A must read

[G!!!]

Intervju sa Chris Avellone oko Tormenta

SPOILER ALERT

Part I

RPGWatch: Tell us a little about yourself and your role in making PS:T.

Chris Avellone: I’m Chris Avellone, Creative Director at Obsidian Entertainment – “Creative Director” is basically a shape-shifting designer, which allows me to change my design title at will depending on what game or project I'm contributing to at the moment. On the last project, I was senior designer on NWN2: Mast of the Betrayer, and now I'm the Creative Lead Designer on the forthcoming Aliens RPG from SEGA.

As far as Torment goes, I was lead designer (and doing work on Fallout 2 at the same time, which contributed to my near-constant level of exhaustion). As lead designer, I laid out the story, characters, dialogues, area layouts, item descriptions and design, scripting, concept art sketches for locations and items, voice casting, script reading, and contributed design and feedback to almost all of the design for the game. I led a team of about 7+ designers and interfaced with the other departments to get the game done with a lion’s share of help from our lead programmer Dan Spitzley and lead artist Tim Donley.

Thankfully, a number of folks who worked on Planescape came with us to Obsidian (Dan Spitzley, Aaron Meyers, Dennis Presnell, Brian Menze, Yuki Furumi, Scott Everts, etc.) and I am grateful for that.

Note that there are a lot of spoilers below, and I tried to mark most of them. If you intend to play the game, I'd suggest sticking to the opening questions and leaving the rest for later. I also included some extracted samples of the dialogue evolution in Planescape with one of the major NPCs for anyone who wants to check it out.

Colin McComb: My name is Colin McComb. I’ve been writing professionally in one sense or another since 1991. I started out as a designer at TSR, Inc, writing Dungeons & Dragons supplements and creating campaign settings like Birthright and being heavily involved in other campaign settings like Planescape, which is how I went to Interplay in the first place. I was originally hired there as the lead designer on a Playstation Planescape title, similar to King's Field, but when that title was canceled, they shuffled me off to some Planescape PC title called "Last Rites". Chris Avellone was the only designer on it before then, so I tell everyone now that I was the “second designer”, as if that were some official title or indicator of quality… and hey, I got on the promo poster, so that was a bonus.

Anyway, now I’m working on a novel (just like everyone, only I think I’m farther along than most other unpublished authors are), some short stories that I take out and polish and then put away again, and a secret project about which I cannot say too much because the details have not been officially finalized, and damn, isn’t that just mysterious?

RPGWatch: What were your experiences with the consequences of working with an "outside" IP?

Chris Avellone: Every franchise I've worked with to date (including Star Wars in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and now, the Aliens RPG) has been pretty painless, and Torment was no exception. For Planescape, I recall we had one meeting with Monte Cook and some of the reps from Wizards/TSR, and I think they had one comment at the end of the presentation ("will Sigil be diverse in terms of the characters you see?") and that was about it. They may have secretly hated everything we showed them, but if so, it was a big secret.

I think as long as you take the time to understand the license and sell your ideas so they make sense in the franchise, it’s not hard to work with a licensor. For Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, we received little to no comments on the game design whatsoever (I think the most comments we got was the initial build of the Devaronian model, and they noted some places where we’d switched Atton’s name with his old version). In any event, the approval process for the game design went through pretty quickly.

Colin McComb: I thought it was great, obviously. I mean, Interplay was pushing hard on the Planescape line. They'd hired David "Zeb" Cook before me, and he was the creator of the setting (never mind the complicated lineage of 1st Edition, Manual of the Planes, or the initial in-house product proposal at TSR; Zeb was the guy who actually designed the campaign setting). I had been extensively involved with Planescape almost from its inception, and Monte Cook and I had taken over primary design duties when Zeb left TSR. When I made the decision to move to California, I did it with TSR's blessing. Interplay was quick to hire me for the aforementioned Playstation game as another expert on the line.

In short, I was hired to assure TSR that the license was in good hands, and the presence of Zeb and me ensured that there was a minimum of meddling from outside. Plus, we had the TSR Planescapers down to show them what we were working on, and they loved it. As Chris said, if they secretly hated it, they kept it secret from me too.

RPGWatch: Planescape: Torment was never developed to be a huge hit. How much involvement or interference was there from the suits of the company?

Chris Avellone: As far as being a huge hit, I think everyone wanted Torment to sell very well (it made a profit, but not a huge one, and certainly not anywhere near Baldur's Gate numbers).

Still, there were a number of elements that I think hurt it in the long run:

- Not an accessible setting. It's not a fantasy world that is comfortable for players to settle into, and we did not take pains to make it comfortable (no dwarves, elves, or halflings, as one minor example).

- Story-heavy in the wrong ways. It has a slow start, and while the momentum does pick up in the Hive, there's a lot of reading, and people don't buy games to read, they buy games to play them.

- Marketing. The box of the product reinforces #1 above - it says, "hey, we're strange," rather than promoting it as a role-playing game using the Baldur's Gate engine, which probably would have made it a more interesting target to the game community.

