People News Ex-Obsidian Kevin Saunders Joins inXile as Project Director, Probably on New Torment Game

[villain of the story]

I can already see the official announcement:

"We would like to introduce you to our next game: Torment©®. It is our spiritual successor to the award-winning Planescape©®: Torment. Torment©® will bring back all the hallmarks of Planescape©®: Torment: great writing, multi-layered quest-solving, weird and beautiful environments and a deeply personal and philosophical, moving story. (Disclaimer: Torment©® is not a part of or a continuation of Planescape©®: Torment. All characters in Torment©® are entirely fictional and original and any resemblance to persons, places and items, living or dead and real or fictional and in any other medium, including Planescape©®: Torment, is purely coincidental. InXile does not own Planescape©®: Torment which belongs to the respective owner) By the very same people who brought you Planescape©®: Torment, InXile is dedicated to bringing you the closest experience you can get to Planescape©®: Torment with InXile's Torment©®."

Now imagine if a bunch of Troika developers got together, including Brian Mitsoda and they announced that they had trademarked the name Bloodlines to make another game similar to Bloodlines in spirit (or whatever):

"We would like to introduce you to our next game: Bloodlines©®. It is our spiritual successor to the award-winning Vampire The Masquerade©®: Bloodlines. Bloodlines©® will bring back all the hallmarks of Vampire The Masquerade©®: Bloodlines: great writing, multi-layered quest-solving, weird and beautiful environments and a deeply personal and philosophical, moving story. (Disclaimer: Bloodlines©® is not a part of or a continuation of Vampire The Masquerade©®: Bloodlines. All characters in Bloodlines©® are entirely fictional and original and any resemblance to persons, places and items, living or dead and real or fictional and in any other medium, including Vampire The Masquerade©®: Bloodlines, is purely coincidental. DoubleBear does not own Vampire The Masquerade©®: Bloodlines which belongs to the respective owner) By the very same people who brought you Vampire The Masquerade©®: Bloodlines, DoubleBear is dedicated to bringing you the closest experience you can get to Vampire The Masquerade©®: Bloodlines with DoubleBear's Bloodlines©®."

That would be tacky, no? Nobody needs a titular resemblance when the resemblance itself serves no purpose.

Also, this "Torment" will mostly likely be 3D, like Wasteland 2.

I don't see any real basis for this assumption.

Is the reason Wasteland 2 is 3D no basis? Fargo: "3D is cheaper that's why". Should anyone have the least expectation that this "Torment" would NOT be 3D? It's only the natural extension of the present.

Wouldn't PE approach be better?

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Nice try. Except, I'm arguing about the method, not specific examples. And we have yet to see how PE will turn out anyway, which is utterly irrelevant to this since InXile != Obsidian.

Simply answer this: would you like this "Torment" to be 2D or 3D? Right now, the odds are against 2D.

Why do people even read his retarded posts?

Brofisting for the butthurt value.

 

[Infinitron]

Yawn. Not today, vots. I'm a bit tired.

 

[villain of the story]

Also, this "Torment" will mostly likely be 3D, like Wasteland 2. Wouldn't PE approach be better? Who needs bloody 3D?

Weren't you saying that PE is shit and looks like shit?

Not at all. The one screenshot looks nice as an image but it also looks impractical for gameplay and is therefore a shitty indicator of gameplay, ie. it's shitty as a screenshot.

But even if I had said that, that would be irrelevant. We are talking rendering method here.

 

[jewboy]

I think you have a point, VotS, about actually using the Torment name in the game title, but he's never said he planned to do that, and I wouldn't try to second guess Fargo when it comes to marketing anyway. Just look at the success of his kickstarter. For a fucking turn-based game. The guy knows what he's doing. If he thinks it will rake in more cash to fund the game I don't care what he calls it.

 

[mediocrepoet]

They should just roll Torment into Wasteland 2. Eternity of Torment: The Wasteland... they could have a jaunt through a planar portal that drops the nameless hero into a brave new post-apocalyptic world where he/she must find his way, discover what happened and come to grips with his/her dark past. It'd be frickin' awesome!

 

[tuluse]

Nobody needs a titular resemblance when the resemblance itself serves no purpose.

There are a lot of more casual gamers who would be interested in a Torment spiritual successor, and might not find it other than seeing the name Torment pop on on Steam.

 

[almondblight]

It's nice and cozy how the lot of you suck up to McComb but anyone has yet to address this:

I did somewhere. I'm assuming that it'll be used mostly as a marketing technique. Which isn't bad, perse, but yeah, nothing to get super excited about. Also, this will probably cut the legs out from under the MCA PST spiritual successor a bit, if he's still planning that. Though Project Eternity already did that a little.

 

[UnknownBro]

Nobody needs a titular resemblance when the resemblance itself serves no purpose.

There are a lot of more casual gamers biotards who would be interested in a Torment spiritual successor romancing a succubus, and might not find it other than seeing the name Torment pop on on Steam.

Fixed.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Avellone already had the chance to do a Torment spiritual successor. But, remember, right before the PE thing started he said there are better things to do. Those better things to do resulted in PE. So, yeah.

