Last time, you decided that Viscera Cleanup Detail's Sniffer tool is better than a fresh new MMO server. This was a close win, 54% vs 46%, but know we now how we're entering the new year: equipped to track down the sources of our problems, rather than running away from them. With that resolved, it's time to get snarky. A real snark-off. So much snark, and so many snarks, and so much potential to be undone by the hubris of miscalculating snark. What's better: Half-Life's Snarks or Planescape: Torment's Litany Of Curses?
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>“It’s incredibly weird for anybody who knows me that I’ve become the romance guy,” David Gaider tells me. “I’m the least romantic guy. Especially when I get to the characters saying ‘I love you’ to each other…” Gaider mimes the sickliness of the scene and his own horrified response. “Apparently I did it so well on Baldur’s Gate II that James Ohlen kept handing me this stuff. And, god, I hated it so much.”
It’s weird, in fact, that Gaider wound up working on Baldur’s Gate II at all - let alone that he became synonymous with Dragon Age and romanceable companions afterwards. At 27 years old, he ran a hotel in Edmonton, Alberta - the same city where, unbeknownst to him, Bioware was busy making its name. Once it came time to make a sequel to Baldur’s Gate, Bioware cast around for local writers, and a friend recommended Gaider, who had played D&D in the ‘80s before it fell out of fashion.
]]>Humble Bundle’s latest collection of good games for a good price and a good cause is a whopping instant library of classic Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs, including both original Baldur’s Gate games, some similarly legendary classics and some more modern additions to the genre. It’s quite the deal.
]]>Last time, you decided that ding! is better than the Howie scream. I have only word for that: yeeeuuuuaaaaauuuuughh! This week, I suppose it's a question of spectacle. Do you want to do ridiculous cool things, or have ridiculous horrible things done unto you? Tell me, what's better: ridiculous spell animations or the mangled hands of Ethan Winters?
]]>Whether you prefer wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>Gather close, adventurers, and prepare to ceremonially Tweet "I feel old!" en masse. 20 years ago today, the influential and undeniable RPG Planescape: Torment was released. What a strange and wonderful achievement that game was! What impact it has had, even now, literally decades later! You can see PST waving at you from yer big epics like Divinity: Original Sin 2, and yer indie weirdnesses like Disco Elysium.
We felt we couldn't let Planescape's birthday go unremarked upon. But we've made a lot of remarks about it over the years, so we weren't sure if we had anything new to add. So, as a compromise, we've decided to round up just a few of the articles RPS has spaffed out about PST, so you can read them with us, and we can all feel old together. Spoilers: a lot of the spaffing was done by Alec (RPS in peace), but you probably knew that already.
]]>We don’t expect much of a typical video game map. As long as it guides us to our destination (and perhaps looks pretty while doing so) most of us won’t waste a second thought on it. And yet, maps can be much more than tools that make our way from A to B a little more convenient. Some games reject the notion of maps as a tacked-on extraneous layer, and instead treat them as an integral part of their world. These maps can tell us something about their world and its inhabitants that goes far beyond topographical information. Rather than creating distance between us and a game, they root us more firmly in it.
]]>The old quote is wrong: neither death nor taxes are, it seems to me, as terrifyingly certain as the Steam Summer Sale. Yes, once more we can add to the heap that is our backlog by buying games for, what, five quid, on average? But there are so many to choose from that it's easy to get flustered, so who better than the staff of RPS to hand-pick the best ones for your consideration (rhetorical question; do not answer)?
Check out the full list below for a mix of games that should suit all pockets and tastes.
]]>In the mid-to-late 2000s, publishers abandoned the CRPG genre – an acronym describing the very specific genre of video games adapted from tabletop RPGs to be played on computers – which a decade earlier had been a cornerstone of PC gaming. They were more interested in accessible, console-friendly series like Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls, and PC-centric RPGs all but died out.
Then, around 2012, RPGs made a comeback, largely thanks to the rise of crowdfunding and an endless well of nostalgia. Since then we’ve been treated to heaps of good ones – Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera – and there are plenty more in the works. But there’s no guarantee that CRPGs are back for good. Some, such as Torment, haven’t sold well. The future of crowdfunding remains uncertain. And asking fans to commit 50 hours to a single story is more difficult than ever, given the volume of great games that release every month. So how can developers ensure that the genre stays relevant?
]]>Leave no rodent behind – that’s the motto of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. With the release of Warhammer: Vermintide 2, we decided to celebrate the lovable dirtbag of videogames. The lowly, filthy, wonderful rat. Whether you are murdering five of them in cold blood for an RPG hotel owner, or pledging your sword to a disgusting subterranean monarch, there’s room in your heart for the humble rat.
And your intestine. And lung. Basically, shove over, organs. Make room for the rats.
]]>Not only does a great hero need a great villain, villains are usually just so much more fun. Whether it's the tortured lost soul who can only find peace by destroying the universe or the cheery psychopath looking to see the world burn, it's no wonder that many of the greatest films of all time have been defined at least as much by the baddie as any individual scene. Darth Vader, the Terminator, Norman Bates, Dracula... villains get people excited. A great villain lives forever, death be damned.
]]>It's Summer Games Done Quick time again! You know what that means. The final seal has been broken, the rivers are turning to blood, and High Dread Azagorath is free to destroy the land. But while people wait, they're doing speed-runs. And in celebration of that, I thought I'd take a dig through the archives for a few particularly impressive and interesting ones that take that whole idea of a fifty hour epic and beat it down so quickly, the hero's hometown doesn't even have time to finish smouldering.
]]>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.
]]>Surprise classic RPG remastering attack! Mere weeks after revered 1999 philoso-roleplayer Planescape: Torment [official site] enjoyed a belated spiritual sequel in the over-lored but otherwise strong Torment Tides Of Numenera, it gets itself a modernised re-release too. It's due out April 11, but I've got the thing updating my hard drive's journal and changing the nature of my VDU right now.
We're not going to run a full review because we all played PST a thousand years ago and know full well it's a solid-gold classic of narrative'n'choice-led games, but I do want to look at what's changed in Beamdog's 'Enhanced Edition' and whether it's a meaningful improvement. It's a bit of a mixed bag, though the net result is the most playable and best-looking version of PST to date.
]]>Planescape: Torment [official site], the revered 1999 fantasy RPG from Fallout creators Black Isle, is getting overhauled a touch in an Enhanced Edition due next month. It'll bring support for modern high resolutions and a new interface to match, along with tweaks and fixes. It's being handled by Beamdog, the folks behind the Enhanced Editions of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate then a new Gate expansion of their own.
Yesterday, following the wee teaser campaign, Cobbo had some grand predictions for the Enhanced Edition. He's close with some but, as far as we know, it will not actually let Nordom transform into a battlesuit for Morte.
]]>If you go down to planescape.com today, you're sure of a big surprise. Unless you're expecting a countdown, in which case, it's that. What could it mean? Well, if you open the page source, you'll see a secret message hidden in there - 0x50 0x53 0x54 0x45 0x45. Convert that from ASCII numbers to letters and you get PSTEE. The two most likely translations of that are either Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition as Beamdog's latest updated release, or someone is really looking forward to going down to Gregg's for a pastie sometime on Tuesday. It's not confirmed. It could be something else. Maybe there's a 'Planescape Kids' TV series coming out. Nobody's told me.
Though it would explain this changelog I found lying around the other week...
]]>Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site] is a weird-fantasy roleplaying game and spiritual sequel to 1999's revered Planescape: Torment. After being successfully Kickstarted a couple of years ago, it is released to the world today.
]]>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.
]]>When you receive a 'Great Horses of the Isle of Wight 2017' calendar from your uncle this holiday season, tear it open, flip to February, break out your spiffy new glitter gel pens, and write "NEW TORMENT!!!" on February 28th. That's the newly-announced release date for Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site], inXile's "spiritual successor" to the venerable Planescape: Torment. That means a weird fantasy-ish setting with mish-mash of worlds and a focus on words over weapons, all of which makes it one of Cobbo's most-anticipated RPGs of 2017.
