Planescape: Torment | Code Like It's 198x

Most role-playing games begin by asking the player to build a hero. Planescape: Torment begins with a corpse getting up off a mortuary slab. The Nameless One has been dead before, many times; he cannot stay dead, and he has forgotten who he is. Computer Gaming World‘s reviewer called the result “half game, half mytho-poetic meditation” and “a role-playing game without peer”, and warned readers that it was a text-heavy game of “circa 800,000 words”. It was Interplay’s Black Isle Studios’ first game on BioWare’s Infinity Engine, and it sold only a fraction of what Baldur’s Gate sold on the same engine.

Fast facts

Developer: Black Isle Studios, Irvine, California.
Publisher: Interplay.
Released: December 1999 in North America, at $50; January 2000 in Britain, at £39.99.
Format: Windows PC, fixed at 640×480; single-player only.
Lead designer: Chris Avellone.
Engine: BioWare’s Infinity Engine, first used for Baldur’s Gate.
Rules and setting: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, in TSR’s Planescape campaign setting.
Enhanced Edition: Beamdog, 2017.

A setting nobody had used

Planescape was a TSR campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, created by Zeb Cook. Instead of one fantasy world it offered a multiverse of planes of existence, centred on Sigil, a city of doors to everywhere else, run by philosophical factions. Computer Gaming World’s 1998 preview admitted that when Interplay “nabbed the Planescape license, we thought they were crazy”. The game’s advertising called it the “first computer game ever set in the AD&D World of Planescape”.

Interplay had the licence but had not used it. Chris Avellone, a writer and freelance designer hired into the new role-playing division that became Black Isle, told Retro Gamer that at his interview he was asked how he would begin a Planescape game: “I told him I’d start with the player waking from the dead in the Mortuary.” Feargus Urquhart and Brian Fargo gave the project the go-ahead, and Urquhart asked Dan Spitzley, who had spent two years programming Interplay’s Dragon Dice, to be lead programmer. Avellone said the setting’s appeal for a designer was that its only “parameter” was “that there are no parameters”. Computer Gaming World’s preview also named Colin McComb, who had written Planescape material at TSR, and Guido Henkel, designer of the Realms of Arkania games, on the team.

Bending BioWare’s engine

BioWare was still making Baldur’s Gate when it shared its Infinity Engine with Black Isle, and the Torment team had to learn it while it was being built. The artist Tim Donley said the engine was not made for a game where a sword can talk to you: “We modified it where we could and where we couldn’t, we worked around it.” The team made the characters larger than Baldur’s Gate’s and brought the camera closer to the ground, which Computer Gaming World’s reviewer also noticed. The Mortuary, the first area, was at first meant to be a stand-alone demo. When the team showed an early build at BioWare’s offices in Edmonton, Donley recalled, the opening animation of the Nameless One climbing off his slab was so large that Ray Muzyka turned to his lead engineer and asked, “Is that our engine?”

Talking instead of fighting

Computer Gaming World’s Thierry Nguyen found that combat was “only absolutely necessary a few times”: he “talked/brained” his way through three-quarters of the game on his first play. The design turned the usual Dungeons & Dragons habits round:

Alignment was earned, not chosen. The Nameless One started as true neutral and moved according to how much he lied, kept his word, killed or helped.
Statistics changed conversations. Intelligence, wisdom and charisma decided what he could learn and say; strength and dexterity could matter mid-dialogue too.
Class could be changed. He began as a fighter but could retrain as a thief or mage if he found a willing teacher.
Death was part of the story. Dying was no reason to reload: he woke up again, and some memories and puzzles could only be reached by dying.

Seven companions could join him, five at a time, among them Morte, a floating skull with a longer history with the Nameless One than he admits; Annah, a young tiefling thief; Dak’kon, a warrior whose blade is shaped from the stuff of chaos; Fall-from-Grace; and Ignus, a mage with an unhealthy love of fire.

The text was the point, and its size became part of the game’s legend. Computer Gaming World’s review gave “circa 800,000 words”; a preview of Icewind Dale in the same magazine two months later put Torment’s dialogue at 900,000 words, against Baldur’s Gate’s 500,000. Retro Gamer later wrote of “over 800,000 words”, adding that some are journal entries and quest logs, so the figures depend on what is counted.

