The two greatest video games of all time get new editions

The two greatest video games of all time (arguably) are both being re-released in spanking new editions fit for modern gamers.

First up is StarCraft Remastered. Blizzard have confirmed that they are re-releasing the original, classic StarCraft and its expansion Brood War is a new edition complete with new resolutions (essential as the old game had a locked, low-res perspective) and reworked graphics. Surprisingly, the game is still in 2D and does not use the StarCraft II engine. Although not confirmed, it is also assumed that they will be replacing the old, CG cut-scenes with reworked ones.

The original version of StarCraft will remain available but, impressively, will now be free. Even more startlingly, as StarCraft Remastered uses the same codebase as the original, players will be able to switch between modes at the touch of a button and original players will be able to play against those using the new version of the game in multiplayer.

More controversially, the UI will apparently not be improved. This means that you will still only be able to select 12 units at a time and you won't be able to auto-send newly-built units to resources.

Despite these age-old limitations, StarCraft is still widely regarded as one of the best real-time strategy games of all time (challenged only by Company of Heroes, Hostile Waters and Homeworld), mainly due to its sublime unit balance between three completely different sides and fast-placed gameplay. Arguably, StarCraft II added too many variables to the mix and made the game a bit more challenging, whilst the original's smaller roster still allowed for a wide mix of strategies whilst being more constrained. Less arguably, the original game has a far better-written, more interest and more concise story than the sprawling, increasingly silly sequel.

Also getting the remaster treatment is (probably, although it's not been quite 100% confirmed yet) Planescape: Torment. Widely-regarded as the greatest CRPG of all time, the game is set in the Outer Planes and the bizarre city of Sigil, and sees the player taking on the role of the Nameless One, an immortal entity who has to discover the secrets of his past and the nature of his own reality. The game is notable for its commitment to dialogue, characterisation and ideas over combat, blood and looting. The game recently gained a "spiritual successor" in the form of Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition is being handled by Beamdog, who previously handled the expanded and enhanced versions of both Baldur's Gate games and the two Icewind Dale titles.

Cities of Fantasy: Sigil, the City of Doors

The multiverse is dazzlingly infinite, a multitude of dimensions and planes coexisting across all time and space. Travellers can step from technologically-advanced worlds to worlds of choking fog to planes of eternal fire or water, all in an instant. It’s a confusing, dizzying morass of nestled realities, jaw-dropping wonders and horrific obscenities.

Sigil is where planewalkers go to get a beer and information, or buy exotic goods, or sometimes just to find a better way of getting from A to B when A and B are located in different universes.

Sigil is the City of Doors. It lies at the precise centre of reality, according to the marketing, equidistant from all other points in the entirety of creation. People with too much time on their hands argue that this is piffle and indeed codswallop, since the multiverse is infinite and cannot have a centre. They then get into lengthy arguments and send angry letters to one another. The inhabitants of Sigil don’t really care.

Sigil is not pronounced like “sigil”, for sign or badge. It is instead pronounced “Sig-ill”. Getting this wrong will immediately identify you as a newcomer in the city, or “Clueless”.

Physical Description               

The city is located on the inner surface of a curved torus six and a half miles in diameter, one-and-a-half miles thick and twenty miles in circumference, located many thousands of feet above the Spire, a massive mountainous structure (tens or hundreds of thousands of feet high) located at the heart of the Plane of Concordant Opposition (please don’t use this name in public), or more colloquially, the Outlands. The torus floats freely on its side, so gravity in Sigil is slanted ninety degrees to the world outside. To avoid metaphysical confusion and/or vomiting, it is not possible to see the outside world from within Sigil, thanks to a sort of grey-brownish haze that permeates a lot of the city. This also frequently blocks the view of the far side of the city directly overhead, which can also be disconcerting. Flying creatures can fly from one side of the city to the other, but cannot fly out of the city and down to the ground (given the titanic height and the thinness of the air immediately outside, this would not be recommended anyway). Nor can people “fall” out of the city from one side or the other, nor can flying creatures enter the city from outside. Any attempt to do any of these things results in the entity in question being teleported to another part of the Outlands, or sometimes another plane altogether.

The torus, or “tyre” as some describe it, is curved on its inner sides, meaning that walking down the street on a relatively clear day when the smog and haze is light, a traveller will see the streets rising up ahead and behind her, as well as on either side, giving the impression of being at the bottom of a bowl or valley at almost all times. Looking straight up across the centre of the torus, the opposite side of the city can be seen several miles away, with its ribbon of streets and landmarks clearly visible. Simply walking around in Sigil can be an unnerving experience until travellers acclimatise.

The city is divided into six major districts or wards. The Lady’s Ward is home to the city’s administrative offices and its most exclusive and rich estates. Adjacent to that is the Lower Ward, the industrial district clogged with smoke from foundries and the portals to the Lower Planes. Beyond that lies the Hive, a slum where the poor and dregs of the city can be found, along with a thriving black market. Those criminal enterprises that are permitted in Sigil are usually centred here. Further along the ring lies the relatively affluent Clerk’s Ward, which is home to the city’s lower-rung bureaucrats and administrators. The small Guildhall Ward lies beyond, which is home to many craftsmen and artisans. They in turn sell their goods in the neighbouring Market Ward, the commercial wing of the city and arguably its beating heart. Just beyond the Market Ward, the Lady’s Ward commences again, and a traveller has completed one circumnavigation of the ring (and is probably very tired and thirsty).

Sigil as it appears in Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. Artwork by Jason Engle.

Population

The city of Sigil is a way-station for people travelling across the planes. At any one time it is estimated that well over three million sentients are within the city, but most of them will be transients. The permanent population of the city is much harder to gauge, with estimates ranging from half a million to one million. The Lower Ward and Hive are crowded and jam-packed with rickety buildings, whilst the Lady’s and Clerk’s wards are home to more spacious, sprawling estates and are relatively quieter. The Market is bustling and rowdy. The city’s population also consists of every species imaginable from the multiverse: humans (who tend to get everywhere) are reasonably common, but so are tieflings and other more adventurous of the planar species.

The Doors

The only way in or out of Sigil is through interdimensional portals, often called “doors” in the city. Some portals are clearly and publicly marked, and people can freely pass through them. Other portals open and close at random in the city, ready to snare the unwary; some portals are only passable through one direction so cannot be used to return to the city. Yet other portals, usually those leading to more exotic, dangerous or unstable parts of the multiverse, can only be passed by those who have the correct key. The difficulties of accessing or leaving the city have occasionally led it to being nicknamed “The Cage”, although other sources for the name have been proposed.

As a result of the doors, the city is home to almost every species imaginable in the multiverse. Tieflings and elves from Toril mix with demons of the Abyss and half-dwarves from Athas and kender from Krynn. Normally hostile species – such as beholders, dark elves, devils from Baator and even the occasional smaller chromatic dragon – may be found peacefully engaged in uncharacteristic pursuits, such as shopping in the Market Ward or visiting the Brothel for Slating Intellectual Lusts. Violence in Sigil is certainly not unknown, but large-scale riots, civil disorder and conflict simply do not occur.

The Factions

The city is dominated by fifteen political factions, each one of which pursues a moral or thematic philosophy. The fifteen factions are the Athar (who deny the divinity of deities); Godsmen (who believe in the potential divinity of all living beings); Bleak Cabal (who believe that there is no metaphysical reality imposed from without and only physical laws and individual action matter), Doomguard (who believe in the inevitability of entropy and the eventual annihilation of everything); Dustmen (who believe that life and death are false states of existence and strive for a balanced existence of emotional denial, the True Death); the Fated (who believe that might makes right and the strong are allowed to profit from the weak); the Guvners (who believe that knowledge is everything and are experts in both scientific and judicial law); the Indeps (who believe in absolute individual freedom and reject the notion of the factions altogether); the Harmonium (who believe in power, stability and control through authority and discipline); the Mercykillers (who believe that mercy is for the weak and the merciful should be punished); the Anarchists (who believe in anarchy); the Signers (who believe that everyone is the centre of their own personal reality and they should strive to make the most of their individual existences); the Sensates (who seek to experience that all can be experienced to make the most of existence); the Ciphers (who seek “oneness” with the multiverse to achieve transcendence); and the Chaosmen (who believe that truth is only revealed in uncertainty and discord, if not outright chaos and mayhem).

The factions are powerful and influential in the city, although they are also dangerous. Travellers passing through Sigil are advised not to let themselves get caught up in their political webs if they do not plan to stay long. Conversely, those who plan to make a home permanently in the Cage will have little choice but to pick a side. The factions engage in philosophical debate with one another and conflict in the city, particularly between the factions whose philosophies are not in conflict, is often limited to high-minded (if often spirited) discussions in the city’s many taverns.

However, some of the factions are diametrically opposed to one another. The Harmonium, for example, has little to no time for either the Anarchists or Indeps, and frequently comes into conflict with the Chaosmen. But widespread violence in the city is limited by the true ruler of all Sigil and her word of law: the Lady’s Peace.

Her Serenity the Lady of Pain as she appeared in the Planescape Campaign Setting Boxed Set (1994). Artwork by Tony Diterlizzi.

The Lady

The true ruler – or guardian – of Sigil is known only as the Lady, or occasionally (and not in her hearing), the “Lady of Pain”. The standard form of address is “Her Serenity”. The Lady is an extremely tall humanoid female with a piercing gaze. She is always clothed in immense robes and floats above the ground, never touching the street. Her head is surrounded by a mantle of imposing blades. She has no castle, manse or known abode, appearing and disappearing in the streets at will. She also never speaks. Instead, the Lady is always accompanied by her minions, the dabus. The dabus are humanoids with yellow skin, white hair and goatlike horns, likewise floating slightly above the ground, who communicate through visual written communiques, floating hieroglyphs known as rebuses. Over the centuries most of the inhabitants of Sigil have come fluent in what these symbols mean, which is essential because they are ignored at mortal peril.

Those who threaten the Lady’s Peace are “mazed”, disappearing into pocket dimensions consisting of mazes. These mazes may be physical obstructions, or conjured out of the nightmares of the individual, or form some kind of existential paradox challenging the prisoner’s very beliefs and self-identity. Those who escape their maze may return peacefully to Sigil, but very few ever do, having usually been exposed to sights and ideas that haunt their waking and sleeping moments alike for the remainder of their existence. Being mazed is considered a mild punishment compared to the alternatives, however.

Those who transgress further, by inciting faction wars or riots, may find the Lady’s Shadow falling on them. The Lady herself maintains a clam demeanour at all times and certainly never engages in physical combat or spellcasting. Instead, the merest touch of the shadow of her mantle of blades will result in maiming, dismemberment, or instantaneous flaying alive. The Lady is immune to all forms of physical coercion or magic.

Indeed, the Lady’s very presence appears to warp the standing field of null-magic on the plane. The Outlands are notable as magical effects disappear closer to the centre, and at the base of the Spire magic simply becomes unusable. The Lady appears to reverse this field and allows magic to be used within the confines of Sigil. Many mages theorise that the Lady’s presence also allows Sigil itself to exist. If someone were to somehow kill the Lady, it is possible Sigil would plummet out of the sky to its destruction seconds later.

The Lady’s true name, origins and nature are all utterly unknown. It is known that the only time she was ever even slightly challenged was when the god Aoskar managed to gain entrance to the city to strive for dominance. The Lady destroyed him without drawing breath. This has led to the widespread belief that the Lady herself is either a goddess, or has the powers of one within Sigil. Some have theorised that if Sigil is the Cage, then the Lady may be its gaoler or, more disconcertingly, its prisoner.

Behind the Scenes

Sigil, the City of Doors, is arguably the single most intriguing and compelling city ever created for the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game. A bizarre city where ideology and philosophy determined a person’s circumstance and wars were fought with ideas and arguments rather than swords and magic, it was the New Weird a good few years before the New Weird even existed. The fact that it came from the game that was arguably the very definition of “stock fantasy” was even more remarkable.

Sigil originated in the Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set, released by TSR, Inc. in 1994 for the 2^nd Edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. The idea behind the Planescape world was to take the long-standing different planes of reality established in previous D&D products, most notably Jeff Grubb’s Manual of the Planes (1987), and flesh them out into a full setting.

Veteran and well-regarded game designer David “Zeb” Cook took charge of the project. Early on he realised that the planes were too vast and remote a concept to easily explain, so he created Sigil and the Outlands as a way of presenting the planes in miniature and concentrating the ideas in a smaller area of space. Sigil also conveniently provided the players with a home base, somewhere they could use to range out to other worlds on adventures, but also vast enough in itself for entire campaigns to play out in its streets and on its rooftops.

Monte Cook (no relation) and Colin McComb fleshed out the Planescape setting over numerous expansions, but the setting didn’t really take off in popularity the way TSR had been hoping. The final Planescape roleplaying product was published in 1998 and the setting faded out of print afterwards. However, the adventures and materials related to Sigil had proven quite popular so Sigil lived on. When the 3^rd Edition of D&D was released in 2000, Sigil was referenced in the rulebooks and the Manual of the Planes, new editions of which were released in 2001 and 2009 (for 4^th Edition). The city has been referenced in the current 5^th Edition of the game, with the hope it may be the focal point for a future setting or adventure.

However, the pen-and-paper game is not the real reason for Sigil’s popularity. In late 1999 Black Isle released a computer roleplaying game called Planescape: Torment, created by Chris Avellone and Colin McComb, who had worked on the pen-and-paper game. The game, almost fully half of which was set in Sigil, fully embraced the setting’s ideals and gripped the imagination of hundreds of thousands of players as they grappled with the fate of the mysterious “Nameless One” and his growing crew of damaged and strange friends. The game has often been hailed as the single greatest CRPG ever created, in no small part to its vividly strange setting.

In terms of fiction Sigil has appeared in only a handful of novels, most successfully Pages of Pain by Troy Denning which attempted to fill in some of the backstory of the Lady of Pain without actually ruining the character. It was an arguable success. However, the cessation of the Planescape campaign line in 1998 meant that the fiction line was cancelled as well.

Sigil stands as one of the weirdest and most interesting cities created in the history of fantasy, owing more of a debt to Moorcock and Harrison than Tolkien or Leiber. It’ll be interesting to see if it returns to prominence in future D&D products, especially with a new line of movies based on the setting in development.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs. The Cities of Fantasy series is debuting on my Patreon feed and you can read it there one month before being published on the Wertzone.

TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA story trailer released

inXile Studios have released the story trailer for their roleplaying game Torment: Tides of Numenera. This is the "spiritual successor" to the classic Black Isle CRPG Planescape: Torment, set instead in Monte Cook's Numenera roleplaying setting.

A billion years into the future, a man strives to escape death by transferring his consciousness from body to body. However, each time he leaves a body, a new consciousness is born within. At first he embraces these entities as his "children" but as time passes he becomes colder and more remote, more willing to cast off these offspring. Until he transfers to his last body, and a new being is born...you.

Colin McComb, who co-designed and developed both the Planescape roleplaying game and Planescape: Torment itself, is the project lead on the game. Chris Avellone (CRPG demigod and lead developer of Planescape: Torment back in the day) has contributed quests and characters to the game, as has fantasy novelist Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind).

Torment: Tides of Numenera will be released on 28 February.

Cities of Fantasy on Patreon: Sigil

My second post for Patreon backers has gone live.

This is the first part of the Cities of Fantasy project and explores the city of Sigil, the bizarre and wonderful (if dangerous) city that lies at the very heart of the multiverse, originating from the Planescape setting for Dungeons & Dragons.

