Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Excidium II]

i would recommend waiting for a sale

a big sale

LAck of capitalization suggests lack of seriousness...

t. t

 

[commie]

Can't fucking wait! I hope the 53 achievements are nice and mutually exclusive so it will take me at least 7 playthroughs to get them all!

 

[roll-a-die]

Roxor linked his massive post review in another post so I figured I'd take a shot at at least addressing some of the claim while I'm waking up.

my most compressed tldrest impressions: b o r i n g

I'm not sure how much stock to put into this assessment, since you complained about having to go places and do stuff in Underrail.

Okay, in that case allow me to elaborate.

To start with what I liked:

- The effort mechanic, i.e. spending attribute currency to boost your chance to pass a skillcheck, is something promising and probably the only attempt in the history of 'big' crpgs to introduce the concept of fate points or rerolls to some degree. Arcanum also had fate points, but their implementation was terrible. Frayed Knights also had them, in the form of adventure stars, and their implementation was a hundred million billion times better than numanuma's effort, but unfortunately Frayed Knights was played by a dozen people at best.

Freyed Knights suffered from it's lack of broad appeal, and poor presentation but was a very good game none-the-less

- There are bits and pieces, mostly tertiary characters, who can be interesting, like a book merchant who speaks in "narration", or city guards who are manufactured when a citizen gives away a year of his life in levy, or an intertemporal adoption service. Unfortunately, those are typically tertiary bits, and even still they are fairly underrepresented.

I'd agree, most of the tertiary character are quite interesting. Often more interesting than the companions.

- The first "crisis" is also something fairly promising, and it's cool to see an RPG finally make use of stuff like dialogue skills in combat (talk to an enemy in combat and [intimidate] him). Unfortunately (see where this is going?), all the other crises I went through were of the "just kill 'em all" variety.

This is somewhat true however, you seem to have forgotten that most of the other crisises you go in too "Just kill 'em all" in have alternate routes.

What I didn't like:

- There is so little actually going on in terms of gameplay in this fucking game that the only way I can describe it is "Dear Esther with skillchecks". 95% of the beta is spent running between characters and talking. Go to ZoneX, talk to Char1, then to Char2, then back to Char1, then to Char3 in ZoneY, then back to Char1 again. Every now and again you press the [skillcheck] option to gain a Creepy Memory (tm) and get +2 xp, or cut your running around by a few characters. Almost everything here is handled via dialogue, and typically it requires 0 effort to handle said everything. Now, this wouldn't be necessarily bad if the dialogue was good. However...

The gameplay of torment was much the same, but in the interest of actually addressing the point. Saying that it's dear esther with skillchecks, denies that the devs of the game focused on the writing. It's like complaining a game like Sorcery! or 80 Days, is a text adventure. This game isn't being said to be anything other than a writing/story based game. And at the very least most of the Crisis' I was involved in, had options for killing things that used non-straight up smack them in the head skills.

- The dialogue is most certainly not good. Apart from the few interesting tertiary characters, it is mostly complete tripe. Too long, overwrought, bland, nonsensical. I was paying close attention to it because I was consciously fishing for examples of really rampant stupidity (and ho boy there's lots), but even then some of them I couldn't stomach. There's a Not-Smoldering Corpse Bar in the city with a bunch of ex-adventurers or whatever, who are so extraordinarily boring that after a few dialogue nodes I just surrendered and continued with "press 1, press enter to continue without reading, press 1, press enter, press 1" because it was honestly just unreadable. Without the conscious fishing I mentioned, I probably would have skipped half the texts in the game in this manner. Still, bad dialogue can at least be saved by a servicable story. However...

This is of course true of all video games. Even planescape torment had moments where my eyes glazed over and the nothingness of mindlessly pressing one continuing the conversation via practically automaton. However, I will say, that As far as this goes, Torment Tides, has far less of this than the Baldurs Gate series. Also, an adage, Roxor, from a writer on Disney movies. "If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will."

- I can't quite decide whether the story is non-existent or completely stupid. In essence, your "main objective" is supposed to be "You are a bhaalspawn castoff. Find someone who can fix your macguffin to stop Dahaka The Sorrow from eating you". The Sorrow is some kind of horrific cosmic horror that really really wants to eat you. Except the Sorrow appears just once during the intro and doesn't appear ever again. Some really fucking extra critical threat this. Of course, you soon find out that your macguffin can probably be fixed only by another castoff. You find said castoff, and she tells you to go find a castoff in a whole CITY of castoffs, and maybe HE can fix your macguffin for you! Meanwhile, while running around between zones, you will notice that suspiciously much going on in the world, the city, everything, has castoffs behind it. Castoffs are hiding behind every corner and in every memory, they are legion, and they are responsible for EVERYTHING. Every moment in the history of the city? It was castoffs! People in the city going crazy? It was castoffs! Strange machinery? Castoffs! Slavers? Castoffs! Cults and scholars? Castoffs! Castoffs, castoffs, castoffs, more like fuck offs! Castoffs being the sole answer to every single problem in this fucking game is not only absurd, it's also fucking idiotic. Each time something happens, you know there is AT LEAST one castoff behind it.

Not entirely true, but yes, they do have a tendency to shove you over to other castoffs hoping they'll know more about your condition. This city isn't however made of castoffs as you imply, I'd say between less than a quarter and more than a 16th of it's population that we see are castoffs. I didn't really notice this playing it, but thinking about it in retrospect, there is a lot that I don't know about the beta areas right now, that might have had castoffs responsible. In certain regards this makes sense, however, given that Sagus is the Changings Gods old stomping ground, and if you go with the idea that each Castoff has some form of genetic memory. Sagus would be a natural place for them to grift into. Or be born in.

- Numenera, both the setting and the ruleset, is complete and utter garbage. The setting is garbage because it's a circus where everything goes. Fallout 3 is less of a clownish theme park than Numenera. The ruleset is garbage, and I have a feeling inXile also happened to notice that once they sat down to the game mechanics - I am 100% certain they had no idea what they were getting into when they announced that Tworment would be using the Numederpa system, and it shows by the additions that they kept making to it. Tl;dr, Numenera is a system where, in combat, you say "I attack", then roll d20 and you either hit or not. There is nothing else to it, no defensive rolls or actual modifiers, nothing. So inXile at least added stuff like Willpower and Evasion mods to combat, because "I attack, the end" wouldn't make for good combat in a crpg. But it's all sisyphean labour, because even with the fixes and additions, the ruleset still remains fucking numederpa, and because of this, the whole "crisis" shtick is completely wasted.

Eh, in reality the PnP combat system relies a lot on social bargaining with the GM hashing out what the actual difficulty is. Then rolling the dice. And yeah, it's pretty bullshit simple for a CRPG game, which is why they modified it. Which is a good thing. The system and setting itself being garbage is a matter of opinion, I fucking love the weird science magic asthetic of it. But then I loved oWoD changeling, and other weird systems.

And because the underlying Numederpa system is total garbage, everything that stems from it is also garbage. Character management/advancement/definition is garbage. Itemisation is garbage. Combat is garbage. The effort system, while promising conceptually, actually falls flat on its face in practice - when inXile added HP to the game, everyone assumed it was an attempt at dumbing down. No, I say it was another desperate attempt to find their way out of a retarded system that they cluelessly forced themselves into. Whether that was a good idea is up for debate.

They were trying to distance the combat further from the PnP rules. These rules are pretty interesting, but don't make sense from a traditional CRPG standpoint. People expect hitpoints. People don't understand having 3 seperate hitpoint pools. And you'd get people who would bitch up and down that they were dying, "Too Quickly" when they spent all their int earlier that day and died to a psychic abomination.

- From the 3 stats (might/speed/int) skillchecks are so lopsided towards int that it's not even funny. My character was focused on speed/stealth/agility, and I felt like a total chump for doing that. Good that I didn't go with might at least, because that one's EVEN more underrepresented.

