Colin McComb Interview

Grimuar Sferowca offers an interview with Planescape: Torment and Wasteland 2 writer/designer Colin McComb, focusing on his general work and Planescape: Torment specifically, as well as his own (cancelled) Planescape project at Interplay.

GS: Matter shaped by sheer willpower, despotic devils warring with chaotic demons, a city linked to every place in the multiverse, and finally the Lady of Pain, the silent ruler of that city… Planescape is a crazy setting and an oasis of radically good ideas, many of which haven’t yet been used to their full potential. Do you have any favorite themes or concepts that you deem especially worth cultivating?

Colin: I don’t think we really explored the notion of what it means to struggle to be good, actually. Writing goodness without being boring is *hard*, especially when you do it without the contrast of evil. That is, it’s easy to for Good to be exciting when you’re in Baator and surrounded by devils – it’s not so easy when you’re in Mount Celestia and everyone around you is encouraging you to be a better person.

I’d love to explore the madness of Pandemonium more, too, the endless tunnels of howling wind. Or the orbs of deeper Carceri, or the chaos of Limbo and the shifting cities of the githzerai, or… well, I could go on for days.

I guess the answer is all of them. I’d love to develop all of them further. I really loved that setting.

With the new setting we’re looking at, we have a fresh set of concepts to examine. While we’re not looking at metaphysics made flesh, we’re looking at some ideas that are equally as cool, and we’re going to have the opportunity to dig deep into the idea of legacies and the individual choices that define our lives and provide meaning on a broader scale. Our new setting is just as Big-Idea, and I am really looking forward to expressing some of those concepts in a way that is emotionally and intellectually satisfying.

GS: Upon several occasions, you’ve mentioned the cancelled PlayStation Planescape game you’d worked on before you joined the Torment team. Could you tell us a bit more about it? Which elements of the original campaign were to be the main focus of the project? Which planes would the player get to visit?

Colin: Sure! The game would have been similar to the game King’s Field, a first-person style game of puzzles, exploration, and real-time combat. You were to have taken the part of a Mercykiller, pursuing the source of a riot in the Hive. Your investigations would lead you to a thieves’ guild in the Lower Ward, an arms dealer in Ribcage, and then into the depths of Baator as you sought to deliver justice to the people responsible for so much suffering.

Now that I think about it, it would have been a really cool tie-in to have your character be named Vhailor.

Thanks RPGCodex.