Brian Fargo Dungeon Master

OXM talks to the creator of Wasteland and Fallout about the Kickstarter Liberation, the secret to a great quest line and how Torment: Tides of Numenera is bringing the Weird back to the RPG.

- Matthew Castle

As the western RPG grows ever more cinematic – inspired by BioWare and CD Projekt Red, fuelled by mega budgets – Brian Fargo and his team at inXile are keeping a more modest dream alive. Having shaped the RPG scene in the 80's and 90's with The Bard’s Tale, Wasteland (proto- Fallout) and Fallout (actual-Fallout) his style of top-down RPG's, soaked through with vivid lore and ideas, fell slightly out of vogue. The fan appetite never waned, however, and with the help of Kickstarter, Fargo is leading a resurgence of the style, first in Wasteland 2 and again in the upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera. And as we found out, this is not your normal RPG...

For someone who didn’t play the first torment, Planescape, could you set the scene for us? what defines what you’re doing as opposed to the western RPG many of us know today?

Forget Planescape: Torment for a second. If you’ve played either western RPG's or even Japanese RPG's, this is unlike anything you’ve played before. I say that confidently, because Torment, as a concept, is… not high fantasy and it’s not exactly science fiction. It’s this otherworldliness. And you’re not dealing with situations where you’re collecting rabbit pelts. Instead, you might be dealing with a world that is a living organism who you have to feed people who have guilt, right? Or use a trans-dimensional scalpel to cut through him!