This is because you still spend your speed and might to be effective in combat. Which is usually triggered by failing int checks. Int is rarer unless you are a nano. There were plenty of speed checks I noticed, not sure about the ratio of them. They just weren't as automatic as the common and frequent, and annoying Anamnesis int checks for 2xp and a weird ass memory sequence to help solve the shit going on. But the idea remains the same, design wise they didn't want you too fall flat on your face in combat, because you spent all your speed or might points in other situations. Essentially the dev team seemed scared of getting you into impossible situations.

- The companion characters are all massively uninteresting, except Erritis the blondie stereotypically heroic hero. Tybir is so generic and cardboard, I can't even describe him in any specific way. Aligern is some sort of emo grimdark guy and that's it. Callistege, the woman who can communicate with her versions from different dimensions, could easily be interesting, but they actually managed to make her 100% uninteresting, which is quite the achievement. There's also some little girl whose VO was driving me nuts and some grimdark edgy (CASTOFF) assassin from Matkina who'd probably be called xXxALTAIRxXx if she was a male player character in an mmo. Erritis is the only one who works because he is the only one to go all the way in with his concept. He's a lawful stupid heroic hero, and everything he does/says is a reflection of this, which is a) comical, b) uncommon. Callistege's interdimensionality you hardly even notice. Tybir is cardboard. Matkina is generic to the bone.

I also want to note the voice acting they chose for each of these characters except perhaps Matkina, does not fit them. Callistege for example is supposed to have a hissing to her voice, that I took to be a lisp, then they added the voice acting. And she's got this smooth talking crisp clear voice. Aligern is implied to be sounding paranoid, when I doubt the slow talking motherfucker they chose for him, could do a paranoid voice if it saved his life.

- The very obvious "hoho c wut I did thar" references to PS:T. A character named "O", an npc referring to you as "Adahn", the Not-Smoldering Corpse Bar, etc etc etc etc etc. It reeks of cheap fanservice. And despite all this, even though the game is titled "Torment", there is practically next to zero actual torment in it. Except for a character named "tormented levy".

Eh, I barely/didn't notice this.

I could probably go on or expand upon the above, but those are my chief complaints. The game is stupid, predictable and boring, further spiced up with a garbage ruleset and setting.

I will say that I think that quote I mentioned above that is a disney writers but typically attributed to Lincoln really fits Roxors assumptions and criticisms for everything I've seen thus far. He went in expecting shit, he got shit on because of it. Go in with a fresh mind. The world is interesting, and lush with descriptions, and things too look at. If you take it as that, as something to explore and experience, rather than literally the next best game ever(TM)(R) it'll probably at very least be tolerable, I know it was for me. I wavered between, this is average, too this is awesome but I have some complaints the 15 or so hours I spent with the demo.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Moth]

Strange that they didn't link her voice actress. She seems like she could be an interesting character, but I don't want to get my hopes up too much.

 

[roll-a-die]

Strange that they didn't link her voice actress. She seems like she could be an interesting character, but I don't want to get my hopes up too much.

Just judging by the sound it might be the person who did the stuff for Neera in BGEE but I'm very tone deaf so it might not be.

 

[Moth]

Just judging by the sound it might be the person who did the stuff for Neera in BGEE but I'm very tone deaf so it might not be.

Yeah, it sounds either like Neera, or an actual child.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think it's the same voice actress as Neera, it may actually be a child.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

It's live now :
https://youtu.be/x_5oq4coOtE

 

[tripedal]

...no blue tide companions?

Little girl seems like the most interesting one, I hope the gold/indigo moralfaggotry doesn't get overwhelming.

 

[Roguey]

No credit, no child labor laws violated?

Are any of the novellas worth checking out?

All of them imo.

 

[Excidium II]

Roxor linked his massive post review in another post so I figured I'd take a shot at at least addressing some of the claim while I'm waking up.

my most compressed tldrest impressions: b o r i n g

I'm not sure how much stock to put into this assessment, since you complained about having to go places and do stuff in Underrail.

Okay, in that case allow me to elaborate.