Avellone was frank about the cost. “Combat took a back seat to character advancement, creation, quests, areas, and the narrative,” he told Retro Gamer. “I regret this, and wish we had a systems designer assigned to the project.”

Reviews and awards

Computer Gaming World made it its role-playing game of the year for 1999. The editors wrote that the dialogue “never insults your intelligence” and that at times the writing “surpasses even the mighty Ultima IV in dealing with ethical dilemmas”; they also gave Morte their award for best character. GameSpot and Computer Games Magazine chose it as their role-playing game of the year too. In Britain, PC Zone’s Andrew Wright called it “the best true role-playing game on PC to date”, whose “intelligent plot knocks Baldur’s Gate into oblivion”. His complaints were slow loading between screens and a setting that would not suit everyone. PC Zone also warned that the American version other magazines had reviewed was “heavily-bugged”, and that the British release would be patched.

Sales and reputation

In Britain Planescape: Torment was, in PC Zone’s words, the only new release to make an impact in January 2000, and entered its chart at number two, behind Championship Manager 99/00. In the United States it did less well. Desslock’s role-playing column in Computer Gaming World in August 2000, using PC Data’s figures, compared Baldur’s Gate’s 500,000 sales with the “lowly 75,000 units” of Planescape: Torment and Ultima IX. He added that in specialist game shops, Torment “crushed” Ultima IX. Retro Gamer summed it up in 2013: the game was an instant fan favourite, “although the sales numbers did not reflect it”. In 2004 Computer Gaming World introduced Obsidian Entertainment, the new studio founded by former Black Isle staff, by listing Planescape: Torment among “the best RPGs of the past decade”.

Enhanced Edition

In 2017 Beamdog released Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition, rebuilt for high-resolution screens. Avellone worked with Beamdog to “curate gameplay updates, bug fixes, and enhancements”. It came out for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, and later for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Sources

Computer Gaming World issue 172, November 1998, Johnny Wilson, Planescape: Torment preview: Zeb Cook as creator of the Planescape setting, Colin McComb and Guido Henkel, “we thought they were crazy”, the Baldur’s Gate engine.
Computer Gaming World issue 186, January 2000: Planescape: Torment advertisement (“first computer game ever set in the AD&D World of Planescape”); TSR and Wizards of the Coast trademark notices.
Computer Gaming World issue 188, March 2000: Thierry Nguyen, Planescape: Torment review (publisher Interplay, developer Black Isle Studios, $50, 640×480, no multiplayer, alignment, statistics, classes, death, “circa 800,000 words”); Premier Awards: role-playing game of the year and best character (Morte).
Computer Gaming World issue 189, April 2000: “Reality Check” games of the year round-up (role-playing awards from CGW, Computer Games Magazine and GameSpot); best-seller comment; Chris Avellone, “lead designer”, on the seven recruitable companions.
Computer Gaming World issue 190, May 2000: Icewind Dale preview, dialogue word counts.
Computer Gaming World issue 193, August 2000, Desslock, “The RPGs of E3”: PC Data sales figures.
Computer Gaming World issue 239, June 2004: Knights of the Old Republic II feature, “the best RPGs of the past decade”.
PC Zone issue 86, February 2000, p. 90: Andrew Wright, Planescape: Torment review.
PC Zone issue 87, March 2000: editorial on the American version’s bugs; chart, January 2000.
Retro Gamer issue 55, 2008: Planescape: Torment retrospective (“over 800,000 words”).
Retro Gamer issue 113, April 2013, pp. 34–38, Craig Ritchie, “The making of Planescape: Torment”: Avellone’s interview, Urquhart and Fargo, Dan Spitzley, Tim Donley, the Infinity Engine, the Mortuary demo, the BioWare visit, Avellone on combat, release in December 1999 and sales.
Beamdog, Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition product page (web, secondary): Avellone’s role and platforms. https://www.beamdog.com/games/planescape-torment-enhanced/
Beamdog, “Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition Is Here!”, The Beamblog, April 2017 (web, secondary): release on 11 April 2017, the rebuilt high-definition interface. http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/04/planescape-torment-enhanced-edition-is.html
Wikipedia, “Planescape: Torment” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): release dates; the Enhanced Edition’s release on 11 April 2017 and on consoles in 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment