Most of the companions in one of the most important RPGs ever made were crafted in "a day or less" by a developer with minimal 3D modeling experience.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Planescape: Torment lead artist Tim Donley explains how he was able to put a slightly unconventional team together while working on the classic CRPG. The slightly under-the-radar approach that developer Black Isle was afforded by borrowing BioWare's Baldur's Gate-creating Infinity Engine meant that he could take some gambles - and one of those gambles paid off in the form of Eric Campanella.
Campanella designed and animated all of Planescape's party companions. But before Planescape, he had absolutely no track record in modeling the 3D figures that the game was using - Campanella was a 2D artist but asked Donley if he could have a go at working in the third dimension.
"I was like, 'Have you ever made a 3D model before?' He's like, 'No, but I'd like to try'. And we just said, 'knock yourself out'."
Clearly, that gamble paid off. The first time Donley walked into Campanella's workshop, he says "it was like fucking Da Vinci. The guy turned out to be one of the best 3D modelers I've ever seen. Back then characters were like less than 1,000, 500 polygons, but he just understood anatomy so well."
Campanella was so good, in fact, that he was able to create each of the game's seven main companions "in a day or less." The only exception to that exceptional work-rate was Planescape: Torment's main character, The Nameless One - Donley doesn't explain why that was the case, but a combination of the extra scrutiny applied to the protagonist and The Nameless One's detailed animations is likely to be the culprit.
Planescape: Torment wasn't the first of this era of CRPG, and nor is it the most famous. An altogether weirder game than Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, it remains a major pillar of this hugely influential time in Western RPG development. I don't know that I'd say Baldur's Gate 3 couldn't exist without Planescape, but I would say that the entire RPG genre would be in a less interesting place without it, so to know that such an important part of the game was created so quickly is a fascinating bit of game design history.
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