PC Gaming Graveyard Interview

In Desslock’s latest RPG news, he mentions an interview he conducted with Feargus Urquhart and David Maldonado of Black Isle Studios, in which they talk about the cancellation of TORN, among other things. A snippet to follow:

GS: The D&D games that Black Isle have developed or published have been very combat-intensive (although Planescape: Torment was less so than other games published by Black Isle). Would Torn have placed a similarly strong emphasis on combat? Were there noncombat skills that characters could acquire?

FU: Less combat than in Icewind Dale but more than in Planescape: Torment. More dialogue than in Icewind Dale, and we came up with an entirely new dialogue system to use in Torn to make more complex dialogue easier. I think there were noncombat skills, or at least we discussed them, but Dave can probably provide additional detail…

DM: Noncombat skills were definitely in the game and very important. Most had some sort of combat use, too, even if odd, abstract, or somewhat contrived–just to make the “power gamers” happy.