How do you follow up a stone-cold classic?
Younger readers out there might not know it, but a singular release back in 1999 came to define the PC RPG genre. Planescape: Torment was a narrative-driven and wholly original title that was held up for decades as one of the greatest stories in game-dom. Now, over a decade and a half later, fans have backed a spiritual sequel to the tune of over $4 million. With Wasteland 2 in its rear-view mirror, and a pocketful of tech borrowed from chums and one-time Planescape colleagues over at Obsidian, InXile is gearing up to follow a legend. The question is how?
Q: What makes this older style of RPG so alluring to work with?
Kevin Saunders: There were things that you could do with a pre-rendered background that are harder to do and have it look as good in full 3D. In some ways its easier to reach a higher quality bar. Like if youre a fully 3D game then the expectations are very high in terms of the fidelity of the models and the animations and everything, and you cant really get something that looks good without spending a lot more money than a Kickstarter will provide. But with an older style we can reach a higher quality level.
Q: Assimilate them?
KS: Well, Numenera is such an intriguing setting that weve found it takes some time for people to get it. And so its good to have a chance to get everyone thinking in the right mindset. Its a futuristic world but any of the science fiction that were used to wouldnt fit well. Something that would fit in Star Trek or Star Wars doesnt belong, so its tough for people to wrap their heads around.
Q: Are you worried about players being similarly confused initially? Will you break them in slowly?
AH: Were pretty much throwing them in at the deep end. I mean, without spoiling anything, the beginning is just weird. But it feels right for a Torment game, because the thing about Planescape is: its weird. I mean, you wake up in a mortuary and then there are zombies just walking around but youre not supposed to kill them. You can talk to them. And this floating skull next to you is hitting on them! Thats your intro to the game, to the world.
Q: Youre doing combat very differently from other RPGs, with each turn-based fight purposefully designed. Whats the philosophy behind this?
AH: Anything we do we want to do it at a high level of quality or not at all. I think once we figured out what we wanted our Crisis combat system to look like we looked at the story of our whole game and said, ok, how many Crises do we have in each zone of the game and which key story elements are going to be a Crisis? We know where all of them should occur, pacing-wise. And then after that, because we dont have a huge number of them, we can go in and design each one to be really cool.
Q: What are Tides and why are they important in Numenera?
AH: The Tides system is the evolution of Planescapes alignments. So at the very base level, as you make choices it increases one of the Tides and that determines what your dominant Tides are. And then they have various effects, so they might change the critical hits of certain weapons, or certain NPCs will respond to you differently. Oh, and theres also the Tidal Surge.
