Labels are rarely as useful as they pretend to be, but mentioning Planescape: Torment to any RPG or video game expert as “one of the best RPGs of all time” is more likely to be met with a “you know what you’re talking about” smile than a “get out of here” scoff. In 1999, developer Black Isles Studios took the vast Dungeons & Dragons setting known as Planescape and used it to build a revolutionary genre-defining masterpiece that is still studied and discussed today. Despite that, Planescape: Torment never got a sequel, and it remains, to this day, the only D&D video game to take place in that setting.
Other D&D games made brief forays into Sigil — the city at the center of the setting, where most of the story of Planescape: Torment takes place — or into the many planes that exist in the D&D multiverse structure, but none made this bizarre, highly imaginative setting its focus. And it’s not just video games. Dungeons & Dragons has also been surprisingly shy of returning to Planescape in its TTRPG products, despite the success of 1994’s Planescape Campaign Setting, the boxed set that started it all. Except for a brief return to Sigil in the 4th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide 2, D&D fans had to wait until 2023 to get a three-volume box set titled Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse.
Interestingly, there were originally three Planescape video games planned at Black Isle, but the other two were canceled during development. From the start, Planescape: Torment was destined to be an only child.
There are probably multiple explanations for this little mystery, but one that can be excluded is that the setting didn’t hit with fans. Designed by David “Zeb” Cook, the Planescape Campaign Setting changed the way people look at D&D. The concept of a cosmology built on different planes of existence is currently so ingrained in the game’s lore that most players take it for granted, but it wasn’t so before 1994. Mentions of other planes had been scattered throughout a bunch of products, notably Deities and Demigods and the Manual of the Planes, but Cook arranged it all around some ideas that are cohesive, sophisticated, and inspiring.
Namely, the concept that Sigil is ruled by factions rooted in philosophies, overseen by the silent and inscrutable Lady of Pain, was a subversion of many fantasy RPG tropes of the time, which operated on a rigid dichotomous setting. Cook’s famous “Rule of Threes” — a cosmic principle that posits things tend to happen in threes — uproots the basic tenet of “good vs. evil” and “heroes vs. monsters” that supported the imaginary of classic D&D. It expands players’ experiences by encouraging them to approach problems laterally, including moral choices. And it’s the root on which Planescape: Torment‘s award-winning storytelling is built.
Chris Avellone was drafted to be the lead designer and writer on Planescape: Torment while he was working on Fallout 2. He mentioned in a 2007 interview that this helped him expand the possibilities of what dialogues could do in RPGs. Planescape: Torment is notoriously dialogue-heavy: the script is more than 800,000 words long, and you can go through the majority of the game avoiding combat, using only dialogue choices. The game uses a simplified version of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, and while the gameplay is actually pretty smooth, the story, characters, and dialogues are the reasons why Planescape: Torment has etched a spot in RPG history. If Henry Cavill is still quoting the game today, there must be a reason.
Avellone famously pitched the idea to Interplay (the distributor of the game, and at the time, owners of the D&D licence for video games) as “starting on the death screen.” The protagonist, the Nameless One, is an immortal being who loses his memory every time he resurrects. After waking up in Sigil’s mortuary, you spend most of the game trying to put together the pieces of his previous existences, interacting with characters whose lives he had an, often tragic, role in. Planescape: Torment constantly tries to subvert RPG norms. For example, there are just a handful of swords available in the game, rats are among the deadliest enemies, and death is actually a means of progressing the story.
Planescape: Torment is an early example of a video game pushing the boundaries of the medium, showing that storytelling can and should be at the core of this form of entertainment. One year later, Interplay and Black Isle published another seminal game, developed by BioWare: Baldur’s Gate 2. The first entry in the series was already groundbreaking, but the sequel went above and beyond, showing clear influences from Planescape: Torment. While Baldur’s Gate 2 is more focused on traditional combat-based gameplay, its deep storyline and complex, unforgettable characters are what make it truly stand out. However, its setting is the tried-and-true Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms, which stands to Planescape like a good pizza Margherita stands to a weird haute cuisine recipe. Both can be great, but one is built on familiar ingredients.
In the same interview cited above, Avellone and Planescape: Torment co-designer Colin McComb were asked about a sequel. Avellone mentions toying with a couple ideas over the years, but never submitting them for consideration. “A direct sequel somehow feels wrong,” he said. “I feel the game stands on its own, and I don’t want to drag a rake through it.” Both designers mentioned they would be interested in a new game in the Planescape setting, however, but they were not sure such a game could be made in the industry as it was at the time.
Almost twenty years have passed since that interview, and no new Planescape game has appeared. The history of the D&D video games license is more complex than learning THAC0 (you can find a nice summary in this fantastic video), but in the present, the license rests safely in the hands of D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast. This means they could put any studio in charge of developing a new RPG set in Sigil, the Outlands, and whatever plane they want to visit. But there are no official plans for it, at the moment. You can still enjoy Beamdog’s excellent Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition, available on both Steam and GOG for a bargain price.
I don’t think you could ever do a Plascape: Torment sequel without involving the original team, and honestly, I wouldn’t even want it. Part of the mystique of this game is that it stands alone in a sea of sequels, spinoffs, and reboots. Just like Sigil stands at the confluence of the planes, a monad that connects to every place in the multiverse while remaining unequivocally itself, a place where philosophies like nihilism and existentialism shape the day-to-day life of its inhabitants, and where moral choices have a real impact that goes beyond “what reward I’ll get from this quest.”
Still, Planescape is a fantastic setting that changed the history of TTRPGs and perfectly represents the explosive creativity of D&D’s early years. I hope future games will visit it again, but in the meantime, pen, paper, dice, and the excellent Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse will suffice.