]]>At Gamescom, after a whirlwind tour of just a few of Torment: Tides of Numenera's [official site] many worlds, I sat down with inXile CEO Brian Fargo to talk about the past, present and future of his company, and of RPGs. As well as discussing Torment, I wanted to talk about Fargo's career as a whole, which spans 34 years, and covers the creation of the original Wasteland and Fallout, along with many other games, as well as three enormously successful crowdfunding campaigns in recent times.
He told me that the crowdfunding of Wasteland 2 had felt like "a referendum on [his] history" and that he'd like to explore original ideas once he has rebuilt trust with new versions of Wasteland, Torment and The Bard's Tale. Mostly, though, we talked about why making RPGs has retained its appeal over all these years, and how the business has changed since the early days of Interplay.
]]>Not for the first time, I've spent quite a while recently pondering the nature of roles - more specifically, mechanical role versus narrative role. When we think of RPGs, what we're usually thinking of is the latter. You play the role of the Hero, but in a universe that's typically designed to let you define that however you like. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but there's a key difference between that and stepping into the shoes of someone more specific. Geralt in The Witcher 3 for instance is - spoiler alert - a Witcher. Every encounter revolves around that, every system involves it, every decision has, whether it's by your choice or Geralt bringing it up, a mercenary element that reinforces that asking for money in exchange for your services is expected and not, as is often the case, the first step towards douchery and getting the Evil ending.
I've also been playing a lot of Hearthstone. The two things are linked.
]]>We already knew that a beta for Torment: Tides of Gary Numan [official site], spiritual* sequel to Planescape: Torment was due this month, but now we have a date. Or, to be precise, dates. Another thing we already knew is that original Kickstarter backers of the inXile RPG would get their clammy crowdfunding paws on the beta, but now we know that it'll update its journal to include Steam Early Access a wee bit later in January.
]]>News that inXile's spiritual Planescape sequel Torment: Tides of New Model Army [official site] won't, in fact, release its first beta during 2015 comes as little surprise, given there are only four and half minutes left of this year. Even so, it's good to have confirmation that a sizeable chunk of the soul-searching RPG will be with us "early next year", with the delay in order that we get "a more polished and complete Beta Test" that should offer around 10 hours of adventuring and existential crisis.
]]>The Numenera pen-and-paper roleplaying system does a lot of interesting things to simplify stats, combat, and to offer players more choice in action and outcome. I am extremely interested to see how those systems translate to Torment: Tides of Numenera [official site], which is using the setting and system as a basis for a spiritual successor to the beloved Planescape: Torment. The first chance to see some of how it's working is in a video below, as Jeremy Kopman - who has the excellent job title of 'Lead Crisis Designer' - talks through the game's encounter system.
]]>Most RPGs ask you to save the world, but not all of them offer a world worth saving. Honestly, there's been quite a few where given the choice I'd have joined the evil overlord just to beat up all the potion vendors who wouldn't even give me a discount before the final battle, and for the mere chance of stabbing the guard in Act 1 who wouldn't let me into The Town Where The Actual Bloody Game Starts.
This week though, I'm interested in the other side of that - the worlds that become more than just a place to grind for loot and XP. The places that feel real. Beloved worlds, which don't necessarily correlate with beloved games. I really enjoyed Skyrim for instance, but Skyrim as a world largely leaves me cold for reasons that have nothing to do with the Frostfall mod. That's not the same as saying it's bad, or any real quality judgement at all, simply that for me it never became a second home, more than a playground. Fallout New Vegas meanwhile, despite its problems, ticked all of the boxes. It was a world I could believe in, get immersed by, and not want to leave, which given the current political climate around the world is quite probably for the best.
Here are some of the most special worlds for me. How about you? Note, we're talking entire worlds, as in the settings for whole games, not specific places like, say, Gold Saucer in Final Fantasy VII or FFXIV. Those are cool too, but... another week!
