Game News Torment Kickstarter Update #61: Release Date - February 28th, 2017

[Deleted member 7219]

Asheron's Call! That said, the Eurogamer review does make some sensible points, along with some silly ones ("And you will find yourself dying a lot, because the game is bloody hard!" "It's also a little disappointing that the game has no multiplayer support.").

Ah, the typical template review.

durr too hard
hurr no multiplayer

No matter the kind of game, no matter how inappropriate, the rats in the guise of gaming journalists must follow the same path.

I actually think any games journalist who criticises a game for not having multiplayer should be killed.

 

[MRY]

By the way, it's amazing think how profitable these games would've been if they'd been distributed digitally. 400k sales at $40 with a 30% cut by Steam would've yielded $11.2M. PS:T probably was pretty expensive to make, but nowhere near that much. But I suppose when you factored in the cut that brick and mortar stores took (presumably much greater than 30%), the cost of production, and so forth, there was a much smaller yield.

 

[vortex]

I actually think any games journalist who criticises a game for not having multiplayer should be killed.

I disagree. Imagine all those online players who would want to play your game if it had some kind of MP.
Especially in 2017 if even more indies will have MP component. Competition is high and fierce.

 

[Roguey]

The "PS:T sold well" thing is now accepted wisdom, but my understanding is that while it may have been profitable, it underperformed hopes and expectations. BG and BG2 were both like 2 million copies, the expansions were both close to a million[1], and what I can find suggests that Icewind Dale also did better[2].

No one at Interplay was expecting a BG-style blockbuster with a game like Torment. I believe Avellone said that it was an under-the-radar B-title where they left him alone to do whatever he wanted, much like they did with Cain and the first Fallout.

And considering that Torment sold better than Fallout, likely cost much less to make (i.e. did not have to create their own engine, was not in development for 3.5 years), and Fallout 1 did well enough that the marketing department decided they were going to micromanage Fallout 2...

(as for why it didn't get a sequel, that's cause the Torment team moved to TORN and that turned out to be quite the unreleased tech mess)

 

[Fairfax]

The "PS:T sold well" thing is now accepted wisdom, but my understanding is that while it may have been profitable, it underperformed hopes and expectations. BG and BG2 were both like 2 million copies, the expansions were both close to a million[1], and what I can find suggests that Icewind Dale also did better[2].

No one at Interplay was expecting a BG-style blockbuster with a game like Torment. I believe Avellone said that it was an under-the-radar B-title where they left him alone to do whatever he wanted, much like they did with Cain and the first Fallout.

And considering that Torment sold better than Fallout, likely cost much less to make (i.e. did not have to create their own engine, was not in development for 3.5 years), and Fallout 1 did well enough that the marketing department decided they were going to micromanage Fallout 2...

(as for why it didn't get a sequel, that's cause the Torment team moved to TORN and that turned out to be quite the unreleased tech mess)

He said they left him alone because they were too busy with other projects, specially FO2 and its problems. Hard to say if it was meant to be "under-the-radar". They did cancel the other 2 Planescape projects, so maybe they didn't care that much about the licence anymore.
Another factor was how little Guido Henkel had to do with the creative aspects of the game, but members of the team have done the courtesy of not bringing that up.

 

[Roguey]

He said they left him alone because they were too busy with other projects, specially FO2 and its problems. Hard to say if it was meant to be "under-the-radar". They did cancel the other 2 Planescape projects, so maybe they didn't care that much about the licence anymore.
Another factor was how little Guido Henkel had to do with the creative aspects of the game, but members of the team have done the courtesy of not bringing that up.

According to Scott the real development happened after Fallout 2 shipped.

http://archive.is/vrhX2

[laughs] Baldur's Gate was being developed concurrently at the same time Planescape was. So as they would release updates to the Baldur's Gate engine, we'd incorporate them and, shortly thereafter we started making some large changes to their engine as they were developing it. But, I think Planescape originally went into production in late 97, early 98, as it is now, and then got put on hold for 10 months while Fallout 2 was wrapped up. There were around 3 programmers on the team working on modifications for the Planescape engine during that time, but the real development started happening in late 98. We busted through the content of the game in 11 months.

