Torment Kickstarter Update #2: Stretch Goals :: rpg codex

After an unprecedentedly successful first day, the Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter has received its first set of stretch goals, as detailed in this Kickstarter update. The update is extremely verbose - so verbose, in fact, that it hit Kickstarter's character limit and the final paragraph is cut off. Which is, I suppose, highly appropriate for the Kickstarter of a Torment game.

The first stretch goal, set at 1.2 million dollars and which had in fact already been reached at the time of the update's publishing, is the option to choose the player character's gender. The update explains:

Besides the obvious impacts of PC gender (e.g., character model, animations, increased localization work for languages for which gender matters, etc.), there will be appropriate reactivity from NPCs in the game world. This doesn’t mean that the overarching story will depend on your gender, but the level of reactivity will be significant and noticeable.

There's also concept art of the female version of the PC, created by artist Nils Hamm.

The second stretch goal, set at 1.5 million dollars and which has also already been reached, concerns Torment's writing team. Here's an excerpt:

Upon reaching $1.5M, we will expand the richness and reactivity of the story through adding two new writers to our team. We have designed the game’s storyline to be highly scalable and modular, and this allows us to bring in additional writing talent to enhance Torment’s story through deeper content and new areas and characters – both optional ones and on the critical path.

At $1.5 Million, two excellent writers, Tony Evans and Mur Lafferty will be contributing to the game.

[...] Additionally, Torment (and Wasteland 2) writer Nathan Long will be writing a novella for Torment. Nathan’s novella will be included in the Novella Compilation, and all backers receiving that reward will automatically receive this fourth novella, too.

Tony Evans is a former Obsidian employee and has also worked at Bioware. It's okay, Tony, we know it's not your fault that Dragon Age 2 sucked. Right? Right??

The third stretch goal is set at 2 million dollars and has not been reached yet at the time of this writing. I'll just copy the entire description here:

We will continue to increase Torment’s story depth and reactivity as Monte Cook also joins our writing team, contributing directly to in-game content. Monte is focused on Numenera, but we’ve been working directly with him already, seeking his guidance on how to best explore Numenera’s Ninth World. Later in the project, we will also be collaborating with Monte on the adaptation of Numenera’s tabletop rules to best suit a computer role-playing game. But at this Stretch Goal, Monte will become even more involved in Torment team and will add his writing talents as well. (Fortunately, Torment’s schedule allows for his creative work to begin later so that it won’t interfere with Numenera.)

At this Stretch Goal, Mark Morgan will write more music for Torment to complement the additional game areas and content we will be adding. Furthermore, he will incorporate a live orchestra into his work. Of course, all of this new music will be automatically including in the soundtrack (digital or CD) for backers who are receiving that reward. We will also provide the soundtrack reward in the lossless FLAC format for those who desire it.

Our initial plans for Torment included four possible companions for the player and at this Stretch Goal, we will be adding a fifth, which we’ve nicknamed “The Toy.” (That’s not its in-game name.) The Toy is a changing ball of goo: Is it a pet, an abandoned toy, a dangerous weapon? Whatever it is, it responds to the way you treat it by changing its appearance and abilities to reflect what it perceives as your desires. Its ultimate secrets are... well, you'll have to find out.

Besides the stretch goals, the update also informs us that, following a suggestion made on Torment's UserVoice forums, inXile have decided to organize a "Developer Retrospective" for the original Planescape: Torment. This collection of commentaries and behind-the-scenes stories from many of the original PS:T developers (though not all - producer Guido Henkel is perhaps unsurprisingly absent) will be granted as a reward to all Torment backers, and also to all backers of Obsidian's Project Eternity.

Oh, and for those of you who cannot into Amazon, PayPal donation will be enabled tomorrow.

UPDATE: The PayPal store is now available.

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