This will be exclusive on Patreon for one month and will then be reposted in full here on 7 March.

This article drew on research from my earlier Worlds of D&D fantasy series from 2009, particularly the article on Planescape that can be found here.

TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA delayed until 2016

Surprising no-one, inXile's new computer RPG has been delayed until some time in 2016. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, arguably the greatest CRPG of all time, and is set in the Numenera roleplaying setting created by Monte Cook.

The delay was unsurprising given the crowded late 2015 release schedule and the fact that the game has only recently started seeing more substantive previews and trailers being released (see above, focusing on the game's "Crisis" encounter system).

Torment: Tides of Numenera will also be of interesting to epic fantasy fans, featuring as it does some quests and characters written by Kingkiller Chronicle author Patrick Rothfuss, as well as material from Chris Avellone (of Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Planescape: Torment and Mask of the Betrayer fame).

Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian Entertainment

Chris Avellone, one of the best-known writers in the CRPG field, has left Obsidian Entertainment, the company he co-founded a dozen years ago, for pastures new.

"What can change the nature of a man?"

"Being reduced to a floating, disembodied skull."

"Oh, right."

Normally, a change of career for a video game staffmember would not be news-worthy, but Avellone is one of the most critically well-regarded writers in the genre. He started out at Interplay, in particular its Black Isle RPG development team, where he won early acclaim for directing the development of Fallout 2. Following that he worked on what is widely regarded as the greatest CRPG ever written, Planescape: Torment. He proceeded to work on Icewind Dale and its sequel before leading development of Project Van Buren, the code-name for the original Fallout 3. During the development of Van Buren Black Isle was abruptly shut down due to financial issues and Interplay effectively ceased to exist as a games development company.

Avellone and several of his Black Isle colleagues regrouped to found Obsidian Entertainment in 2003. BioWare, who had produced the Baldur's Gate series for Interplay and worked alongside Black Isle, gave Obsidian their first break by convincing LucasArts to hire them to make Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, with Avellone taking a key writing role. Although hamstrung by budget and time constraints, Knights of the Old Republic II won critical acclaim for its subversive deconstruction of the Jedi and the simplistic black/white morality of the Star Wars universe. Obsidian subsequently developed Neverwinter Nights II, Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas, the latter of which re-used some of the old Van Buren ideas. Avellone worked on all of these games, gaining kudos for his key work on the Mask of the Betrayer expansion for NWN2 and Old World Blues for New Vegas.

More recently, Avellone has been allowed to branch out and outsource work to inXile Entertainment (made up of other ex-Interplay and Black Isle staff), contributing quests, dialogue and characters to both Wasteland 2 and the upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera. His last big project for Obsidian was working on the hugely successful crowdfunded RPG Pillars of Eternity.

Avellone's writing is noted for being rooted in character and thematic development, philosophy and internal realisation, unusual for a medium which is usually more story and action-focused.

According to Twitter, the break with Obsidian was wholly mutual. Avellone's next project is unknown, but speculation is rampant that he may team up with inXile, who recently regained access to the Van Buren trademark. Although it won't be a Fallout game (the rights for which reside with Bethesda, who recently announced Fallout 4), there is speculation that Van Buren will be re-tooled either as a whole new post-apocalyptic franchise, or may form the basis for the inevitable Wasteland 3.

First gameplay footage from TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA

inXile have released the first gameplay video for Torment: Tides of Numenera. This is their spiritual sequel to the 1999 CPRG Planescape: Torment, widely regarded as one of the greatest CRPGs ever made.

Tides of Numenera takes place on Earth a billion years in the future, after multiple civilisations have risen and fallen and magic and science have become entwined. Several of the creators of Planescape: Torment are working on the game and inXile are gearing up for full production as soon as they release their Kickstarted post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland 2. Which is tomorrow, which is quite handy. inXile have received the assistance of Obsidian Entertainment in making the game, who loaned both tech and some writers (including Planescape: Torment's head writer, Chris Avellone) to the project. Obsidian are preparing their own old-school CRPG Pillars of Eternity for release in the next few weeks.

It may also be of interest to literature fantasy fans that Patrick Rothfuss is contributing some writing and a character to the game as well.

This video footage is pre-alpha, so a lot can change before Tides of Numenera's final release, which is anticipated in late 2015.

Chris Avellone on RPG design, PROJECT ETERNITY and too many great games to count

At the Rezzed gaming conference this weekened, Obsidian developer Chris Avellone did a presentation on CRPG design. You can check it out here.

Avellone has a CV that is interesting. At Black Isle back in the day he was the project lead on Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment (probably the greatest Western CRPG of all time) as well as working on Icewind Dale and its sequel. At Obsidian he was the lead designer on Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues and Alpha Protocol. He also worked on Neverwinter Nights II and its expansion Mask of the Betrayer as well as the main game of Fallout: New Vegas. He has also been hired out to inXile to assist on the upcoming Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera. Avellone is a noted proponent of player choice and including more complex thematic, and philosophical elements than is normally found in games, not to mention more complex characterisation.

Some of those things are discussed in the interview, along with progress on Project: Eternity, some interesting info on how they made Planescape: Torment and Fallout: New Vegas, and on the merits of Kickstarter as a business model. He also namechecks Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss in a discussion of magic systems, though he doesn't mentioned Obsidian's planned Wheel of Time CRPG (which is still on hold until Red Eagle raise the funding for it).