To start with what I liked:

- The effort mechanic, i.e. spending attribute currency to boost your chance to pass a skillcheck, is something promising and probably the only attempt in the history of 'big' crpgs to introduce the concept of fate points or rerolls to some degree. Arcanum also had fate points, but their implementation was terrible. Frayed Knights also had them, in the form of adventure stars, and their implementation was a hundred million billion times better than numanuma's effort, but unfortunately Frayed Knights was played by a dozen people at best.

Freyed Knights suffered from it's lack of broad appeal, and poor presentation but was a very good game none-the-less

- There are bits and pieces, mostly tertiary characters, who can be interesting, like a book merchant who speaks in "narration", or city guards who are manufactured when a citizen gives away a year of his life in levy, or an intertemporal adoption service. Unfortunately, those are typically tertiary bits, and even still they are fairly underrepresented.

I'd agree, most of the tertiary character are quite interesting. Often more interesting than the companions.

- The first "crisis" is also something fairly promising, and it's cool to see an RPG finally make use of stuff like dialogue skills in combat (talk to an enemy in combat and [intimidate] him). Unfortunately (see where this is going?), all the other crises I went through were of the "just kill 'em all" variety.

This is somewhat true however, you seem to have forgotten that most of the other crisises you go in too "Just kill 'em all" in have alternate routes.

What I didn't like:

- There is so little actually going on in terms of gameplay in this fucking game that the only way I can describe it is "Dear Esther with skillchecks". 95% of the beta is spent running between characters and talking. Go to ZoneX, talk to Char1, then to Char2, then back to Char1, then to Char3 in ZoneY, then back to Char1 again. Every now and again you press the [skillcheck] option to gain a Creepy Memory (tm) and get +2 xp, or cut your running around by a few characters. Almost everything here is handled via dialogue, and typically it requires 0 effort to handle said everything. Now, this wouldn't be necessarily bad if the dialogue was good. However...

The gameplay of torment was much the same, but in the interest of actually addressing the point. Saying that it's dear esther with skillchecks, denies that the devs of the game focused on the writing. It's like complaining a game like Sorcery! or 80 Days, is a text adventure. This game isn't being said to be anything other than a writing/story based game. And at the very least most of the Crisis' I was involved in, had options for killing things that used non-straight up smack them in the head skills.

- The dialogue is most certainly not good. Apart from the few interesting tertiary characters, it is mostly complete tripe. Too long, overwrought, bland, nonsensical. I was paying close attention to it because I was consciously fishing for examples of really rampant stupidity (and ho boy there's lots), but even then some of them I couldn't stomach. There's a Not-Smoldering Corpse Bar in the city with a bunch of ex-adventurers or whatever, who are so extraordinarily boring that after a few dialogue nodes I just surrendered and continued with "press 1, press enter to continue without reading, press 1, press enter, press 1" because it was honestly just unreadable. Without the conscious fishing I mentioned, I probably would have skipped half the texts in the game in this manner. Still, bad dialogue can at least be saved by a servicable story. However...

This is of course true of all video games. Even planescape torment had moments where my eyes glazed over and the nothingness of mindlessly pressing one continuing the conversation via practically automaton. However, I will say, that As far as this goes, Torment Tides, has far less of this than the Baldurs Gate series. Also, an adage, Roxor, from a writer on Disney movies. "If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will."

- I can't quite decide whether the story is non-existent or completely stupid. In essence, your "main objective" is supposed to be "You are a bhaalspawn castoff. Find someone who can fix your macguffin to stop Dahaka The Sorrow from eating you". The Sorrow is some kind of horrific cosmic horror that really really wants to eat you. Except the Sorrow appears just once during the intro and doesn't appear ever again. Some really fucking extra critical threat this. Of course, you soon find out that your macguffin can probably be fixed only by another castoff. You find said castoff, and she tells you to go find a castoff in a whole CITY of castoffs, and maybe HE can fix your macguffin for you! Meanwhile, while running around between zones, you will notice that suspiciously much going on in the world, the city, everything, has castoffs behind it. Castoffs are hiding behind every corner and in every memory, they are legion, and they are responsible for EVERYTHING. Every moment in the history of the city? It was castoffs! People in the city going crazy? It was castoffs! Strange machinery? Castoffs! Slavers? Castoffs! Cults and scholars? Castoffs! Castoffs, castoffs, castoffs, more like fuck offs! Castoffs being the sole answer to every single problem in this fucking game is not only absurd, it's also fucking idiotic. Each time something happens, you know there is AT LEAST one castoff behind it.

