Huh. I'd never heard of this before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Isle's_Torn
"In Torn, the player assumed the role of a wanderer, who was cursed to bring misfortune to people and places around it. Under a king's orders, the player undertook quests to clarify a series of conflicting prophecies. Unlike several other Black Isle Studios games, the game was to take place in an original world titled "Torn" instead of a traditional Dungeons & Dragons location."
"Torn was to contain four types of magic: Chaos, Order, Alchemy and Summoning. Order magic primarily consisted of healing, protective, and empowering spells. Conversely, Chaos magic was to have consisted of harmful elemental attacks, detrimental status afflictions, and invisibility spells."
I'm not sure if that's possible, but... well, it does feel kinda similar.
ALL Obsidian titles smell like Planescape.
Ha, true. This time, though, they might be working with their own thing instead of trying to retell PS:T in Star Wars or something.
No sleep for the wanderer?
I think you guys nailed it.
Torn is Interplay's only unfinished project that wasn't based on a licensed setting, so, in that respect, it makes more sense than IWD3, TBH or anything like that. From the point of view of the fact that MCA was talking about a spiritual successor to PS:T, Torn fits like a glove because its setting is very Torment-like and, then there's this gold nugget from
Black Isle's Torn Wikipedia page: "Announced during GDC 2001,
Torn was subject to much interest by the press, because the team behind the cult classic
Planescape: Torment was revealed to be developing it", so the Torn team was the PS:T team... the plot gets thicker.
The protagonist of Torn was said to be "a wanderer, who was cursed to bring misfortune to people and places around it" (
Black Isle's Torn Wikipedia page again), so I would bet money on the fact that "no sleep for the wanderer" is the correct interpretation.
Now, as to the Obsidian website hints: the word puzzle points to "Eternity" and the Ouroboros symbolizes cyclicity, eternal return, all of that pointing to a very PS:T-like plot, where the protagonist struggles to escape a never-ending cycle... this is the "no sleep" part from the "no sleep for the wanderer" tagline. At this point, all the little quotes fit right in with this setting.
Now, for my opinion of Obsidian rebooting Torn: