Baldur’s Gate 3 might be the greatest D&D videogame out there, but Planescape: Torment—with its potent mix of exceptional writing and fever-dream setting—is a close second. And we almost got a sequel, Planescape: Unraveled, but nobody had the courage to fund it.
Unsurprisingly, Beamdog—which has become something of a custodian for BioWare and Black Isle’s classic RPGs—was involved. Beamdog boss Trent Oster, along with former BioWare scribe David Gaider, pitched his vision of a sequel to Wizards of the Coast, and initially it went well.
“We actually had some great meetings with their creative team,” Oster tells us. “We were down talking with Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls about it, and they were really into what we were doing. We were talking about how we could tie it in with a source book and everything. It was an exciting concept.”
Despite the concept being well received, says Oster, Wizards wanted someone else to foot the bill and take on all of the risk.
“When we pitched it to Wizards, they were like, ‘We don’t have money for external development, we’re not doing that right now.’ Over time, Wizards has kind of gone through these cycles where they’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll do all the internal development.’ And then, ‘Oh my God, internal development’s so expensive, we’ll just licence it all out. We’ll let partners take all the risk.’ [And then] ‘Hey, wait, these guys made a ton of money, let’s bring it internal again.'”
Unfortunately, nobody else fancied taking the risk, either. “We searched around for funding, and nobody would fund it,” says Oster. “Everybody we pitched at that time was like, ‘Well, why would we spend our money making their IP worth more money?'”
Gaider shared his own perspective on the saga last year, saying, “Whatever the problem, we couldn’t sell it… and by the end of 2016, we had to put Planescape: Unraveled on the shelf and start something new. Which killed me, and I almost moved on right then.”
It’s tragic but par for the course: we keep being robbed by risk-averse publishers. And Planescape: Torment deserves a sequel more than most. Sure, it wasn’t a money-maker. Despite ultimately being profitable, it was considered a commercial disappointment at the time. But it’s one we’re still talking about, one we’re still craving more of.
And it’s a setting of near limitless potential—a creative dream. A modern sequel could better realise this intensely weird multiverse with the ever-shifting city, Sigil, at its heart. If it was given the BG3 treatment, with a stronger combat system and more tabletop-inspired roleplaying, I think we’d have a new top dog.
Maybe one day. And if you can’t wait, Torment: Tides of Numenera, which serves as a spiritual successor, is more than worth your time. The likes of Disco Elysium and Esoteric Ebb also share a lot with Planescape: Torment, especially the latter, and are just exceptional RPGs as well.
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