*drops another bear*

Nostalgia aside a word-for-word remake of Planescape: Torment with updated graphics and Stardock AI would be pretty epic.

What's all this I hear about beardropping?

Torment and BG are all well and good, but I'm throwing my 0.2c in that they should consider as source material one of the following:

1.   Shadowrun (only because I sold my childhood to the Sega Genesis version)

2.  Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter

3.  Snow Crash

4.  Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

5.  Gaiman's Sandman or Neverwhere, alternately Mignola's BPRD

6.  Banks' The Culture

7.  Erickson's Malazan Book of the Fallen

8.  Glen Cook, all of it 

 

It's just scatological nonsense. Ignore it.

A pure, honest-to-god remake would be.. would be.. in lack of a better word.. EPIC. Truly, truly epic.

There are way, way, WAY to little actual REMAKES of older games. I see no reason for a remake of an old game selling any worse than a sequel to an old game such as is the norm. Those that never had heard of Planescape: Torment is as likely to buy it as any other high-profile RPG, and old fans of the series will no doubt buy it too.

The only reason I don't see a reason to make a remake of a good, popular cult-game would be if you're expecting to dumb it down or make it worse. Which is horrible premise to start developing a game with. Since it'd be subject to endless comparisons to the original.

I can count a number of games that could benefit greatly from a remake. The entire Baldur's Gate series divided into three parts, Planescape: Torment, Deus Ex, System Shock 2. There's just so many games that are just so good, that still haven't aged very well.

Shadowrun! Another great setting to put a CRPG in, indeed. Preferably set somewhere other than mainland america, for a change. It'd give comparatively greater freedom, too.

I would urge Stardock to take more inspiration from Baldur's Gate than from Planescape. Planescape's story was excellent, but the game play completely failed to compliment it. It's one of the few games I've ever played that genuinely would have been better as a novel.

 

Baldur's Gate sought and found a superb balance of enjoyable gameplay and interesting story, of the two I enjoyed it far more.

*drops the uncuddly kind of bear on Vinraith*
Planescape: Torment was made into a novel and it sucked and it reveals the nameless one's name baaaaaw

Maybe even an rpg placed in the sins universe, though i doubt it. Might be their way of injecting a story into the sins picture.

A stardock developed Star Control (real)3 would go right too the top of the list.  The first time I played Star Control 2 was on my 3DO.  It was and still is the BEST game I`ve ever played.  Oh, System Shock 3 would be OK too...

 

 

If they could combine the sandbox aspects of Oblivion with the combat system in Dark Messiah, pull a rabbit out of their ass and outdo both in the customization options, and write a decent script for the main plot, I could go for an rpg...

 

Not that such a thing is possible.

 

I liked the BG1 map better too.  It added exploration to the map.  BG2 pushed you from one place too the next.

 

The immersion, feeling and in-action choices of Deus Ex, the destructible enviroments of Red Faction, the destructible enemies of Soldier of Fortune, the enviromental-graphic influences of Oblivion, the setting of Arcanum, the adult mood of Vampire: The Masquerade, the combat system of Dark Messiah, the scope of Morrowind and the character development of a mix between Morrowind, Deus Ex & System Shock and Neverwinter Nights 2 (DnD 3.5th Ed), and the sheer character of Planescape: Torment.

Yes, I've given this quite a lot of thought over the years. I could probably write a whole tretise based on what I'd want out of "the perfect 1st-person CRPG".

Please, please, PLEASE Starodck, give us something like Darklands.

1400 Germany with alchemy, saints, witches.

 

And give us some sense of freedom. i'm starting to hate all those damn Bioware games with nice graphic and stuff but without a true game behind.

Darklands 1942, anyone?

And the new RPG Title is:

Galactic Sins of an Elemental Civilization Demigod. (GSECD)

 

On a more serious note and not a woefully attempt at humor way I'm hoping its a SCI-FI RPG. I'm so sick and tired of orcs and elves and what not. Planescape universe would also be welcome. Although the bioware game felt like reading a novel it had a damn good story and very interesting characters. I mean who wouldn't prefer to have Morte travelling with them instead of generic dwarf no3947

A Final Fantasy style, TBS battle RPG would be sweet if it were a really westernized cast of characters and story.  I'm with those who are tired of orcs n' elves, and since they're going there with Elemental (in a sense), it'd be nice to see something wholly original or at least sci-fi.  I'm sure there's lots of neat monsters haning around in asteroids and ice moons and whatnot! 