As far as interference-from-above goes, we probably could have used more than we had - like Fallout, Torment was sort of under the radar for a while, and the producer role changed several times over the course of the project. Brian Fargo was mostly hands off, except to complement us on the writing, and give me a pretty stern lecture (deservedly) about the localization costs for the game. Feargus was also concerned about how much it slipped over the course of the development cycle, and those weren't fun discussions.

Colin McComb: As far as I know, a surprisingly small amount compared to the amount of money they spent on us. We had to do a few dog-and-pony shows for game magazines, a couple of presentations for the investors, but from my perspective, the executives didn't get too involved with our development cycle, focused as they were on the big money titles like Fallout 2, Stonekeep 2, and the games on the other side of the building. Chris might have a different story, since he was a step higher on the ladder, and he may simply have performed the valuable service of protecting all his designers from any spatters from above. I certainly never felt that we were being jogged or pushed in any one particular direction especially.

RPGWatch: Do you feel the Infinity Engine was a good engine to build a AD&D game on (especially in the sense of combat, but also in whatever other sense you wish to discuss)?

Chris Avellone: For Planescape, hell(s) yes, because most environments could be painted, which is one of the only ways to fully realize some of the Planescape locations. Also, because the Infinity Engine was already so heavily D&D focused, that made a lot of the content creation much easier. I do recall discovering some surprises in the Infinity Engine, but Bioware was pretty open about sending down advisors and helpers at points during the project to assist us with the functionality and features of the editor so we didn’t get turned around (they did the same on Knights of the Old Republic II as well).

Colin McComb: I was not especially thrilled with the way combat felt in the Infinity Engine, but I write this off to my predilection for the immediate rush of first-person shooters, and the fact that the AD&D rules are in themselves a shorthand for that immediacy as well. I have always felt that the biggest problem with tabletop gaming is the pure nitpickery of slogging through combat; entire sessions have been wasted on a single battle. Computer gaming should, in theory, create a seamless flow, allowing action to occur naturally and fluidly. I suppose the Infinity Engine was the closest one could get to such fluid action while still retaining at least the outline of the basic AD&D rules. Essentially, I’m torn between the desire to immerse the player in a combat situation and the desire to make sure even slow-twitchers get something out of a game.

As far as dialogue, scripting, and depth, I thought it was great. We had intimate control over stats, motions, scripting, alignment variables, and basically any variables or constraints we wanted to introduce.

RPGWatch: Generally speaking, what are the biggest constraints in bringing the AD&D universe to the computer?

Chris Avellone: Turn-based systems do not translate well into real-time games. In addition, the spell system in AD&D was not computer player friendly. I imagine much of the impetus behind the Warlock and Sorcerer classes in D&D nowadays is a result of the frustrations of spell memorization and spell books.

That said, however, the Planescape source material itself was designed to bend (and break) various D&D rules. As a result, getting changes to the character development (especially the Nameless One’s leveling scheme), having unconventional character classes, and brand new spells (thanks to Ken Lee, Eric Campanella, and Rob Holloway), actually complemented the setting, not undermined it.

Colin McComb: Having regard for the different play styles of each gaming type. You’ve got rules lawyers, who want to make sure that they receive every possible benefit from the rules. You’ve got min-maxers, who calculate pros and cons with the eagle eye of a CPA. You’ve got roleplayers, who couldn’t care less about the rules and just want to see the story. Then you’ve got the computer gamers, some of whom want a straight-up Diablo-style adventure game and think Zelda is role-playing (don’t get me wrong; I love Zelda, but it drives me crazy to see it called “role-playing”), and then you’ve got… well, the list goes on. You’ve got to figure out how to cater to a significant chunk of each of these groups and make the game recognizably D&D in their particular styles, and that’s a serious chunk of work.

Oh, actually, I just remembered: The experience point system works fine for tabletop gaming, but it is completely broken for computer-style gaming. Players expect a certain amount of incremental reward as they progress through a game; it keeps us motivated to press on. Unfortunately, in AD&D, levels come harder as you advance, and thus the regular reward system breaks down. During the design and implementation of the Curst/Carceri sequence, Feargus took me aside and asked me to increase the XP rewards in the area significantly, because otherwise the player could go through the entire level without seeing a single level increase. The amount of encounters in the area are approximately a metric ton; there should be a reward in there somewhere. 5,000 XP for a combat is a huge reward, in theory, but it’s almost nothing when compared to the XP one needs to get to 20th level. We wanted our players to get that feeling of success that a level brings, and it just wasn’t happening with ordinary XP rewards, so we jacked up the XP gained in certain dialogues.

PS:T Development Cycle

RPGWatch: Why Planescape?

Chris Avellone: Boring answer, but here it is: Interplay had the license, and they had the resources to do one. The setting and engine was dictated to us, but of all the licenses that could be dictated to somebody at Interplay, it was one of the best (aside from possibly Fallout).

