The last couple of years have been pretty good to inXile Entertainment. Wasteland 2 earned nearly $3 million on Kickstarter and was recently released to solid reviews; Torment: Tides of Numenera pulled in more than $4 million and will hopefully be even better. And now the studio says it's begun work on yet another RPG that fans have been clamoring for.
You already know this if you receive (and pay attention to) Wasteland 2 backer emails, although in truth there's not a whole lot to know. "Along with continued tuning of Wasteland 2, myself and a few others at the studio are beginning to work on another RPG that has been passionately demanded of us for a while now!" Wasteland 2 Project Lead Chris Keenan teased. "It’s still quite early in the process, but we will have more news on that in the New Year."
Not much to go on there, which means that it's speculation time! The only other "big" RPG in the inXile lineup, as far as I know, is The Bard's Tale, which I would be absolutely thrilled for as long as it's based on the original and not the 2005 remake. InXile founder Brian Fargo's history as an Interplay co-founder opens up some other intriguing, if almost entirely fantastical, possibilities as well. Remember, Interplay owned Black Isle, and Black Isle did Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale in its short history.
The Planescape base is already covered, at least partially, by Tides of Numenera, but the recent successes of old-school isometric RPGs like Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin could mean that other, previously unavailable licenses are suddenly more accessible—although that situation could be complicated somewhat by the 2012 resurrection, of sorts, of the Black Isle brand.
Bottom line: I have no idea. Put a new Bard's Tale dungeon crawler on Kickstarter, though, and I'll be the first in line with my wallet in hand.