Not entirely true, but yes, they do have a tendency to shove you over to other castoffs hoping they'll know more about your condition. This city isn't however made of castoffs as you imply, I'd say between less than a quarter and more than a 16th of it's population that we see are castoffs. I didn't really notice this playing it, but thinking about it in retrospect, there is a lot that I don't know about the beta areas right now, that might have had castoffs responsible. In certain regards this makes sense, however, given that Sagus is the Changings Gods old stomping ground, and if you go with the idea that each Castoff has some form of genetic memory. Sagus would be a natural place for them to grift into. Or be born in.

- Numenera, both the setting and the ruleset, is complete and utter garbage. The setting is garbage because it's a circus where everything goes. Fallout 3 is less of a clownish theme park than Numenera. The ruleset is garbage, and I have a feeling inXile also happened to notice that once they sat down to the game mechanics - I am 100% certain they had no idea what they were getting into when they announced that Tworment would be using the Numederpa system, and it shows by the additions that they kept making to it. Tl;dr, Numenera is a system where, in combat, you say "I attack", then roll d20 and you either hit or not. There is nothing else to it, no defensive rolls or actual modifiers, nothing. So inXile at least added stuff like Willpower and Evasion mods to combat, because "I attack, the end" wouldn't make for good combat in a crpg. But it's all sisyphean labour, because even with the fixes and additions, the ruleset still remains fucking numederpa, and because of this, the whole "crisis" shtick is completely wasted.

Eh, in reality the PnP combat system relies a lot on social bargaining with the GM hashing out what the actual difficulty is. Then rolling the dice. And yeah, it's pretty bullshit simple for a CRPG game, which is why they modified it. Which is a good thing. The system and setting itself being garbage is a matter of opinion, I fucking love the weird science magic asthetic of it. But then I loved oWoD changeling, and other weird systems.

And because the underlying Numederpa system is total garbage, everything that stems from it is also garbage. Character management/advancement/definition is garbage. Itemisation is garbage. Combat is garbage. The effort system, while promising conceptually, actually falls flat on its face in practice - when inXile added HP to the game, everyone assumed it was an attempt at dumbing down. No, I say it was another desperate attempt to find their way out of a retarded system that they cluelessly forced themselves into. Whether that was a good idea is up for debate.

They were trying to distance the combat further from the PnP rules. These rules are pretty interesting, but don't make sense from a traditional CRPG standpoint. People expect hitpoints. People don't understand having 3 seperate hitpoint pools. And you'd get people who would bitch up and down that they were dying, "Too Quickly" when they spent all their int earlier that day and died to a psychic abomination.

- From the 3 stats (might/speed/int) skillchecks are so lopsided towards int that it's not even funny. My character was focused on speed/stealth/agility, and I felt like a total chump for doing that. Good that I didn't go with might at least, because that one's EVEN more underrepresented.

This is because you still spend your speed and might to be effective in combat. Which is usually triggered by failing int checks. Int is rarer unless you are a nano. There were plenty of speed checks I noticed, not sure about the ratio of them. They just weren't as automatic as the common and frequent, and annoying Anamnesis int checks for 2xp and a weird ass memory sequence to help solve the shit going on. But the idea remains the same, design wise they didn't want you too fall flat on your face in combat, because you spent all your speed or might points in other situations. Essentially the dev team seemed scared of getting you into impossible situations.