]]>I very much want Torment: Tides of Numenera to be excellent, because the world needs more Torment. Not in the literal sense, of course; the world is a miserable place. But Planescape Torment was a wonderfully different sort of RPG set in a wonderfully different sort of world, and another descent into the gnarliest bowels of fuckweird would be quite grand. Numenera's still a ways off at this point, but inXile seems to be on the right track. Yesterday we talked combat and why quality is more important than size, and today we continue on by chatting about why Planescape Torment *wasn't* perfect, what that means for Numenera, the recent delay, and why we won't just be able to attack any old random NPC. All that and more below.
]]>Madly anticipated Planescape Torment spiritual successor Torment: Tides of Numenera has been delayed. We won't be able to probe its strange, sloughing depths until late 2015, which is a shame except that if inXile released when they were originally planning to we'd probably get a stack of concept art and a mountain of design documents instead of a game. Torment's Kickstarter wrapped up more than a year ago, though, and it has made progress. Big progress. I spoke with project lead Kevin Saunders, creative lead Colin McComb, design lead Adam Heine, and new lead area designer George Ziets about how the game has evolved. In part one, we discuss combat, how backers have influenced the game, using Pillars of Eternity tech, why Torment will be more about quality than size, skill systems, and story changes. It's all below.
]]>Torment: Tides of Numenera aims to be a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, but it seems producing vastly complex, non-linear RPGs is a difficult task. Following the success of Wasteland 2, inXile's other Kickstarted game, Tides of Numenera has swapped its previous 'early 2015' release date for a revised 'late 2015'. In a lengthy post at the Torment blog, the team have offered update on the game's current development.
]]>Divinity: Original Sin is looking positively divine. Honestly, in the sheer heat of the moment, I might be more excited about it than Pillars of Eternity or Wasteland 2. I already spoke at length with Larian head Swen Vincke during a massive video play session, but that wasn't enough. Afterward, we chatted about everything from the studio's rocky, too-close-to-closure-for-comfort history to the possibility of using Divinity's engine on a non-fantasy RPG to the chances that Larian goes back to Kickstarter. On top of all that, Vincke told me why having gender parity (one male, one female) on his writing team turned out to be the "best decision ever."
Vincke's admirably frank answers to roughly a million questions are below.
]]>It's official! Project Eternity finally has a real big boy name: Pillars of Eternity. On its own, that's hardly the most exciting news in the world, but it also means that Obsidian is finally ready to take the wraps off more than, like, three screenshots and precious little else. I had the good fortune of traveling to Obsidian to witness plenty of gameplay and conduct multiple eternities-long interviews, and The Artist Formerly Known As Black Isle sent me away with some video to boot. See, hear, read, and - I guess if you want - taste and touch so very, very, very much of the newly rechristened Kickstarter darling below.
]]>Turn-based or real time with pause? This dilemma is what keeps inXile up at night. Actually 'how are we going to spend all this money?' is probably what keeps them up at night. But being undecided on what combat system to use for spiritual Planescape sequel Torments: Tides of Banana Split can't help. Do they use a system similar to the Baldur's and Planescape games of yore, where fights play out in real time but you can pause at any point to dole out orders? Or is the full tactical might of turn-based, as they're using in Wasteland 2, the way to go?
They've decided to ask their 80,000-ish backers. Which means this is ON YOU. If you backed. Maybe you didn't. In which case, blame a bunch of other people if you don't like the outcome.
]]>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.
]]>Let there be Torchlight. The ARPG's sequel thoroughly impressed John and the original is free until June 20th as part of Good Old Games' summer sale. There will be new deals every day until July 5th and the first day's offerings include Alan Wake and American Nightmare for $4.48, and a massive Dungeons and Dragons pack for $21.10. That one includes Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, and Icewind Dale 1 & 2. Whatever happened to every series at least reaching a lacklustre third part? It's probably Valve's fault. Remember, Torchlight is only free until the 20th, so best to download it right away.
