Chris Avellone, the lead designer of the original (and classic) Planescape: Torment RPG for the PC has reportedly given the green light for a sequel. However, Avellone won't be involved as he is handing over the developmental baton to former second-in-command Colin McComb and inXile, the developer behind the upcoming game Wasteland 2.
According to Eurogamer, Colin and Chris started talking about a successor over the summer. Originally they approached Wizards of the Coast (which owns all AD&D IPs) about resurrecting the franchise, but those talks didn't "yield any fruit." This led them to agree that taking the Planescape route wouldn't be the best avenue due to both mechanical issues and WotC's possible involvement.
"The Project: Eternity Kickstarter took them in a different direction than a direct successor," McComb told the site. "I told Chris that I would not work on a Torment successor without his approval. We talked about it for a bit, and he told me that he was entirely comfortable with me moving forward on a Torment game without him, and he gave me his explicit blessing to do it."
Currently McComb is putting a team together to work on the Torment sequel, but he claims that he won't use Kickstarter to fund the project as he did with Wasteland 2. He also said that he'd welcome any help Avellone could provide even though he's currently bogged down with Project: Eternity.
"Of all the games I've written, the one that I keep circling back to is Torment," McComb recently said in a lengthy "What's Next" blog. "And now that the bulk of my work on Wasteland 2 is largely complete (with some iteration work that still needs to be done), I can start thinking about Torment seriously."
In addition to the blog post, a company called Roxy Friday trademarked the name Torment just a few days ago. Brian Fargo of inXile is a part of this company, and previously used it to register other trademarks. As if confirming the purchase, he even ordered the sleuthing abilities of the Codex to figure out what he's up to.
"There are many other pieces to the pie on this project that I can't speak to yet which prevents me from much comment," he said. "I need to get the other elements in order so you can fully understand the detail, team, approach and reasoning first. There will lots of pleasant surprises but I had not planned on talking about it yet."
Planescape: Torment was originally developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment back on December 12, 1999. This single-player RPG for Windows PC currently has a Metascore of 91, earning perfect scores (100) and in the high 90s from the likes of Adrenaline Vault, Firing Squad, PC Gamer, IGN, GameSpot and more. It used a modified Infinity Engine which was also used for BioWare's original Baldur's Gate RPG for Windows PC.
Time to dig Planescape: Torment back out and play it again...
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