- The companion characters are all massively uninteresting, except Erritis the blondie stereotypically heroic hero. Tybir is so generic and cardboard, I can't even describe him in any specific way. Aligern is some sort of emo grimdark guy and that's it. Callistege, the woman who can communicate with her versions from different dimensions, could easily be interesting, but they actually managed to make her 100% uninteresting, which is quite the achievement. There's also some little girl whose VO was driving me nuts and some grimdark edgy (CASTOFF) assassin from Matkina who'd probably be called xXxALTAIRxXx if she was a male player character in an mmo. Erritis is the only one who works because he is the only one to go all the way in with his concept. He's a lawful stupid heroic hero, and everything he does/says is a reflection of this, which is a) comical, b) uncommon. Callistege's interdimensionality you hardly even notice. Tybir is cardboard. Matkina is generic to the bone.

I also want to note the voice acting they chose for each of these characters except perhaps Matkina, does not fit them. Callistege for example is supposed to have a hissing to her voice, that I took to be a lisp, then they added the voice acting. And she's got this smooth talking crisp clear voice. Aligern is implied to be sounding paranoid, when I doubt the slow talking motherfucker they chose for him, could do a paranoid voice if it saved his life.

- The very obvious "hoho c wut I did thar" references to PS:T. A character named "O", an npc referring to you as "Adahn", the Not-Smoldering Corpse Bar, etc etc etc etc etc. It reeks of cheap fanservice. And despite all this, even though the game is titled "Torment", there is practically next to zero actual torment in it. Except for a character named "tormented levy".

Eh, I barely/didn't notice this.

I could probably go on or expand upon the above, but those are my chief complaints. The game is stupid, predictable and boring, further spiced up with a garbage ruleset and setting.

I will say that I think that quote I mentioned above that is a disney writers but typically attributed to Lincoln really fits Roxors assumptions and criticisms for everything I've seen thus far. He went in expecting shit, he got shit on because of it. Go in with a fresh mind. The world is interesting, and lush with descriptions, and things too look at. If you take it as that, as something to explore and experience, rather than literally the next best game ever(TM)(R) it'll probably at very least be tolerable, I know it was for me. I wavered between, this is average, too this is awesome but I have some complaints the 15 or so hours I spent with the demo.

shill

 

[roll-a-die]

I sure wish I was getting paid too shill this game, I'd probably put a lot more effort into not complaining about it then.

 

[Excidium II]

It is very odd to see this much emotional investment in a game two days from release.

 

[roll-a-die]

It is very odd to see this much emotional investment in a game two days from release.

It's literally been like this here, before every kickstarter has released.

 

[Fry]

I don't think it's the same voice actress as Neera, it may actually be a child.

No sane person would hire an actual child to do voice acting. It's easy to find adult women who can sound like children.

 

[Lady_Error]

It is very odd to see this much emotional investment in a game two days from release.

The spiritual successor of the Codex #1 game? Odd indeed that people care.

Also, inXile knows that if this game is shit or doesn't sell, they are pretty much done.

 

[Lacrymas]

No sane person would hire an actual child to do voice acting. It's easy to find adult women who can sound like children.

I mean like a 14ish-year-old, not a 6-year-old or something. Not being credited is also suspicious.

 

[Jarpie]

From what I heard in beta, Rhin's VA isn't exactly stellar but it was just couple lines. Kid companions in games won't imo work for the same reason why I find kids annoying in tv or film, usually written horribly.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's funny that GOG's first tag for Numanuma is "Adventure" instead of RPG ;d

 

[V_K]

The world is interesting, and lush with descriptions, and things too look at. If you take it as that, as something to explore and experience

But that's the definition of Dear Esther.

 

[V_K]

It's funny that GOG's first tag for Numanuma is "Adventure" instead of RPG

I was going to say that it's even more insulting to Adventures, but then I realized that they probably meant it in a Telltale sense.

 

[FeelTheRads]

It's funny that GOG's first tag for Numanuma is "Adventure" instead of RPG ;d

Pulling a reverse Infinitron here, PST had it as the second "tag".

http://s243.photobucket.com/user/adg1034/media/IMG_1209.jpg.html

 

[Roguey]

No sane person would hire an actual child to do voice acting. It's easy to find adult women who can sound like children.

Boy do I have a sad story for you http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0058279/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

 

[Jinn]

So the FAQ on the game's steam forums was updated recently and it seems like beta saves will be compatible with the final release build. Has anyone started this as a result?