]]>$4,188,927. That's where Torment: Tides of Numenera's conquest of Kickstarter ground to a halt, which is pretty good considering it started off asking - nay, begging, clothed only in rags and its own waste - for a pithy $900,000. It's also apparently pretty good in the grand scheme of every videogame ever, seeing as Torment's now holds the record for most-funded Kickstarter game of all time. Previously, brother in spirit (and partially in flesh, given Chris Avellone's formidable intellectual seed) Project Eternity held the top spot at $3,986,929. But enough numbers I can barely count to using my fingers, toes, and a nearby family of millipedes. Let's delve into what this means for the game.
]]>Roll up roll up! We have one man for auction! Cofounder of Obsidian Entertainment, lead designer for a thing called Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, lead designer on a thing called Planescape TM: Torment. Anyone? Anyone for a designer man? You sir? You ma'am? You look a likely sort for a single player, story-driven, isometric role-playing game. Come on lady, do you like complex and nuanced morality, deep and reactive choice and consequence, and immersion into a new and strange vision? Sounds sexy doesn't it sir. LOOK AT HIS CRANIUM. Looooooook at those sexy hands of design-orientated development skills! Well give us $3.5M and you can have him you cheeky buggers.
]]>Seven hours. That's what can change the nature of a roleplaying sequel. While it always seemed relatively likely that inXile's Torment: Tides Of Mahna Mahna would be funded, given the years of backlogged adoration for Planescape: Torment, with no actual footage on show and no Avellone involvement, I'm not sure anyone expected it to happen so quickly.
]]>It's no surprise whatsoever that inXile's PlaneScape: Torment spiritual sequel would hitch itself to the Kickstarter mast. Because, er, they always said it would. That Kickstarter is now live, live, live, as Torment: Tides of Numenera sings for its $900,000 supper for the next month or so.
Update: 15 minutes after launching, they've made $50,000 $70,000 already. Bloody Nora! Update 2: Less than two hours from launch, Torment's at over $300,000. Seems unlikely this one won't make it, eh?
As human beings with all the normal Products of the Flesh - hopes, dreams, and a single brain split between multiple bodies, inextricably intertwined via thick, ropy cords of spinal tissue - we at RPS are quite excited about inXile's Planescape: Torment not-quite-a-sequel. It is, however, missing a couple key ingredients: 1) Planescape lead designer Chris Avellone and 2) money. So of course, inXile's released a video of Chris Avellone explaining why you should give them money. On Kickstarter, by the way. That's officially a thing now. Or at least, it will be very, very soon.
]]>Last month, inXile's Brian Fargo spilled several important beans about post-Black Isle, post-Planescape plans for a sequel to the legendary RPG Torment, in a brand new and rather tasty-sounding roleplaying setting from ex-Wizards of the Coast man Monte Cook. While there still isn't too much firm'n'fixed to go on, the game's gone live with its very own website and the first reveal of its new, full name.
Torment: Tides of Numenera lives.
]]>Rumours have been swirling for years about a possible sequel to Black Isle's legendary and powerful roleplaying game Planescape: Torment, but the closure of the original studio and the jealous guarding of the Planescape rights by owners Wizards of the Coast seemed to have put paid to any comeback. But with original Interplay boss Brian Fargo very much back in the RPG business with current studio inXile's wildly successful Wasteland 2 crowdfunding, everything changes. He and his team have come up with a way to make a new Torment game: this is really happening.
And there was much rejoicing.
Read on for details of its new setting, the people involved, whether it'll link to the original game, which thematic aspects will recur, how the combat may work and how they'll get it made.
]]>In an interview to appear on this website at 1700 UK time today, inXile's Brian Fargo reveals that a new Torment game is really definitely happening, and explains that it will be made in conjunction with contributing writer/designer on the original Planescape pen and paper RPG and assorted other Wizards of the Coast projects (as well as PS:T itself), Monte Cook, as well as a number of other key individuals from the original Planescape team. The game will be set in Cook's ambitious pen and paper Numenera Universe, which was Kickstarted last year to the tune of half a million dollars. As well as explaining how this setting constitutes a new Planescape Torment game, without actually being a Planescape Torment game, Fargo says stuff like: "We won’t have faeries or devils, but we’ll have diabolical creatures from far dimensions with schemes beyond human imagination. We won’t have gods, but we’ll have creatures who have lived for millennia with the powers of creation and destruction at their fingertips, with abilities honed over countless lifetimes. We won’t have other planes per se, but we’ll have pathways to hostile worlds and bizarre landscapes and ancient machines that catapult the players into places where the ordinary laws of nature no longer apply."
