In December last year, inXile boss Brian Fargo - founder of Interplay - trademarked Van Buren. inXile, remember, produced last year's excellent Wasteland 2 - a game being tidied up for a console release and PC and Mac re-release this year.

Fargo had only vague confirmation at the time. "The [RPG] codex investigative unit strikes again," he sort of nodded.

I spoke to Fargo recently, however, and he had more to say - implying he intends to make something Van Buren with Chris Avellone, if and when inXile has time. (Avellone retains close ties to inXile, having been involved in Wasteland 2 and, now, Torment: Tides of Numenera.)

I asked if Fargo was doing anything with the Van Buren trademark. "Not yet," he replied. "But there were some things, some ideas, that Chris Avellone had for doing something that made the post-apoc - a twist on the whole what-was-being-done that we really loved. So we talked about it and we thought why not grab the rights so we can entertain this one of these days.

"But nothing now," he stressed. "We have enough on our plate to be doing that right this second."

One of the eye-catching ideas Black Isle had for Van Buren was that the player would run into other players in the game world. You'd have a series of rivals that weren't necessarily enemies - more parties you would compete against, with different goals. They weren't necessarily evil, but they would have a different agenda. You would run into conflict with them over the course of the game.

InXile only last week launched a Kickstarter campaign for new game Bard's Tale 4 - a graphical showpiece in comparison to the retro-styled Wasteland 2. The game is inches away from its $1.2m goal with a month still to go.

In addition, inXile is also making Torment: Tides of Numenera - a thematic successor to the philosophical Planescape Torment from years ago. It has a Q4 2015 release date but Fargo wouldn't commit to a 2015 release when we spoke.

"We have to get to our backers pretty soon, the beta version or Early Access or whatever you want to call it," he said, "and that is coming here late summer. The [final release] date gets determined based upon that."

While inXile now owns the trademark for Van Buren, the developer is unable to use any Fallout-related material in a possible game. Everything brand Fallout is owned by Bethesda, and it keeps a tight ship when it comes to copyright. Perhaps more likely is the Van Buren name is used for a new post-apocalyptic role-playing game unrelated to Fallout.

Beyond those games, and possibly Van Buren, Fargo also has original new ideas for games he'd like to do.

"What's left?" he mulled. "I've got so many ideas of things I'd like to do. I have some pet projects of mine I would love to do that are not sequels to hits in any way. It will be interesting to see how that all works out as we start to get into more speculative titles."​