In any event, Ferg and Fargo pretty much let us run with it, I think they were more concerned with Black Isle getting Baldur's Gate and Fallout 2 done than worrying too much about Torment.

Colin McComb: Because TSR had licensed out its various properties to a bunch of different software companies. Interplay wound up with Planescape, and Interplay’s management was determined to wring every possible ounce of profit from the license. This leads nicely into your next question.

RPGWatch: There were multiple Planescape games in the works at Interplay. Could you tell us a little bit about the two other Planescape projects?

Chris Avellone: I'll let Colin McComb field this one, since he was working on the Playstation console Planescape game. ;) The console version was supposed to be a different storyline and game mechanic than the Infinity-engine-inspired PC version.

Colin McComb: When I came on at Interplay, Zeb Cook was working on a first-person perspective Planescape game, something less wordy than Torment (well, obviously) and with different mechanics. There was all sorts of cool stuff going on with it, and I think it could have been a fairly big hit had it ever been completed. Zeb was well into the design when I first started at Interplay, and I imagine he was intensely disappointed when the project was canceled and wrapped into Stonekeep 2. “Stonekeep 2? I don’t ever remember seeing Stonekeep 2 on the shelves!” you might be saying. Well, yes. It was canceled after five years in production. I credit it with keeping the eye of the executive suite from Torment. There was a ton of money poured into that game.

Then there was the game I was working on. They asked me to play King’s Field – a first-person Playstation adventure/combat game – and I was thrilled to play computer games for a living. Then they asked me to make a game similar to but not copying King’s Field. My original concept was to start in Sigil, because it’s the quickest way to get into the Planescape feel and it’s the safest place for a low-level adventurer. The lead character was a young Harmonium recruit commanded to help his squadmates put down a riot in the Lower Ward. This first area would have been the get-acquainted-with-the-controls area, and after some low-intensity combat, the player would have been funneled into some burned-out buildings, where he’d find clues to the rioters’ motives, and this would lead him into a story of intrigue, upper-planar meddling, and a story that may have involved (at least) the scion of a power. You know, basically a police procedural with spiky armor and the actual incarnations of corruption and evil. I hadn’t gotten incredibly far into it before they pulled the plug on my game and Zeb’s, but I still think it would have been lots of fun.

RPGWatch: What was it like working with the PS:T team? How did the team come up with all the insane characters?

Chris Avellone: I made up and wrote most of the major characters such as the companions, plus Deionarra, Ravel, Pharod, Dhall (and quite a few of the minor ones, especially in the Hive), but the entire team contributed to the roster. Dave Maldonado did an excellent job on bringing the Clerk's Ward to life as well as elements of the Sensorium, Colin did the same with the Foundry, and so on. I had done a first draft of most of the dialogues for Planescape before full production started, and some designers would use those, others would revise or change as they saw fit.

Colin McComb: Avellone had at least a broad outline of the entire game from start to finish, with all of the major characters sketched out, by the time I’d joined the team. The rest of the design team added minor characters, stuff not exactly crucial to the main quest, and other fun stuff, and fleshed out the stuff he couldn’t get to. Avellone is a madman, I’ll tell you that – it was only with the greatest regret that he passed off Fhjull and Trias to me, and I heard him weeping bitter and solitary tears in his office when he assigned the Brothel to Dave Maldonado.

Working with the Torment team was incredible. It was really a fantastic bunch of people. We all did the very most we could to help each other out, to make each area as good as it could be, and to incorporate as many ideas as we could. Eric Campanella, one of our artists, came up with a pile of crazy and creepy monsters, and we made up some names and stats for them and threw them into the sewers.

RPGWatch: How was work divided and who did what (areas/NPCs/dialogue)?

Chris Avellone: I wrote a first draft and character briefs of most of the characters in the game (I’d say 75%, a sample of one of these dialogue briefs is attached - Ravel_First_Draft.doc), and then designers for individual areas would script and revise them, taking them to something along the lines of Ravel_Final.doc. Probably a poor example, since I wrote Ravel from start to the finished template, but it should give you a sense of scope, and taking it from first draft to final copy was no small task.

I probably did the most writing, but Colin, Warner, Maldonado, Bokkes, Jason Suinn, Deiley, and others all made original characters as well as revising the suggested ones. Suinn, for example, did a lot of the core work for the Alley of Dangerous Angles and a number of original characters (and item descriptions), and Warner and Colin hammered away at Curst. In general, each designer took a portion of the game and fleshed it out.

Note that while we wrote these dialogues in Word, we had a clunky process for getting them into the editor and testing them – we had several tech designers (Presnell, Hendee, Derek Johnson, and Dave Maldonado) who actually helped get the frameworks into the game and inputed them directly into the editor. Maldonado had the horrid task of getting Fell’s dialogue into the game, which was a huge pain because it technically was three dialogues in one (and huge ones) depending on who was translating for the player.

Since then, we've tried to use batch files and importation processes for entering dialogues into game editors, and when possible, we try to write dialogues directly in the editor (NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer).