 

[Rake]

i thought it had already become apparent that MCA does not like to retread old work, and when he does, he likes to bring a new twist or new insight to it. he's been trying to distance himself for years from being "the planescape torment guy", except when it suits their PR needs, as in the opening of the PE kickstarter. why the fuck, after almost 13 years and a plethora of other games which have been critically recognised, would he want to still be the PST one hit wonder?

It seems to me that a chance for him to step out of Torment's shadow is to make a game with the same strengths as Torment. Given his 13 year experience he could try to make a game even better than Torment.And a spiritual succesor doesn't mean a copy.He could still bring new insight into this. If inXiles game is a success, i expect Obsidian to follow with their own take on this. I believe the reason they choose P:E is that Feargus and MCA decided that Baldur's Gate 2 was more proffitable and mainstream,so it made sence their first try to be with that.But with P:E's engine they can make their own series of IPs like Black Isle did with the IE

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Jesuschristalready, has VOTS gone full-hiver?

 

[Jaesun]

He has been a fucking retard since he joined. Where have you been?

 

[ironyuri]

Jesuschristalready, has VOTS gone full-hiver?

No, just full deniszi.

 

[jewboy]

I just hope it doesn't discourage Obsidian from doing a torment-in-spirit game. With sequels, P:E may keep Chris busy for a while though. Until Obsidian figures out a way to clone him. Although with current tech even that would take, say, 20-30 years to bear fruit.

 

[Jaesun]

What would be wrong with TWO Planescape inspired games from 2 different companies?

THAT would be a win win scenario to me.

 

[almondblight]

Nothing wrong with two PST inspired games. The question is how much money there is out there for two PST Kickstarters.

 

[Gondolin]

And which one gets to use the "spiritual successor" tag first.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Nothing wrong with two PST inspired games. The question is how much money there is out there for two PST Kickstarters.

As long as they're not expecting $3M raised for each one, I think they'd do fine. There aren't many RPG devs out that can ask for and receive $1M+ in funds that would crowd out Obsidian and inXile.

All the late 90s rockstar devs are already employed by someone. I'm guessing all the big guys that just quit Bioware probably have a lengthy non compete. Garriott probably could, but I don't think he's interested in single player RPGs at this point. Maybe DW Bradley if Dungeon Lords didn't complete mess up his cred? I doubt the other DOS era names could raise much more $500K even with a good pitch unless they got the rights to make a Wiz9, Anachronox 2, Might and Magic 10, etc.

 

[Stinger]

Holy crap I've missed out on a hell of a lot in the last few days to weeks.

Honestly this sounds great. If a year ago, while we were so desperate we were calling fucking Skyrim or Witcher 2 GOTY, someone told me that Kevin Saunders, Colin McComb and Brian Fargo would all team up for a Torment sequel I'd have laughed in their face at such a possibility.

I guess it says a fair bit about how much better off we are right now that instead we're slightly disappointed that Chris Avellone isn't involved.

It's understandable and I think inXile can pull off a really strong title, I just hope they pace the kickstarter or whatever so that they can get the right amount of funding. I think it'll be a bit of a tougher sell to do Torment 2 without having Chris Avellone on board.

The idea of Torment being a series of different stories with similar themes sounds really awesome though.

 

[tuluse]

i thought it had already become apparent that MCA does not like to retread old work, and when he does, he likes to bring a new twist or new insight to it. he's been trying to distance himself for years from being "the planescape torment guy", except when it suits their PR needs, as in the opening of the PE kickstarter. why the fuck, after almost 13 years and a plethora of other games which have been critically recognised, would he want to still be the PST one hit wonder?

If he doesn't want to be known as the Torment guy all he has to do is make a better game.

 

[ironyuri]

i thought it had already become apparent that MCA does not like to retread old work, and when he does, he likes to bring a new twist or new insight to it. he's been trying to distance himself for years from being "the planescape torment guy", except when it suits their PR needs, as in the opening of the PE kickstarter. why the fuck, after almost 13 years and a plethora of other games which have been critically recognised, would he want to still be the PST one hit wonder?

.

 

[Metro]

Glad Fargo got the IP because now it'll be turn based instead of RTwP.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I think the only thing he got is being able to use "Torment" in the title ?

 

[villain of the story]

Jesuschristalready, has VOTS gone full-hiver?

So which part of what I said was a problem exactly? The part where I question the point of using the name "Torment"? Or the part where I call into question if this "Torment" should rather be 2D instead of 3D which it most likely will be?

Get back to me when you stop flipping like a bitching drama queen who can't put her finger on just what exactly is wrong with the stuff that makes her upset.

 

[villain of the story]

i thought it had already become apparent that MCA does not like to retread old work, and when he does, he likes to bring a new twist or new insight to it. he's been trying to distance himself for years from being "the planescape torment guy", except when it suits their PR needs, as in the opening of the PE kickstarter. why the fuck, after almost 13 years and a plethora of other games which have been critically recognised, would he want to still be the PST one hit wonder?

If he doesn't want to be known as the Torment guy all he has to do is make a better game.

Oh but he did. Remember Alpha Protocol, the new original IP by Obsidian, The Shitty Mass Effect Derivative Popamole Console Corridor Shooter On Rails Espionage RPG?

R00FLES!