very important game to me for a number of reasons, and the crazy thing is that BioWare actually seems to *get* why its return to fantasy’s pointy eared realms made people like me chant(ry) its name to the high heavens. There’s action-y stuff in Inquisition, sure, but also plenty of tactical options (TOP-DOWN VIEW YEAH) and yummy conundrums to scramble my moral compass. But it wasn’t until I spoke with lead designer Mike Laidlaw that I really began feeling good about Inquisition. His favorite game? Planescape Torment. And, if Laidlaw is to be believed, the Black Isle classic’s influence is strong in this one. 

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Black Isle Asks For Your Money… Badly

You probably remember that legendary RPG powerhouse Black Isle Studios abruptly rose from the dead earlier this year. You might also remember feeling supremely baffled by that fact, given that Interplay’s now a penniless shell of a company, and the “old band” it was hoping to get back together had already, you know, done that – just at Obsidian and inXile. So how exactly does this new studio wearing Black Isle’s pajamas hope to paddle through the overwhelming waters of seeming impossibility? Well, predictably, that’s where you come in. But, to be perfectly honest, you probably won’t want to.

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Bwah? – Interplay Boss Speaks Out On Black Isle Plans

We're baaaaaack! Kind of? Maybe? Honestly, we don't even know.

Yesterday, golden age RPG powerhouse Black Isle Studios abruptly rose from the dead. Now death – according to the many dead people I’ve spoken to in the name of accurate, well-researched reporting – is frequently permanent, so people were a bit surprised when the fallen Fallout factory suddenly whirred back to life. Even the likes of Chris Avellone and Brian Fargo didn’t know what to make of it. But hey, Interplay’s finally chiming in, so it’s time for the world to make sense again, right? Errrrrr.

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