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey As a licensed title (ie, another company's problem, lawsuit bait!!), I think it's rather unlikely that Planescape was "under the radar" in the same way that Fallout was.

 

[MRY]

A Torment RPG held up for a post-apocalyptic RPG? The devil?!

 

[Roguey]

Roguey As a licensed title (ie, another company's problem, lawsuit bait!!), I think it's rather unlikely that Planescape was "under the radar" in the same way that Fallout was.

Fallout started as a licensed title (GURPS).

Interplay doesn't strike me as being much of a learning animal howeverrrrrrrr they did have Colin McComb on the team and he actually contributed Planescape work in the past, so he was there to set Chris straight on anything that needed setting.

 

[Fairfax]

He said they left him alone because they were too busy with other projects, specially FO2 and its problems. Hard to say if it was meant to be "under-the-radar". They did cancel the other 2 Planescape projects, so maybe they didn't care that much about the licence anymore.
Another factor was how little Guido Henkel had to do with the creative aspects of the game, but members of the team have done the courtesy of not bringing that up.

According to Scott the real development happened after Fallout 2 shipped.

http://archive.is/vrhX2

[laughs] Baldur's Gate was being developed concurrently at the same time Planescape was. So as they would release updates to the Baldur's Gate engine, we'd incorporate them and, shortly thereafter we started making some large changes to their engine as they were developing it. But, I think Planescape originally went into production in late 97, early 98, as it is now, and then got put on hold for 10 months while Fallout 2 was wrapped up. There were around 3 programmers on the team working on modifications for the Planescape engine during that time, but the real development started happening in late 98. We busted through the content of the game in 11 months.

Full production started after FO2, yes, but everything before that is the period MCA refers to when he says they "left him alone for a year" writing. Interplay was too concerned with other projects and FO2's troubled development to worry about PS:T's pre-production, and there wasn't a team working on it, so he had free rein. They only "busted through the content of the game" in 11 months because Chris had already written almost half the game by the time other writers joined him.

 

[HoboForEternity]

in the end i will probably buy it out of respect to ziets, Mc Comb, and MRY. fargo seems like shit, but the other crews are people i still respect and admire. i would feel bad if i just pirate it

 

[throwaway]

Exclusive pre order armor?

 

[Roguey]

Full production started after FO2, yes, but everything before that is the period MCA refers to when he says they "left him alone for a year" writing. Interplay was too concerned with other projects and FO2's troubled development to worry about PS:T's pre-production, and there wasn't a team working on it, so he had free rein. They only "busted through the content of the game" in 11 months because Chris had already written almost half the game by the time other writers joined him.

They continued leaving him alone up until the point they realized he went overbudget with localization costs.

 

[MRY]

in the end i will probably buy it out of respect to ziets, Mc Comb, and MRY. fargo seems like shit, but the other crews are people i still respect and admire. i would feel bad if i just pirate it

I would never endorse anyone buying a product because I worked on it. If the product is worth buying, you should buy it irrespective of my working on it, and if it's not, you shouldn't buy it even if every word, pixel, and musical note was the product of my earnest toil. Buying TTON as a courtesy to me would be like an even less defensible case of people buying multiple copies of Primordia to support us or threatening to pre-order future Wormwood titles. Game developers have to be the worst charity case ever because almost all of them are willfully pursuing economically suboptimal jobs because they love the work. It would be like a Patreon for amateur improv actors. (Buying a game to support inXile as a company is a different matter, and isn't crazy.)

(N.b.: I generally disapprove of piracy by people who can afford to buy the games, so if your alternatives are buying it or pirating it, you should buy it, unless you are tightly cash constrained.)

