Obsidian’s Chris Avellone is ‘very tempted’ to reboot Planescape on Kickstarter

Chris Avellone of Obsidian Entertainment, who's working with Brian Fargo and InXile Entertainment on the highly successful Wasteland 2 Kickstarter, is "very tempted" to relaunch Planescape: Torment through the platform.

"I don't know if I'd want to do it as a Planescape game," he told GamesIndustry International, speaking as the 1999 PC game's lead designer. "I think a better approach would be to ignore the [Dungeons & Dragons] mechanics and respect what Planescape was trying to do and what the game did and see if you can do what Fallout did when it became the spiritual successor to Wasteland.

"I think if you made a game using some of the concepts of Planescape, the metaphysical ideas and the plane travel, without using the D&D mechanics, you could actually come up with a much better game," he said. "With Torment, I'd argue that the D&D base actually, in places, got in the way of the experience. It was a lot harder to make a game with those ideas in it with D&D mechanics. So much that we had to break a lot of them. We had to ignore certain spells, change up the class mechanic so that you can switch at any time you like by remembering abilities.

"That was stuff that D&D didn't allow for, it was to restraining in some respects," he said. "If we did do a spiritual successor, then I don't know if we'd use the Planescape license or attach the mechanics, perhaps something that has a different feel to Torment."

Good Old Games has updated Torment for modern PC operating systems. The game costs $9.99.

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