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Andrew Park Senior Editor |
Maybe You'll Think of Me
The developer we knew as Black Isle Studios is no more, and internal confirmation of the studio's closure came just recently. You could say that the writing had been on the wall for the troubled developer, considering the problems its publisher Interplay has encountered in recent years, such as its turbulent relationship with publishing partner Vivendi Universal Games and its ongoing financial troubles. That doesn't make Black Isle's closure any less of a loss, considering that the studio, and the people who created it, are responsible for some of the greatest and most influential computer role-playing games ever made.
Black Isle began its life as Interplay's internal RPG division, and its staffers helped give rise to the outstanding 1997 postapocalyptic role-playing game Fallout--the spiritual successor to EA's 1987 game Wasteland. Fallout is one of the best, and, I contend, one of the most misunderstood computer role-playing games ever. Yes, it received critical acclaim for its open-ended nature. And yes, using the game's "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." character-creation system (an acronym that stands for the character attributes of strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck), you could produce a great variety of different characters, like an eagle-eyed sniper, a heavy weapons specialist, a charismatic diplomat, a nimble knife fighter, an experienced wilderness scout, and others. It also let you travel just about anywhere across a fictitious and highly irradiated version of the United States. This included areas designated for low-level starter characters to the very final areas of the game. However, Fallout was also a highly compact game and actually had an end in sight. You had plenty of time to meet interesting characters and could solve frontier disputes in your adventures--but most of your time was spent adventuring, not wasting dozens of hours fighting wave after pointless wave of the same monsters or walking mile after pointless mile. When you were finished (because finishing the game before getting bored of it was actually possible), you'd want to play through it again as a different sort of character. Interplay's internal RPG studio was formally renamed "Black Isle Studios" in 1998, just in time for the sequel Fallout 2--though in the sequel, the vision of having a compact, open-ended game seemed lost. Fallout 2 did preserve many of the features of the original Fallout, but it was also a long-winded, sprawling game that was, in many ways, more linear than the original game. It was also packed with a few too many goofy and unnecessary references to movies, cable TV shows, and Saturday morning cartoons. Three of the Fallout team's key members left Interplay to form Troika Studios in early 1998; the game itself was completed later that year.
Black Isle then went on to lend production assistance to an up-and-coming Canadian developer, named BioWare, with a 1998 game called Baldur's Gate, which let you play as a fledgling adventurer who was revealed to be of divine heritage. After it was released, many critics claimed that this traditional high fantasy role-playing game "saved" computer role-playing games from the slump they were in at the time. While not everyone agreed with this sentiment, Baldur's Gate and BioWare's Infinity Engine would become the basis for Black Isle's PC role-playing games for the next five years. This included Tales of the Sword Coast, a challenging expansion pack for Baldur's Gate that was released in early 1999. Then, at the end of the year, Black Isle produced what I (and other fans) consider to be the studio's second truly great role-playing game.
1999's Planescape: Torment was an unassuming RPG that used the now-discontinued Planescape campaign setting from Dungeons & Dragons. The setting was based around interplanar travel that was centered in a hub city known as Sigil. You played as a scarred man with a bad case of amnesia and more than a passing resemblance to Black Isle producer emeritus Guido Henkel. While it seemed like the game had been thrown together and then shoved out the door in December of 1999--to barely make the holiday season--it turned out to be one of the most involving and intriguing PC role-playing games we've ever seen. In your quest as a man with no memories, your character eventually discovers that he is an ancient immortal whose actions had affected entire worlds and had changed history. The game also had an excellent moral alignment system that let you be truly good or truly evil--a paragon of virtue or a black-hearted manipulator--rather than the simplistic "I will either be a Goody Two-shoes or a big jerk" alignment choices that had appeared in other role-playing games--if they were even present at all. 1999 was also the year in which Interplay took the wraps off of Neverwinter Nights, BioWare's 3D role-playing game and toolset, though the two companies would part ways a few years later.
Black Isle went on to produce its own role-playing game in 2000 with the hack-and-slash Dungeons & Dragons adventure Icewind Dale, which was released at around the same time as Blizzard's highly anticipated action RPG sequel Diablo II. The studio also lent production assistance to BioWare for the award-winning 2000 role-playing game Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, a suitably epic sequel to the first game. While Icewind Dale did fairly well, Black Isle was also working on a few other projects, some of which were received better than others. Interplay's strategy game division, 14 Degrees East, created Fallout Tactics, a hybrid turn-based/real-time strategy game based on the Fallout RPG series, in early 2001--and even though the game wasn't developed by Black Isle, it was generally well-received. So was Throne of Bhaal, the BioWare-developed expansion pack for Baldur's Gate II, which ended the saga of the demigod character whose adventures started in the first Baldur's Gate. And Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, a 3D action RPG developed by Snowblind Studios with production assistance from Black Isle, surprised everyone by being an astonishingly good hack-and-slash game for the PlayStation 2 console. However, the same couldn't be said for Heart of Winter, an expansion pack for Icewind Dale that was criticized for being too straightforward and too short, though the studio did supplement this with a second, free expansion pack called Trials of the Luremaster. 2001 also marked the debut of Torn, an ill-fated 3D role-playing game that was first revealed at the Game Developer's Conference in San Jose, California. The game's difficult development cycle led to its eventual cancellation, as well as the loss of several talented staffers that year. 2001 also marked the first signs of dissension with longtime collaborator BioWare, as the Canadian developer filed a licensing lawsuit against Interplay, which would lead to further complications down the road. Interplay itself was acquired by French publisher Titus that year, which represented a change that would lead to even more significant developments the following year.
In 2002, Interplay CEO Brian Fargo stepped down, citing difficulties with the Titus merger as being chief among his reasons for leaving. Interplay also lost the publishing rights to Neverwinter Nights to French publishing giant Infogrames (now known as Atari). It then sold off developer Shiny Entertainment, along with development of that studio's movie-licensed game Enter the Matrix, to that same publisher, though this sale didn't seem like it was enough to support the embattled publisher through its continuing difficulties. By this time, Interplay had established a publishing deal with VU Games, which helped bring the Black Isle-developed sequel Icewind Dale II to market, in addition to Reflexive Entertainment's problematic alternate-history RPG Lionheart. Aside from producing these games, Black Isle also helped produce Dark Alliance for the Xbox and GameCube consoles and announced a sequel for the PS2 and Xbox. Rumors also began circulating throughout Black Isle's fan community that two internal projects, code-named "Jefferson" and "Van Buren," would be Baldur's Gate III and Fallout 3, respectively.
Unfortunately, both products were shelved in 2003, while Interplay revealed a new hack-and-slash action console game bearing the Fallout name and confirmed its plans to continue production of Dark Alliance II. Most recently, Interplay shut down what we knew as Black Isle Studios in the face of continuing financial problems. Again, the writing seemed like it was on the wall, but it's tragic nonetheless. Black Isle will always be remembered by role-playing game fans around the world for having created some of the most enjoyable computer RPGs ever made.
[Editor's Note: Special thanks to all those who sent in corrections and updates.]
GameSpotting: Final Fight
We get into one last verbal brawl before the year closes out.