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Release on February 28th; patched and feature-complete on February 29th.

Better than February 30th

This prompted me to pull up the contemporaneous reviews PS:T got from mainstream commercial reviewers, and it's actually striking to me how much they nailed it.

Though this from Eurogamer made me laugh out loud:

Asheron's Call! .

I googled this MMO and it turned out it is still around. So maybe Eurogamer was onto something

 

[Septaryeth]

It's so funny that it has fewer owners on Steamspy than people who backed the Kickstarter. People outright refusing to activate their keys.

Fans are so excited about this once-in-a-generation game that they want to avoid spoiling it by playing an incomplete beta!

:pangloss:

Yup pretty much me. Right now I'm holding my curiosity by reading the novellas.

Yes I admit it, now do what you want with me, codex.:selfhate:

 

[Azrael the cat]

Roguey As a licensed title (ie, another company's problem, lawsuit bait!!), I think it's rather unlikely that Planescape was "under the radar" in the same way that Fallout was.

It was an unusual context, where using the D&D licence was far more trivial than it would usually be.

Interplay got the D&D licence in order to make/publish some major AAA Forgotten Realms games. Bioware came to Interplay with their RTS alpha demo, they talked and Interplay realised that the Biodocs also liked crpgs and were familiar with D&D. Interplay convinced Bioware to make their Forgotten Realms games for them to publish - which became the Baldurs Gate series.

So they'd already published the game for which they obtained the licence, and had their major follow-up sequel in the pipeline, with plans to develop their own dungeon-crawler Icewind Dale game using the same engine. Very different scenario to where they'd be if they'd licenced D&D specifically for Torment, and entirely consistent with it flying under the radar. They were using a licence that they already had for other projects, where they had a broad right to develop games using that licence for a lengthy period, the licensor and everyone else involved was happy because Baldurs Gate sold well and BG2 was looking good. Torment used the D&D licence in the same way that it used the Infinity Engine - ultra low risk/cost because they're just taking assets (including the licence) that they already had for far bigger projects, and were pushing out a cheap little slamdunk. D&D didn't care because Planescape wasn't a big property like Forgotten Realms, and BG was giving them a computer game foothold that had been lost since the Gold Box days - they didn't even need their permission, because they already had the licence, and there was never going to be any problems so long as the 'main projects', i.e. Baldurs Gate series and Icewind Dale, were selling well.

If anything, it would be easier for that to 'fly under the radar' than if they were developing an original IP. In those days, developers - especially large developer/publishers like Interplay - got to keep their original IPs, so developing a new IP was an opportunity to add a major long-term asset to the business. PS:T was structured, business-wise, as a cheap cash-in. The equivalent of churning out a FPS expansion pack, where it's just 10 more levels of the same engine/gameplay. Really minor stuff, just a small bit of 'value-adding' to milk the licence for a few extra bucks at no risk. It just so happened that Interplay/Black Isle was chock full of talent, and the cheap cash-in ended up in the lap of MCA and a really talented team.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I would never endorse anyone buying a product because I worked on it. If the product is worth buying, you should buy it irrespective of my working on it, and if it's not, you shouldn't buy it even if every word, pixel, and musical note was the product of my earnest toil

it's not really much about the money or paying tributes. i mean realistically, what does 1 sales matter to a company anyway (pun intended)? it's not that i can influence thousands of buyer into not buy or buy. it's more a matter of trust. i mean even with all the bad press (in codex anyway) and recent decisions that inexile took made me a bit turned off, but i still trust the crew and willing to bet my money that it will turn out enjoyable and worth my money. that trust is based on multiple products that i received alot of worth from.

there's of course reviews and impression by fellow players or media, but i still find the best way to judge a game is play it. all the way trough. that is a risk that come with every purchase for me. a game can be excellent in the beginning, then fell apart in the end or vice versa. so if you judge a 50 hours game by its first 10 hours, it is alot less credible.

i guess for me these people's names incite some kind of brand trust and loyalty, because all their previous works i deem good and satisfying. trust is earned, and you worked so hard to earn it well for me and it will keep stay that way unless the creators are royally screw up.

