Torment Sequel Was Cancelled Because Nobody Would Fund It

Summary

• Beamdog once worked on a sequel to Planescape: Torment called Planescape: Unravelled.
• David Gaider was the game’s creative director, and Chris Avellone was on board as a consultant.
• Beamdog failed to find a publisher for the title despite support from Wizards of the Coast.

Black Isle Studios was one of the eminent role-playing game developers throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s. The studio began by creating the hugely popular Fallout series and ended with the beloved Icewind Dale series and Baldur’s Gate 2: Dark Alliance. However, in between those two series was a standalone game that would eventually go on to reach cult classic status among the roleplaying faithful. That game was Planescape: Torment, an Infinity Engine-powered RPG set in the obscure Dungeons & Dragons setting of Planescape.

The game was not a commercial success, which partially explains why Black Isle never made a sequel before the studio was eventually shuttered. However, in 2016, we were far closer to a sequel than anyone likely realised.

This information comes courtesy of David Gaider, lead writer of Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age: Inquisition and now co-founder and creative director of Summerfall Studios. Gaider spent a brief period of his career at Beamdog, a Canadian studio best-known for remastering classic Infinity Engine games from BioWare and Black Isle, such as Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, Icewind Dale and… Planescape: Torment.

Unravelled Planes

According to a post from Gaider on Bluesky, Beamdog had made significant progress on developing a sequel to Planescape: Torment called Planescape: Unravelled. As the former BioWare writer approached a crossroads in his career, he stumbled upon Beamdog (and BioWare) co-founder Trent Oster in his local gym.

“He told me Beamdog was starting to do their own projects. They were finishing Siege of Dragonspear, an expansion for BG1, but more importantly were also up for something else: a sequel to Planescape: Torment, for which they had Chris Avellone on board as a consultant. Now that caught my interest,” Gaider writes.

Chris Avellone was a prominent creative figure at Black Isle and went on to found Obsidian Entertainment with other former Black Isle employees. Avellone departed Obsidian in 2015 and has since been involved in several projects as a freelancer, such as Prey, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.

“After all, making a sequel to one of the most beloved Infinity Engine titles? In the Planescape setting, which I adored, and which gave the license to break all the “standard” rules of CRPG’s? Yes please! Under that premise, I warily agreed – and by March of 2016, I was Beamdog’s new creative director,” Gaider’s thread continues.

“Thus, I spent the next year training a pair of brilliant young writers and (with Chris Avellone’s help) put together a plan for what ended up being called Planescape: Unraveled, where you played one of three aspects of Ravel Puzzlewell racing against time to solve the mystery of your own existence. I was proud of this one, let me tell you. It was sharp, it had great NPC’s, WOTC [Wizards of the Coast] was so excited about it they were willing to move up their plans for third edition Planescape and include some of the characters and seismic events from the game in the setting reboot. We were ready to start writing!”

I wish I lived in the world where Gaider and his team had the opportunity to make that game, but unfortunately, I wasn’t placed into that particular universe by the Lady of Pain.

“The problem? Funding. WOTC wasn’t in a place to do more than give it a stamp of approval, and the publishers we met… well, Trent knows more than I do, but I think there was a perception that Planescape wasn’t very successful or commercial. Or maybe they just didn’t have confidence in Beamdog or me. Whatever the problem, we couldn’t sell it.”

At the time, Beamdog had almost exclusively developed remasters of classic RPGs. The studio’s inexperience in developing an original RPG may have given publishers pause, despite the well-documented experience of Oster and Gaider.

Gaider would go on to work on another shelved project at Beamdog before co-founding Summerfall. As for a theoretical Planescape: Torment sequel, perhaps the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 will prompt another talented studio to tackle Dungeons & Dragons’ weirdest setting.