Colin McComb: I hate to say it again, but Chris did the major work on the game. I would estimate that although he had seven designers on his team, he did about 50% of the work on the project. Keep in mind that he did all this while he was working on Fallout 2 as well. The man is truly prolific.

For the major character dialogues, I based my work on the original dialogues that Chris had created – some of them were just snippets, but they all held the germs of fascinating ideas - because I felt that the game would be better served to move forward with his vision as the signpost. If I misremember anything I’m about to list, I plead the passage of years and the indulgence of my coworkers.

The areas I did included Smoldering Corpse bar and its attendant quests and dialogues, Many-As-One and the Warrens of Thought, the Great Foundry, some of the Lower Ward (John Deiley did most of the other parts), Lothar and the Bones of the Night (though I don’t remember if I did Mantuok), Many-As-One, Curst, Under Curst (and certain dialogue nodes with Vhailor), Carceri. Trias the Betrayer, and Fhjull Forked-Tongue. I helped smooth out certain kinks in the flow of the game, and suggested some of the chaos that might ensue when Curst shifted into Carceri and helped design the mechanic that would allow the player to return the city to the Outlands. I think I did some other stuff too.

I should mention that Curst-in-Carceri would not have been nearly as fun without the aid of Scott Warner and Adam Heine, both of whom helped turn a fairly stale location into the awesome run of chaos and super-scripted events that it became. Scott’s a lead at Pandemic Studios now, and based on his performance on Torment, he definitely deserves to be.

I would also add that Dave Maldonado deserves a huge portion of credit for the Clerk’s Ward. He did a fantastic job and was fearless in exploring the possibilities.

Scott Warner, Jason Suinn, and John Deiley did a hell of a job on creature design, item design and placement, stores, and all the thankless stuff that people don’t tend to notice when it’s done well, but definitely notice if it’s not. So I hereby would like to make sure they are thanked, and that very loudly, in public.

Chris was almost entirely responsible for the dialogues between the Nameless One and the party NPCs. We could add a few nodes of dialogue here and there, but Chris did almost everything with those characters.

Part II

Storyline

RPGWatch: MCA once noted PS:T was born of frustration with the uselesness of dying in cRPGs, how did the creative process go from there?

Chris Avellone: When I first came to interview at Interplay, the director of the TSR division at the time was Mark O’ Green. One of the questions he asked in the interview was “if I were to design a Planescape game, what would it be like?” I told him I’d start on the death screen, and what happened to the player character after that, waking up in the Mortuary, and trying to piece things out from there like a jigsaw puzzle. He hired me, either because or in spite of that, so I guess it worked out.

One of the directions for the theme of the game was to turn a lot of RPG cliches on their head, and a number of encounters, situations, and game mechanics revolved around that. For example:

- Rats became one of the most dangerous creatures to fight.

- Undead were often more human and sympathetic than their living counterparts (Pharod vs. Stale Mary, for example).

- Quest givers were usually people you had given quests to, but had forgotten you had (Pharod).

- Brothels indulged not physical lusts, but intellectual lusts. A LOT.

- The plane of chaos was incredibly orderly.

- Gaining information was often more important than increasing your stats.

- Death didn't end the game, and in places, helped progress it.

- You didn't get a name until the end of the game.

- You are frequently fighting against things and traps you set for yourself in previous lives.

- No swords - and there was an attempt to avoid conventional and expected spells and weapons.

- No dwarves, elves, halflings, etc.

- Options were provided for the player to easily raise dead companions so the game could keep going easily.

- The most prominent Succubi in the game was non-sexual.

- Devils were painfully honest, angels... well, weren't.

There were more, but a framework of those often helped guide the overall direction of the game.

I can’t say that these decisions helped mainstream sales or made customers want to pick up the game in favor of more tried-and-true fantasy titles, but those were ideas that seemed to be cool to try out.

Colin McComb: This is Chris’s baby.

RPGWatch: Could you clear up once and for all the exact relation between the Nameless One's deaths, his amnesia and the three incarnations?

Chris Avellone: Spoilers! Don't read any farther if you intend to play the game.

Every time the Nameless One dies before the start of the game, his personality is erased. This is the result of the magic that the night hag Ravel performed on him to make him immortal, since everything Ravel did always had a brutal drawback that unmakes all her altruistic efforts. She discovered that he lost his memory after she “tested” her work by killing the player - the player woke up and had forgotten her and the reason he had asked for immortality in the first place. Rinse and repeat for a few thousand incarnations or more.

As the start of the game, however, Ravel's "blessing" is breaking down, and the Nameless One is actually able to remember his previous deaths up until the start of the game. Ironically, this coincides with the fact that his mental degradation is also escalating, and the longer he is killed and reborn, he will eventually become nothing more than a mindless zombie that is impossible to kill. Once he loses his will, there will be no way for him to save himself - or at least discover what drove him to this state. The events of the game is his last chance in his lifetimes to put things right.