 

[Fairfax]

Roguey As a licensed title (ie, another company's problem, lawsuit bait!!), I think it's rather unlikely that Planescape was "under the radar" in the same way that Fallout was.

It was an unusual context, where using the D&D licence was far more trivial than it would usually be.

Interplay got the D&D licence in order to make/publish some major AAA Forgotten Realms games. Bioware came to Interplay with their RTS alpha demo, they talked and Interplay realised that the Biodocs also liked crpgs and were familiar with D&D. Interplay convinced Bioware to make their Forgotten Realms games for them to publish - which became the Baldurs Gate series.

So they'd already published the game for which they obtained the licence, and had their major follow-up sequel in the pipeline, with plans to develop their own dungeon-crawler Icewind Dale game using the same engine. Very different scenario to where they'd be if they'd licenced D&D specifically for Torment, and entirely consistent with it flying under the radar. They were using a licence that they already had for other projects, where they had a broad right to develop games using that licence for a lengthy period, the licensor and everyone else involved was happy because Baldurs Gate sold well and BG2 was looking good. Torment used the D&D licence in the same way that it used the Infinity Engine - ultra low risk/cost because they're just taking assets (including the licence) that they already had for far bigger projects, and were pushing out a cheap little slamdunk. D&D didn't care because Planescape wasn't a big property like Forgotten Realms, and BG was giving them a computer game foothold that had been lost since the Gold Box days - they didn't even need their permission, because they already had the licence, and there was never going to be any problems so long as the 'main projects', i.e. Baldurs Gate series and Icewind Dale, were selling well.

If anything, it would be easier for that to 'fly under the radar' than if they were developing an original IP. In those days, developers - especially large developer/publishers like Interplay - got to keep their original IPs, so developing a new IP was an opportunity to add a major long-term asset to the business. PS:T was structured, business-wise, as a cheap cash-in. The equivalent of churning out a FPS expansion pack, where it's just 10 more levels of the same engine/gameplay. Really minor stuff, just a small bit of 'value-adding' to milk the licence for a few extra bucks at no risk. It just so happened that Interplay/Black Isle was chock full of talent, and the cheap cash-in ended up in the lap of MCA and a really talented team.

It wasn't a cheap cash-in, actually. It flew under the radar because of several factors, but Interplay bought the licences for Forgotten Realms and Planescape games. FR for obvious reasons, and Planescape because it was going to be a big push by TSR, and Interplay saw potential in it. The irony is that they signed the contract right when Planescape was released, but their only Planescape game came out after the setting had already been abandoned (or right before it was abandoned, I'd have to check).

Just to clarify the context:

1994: Interplay buys exclusive rights to games based on Forgotten Realms and Planescape.
1995: Interplay is hiring designers to work on D&D, specially Planescape. Chris Avellone pitches his idea for a Planescape game and they hire him.
1996: Interplay has FR games in the works, but nothing using the Planescape licence. 3 Planescape projects enter pre-production: Planescape PS1 is assigned to Colin McComb, and Feargus requests an RPG similar to King's Field. Planescape PC is assigned to Zeb Cook, and not much is known about this one. Apparently it never got very far. Planescape: Last Rites is assigned to MCA, and that's the game that becomes Planescape: Torment. Either Interplay or Black Isle decides that's too much, so Planescape PC becomes Stonekeep 2 and Planescape PS1 is cancelled.
1997: MCA is busy with Descent to Undermountain and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (which is why he didn't work on Fallout 1). Fallout and MDK come out and are more successful than expected. Descent to Undermountain bombs.
1998: Troika folks leave Interplay after disagreements about team structure and payments. Interplay micromanages Fallout 2 during the busiest time of the company's history. More than two dozen games released in 98-99, plus others that only came out in 2000. While working on Fallout 2, MCA starts to write PS:T on the side by himself. Interplay has an underwhelming IPO. Later in the year, FO2 is successful, Baldur's Gate is an instant hit.
1999: Rather than micromanage the project, Interplay turns up the pressure on Guido Henkel, PS:T's "Project Director" at the time (he was eventually listed as Producer in the credits and the guy himself says that was his true role). Guido Henkel later said he hated the job because of how Interplay handled marketing and that he had to do the "dirty work". He starts to cut content so that the game would meet the deadline and Interplay's results wouldn't suffer in the targeted quarter. Creatively speaking, only a few characters considered "too crass" are cut. Guido stays until the game reaches the beta phase and quits Interplay in August, being replaced by Ken Lee. The game misses the original release date by a week, but meets commercial and critical success.
Meanwhile, Wizards of the Coast is bought by Hasbro.
2000: WOTC pretty much abandons Planescape, and so does Interplay. Forgotten Realms games are alive and well with Baldur's Gate II and Icewind Dale.
2001: Hasbro Interactive is purchased by Infogrames. Infogrames owns the rights to publish and develop D&D games now, but Interplay manages to keep the rights to D&D. It was probably grandfathered in, but I don't know the legal details there. BioWare is working on Neverwinter Nights and is owed a lot of money from Interplay. BioWare, Titus, Atari and WOTC sit down to arrange a deal, and Infogrames ends up publishing NWNl.
2003: After a legal dispute over unpaid royalties, Interplay loses the rights to D&D games and BG3 is cancelled.

 

[MRY]

As loremaster on this subject, perhaps you can answer a question for me. In 1995, was there anything other than a jRPG that could have served as an inspiration for the party aspect of PS:T? Ultima VII, maybe? It just seems like it wasn't really until Baldur's Gate that the idea of a party members as independent, interactive characters (as opposed to mute followers or additional avatars) became a thing. Or was Chris's 1995 pitch at a different level of generality?

[EDIT: I wrote these two paragraphs some time apart, and in the interim did some sleuthing on my own. Obviously the '95 "pitch" was not thinking of companions at all, just a general plot hook, so the question is what could the inspirations have been by the time of the '97 vision document.]

Also, something seems wrong or incomplete with this timeline -- the vision statement is from 1997, and it's quite detailed. It's also referred to in various places as the document used to pitch Last Rites to Interplay's management (which seems right). What's the story? (It sounds like the pitch he made in his job interview was pretty thin: "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."

Incidentally, I'm blown away by how close the '97 document is to the final game.

 

[Fairfax]

As loremaster on this subject, perhaps you can answer a question for me. In 1995, was there anything other than a jRPG that could have served as an inspiration for the party aspect of PS:T? Ultima VII, maybe? It just seems like it wasn't really until Baldur's Gate that the idea of a party members as independent, interactive characters (as opposed to mute followers or additional avatars) became a thing. Or was Chris's 1995 pitch at a different level of generality?

[EDIT: I wrote these two paragraphs some time apart, and in the interim did some sleuthing on my own. Obviously the '95 "pitch" was not thinking of companions at all, just a general plot hook, so the question is what could the inspirations have been by the time of the '97 vision document.]

Also, something seems wrong or incomplete with this timeline -- the vision statement is from 1997, and it's quite detailed. It's also referred to in various places as the document used to pitch Last Rites to Interplay's management (which seems right). What's the story? (It sounds like the pitch he made in his job interview was pretty thin: "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."

Incidentally, I'm blown away by how close the '97 document is to the final game.

Yes, that was it. One of the questions was "if you had to make a game in the Planescape setting, how would you start it?". MCA only pitched the premise and the opening in his answer. Most likely the "high concept" mentioned in the vision statement:

The player is a scarred, amnesiac immortal in search of his identity. On the way, the player character will kill a lot of people…including himself.