Final Fantasy my ass.

Get lost, emochild.

no turn based rpg please, we ldont live in the 20th century anymore.

That's why mass market sucks.

You, sir, needs some serious fantasy steampunk!

I think that people should stop painting. We live in the 21st century for christ sake! Learn to use computers! Why not just take a photography, durr, durr.

If they do go with fantasy, I want them to make the races diverse. Look at the variety of humans and their culture on earth. Most fantasy games take the diversity found in humans and graft a certain part onto a single race. Take WoW culture for example. Tauren are representative of native americans, trolls are representative mostly of african voodoo, blood elves are the drug addicts, undead are the typical 'kill everything' psycopaths, orcs are the gung-ho charge into battle type. If they go with a fantasy theme PLEASE DO NOT MAKE A RACE WHICH RESEMBLES A SUB-UNIT OF HUMAN CULTURE.

Make each race unique from earth humans and earth cultures. If all a race is meant to do is portray a sub-unit of real life human culture, why not x out the race altogether and just keep it with humans?

For multiple fantasy races, make each race have various different ethnic groups, government types, and religious views within the race itself. Many fantasy settings overemphasize the inter-racial relations and fail to focus much attention on relations of groups within a race. Sure, some of that could be explained away by 'fighting a common enemy' but there will be tensions within various groups of a race. IMO games should focus on that as much as if not more than they focus on the inter-racial interactions.

And please... do not make them all look the same. Make regional variances in appearance if the groups are unable to interact (mate) due to long distances/barriers between the regions. If you look around, humans look very different, often enough to tell relatively where on earth they originated. Europeans look different from people from Asia for example. As do Asians from Africans. Or Africans from Native Americans. If the RPG is in a fantasy setting, include details such as these.

In short, avoid the steriotypical fantasy stuff. It detracts from the endless possibilities a multitude of sentient beings can give to a story.

Considering how much diversity there is to human culture, you're probably asking the impossible.  We've had everything from baby eating death worshippers to flower power free love communes...  It would be nice to not have the French aristocracy and germanic tribes for the humans in yet another fantasy game though.  Even just switching to the English longbow based armies and a new world culture for the token barbarian side would go well...

True... I think the main thing I'm asking for is not to have one culture for the entire race. If you had to portray the cultures of all humans on earth, you wouldn't just show someone European culture, you would show them the huge multitudes of various cultural beliefs and practices. I would like for a large portion of the cultures to be somewhat of a blend of various earth cultures if nothing original can be concieved of (since its really hard to come up with new stuff). If a single race can be summed up to be a representation of ethnic group X on earth, that to me seems very shallow as far as storytelling opportunities go. You shouldn't be able to do things such as:

Elves - Tall, pointy eared, immortal, first sentient humanoid race, use longbow, in touch with nature
Humans - Diplomats, warriors, relatively short lives
Dwarves - Short, heavy built, long lives, created somewhat on accident, axe weilders, build underground cities, created from stone
Orcs - Stupid, brawny, rush into battle, use crappy weapons, strength in numbers

Those are your basic fantasy steriotypes. The descriptions overall aren't to bad; they are rather unique when compared to human cultures. The problem comes in that there is no variety what so ever in how the races are used. A majority of fantasy fictions use the exact same steriotypes with little to no variation. The races are often not given much variation within the race as far as physical appearance, religious views, cultural practices, ect...

@ tucbenidicto :   I personally don't mind mass market, since you can still make very good work and appeal to the masses. I think mr. tucbenidicto that you are a bit too harsh on final fantasy.  Not everybody who has played final fantasy is an "emochild" and using it as a reference point is a very good one since its one that just about everybody has encountered (rather than say, using "moria" as a reference point would probebly miss everybody except a very select few)