The three incarnations the player meets at the end game are (1) the practical incarnation who discovered that someone was purposely killing the player and did a great many unethical things to strike back (led the assault on the Fortress, assembled Deionarra, Dak'kon, Xachariah, and Morte, built the trapped tomb for the killer, left notes on the player's back, deceived (?) Dak'kon with the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon), (2) the insane incarnation who did all sorts of historical damage and tried to dismantle and ruin all that the practical one did (the two obviously hate each other at the end - the paranoid incarnation made the dodecahedron trapped journal, got mazed by the Lady of Pain, killed the linguist Fin and strangled a bunch of other people in Sigil), and (3) the seemingly well-meaning incarnation, who is actually the one who started this whole ball rolling by being a bastard, and then suddenly realizing that the karmic wheel was going to roll around for him and tried to change his ways.

It's important to say, however, that the well-meaning original incarnation genuinely felt remorse for what he had done, and he wanted to try to fix it - the only problem is, after the first death, he forgot his grand goal and doomed thousands of incarnations to immortality. I always felt that this was the proper way to handle this because I always felt that the “immortality fix” he tried to achieve was a quick fix, when in fact, he should have just owed up and paid the piper in the first place.

Colin McComb: This is, again, Chris’s baby.

RPGWatch: What's Morte's story exactly and where did the inspiration for the character come from?

Chris Avellone: Spoilers: Morte was yanked from the Pillar of Skulls by the player after swearing an oath to serve him. The player did this because he thought Morte would retain all the knowledge of the Pillar of Skulls once he was removed from it – he was wrong.

Morte is responsible for the deaths of more than one of the player's incarnations and is believed to be responsible for the death of the first incarnation as well, but there is no evidence for this other than Morte's suspicion.

Morte sticks with the player seemingly out of “Mimir” responsibility (he's not a Mimir), but in fact, it is Morte's guilt - the one noble emotion he has, although he refuses to confront it - is what drives him to try to help the player on his quest.

Incarnations in the past, however, have considered the floating skull to be deceptive and did not trust it, thus, the warnings in the player's tomb concerning Morte.

Colin McComb: Chris’s baby, dammit! Why must you torment me?

Setting

RPGWatch: Factions featured strongly in the background of PS:T. Any factions you would have wanted to expand or add?

Chris Avellone: We actually wanted to add all of them, but there just wasn't the resources to do it - the Chaosmen was something I realized could be thrown in quickly, so I went ahead and did it. Also, we did want a Doomguard faction just because of Vhailor's presence, but again, we ran out of resources there as well.

Colin McComb: I would have liked to expand the Godsmen. I don’t think I gave them nearly enough credit, nor do I feel I made them interesting enough or involving enough. I think the Harmonium were well represented by Ebb Creakknees. I would have loved to get the Doomguard involved, and the Athar, but the whole no-powers-rule in the game kind of obviated their involvement.

RPGWatch: Why the choice to center the game strongly around Sigil and keep other places very restricted when entered (such as only one canyon on the Lower Planes)?

Chris Avellone: We felt Sigil was the part of Planescape we really had to get right from the outset in case we made more games. It's the signature city, but you're right, we did sacrifice other planar locations so that we could do it.

Chris McComb: As I mentioned above, starting the player out in Sigil immerses the player in the planes immediately, without throwing in the whole “hey, check it out, you’re in the playground of the GODS now, berk!” that sort of comes with the territory of the Outer Planes. It’s a good introductory area. As for the reason behind keeping the other areas restricted, well, it was largely a question of just how big we wanted the game to be. Opening up additional planes meant opening an infinity of new options, and we kind of had to ship the game at some point.

RPGWatch: Any Planescape places you had wanted to add, but couldn't?

Chris Avellone: Limbo was considered (and made it in, in a different format, so I don't know if that counted), and we did kick around the idea of the Higher Planes, but those didn't strike as interesting enough compared to some of the other locations we could do.

Colin McComb: I wanted to do Mount Celestia and more of Baator, but again, we’re talking about a massive increase in design time, scripting time, and testing time, even if we didn’t add any new features or monsters. Chris added Limbo, technically. I wish we had seen some slaadi.

RPGWatch: To what extent did you allow yourselves to, and did you, deviate from the Planescape universe?

Chris Avellone: You may notice in the game you can't be a priest, and the idea of the Powers is downplayed in the game as well - we intentionally distanced ourselves from the gods of the D&D universe, since we were concerned it would detract from the plot. There was already more than enough that had to be explained and fleshed out, so throwing the Powers in felt like more baggage.

Colin McComb: We made a conscious effort not to deviate from the setting. The whole team had incredible respect for the license, and I thought we did a great job of keeping the game true to the setting. Now, we didn’t include everything in the campaign, and some absences may have been glaring, but I think we did a good job in distracting people from those absences.

I also think I dislocated my shoulder by patting myself on the back there.

RPGWatch: Any specific technical constraints that got in the way of translating the PS:T setting?