The game begins with the character waking up on a cold stone slab in the Mortuary, a huge morgue in the city of Sigil. The player character has no idea who he is, what he is doing there, and how he died. He must escape and explore the strange world beyond the Mortuary walls to uncover the secret of his death and rebirth.

The vision statement was only written after Feargus approached him. He basically said: "We're publishing Baldur's Gate. I was thinking we could license the Infinity Engine from BioWare and make a Planescape game with it. Want to do it?"

Most of his inspirations were quite specific, such as The Chronicles of Amber (amnesiac hero), Elementals (heroes that regenerate lost limbs), Doom Patrol (the pregnant alley), FF7 (spell animations), and so on. Overall his main focus was on a list he wrote with everything he hated (like elves, dwarves, halflings) or was tired of seeing in RPGs, so he reversed a bunch of tropes (death scene being the first, puritan succubus, protagonist out for himself, etc) and tried to fix problems he saw in the genre. He was also heavy on distinct visual hooks, something he probably got from comics and JRPGs, and Planescape was great for that. Planescape had a bunch of factions, places, races and themes to explore, which was a great fit for his companion design approach.

He always mentions Chrono Trigger as one of his main inspirations over the years, and until recently as his favourite game, but nobody's ever asked him for any specific inspiration. I'll ask him in the interview, though.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Came for the Torment update. Stayed for the 25 posts arguing about the production schedules for two 20 year old games.

 

[MRY]

The vision statement was only written after Feargus approached him. He basically said: "We're publishing Baldur's Gate. I was thinking we could license the Infinity Engine from BioWare and make a Planescape game with it. Want to do it?"

When did that happen? Because on your timeline, there's already a Planescape: Last Rites assigned to MCA in 1996.

(I'm not sure why I care about this...)

 

[Fairfax]

The vision statement was only written after Feargus approached him. He basically said: "We're publishing Baldur's Gate. I was thinking we could license the Infinity Engine from BioWare and make a Planescape game with it. Want to do it?"

When did that happen? Because on your timeline, there's already a Planescape: Last Rites assigned to MCA in 1996.

(I'm not sure why I care about this...)

I don't know if it had that name right off the bat, but yes, that was in 1996. Colin's Planescape PS1 was cancelled, Planescape PC became Stonekeep 2, and MCA started to work with a "very small team" on Last Rites, but he's only mentioned Tim Donley (lead artist) and Dan Spitzley (lead programmer) by name. He wrote the characters and story, the artists provided the artwork he needed for the pitch, and the programmers were learning how to work with the Infinity Engine, which was still being made for BG1.

 

[MicoSelva]

I remember reading a glowing review of Planescape: Torment in a Polish printed gaming mag Reset in 1999 - I was already deep in Baldur's Gate's grasp at that time. They gave it a 9/10 (same as BG) and could not praise it enough, which obviously made me interested. Soon after our class went to some IT trade show (we were the only IT-focused clas in our high school and had an awesome teacher who actually took that focus seriously - not so obvious in Poland in 2000 A.D.), and CD Projekt had a booth there, selling their freshly-made loclaized version of Torment AHEAD of official Polish relase date and AT A DISCOUNT.

Best purchase in my life.

CD Projekt's localization was one of the best ever (and definitely the best Polish localization back then - not that it had much competition), but had one funny mistranslation. Someone misread 'beams' (Polish: belki) as 'beans' (Polish: fasola) at one point and made Iron Nalls pull out nails from 'beans' lying around on the ground. The game's graphics were good enough - with beans clearly visible on the ground - to make that a non-issue, but still, it was vey bizarre to read.

BTW, later Reset regretted not giving PS:T 10/10 in a look-back article on their highest-rated games (they also regretted giving Final Fantasy VII 10/10 ).

---

As for Nu-Torment: I am excited, but I am not touching my Kickstarter Collector's Edition until I am completely sure it is finished patching. Wasteland 2 and DivOS have taught me as much.