TORMENT update: Rothfuss and Avellone in

The Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera is roughly halfway done, with 14 days to go before the end of the appeal. However, the game is already funded: having asked for $900,000, inXile Studios have actually received $2.9 million. The game is now deep into what Kickstarter calls, 'stretch goals', that is additional incentives for people to keep funding in the form of added content to the game.

First up, if the game hits $3.25 million then the writing team will be expanded to include bestselling fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear). Rothfuss will be adding about 10,000 words of content to the game in the form of dialogue and characters. He won't be doing any more because of his commitments to finishing off The Doors of Stone, the third and concluding volume of The Kingkiller Chronicle.

Much more enticing (to this blogger, anyway) is that at $3.5 million, inXile will add Chris Avellone to the writing time. Avellone was the primary writer and designer of the original Planescape: Torment (to which Numenera is the spiritual successor), as well as Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer and the forthcoming Project: Eternity. He also worked on Icewind Dale and its sequel; Fallout: New Vegas (including leading the design of several of its DLC episodes); and Alpha Protocol. He has also done some writing for inXile's previous Kickstarter game project, Wasteland 2. He is often cited as the finest writer of Western CRPGs. Exactly why Avellone still hasn't written a novel, I don't know, as I suspect it would be awesome. Avellone will be creating a new NPC character for the game and writing their dialogue, but will also be serving as an editor and a fresh pair of eyes on the work of the rest of the team as well.

With still two weeks to go, I suspect this Kickstarter will breeze past both targets and probably end up somewhere on the other side of $4 million when all is said and done. It's shaping up to be a very interesting game.

More detailed plans for PLANESCAPE: TORMENT successor emerge

InXile Studios may be hard at work on Wasteland 2, the crowd-funded sequel to the seminal 1988 computer RPG Wasteland, but they have already announced their next project. With most of the writing and concept art completed for Wasteland 2, those teams have started work on a game that may be called Numenera: Torment. This game will be a spiritual sequel to the classic 1999 RPG Planescape: Torment, widely-regarded as the finest (and most literate) computer roleplaying game ever made.

The new game will not involve any of the characters or situations from Planescape: Torment (which is copyrighted by Atari and Wizards of the Coast), but will share a similar focus on characterisation and philosophical matters, such as the nature of life, death and consciousness. The setting will be Numenera, a new roleplaying setting created by Monte Cook. Cook is a highly respected RPG game designer and worked extensively on the original Planescape setting for the Dungeons and Dragons game in the 1990s.

The game itself is being worked on by Colin McComb, one of the main designers on the original Planescape pen-and-paper setting and a key creative force on Planescape: Torment. The director of the game is Kevin Saunders, who has joined the team from Obsidian, where he led the Mask of the Betrayer team. Also on board are Torment designer Adam Heine and Dana Knutson, the concept artist whose work on Torment was crucial.

The game will use all-new rules for skills, character creation and combat. Full-scale work on the game will begin after Wasteland 2's planned release date (still scheduled for October 2013). There will be another Kickstarter campaign further down the line to help fund the game ahead of time.

Since Planescape: Torment is one of my favourite RPGs of all time (the computer game equivalent of Gene Wolfe), this is a project that I'll be watching with great interest.

Creators of the greatest RPGs of all time collaborate on new game

Obsidian Entertainment have announced their next big RPG: a fantasy game called Project Eternity (working title). This game will be an isometric, old-school RPG that draws heavily on their old D&D games using the Infinity Engine (the Icewind Dale series and the legendary Planescape: Torment).

However, tired of working for publishers who either don't do proper Q&A on their games (resulting in the bug-filled mess of Alpha Protocol), rush them out in an incomplete state (Knights of the Old Republic II) or refuse to pay them a bonus by failing to hit a ludicrously arbitrary Metacritic score by one point despite selling millions of copies (Fallout: New Vegas), Obsidian have decided to take this one to the fans. Via Kickstarter, Obsidian are asking for $1.1 million to help fund the game. They're already at $300,000 less than a day after starting the project.

The creative forces behind the game include Chris Avellone, the writer of Planescape: Torment; Tim Cain, the creator of the Fallout franchise; and Josh Sawyer, the project lead on the excellent New Vegas (who infamously disapproved of the game being somewhat 'softened' for console players and released his own, more hardcore mod for the PC version of the game). They hope to release the game in early 2014.

Kotaku interview Avellone here about the project, whilst GameBanshee talk to Obsidian studio head Feargus Urquhart here.

UPDATE: As of 24 hours later, the amount raised stands at $1,083,000, and should hit the target within a few hours (with 31 days still to go). Obsidian have already said that any money they make over the $1.1 million will go to making the game even more impressive, and some projections are now suggesting they could make upwards of four times the amount they asked for.

Chris Avellone details ideas for a TORMENT successor

In December 1999, Black Isle released what continues to be widely regarded as the greatest CRPG of all time: Planescape: Torment. It was only a modest hit, especially compared to its fellow games using the Infinity Engine (the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series), but a critical success, appearing on numerous 'best games evaaah' lists up to this very day.