Chris Avellone: Nothing really springs to mind - obviously, you're trying to cram an infinity of infinities into a box, and there's only so much you can do. Again, the advantage of being able to use painted bitmaps as adventure maps really allowed us to pull off some of the locations that would be extremely difficult to do in a 3D engine.

Colin McComb: Belief being power. There’s no stat for belief. Some of those things had to be fudged, but since there’s no actual stat for belief in tabletop AD&D, I think we did all right with what we had.

General

RPGWatch: Do you feel it would be a good idea to make a sequel to PS:T? If so, how do you envision it? If not, how about another game in the Planescape setting?

Chris Avellone: A long time ago, I did kick around the idea of two sequels. One was "Lost Souls," an adventure that allowed the player to experience the events surrounding Torment (both past and future) but the Nameless One wouldn't be in it - it would, however, feature Deionarra, some of the members of the player's first party (Xachariah), Fall-From-Grace, Ravel, Trias, and other major characters and see the Planescape universe from a different perspective. This didn't go much beyond a one-page vision statement, though, and I never submitted it for serious consideration.

One I felt less strongly about (but still liked) was "Planescape: Pariah", which allowed the player to take on the role of Dak'kon and try to unify the githzerai and githyanki, but again, that never went past the vision doc stage.

The reason I never submitted either one was because a direct sequel somehow feels wrong (I feel the game stands on its own, and I don't want to drag a rake through the first game).

I'd be up for another game in the Planescape setting, though. Some of the Planescape mods I've seen for Neverwinter Nights 2 would probably put any ideas I had to shame, though - they're pretty amazing. I know there’s a few guys at work who would also like to do a Planescape game.

Colin McComb: I have mixed feelings about it. I thought Chris did an excellent job in ensuring the loose ends were tied off neatly, but at the same time, he didn't kill off all the NPCs. They were so richly imagined and so involved in great events that it's hard to imagine them just saying, "Well, that's enough excitement for THIS life," and then going and settling down by a nice little fire made up of the souls of damned petitioners. I would especially like to see more done with Dak'kon, and I'd like to see more of Morte, and I'd like to see more of Annah, if only so I could go to the recording studio when Sheena Easton came in again, because she was hilarious.

So a direct sequel? Not so much. Another game in the Planescape setting, one that references Torment and ties a few characters in without making them the centerpieces of the game, absolutely.

RPGWatch: Would you like to work on said game? Do you think it's likely such a game could be made in the industry as it is now?

Chris Avellone: Yes, and yes... but the last answer would come with the caveat "with difficulty." And the caveat: "And only if it were self-financed." And: "And if it were distributed for free." And finally: "Of course, it would probably need to be done with an existing editor."

Colin McComb: I would love to work on this, especially if we could bring back most of the team from the original. We were driven, motivated, and I am extremely proud of the result of our hard work. Do I think it could be made now? I do, provided we had the backing of an understanding set of investors who didn't mind a good long slip from the original deadline. And hell, look at Blizzard and Valve... when was the last time they made an original deadline? And when was the last time they put out a bad game? So yes, given a nearly impossible confluence of factors, I believe it could happen.

Additional Questions

RPGWatch: Dialogue is the most-discussed element of Torment's design.

a) Did you feel D&D system was the best way to bring the kind of dialogue options Torment had to the forefront, or do you feel GURPS-likes could be an improvement on it?

b) PS:T is even referred to as a "dialogue-based" RPG, as its own genre. Was this dominance of dialogue over other gameplay elements in the game intentional from the start?

Chris Avellone: I don't know if either D&D or GURPS always nails dialogue interaction, but D&D 3rd Edition does a good job of providing more options for players to get more "game" out of dialogue.

While doing design for Neverwinter Nights 2 and NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, I usually found there was always a dialogue skill (Taunt, Appraise, Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, etc.) that could be called into play for any particular conversation. In Torment, we kept most of those options statistic-dependent (Strength, Wisdom, etc.), but a more skill-based system to go along with the stats is my preference.

I do think dialogue in Torment would have suffered had I not done design work on Fallout 2 and saw all the stat-based and skill-based options the game presented in conversations. That really opened my eyes to what could be done in dialogues.

Yes, it was a personal preference. I don't feel it was the right call in the end (game mechanics should come first, and Torment's game mechanics were very clunky), but that was the main focus for design of the project.

Colin McComb: a) A mixture of the two would probably be ideal. We had to invent a lot of variables and base a lot of decisions on the player’s stats, and that’s not necessarily the best route to capturing fully the experience of a thousand-lived immortal.

b) Yes, it was. Chris made a choice early on to make the game more than a hack-n-slash adventure, and I think it paid off in the depth of loyalty and fondness of feeling the audience still has for the game. There may have been a little TOO much dialogue, but hell, I loved it all.

RPGWatch: The farther you get into the game, the more rushed it feels, especially on the prison plane. How much rush was there behind the project and how did you pick what you wanted to cut or leave unfinished?

Chris Avellone: There was urgency toward the end of the product, and the version of Curst you played through was actually the second revision of that plane (the original felt like it needed the iteration, so Adam Heine, Colin, and Scott Warner all tackled it).

I also wanted a lot more going on in the Fortress of Regrets (I don’t like the opening map’s challenge to this day), but I'm actually impressed with the amount of companion scripted sequences that took place at the end. Hendee, Jake DeVore, and Spitzley did a lot of work to make that ending happen, and I am thankful to this day.

Of all the things that were cut, however, I feel the most sad about a quest that was supposed to occur in the Modron Cube – this quest was one where either Fall-From-Grace or Annah would get kidnapped by the evil wizard in the maze once you entered it. The cool part that amused me was aside from mocking the save-the-princess cliche, we recorded some funny dialogue for Fall-From-Grace where she's delighted and excited by the whole thing, since this is her first time being kidnapped, ever.

Annah has a slightly less-than-pleased reaction, but the Fall-From-Grace one still makes me smile.

Colin McComb: The rush in Carceri was fully intentional, if you mean in the sense of “wow, there sure is a lot happening!” If you mean, “Things sure are broken!”, well, we realized that there were certain capabilities of the scripting editor that we hadn’t tried out originally, and we wanted to see just how cool we could make things in the time we had remaining.

Funny story about the final crunch… Torment was actually responsible for me meeting my wife. See, we were supposed to go gold before Thanksgiving, but there was a database crash and we lost a few weeks’ worth of work, and Feargus asked me to cancel my Thanksgiving plans to help with getting my stuff back in. I was invited to an Orphans’ Thanksgiving, and I met this incredibly cool woman there, and… oh, we’re talking about Torment? Sorry.

Anyway, yeah, there was some rush at the end. We’d been working incredibly long hours – like, hundred-hour weeks – and we came to realize that unfinished work like dialogues, subplots, and extra coolness had to be shelved if we wanted to get the game out in time for Christmas. The day they put the freeze on new design was both chilling and liberating – but we still had over a month to go. At that point, anything that was not crucial to advancing the main story of the game was evaluated and ruthlessly slashed, unless it had a completely miniscule amount of work left. There was no “picking” involved – there was just carnage.

The harm to our hearts caused by this carnage was slightly alleviated by the Jack-and-Cokes that I poured for the team on the day we went gold.

RPGWatch: What can change the nature of a man?

Chris Avellone: The high Wisdom answer available at the end of the game is, whatever you believe can make you change can do so - it all varies on the individual. Belief is what drives the Planescape setting, and belief allows one to change the shape of people and the Planes – and over the course of the game, it may even create real people from figments of the player’s imagination (Adahn).

The Transcendent One believes the question is meaningless, but characters with high Wisdom can give the "correct" answer in the final confrontation (or at least the answer I agree with) which is:

NAMELESS ONE: “If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear – whatever you *believe* can change the nature of a man, can.”

THE TRANSCENDENT ONE: "THEN YOU LEARNED A FALSE LESSON, BROKEN ONE."

NAMELESS ONE: “Have I? I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil’s hag heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.”

And that's it in a nutshell.

Colin McComb: Wisdom. Time. Belief. Desire. Remorse. A good meal. A tapeworm. Anything that can reach your soul, touch your heart, or broaden your mind. When you open yourself to understanding this, your answers are infinite. Your only impediment is will.

Chris Avellone: In any event, that’s it. Thanks for the opportunity, Thomas, this was fun.

Colin McComb: Huh. No more questions? Well, all right. Thanks so much for this – I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to answer some questions and tell some stories and praise my Torment teammates. And thanks to all you fans who helped keep us going during the tough slogs. We couldn’t have done it without you.

No, seriously. Totally sincere. Honest.

It probably doesn’t help that I’m saying that, huh? Well, it’s true.

Torment design documents

http://www.rpgwatch.com/files/Files/00-020...tement_1997.pdf

Kako je Torment razbijao rpg klishee

- Rats became one of the most dangerous creatures to fight.

- Undead were often more human and sympathetic than their living counterparts (Pharod vs. Stale Mary, for example).

- Quest givers were usually people you had given quests to, but had forgotten you had (Pharod).

- Brothels indulged not physical lusts, but intellectual lusts. A LOT.

- The plane of chaos was incredibly orderly.

- Gaining information was often more important than increasing your stats.

- Death didn't end the game, and in places, helped progress it.

- You didn't get a name until the end of the game.

- You are frequently fighting against things and traps you set for yourself in previous lives.

- No swords - and there was an attempt to avoid conventional and expected spells and weapons.

- No dwarves, elves, halflings, etc.

- Options were provided for the player to easily raise dead companions so the game could keep going easily.

- The most prominent Succubi in the game was non-sexual.

- Devils were painfully honest, angels... well, weren't.

Sjajno ! :) :)

[Rejz]

Sta reci sem da je igra sabijala, kad se samo setim kad sam je prvi put instalirao i startovao... Lezim na onom stolu, ne'am pojma ko sam i gde sam...

Damn, danasnje software-ske kuce nemaju pojma sa pravljenjem pravih igara, vec samo znaju da naprave pare, jer to im jedini cilj...

