GB: Tell us a bit about your previous work at Black Isle Studios and your role during the development of Planescape: Torment.

Chris: Well, before Torment (and during Torment), I was working on Fallout 2 as a designer, and occasionally doing some work on other Interplay titles (mostly pick-up work here and there on Starfleet Academy, Conquest of the New World, Die by the Sword, plus various AD&D titles that kept getting flushed), then I got a sudden promotion to lead designer for the Planescape PC RPG (we also had a console one planned at the same time, but that got scrapped along the way). It was hard to juggle a lot of the lead design tasks all at once, and I was pretty new at the role, so I made a lot of mistakes. Interplay was also taking its financial downturn around that time, and we were in a hurry to get out a lot of our projects in order to prevent layoffs, so nothing really spurs you to develop faster than knowing if you don't get the project out, your friend down the hall is going to get the axe. Of course, those people all got laid off or quit anyway, so for all I know, we may have actually prevented them from going to a better place in the end. Sigh. Who knows.

Life's better at Obsidian, though, and we got a number of our crew from Planescape back, which is incredibly nice. I wasn't sure if we'd ever have a chance to work together again, but we have a number of the artists, the lead artist, the lead programmer, and the lead designer all here, so it makes me think happy thoughts.