Chris Avellone has really been thinking hard about what he'd do with a spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment, and he's laid down a lot of his thoughts over at Kotaku. He discusses breaking away from the Dungeons and Dragons mechanics (and the Planescape name), keeping a similar visual feel to the original game, and playtesting using pen-and-paper before even getting around to design the videogame itself. It's a really interesting read, and I highly recommend checking it out. Here's a sample:
Something that set Torment apart – we had a good chunk of the story, dialogues and the flow of the narrative laid out before production began. This was key. If I had the power and funding to sit down for a year and script a spiritual successor out, then we built from there, I would do that, but that process is something no publisher would agree to – you're constantly under the gun, either as an internal or external developer (Josh Sawyer had to write the Icewind Dale 2 storyline over the course of a weekend, for example – he did a great job, but that's not an ideal way to write a story). Generally, you have two-to-four weeks.To me, the whole thing reads as a really interesting view into the world of game development. Are folks really only given "two-to-four" weeks to nail down a story? That seems to be a bit of an embellishment to prove a point, but it seems indicative of a lack of focus on story that a lot of developers have.
No Kickstarter has been announced yet, but all this chatter about an Avellone-designed game isn't going to end with nothing. Keep your eyes out, folks.