]]>That is according to the site that scrapes details of upcoming titles from the Steam Content Description Record Database. Open Steamworks allows you to view updates to the Steam appids, gathering the information of games yet to appear, and it's just uncovered classic RPG Planescape: Torment within Steam's digital maw.
]]>Despite all the talk over the years, I think we'd all long ago given up on there ever being a proper, official, original team sequel to the RPG that can change the nature of a man, Planescape: Torment. However, one of its original devs has expressed his interest in a follow-up and come up with an intruiging way around the licensing issue.
Colin McComb, who played a major design role in PST, now works at InXile, where the bulk of his work on the upcoming Wasteland 2 is now complete. So he's wondering what grindstone to put his nose to next. "Of all the games I’ve written, the one that I keep circling back to is Torment."
]]>Hmm. Well, this came out of nowhere. OK, not entirely nowhere - we are living in the age of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Wasteland 2, and talk of a new Planescape: Torment, after all - but I can't say I was expecting Black Isle to just suddenly explode out of the suspiciously human-sized birthday cake that is life. And yet, here we are. Black Isle Studios is apparently back. I mean, look at that picture. It's as clear as day.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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."
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>[A version of this feature was originally printed in UK videogames bible Edge. It's about the use of Text in videogames, both in the mainstream and over in the world of Interactive fiction. It features material from Chris Avellone (Planescape Torment), Sheldon Pacotti (Deus Ex), Adam Cadre (Photopia, Shrapnel) and Emily Short (Galatea, Floatpoint). I've expanded it to fit in in some of the quotes I couldn't fit in Edge's word-count. Which were many. If you've read my Planescape Retrospective, you'll recognise some key riffs. This feature very much grew from that one. And enough waffle. Let's do this thing.]
In the beginning was the word. And the word begat a phrase. And the phrase was “Avoid Missing Ball For High Score”. Gaming’s public relationship with words started here, and continues to this day. It’s these first furtive fumblings which produced the most lasting signifiers which define games in the public eye, and will continue to do so as long as the form continues to exist in its current state. Icons like “Extra Life” and “High Score” are as much a signifier of gaming as any of the corporate mascots.
But this isn't about that.
]]>It's always fun when a story generates another story. Regular readers will recall the Planescape retrospective I posted recently. The ever-lovely Slashdot picked up on it, and one of their commentators pointed everyone in the direction of the game's actual Vision Statement over at RPGWatch, from when it was called "Last Rites" rather than "Planescape: Torment" and they weretrying to persuade management to greenlight the project.
Since I hadn't read it, it's likely that a lot of you haven't either. It's interesting to see what was planned that didn't happen. And it's interesting because it's incredibly fucking interesting. It's one of the best videogame documents I've ever seen in my life. It's smart, driven, obsessed and actually really funny. For example, it has diagrams that look like this.
Clearly, you should read the whole thing. If you haven't played the game, don't go past page 25. It's relatively spoiler free until then, before immediately revealing the biggest secrets in the game. And I'll quote some random non-spoiler examples beneath the cut.
]]>[I originally wrote this for the relaunch issue of PC Gamer, when they were introducing their extra-life section. The Long Play features are basically a critical essay, looking at a game a few years on and noting why it still matters. Anyway, this is my look over Black Isle's genuinely seminal RPG. A few years old, every word then remains true now - and I sincerely doubt we'll ever see its like again. Obviously enough, there's some fairly heavy spoilers in here. Re-reading, it reminds me that I should do something bigger than this on the old warhorse. I've got Chris Avellone's e-mail around here, somewhere...]
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.
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