Your party at this point in the game consists of an animated suit of armour, a floating skull, a man permanently on fire and a steampunk robot. Plus yourself, an immortal, intelligent zombie (sort of).

The chances of a sequel ever appearing are pretty much zero, since Wizards of the Coast shut down the Planescape D&D setting shortly after the game was released and have subsequently heavily retconned elements of the setting in the 3rd and 4th editions of the game. In addition, with the D&D rights lying with Wizards and the Torment rights lying with Interplay, navigating the legal minefield to be able to make the game in the first place would likely be time-consuming and complex.

For this reason, Torment's lead writer, Chris Avellone, has been musing on the idea of doing a 'spiritual successor' to the game, but not an actual sequel, for a while. He's told Kotaku about some of the ideas he and his company, Obsidian (the successor to Black Isle), have been kicking around. This includes maintaining a non-traditional fantasy setting (no elves, dwarves etc), having a small, focused cast of supporting characters and bringing back an overhead, isometric viewpoint.

Avellone, whose other credits include Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Alpha Protocol, is currently working on Wasteland 2.

The Worlds of D&D: Planescape

The Planescape logo, used between 1994 and 1999.

The History of Planescape

If there is one constant in these journeys through the Dungeons and Dragons campaign worlds, it is the apparent lack of the truly fantastical. Three of the settings visited so far are essentially secondary Earths, based on medieval Europe or other real-world analogues, whilst Dark Sun is effectively D&D interpreted by way of Mad Max. None of these things prevent these settings from being fun to play in or a viable setting for half-decent books, but at the same time we're not really seeing the truly fantastic on display here. D&D is sometimes used as a byword for 'bad' or at the very least 'unambitious' fantasy, and there is an element of truth to that description. However, hidden behind the Drizzts and draconians, there is one part of the D&D franchise that is truly interesting, original and home to some of the best stories ever told in the game.

The D&D multiverse developed over a long period in fits and starts. Gary Gygax wanted demonic entities, otherworldly beings and occasionally proud celestial warriors to show up who wouldn't reside on his campaign world, but would come from 'elsewhere'. This led to the creation of other dimensions and planes of existence. Over the lifespan of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition (1978-89), many different writers and game designers added their own planes of reality, until the whole thing became somewhat unwieldy. Various print editions of the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide attempted to streamline the confusing morass of parallel universes but it wasn't until 1987's Manual of the Planes, written by Jeff Grubb, that the D&D multiverse was finally codified.

The Manual of the Planes, published in 1987 for AD&D 1st Edition.

Grubb developed the idea of the Prime Material Plane consisting of various realities which were the already existing Earth-like worlds, such as Toril (home of the Forgotten Realms), Oerth (Greyhawk) and Krynn (Dragonlance). Around this swirled the Ethereal and Astral dimensions, then beyond them lay the Elemental or Inner Planes (of fire, earth, air and water) and the sixteen Outer Planes, which formed a 'great wheel' cosmology. These Outer Planes included places of great good such as Mount Celestia and places of fell evil, such as the Abyss, home of the Dragonlance goddess Takhisis and the drow god Lolth, where the Blood War between the baatezu and tanar'ri raged for all eternity. At the suggestion of another writer, Grubb also introduced the Plane of Concordant Opposition as a sort of neutral meeting ground between the various planes of reality.

This set-up was maintained, fleshed out a little in other products, until around 1993. At this time TSR were looking to develop a new 'unusual' campaign setting, based on the success of the offbeat Dark Sun and the horror-derived Ravenloft settings, and the feeling that between Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Greyhawk (then being briefly revived) the 'standard' fantasy setting was already well-covered. In addition the 2nd Edition of AD&D had been released in 1989, and a brief mention in the new Dungeon Master's Guide aside, no further development had taken place of the other planes of reality. Fan demand for an updated Manual of the Planes was strong. The need for more information on the planes and for a new game world naturally coalesced into an entire campaign setting revolving around the other planes of existence. Veteran game designer David 'Zeb' Cook was put on the job.

The Planescape campaign setting boxed set, released for AD&D 2nd Edition in 1994.

The Planescape campaign setting boxed set was released in 1994 and immediately caused a stir. This wasn't your traditional Dungeons and Dragons game. The game's artwork was like nothing seen before in the D&D canon, with muted pastels, striking imagery and unusual colours, apparently inspired more by Dave McKean's work on Sandman and Dr. Seuss than any of D&D's traditional inspirations. Opening the box proved likewise bemusing, with large maps of the entire multiverse and schematic diagrams showing the connections between the various dimensions. The books seemed to take delight in needling the player's incomprehension, referring to them as 'cutters' and 'berks' and that the secret of cracking this Planescape thing was 'getting a clue'. Being bewildered at the game's size and scope was natural and appropriate, as their characters would be bewildered and confused when torn out of their cosy Tolkien-lite secondary worlds ("Not that there's anything wrong with that,") and thrust into the teeming insanity of the cosmos. Whilst there was nothing stopping the players using traditional races like elves or dwarves, the setting strongly suggested using more interesting native races like githzerai, tieflings or bariaur was a better idea. Of course, this didn't quite work as intended, as more than a few players, after a few hours of struggling with the material, threw it under the stairs and went back to playing hunt the beholder in some dungeon instead.

For those who stuck with it, Planescape rapidly became the most rewarding and interesting roleplaying campaign setting ever published. The setting is literally infinite, with any type of game possible. Creative and offbeat DMs came up with some truly original and bonkers campaigns and gaming ideas. Groups of players, particularly those who favoured roleplaying and subverting expectations of the game and setting, enjoyed the game's unusual atmosphere and vibe and seized on the vast glossary of new phrases, colloquialisms and terms with glee. One of Cook's masterstrokes was to introduce the city of Sigil on the Outlands (the somewhat catchier new name for the Plane of Concordant Opposition), a neutral meeting ground where characters could meet or use as a base for their forays elsewhere in the planes. Sigil itself rapidly became one of the most iconic fantasy cities to emerge from the D&D game, to the point where players could spend entire campaigns taking part in intrigues between the factions of the city and ignoring the wider setting beyond.

In short, Planescape is D&D's answer to the New Weird, only it did it before China Mieville made it fashionable.

Planescape's fire burned brightly but also briefly. There was a gradual downturn of new material being released (not helped by TSR's financial woes) and in 1998 the final product, a third Monstrous Compendium book focusing on the setting's creatures, was issued less than four years after the original campaign setting was published. Whilst it had been an enormous critical success, winning multiple awards for both game design and its unforgettable artwork, it had not captured the hearts of the masses. It was perhaps too radical, too ambitious and too arty for its own good. Critics pointed out that whilst the planes were fun to visit for a break from orc-killing, you wouldn't necessarily want to live there, and a common complaint was that the 'infinite reaches of the multiverse' all too often meant lots of arguments between philosophy majors and not as much demon-crushing as might be desired.

The D&D 3rd Edition Manual of the Planes, released in 2001.

Later editions of the game largely revoked or retconned a lot of Planescape material. In 3rd Edition the new Manual of the Planes saw something of a streamlining of the D&D multiverse and the confusing removal of the various campaign worlds into their own, independent cosmologies, which proved headache-inducing for those DMs who had previously been using dimension-hopping campaign ideas. 4th Edition increased this confusion with new dimensions introduced and old ones disappearing. However, 4th Edition has also given rise to hope that Planescape will be revisited, maybe not as its own setting, but as part of the basic setting, as the Dungeon Master's Guide II book and yet another Manual of the Planes feature information on several key Planescape locations, such as Sigil. Whether this will come to anything remains to be seen.

The D&D 4th Edition Manual of the Planes, released in 2009.

There is one ironic twist in this tale. One and a half years after Planescape was effectively dropped as a D&D campaign setting, a computer roleplaying company named Black Isle released Planescape: Torment, using the Infinity Engine which had proven so popular in the previous year's Baldur's Gate. Torment saw the player taking on the role of an amnesiac, immortal warrior and having to guide him through Sigil and various parts of the multiverse looking for his memories and his mortality, accompanied by a number of complex and multi-faceted companions. Following the advice of the campaign setting itself, there were no traditional D&D races, monsters or weapons. Characters including a burning man, a bodiless floating skull, a mobile suit of armour, a fallen succubi and a sentient clockwork robot. It was extraordinarily good, easily the closest computer games have ever gotten to achieving real literature, and is now commonly cited as the greatest computer roleplaying game ever made. Whilst not as successful as the Baldur's Gate series, it did do respectably well and could have generated much more interest in the Planescape setting, if it hadn't already folded by the time the game came out.

Computer role-playing's answer to The Book of the New Sun.

The Worlds of Planescape

The heart of the Planescape campaign setting and normally the first stopping-off point for visitors is Sigil, the City of Doors, also called the Cage. Sigil is located at the very centre of the infinite multiverse (which is both impossible and also accurate), floating above a spire of infinite height (also both impossible and also accurate). The city is located on the inner surface of an immense ring, several miles wide and several miles across, resembling an immense tyre lying on its side slowly rotating above the spire. The city's permanent smog thankfully hides the site of the ground, the constant presence of which which would probably drive half the populace insane through vertigo over time. The city's architecture is a mish-mash of a million different cultures and times from across the multiverse, harbouring as it does representatives from dozens of planes and thousands of worlds. Some of the buildings would give M.C. Escher a headache and make Hieronymus Bosch feel inadequate.

The Outlands, featuring the city of Sigil at the centre.

The city is home to sixteen factions, including the Bleak Cabal, the Dustmen, the Doomguard, the Mercykillers and the Harmonium, all of whom espouse different philosophical and ideological viewpoints. Most Sigil campaigns are based around the characters getting involved in disputes between the factions. A 'faction war', one of the few meta-events in the setting, later ravaged parts of the city and saw several factions outlawed or destroyed. Sigil is also home to many portals or planar doors leading anywhere in the multiverse. Some are well-known, marked and open for public use. Others are 'locked' and can only be used by those with a planar key. Some doors are hidden in plain sight (as a normal doorway, for example) and will only teleport those of a certain race, sometimes only on certain days, or on a whim. Mapping the planar gates in Sigil is a keen past-time for some scholars and mages.

The Lady of Pain. She can eviscerate you with her brain.