Zato long live web based RPG's :D

[G!!!]

web based rpgs ?

[Lurdusami]

- You didn't get a name until the end of the game.

Oo Ako se dobro sećam, nisi dobio ime ni na kraju. Otišao si da plaćaš dugove kao Nameless one.

Inače, nemam vremena, ali jedva čekam da pročitam intervju o najboljem RPG-u ikad.

[SavKe]

U jebote G,al si me istripovao, vec mi se u glavi pravila suluda ideja da planiraju nastavak:)

Aj sad cu da prochitam...

Edit:

Rats became one of the most dangerous creatures to fight

Boze kolko su me oni nervirali :)))

Edited August 2, 2007 by Savkeeeeeee...e!

[Crno-Sunce]

sjajna igra... nista vise nista manje... jednostavno savrsenstvo

[twisted system]

mda....zanimljiva igra...tako kvarne npc-ove nisam dugo video...hvala shto ste me podsetili zashto sam prestao da igram takve igre 1 i po godinu!!!

PS:slazem se sa savketom...krajnje odlichan trip!

[LaG]

tako, skenjam se kad prochitam ovo

zar je toliko teshko sesti i opet napraviti ovako neku igru?

[[BMF]Psycho]

nema para u takvim igrama. kvantitet>kvalitet. kad bi napravili dvojku niko ne bi morao da kupi najnoviju GeForce 99999 MX turbo laser disco dance 2gb video rama, a uz to bi morali da imaju mozga u glavi da bi resavali kvestove.

[voodoo_]

jeste, mora da je to.

[Trans-Lucky]

tako, skenjam se kad prochitam ovo

zar je toliko teshko sesti i opet napraviti ovako neku igru?

nema para u takvim igrama. kvantitet>kvalitet. kad bi napravili dvojku niko ne bi morao da kupi najnoviju GeForce 99999 MX turbo laser disco dance 2gb video rama, a uz to bi morali da imaju mozga u glavi da bi resavali kvestove.

Upravo.Sve treba da sija,da brije,da zahteva masinu od 256 TB rama i GF 99999 MX MEGA GIGA da bi radilo.I sva radnja treba da se svede na tri tastera da bi debilnoj (de)generaciji bilo lakse da se zabavlja

[viljuska]

kad bi napravili dvojku niko ne bi morao da kupi najnoviju GeForce 99999 MX turbo laser disco dance 2gb video rama, a uz to bi morali da imaju mozga u glavi da bi resavali kvestove.

:love:

salu na stranu, tuzno ali istinito.

Edited October 3, 2007 by viljuska

[voodoo_]

I elektronska industrija mora od nečeg da živi.

[viljuska]

nek zive od fpsova :)

ne moraju i od rpg-ova shootere praviti.

[[BMF]Psycho]

nek zive od fpsova :)

ne moraju i od rpg-ova shootere praviti.

ne nasedaj.

[voodoo_]

To nije bio trol. Elektronska industrija zaista mora od nečeg da živi, a serverske i kancelarijske mašine se ne menjaju na pola godine kao igrački hardver.

A ti si prvi počeo sa preseravanjem o GeForce 9999 MX Turbo.

[G!!!]

viljuska josh lepshe reche, nek zive i goje svoje debele guzove sa svakim generichkim fp shuterom ili arakdicom iz treceg lica... zasto diraju nesto sto je legenda :| zar im toliko fali mashte za nesto novo... tja bla truc... teeeeeekilaaaa

[voodoo_]

Pa čekaj, u šta drugo FPS-ovi mogu da evoluiraju osim u RPG-ove? U fudbal ne mogu, u auto trke ne mogu, ne mogu ni u point&click avanture, dakle jedino što preostaje je blend RPG-a i FPS-a. A ljudi isto tako neće da igraju prepakovani Kvejk 20 godina.

Kome se sviđa taj nek ide with the flow, kome se ne sviđa - nek igra Mask of the Betrayer i pošalje Obsidianu neki keš da i dalje pravi tako dobre igre :)

[[BMF]Psycho]

viljuska josh lepshe reche, nek zive i goje svoje debele guzove sa svakim generichkim fp shuterom ili arakdicom iz treceg lica... zasto diraju nesto sto je legenda :| zar im toliko fali mashte za nesto novo... tja bla truc... teeeeeekilaaaa

ne nasedaj.

[voodoo_]

smorio si.

[viljuska]

Pa čekaj, u šta drugo FPS-ovi mogu da evoluiraju osim u RPG-ove?

pa problem je u tome sto to nije evolucija fps-ova, vec degeneracija rpg-ova, jer jednostavnih i cistih fps-ovai dalje ima, dok se klasicni (a kvalitetni) rpgovi pojavljuju mozda jednom godisnje... dok je stari zanr fpsa i dalje isti, rpgove su polako zamenili neke kvazi akcione igre u kojima nit ima role playinga nit upotrebe mozga/uticaja na razvoj lika.