The city is ruled by a bureaucratic administration who answers to the Lady of Pain, an inscrutable and completely enigmatic entity. The Lady is assumed to be a deity as her powers within the City of Doors are absolute, but since she refuses to answer queries and flays alive those who try to worship her, this question is difficult to answer. One theory is that if Sigil is indeed a 'Cage', the Lady is both its ruler and its prisoner. The Lady has a perpetually serene, untroubled expression on her face and travels everywhere by floating along several inches above the ground, and her head is surrounded by a mantle of blades. These blades have never been used directly (in the presence of anyone who has lived to tell the story of it, however), but occasionally beings trying to waylay the Lady have suddenly been torn apart by simply stepping into the shadow of the blades. The Lady normally does not favour this type of violence, however, and mostly simply 'Mazes' transgressors, banishing them to a pocket prison dimension consisting of a maze and various inventive and original traps. If the imprisoned one manages to escape, they are usually permitted to return to Sigil. The Lady can also bar, close or shut down any planar gate in the city at will, or open new ones (although she has never passed through one herself, or at least again not in the sight of others). The Lady's powers extend even to barring all the gods access to Sigil. In short, don't mess with her.

Beyond Sigil sits the Outlands, one of the seventeen Outer Planes. The Outlands are neutral ground where caravans of goods and travellers meet or simply pass through on their way somewhere else. At the 'edges' of the plane (although the Outlands, like all planes, are infinite, they also have an edge; go figure) are permanant trade towns and portals leading to the other Outer Planes: Elysium, the Beastlands, Arborea, Ysgard, Limbo, Pandemonium, the Abyss, Carceri, Hades, Gehenna, Baator, Acheron, Mechanus, Arcadia, Mount Celestia and Bytopia. These planes vary immensely in size (although they are all, of course, infinite) and composition. The Abyss is a vast chasm consisting of thousands of levels populated by various evil creatures, whilst Mechanus (also called Nirvana) consists of vast, thousand-mile-wide cogs and machines with cities and entire kingdoms sitting amongst gears and levers.

A map of the entire totality of reality in the D&D multiverse. Not to scale.

The Astral Plane, a sort of sea of unusual energy where the gods go when they die, links the Outer Planes to the Prime Material Plane, whilst the Prime Material Plane is also linked and surrounded by the Ethereal Plane, the home of various undead spirits and small demiplanes (the Demiplane of Dread, home of the Ravenloft campaign setting, is located in the Ethereal Plane). The Ethereal links the Prime Material Plane to the Inner Planes, which consist of various forms of energy and act as the power sources for spells.


Evaluation

The Planescape campaign setting eventually gave what a number of D&D fans had been asking for for a while: a truly original, fantastical campaign setting in which the traditional elves, dwarves, orcs and dragons were sidelined in favour of new (or previously-existing but lesser known) races and campaigns based around combat and levelling up were de-emphasised in favour of roleplaying and juggling factions and philosophical ideas.

Planescape: so awesome it even has robots.

It's both a good and bad idea. Good, because it encourages radical ideas and a different of gaming, and bad because unless the players are really into it, it can become a little gimmicky. DMs also tend to like the setting because they can take ultra-powerful player characters who are effectively the most powerful beings in their world and dump them in a situation where they are nobodies, whilst players are not always quite so keen on this approach. The setting's biggest problem is that finding and maintaining a coherent narrative plot strand in the vast infinity of the setting can be quite tricky, especially for an unwary or inexperienced DM.

However, for a party really in the mood for something different and a DM really willing to do something outside the box, Planescape is nothing less than the most impressive and versatile toolbox in the Dungeons and Dragons arsenal, and it is a shame it has been effectively on hold for all of 3rd and 4th Editions of the game. It'll be interesting to see if it does come back in a big way for 4th, and in what form it is when it does.

Greatest RPG ever made re-released

In a totally unexpected move, Interplay are about to re-release Planescape: Torment, which has an excellent claim on being the single greatest computer roleplaying game ever made. Easily the closest gaming has ever gotten to 'real' literature, Torment is a complex and morally ambivalent game about an enigmatic central character who cannot die and has to uncover his past. The setting is the wondrous Planescape multiverse from 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons (look out for its eventual appearance in the 'Worlds of D&D' feature), the most original setting that D&D has ever produced, where ideas and ideology can shape the very nature of reality. The game is notable for not focusing on combat and putting the characters and their thoughts, conflicts and ideas front and centre, with over 400,000 words of dialogue and description making up the game.


Torment was produced by Black Isle by much of the same team that worked on the first two Fallout games and would go on to make the Icewind Dale duology before going bust and reforming as Obsidian, creators of Neverwinter Nights II and Knights of the Old Republic II. Originally released in 1999, the game was overlooked somewhat by many gamers at the time (although it went on to sell a solid half-million copies) but has become a major critical darling in recent years, frequently placing high in 'Best Game Ever' polls. This strategic, Vista and Windows 7-compatible re-release will hopefully introduce it to a new generation of gamers.

The most eyebrow-raising part of this is the price: a ten-year-old game for £17.99? Seems a bit much. I'd be tempted to say hang on for a while and see if it drops below a tenner, but then again it is seriously one of the very best computer games of any genre ever made, so at that price it is still reasonable, if you can withstand the old-school graphics (and there are plenty of mods out there which can improve the resolution and interface).

Simultaneously, you can also get the almost-as-awesome Anachronox from Amazon for £4, which is a total no-brainer.