Game News Torment Kickstarter Update #8: George Ziets Video, Pat Rothfuss Stretch Goal, and much more

[Rake]

Worse. One man having sex with lots of women. And they love it.

Women enjoying sex? That's fantasy for you.

Yes, Rothfuss has a vivid imagination. How did he thought that? Genius.

 

[St. Toxic]

I prefer my fantasies to be of a more cerebral nature.

 

[Minttunator]

Never read anything by Rothfuss. Guess I should bump him up a bit on my 'to-read' list.

 

[JarlFrank]

So how does Lesi justify her hate of Rothfuss's books? I've read both and enjoyed them (read the second one in like 3 nights, and it's a pretty thick book), and I haven't seen any so-called mysogyny at all. There's one quite strong-willed female character, the love interest of the protagonist is a mysterious and free-spirited woman who does whatever she wants and doesn't let herself be chained by any man.

But yeah, in the second book the protagonist screws some women. Well hey, he's a young man, that's what young men do. It's realistic for this character to behave this way. I wonder if it's the scene with the elf girl that made Lesi so aggressive...

Anyway, fuck this shit. Rothfuss is a pretty good writer, I like his characters, the world isn't bad either especially since everything we learn about the world is what the protagonist knows and learns too, which is much better exposition than just throwing out walls of text with background info (especially for a game), so I trust him to deliver some good stuff for Torment.

Also, dat beard

 

[kazgar]

Third Fathom!

I don't know Pat Rothfuss's stuff, but if he's different to the others that only a good thing (unless he's a complete hack, and no ones gone that far in comments) as long as the overarching world design and the big picture story are solid (ie the leads keep it together) the more variety can only improve the overall game, would be the same if they did get a Brandon Sanderson or something like that. Otherwise, everything I'm hearing still sounds good.

Is this the only time Bloom's been a good thing in a game?

Also, Extended epilogues stretch goal should be met when you factor in paypal.

 

[Globbi]

Oh wow, the image is big, I didn't check it... previous images of the Labyrinth were small, this one is big and resized on site Good job kazgar

edit: It looks like the high-res version of 3rd Fathom has been removed. Too bad it's already been put on the Internet

 

[Kirtai]

I wonder what the Labyrinth actually is. Could it be connected to how your progenitor does his body thievery?

 

[evdk]

So how does Lesi justify her hate of Rothfuss's books? I've read both and enjoyed them (read the second one in like 3 nights, and it's a pretty thick book), and I haven't seen any so-called mysogyny at all. There's one quite strong-willed female character, the love interest of the protagonist is a mysterious and free-spirited woman who does whatever she wants and doesn't let herself be chained by any man.

Except for the one who beats her and abuses her, you mean.

 

[Stabwound]

Is bringing fantasy novel writers into game projects going to be the new thing, now? First Hickman, now Rothfuss.

Actually, that may not be a bad thing. Now that we've broken out of the hold D&D had on CRPGs and have entered the New Era, getting some fresh blood and ideas that aren't standard, lame fantasy is a good idea.

 

[JarlFrank]

So how does Lesi justify her hate of Rothfuss's books? I've read both and enjoyed them (read the second one in like 3 nights, and it's a pretty thick book), and I haven't seen any so-called mysogyny at all. There's one quite strong-willed female character, the love interest of the protagonist is a mysterious and free-spirited woman who does whatever she wants and doesn't let herself be chained by any man.

Except for the one who beats her and abuses her, you mean.

Oh, right, there was that guy. But there being such a character doesn't mean the author supports beating women. It's not even a character that directly features in the story as far as I remember, you only know of him cause the woman mentions him occasionally.

So, writing believable characters who don't worship all women as goddessess probably counts as mysogynistic then.

 

[evdk]

Oh, right, there was that guy. But there being such a character doesn't mean the author supports beating women. It's not even a character that directly features in the story as far as I remember, you only know of him cause the woman mentions him occasionally.

So, writing believable characters who don't worship all women as goddessess probably counts as mysogynistic then.

Oh no. I was mainly insulted because the guy beating her is so obviously one of the Chandrian it's painful.

 

[hoverdog]

Is bringing fantasy novel writers into game projects going to be the new thing, now? First Hickman, now Rothfuss.

Actually, that may not be a bad thing. Now that we've broken out of the hold D&D had on CRPGs and have entered the New Era, getting some fresh blood and ideas that aren't standard, lame fantasy is a good idea.

Don't forget about R.A. Salvator taking part in Kingdoms of Analur (and grabbing himself a lot of dorraru)


or better yet, forget. It should be easy, there's nothing more forgetable than his writing.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Hm, I recall porkamorka quoting some passage from Rothfuss about how a womyn can be just as strong a warrior as any man, as proof of his neckbeardness.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Rothfuss is bro.

 

[JarlFrank]

Might be of interest:
http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2013/03/concerning-games-torment-and-a-sense-of-play/

“I still remember the interaction you could have with some of the NPC’s,” I said. “You actually had to be clever talking to them. You could offend them and piss them off. The writing was solid and smart. You had a branching narrative that still felt cohesive and engaging. I’ve never seen that handled so well except for maybe in the early Fallout games.”

Well, he certainly seems to have the right taste in games.

EDIT:
Someone should invite him to the Codex:

During the panel, I get a little crotchety about modern games. I make some noises along the lines of, “Video games are pissing away the storytelling opportunities available to them. There’s bad writing. Foolish mistakes. When I was a kid….”

 

[JarlFrank]

Reading the comments now. It appears that a lot of Rothfuss's fans are chipping in on the kickstarter because of his possible involvement, and some people who haven't played PST yet got interested by his post.

 

[Brother None]

Well, he certainly seems to have the right taste in games.

It's kinda worth it to watch geeksandsundry's roundtable on Storytelling in Video Games. It's kind of noticeable how much there's a divide between Colin and Pat, whose preference clearly lies with "old-school" for want of a better term, and Veronica Belmont and PA's Jerry Holkins, who will defend the writing of Assassin's Creed and its ilk.

 

[mondblut]

This increasingly sounds like a typical "all-star" rock band, and nothing good ever comes out of that. Too many Cooks, etc.

 

[Zed]

where's all the art at? P:E had tons of art by this time. even wasteland had some portraits. fucking lazy artists. hire more artists, not writers. wueheuehr

 

[Excidium]

Tons of art? There was only like the waterfall, the party fighting and the goatgirl. The rest were just quick character mockups.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Damn, another person on the team who has no charisma or the ability to smile.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

The only kind of Kickstarter/Indiegogo project I engaged in was for Cleve's vaporware Grimoire game. And I'm glad I did so as he has provided me with endless entertainment and his beta is fun, but I'm not in the habit of purchasing a game until it is published and I read some fan reviews.

However, this gets more tempting every time I see an update. I'm a big fan of Rothfuss' fantasy writing because his characters actually seem like real people. Brandon Sanderson is another fantasy writer from the same generation of writers, but I never really feel that the characters were real people in the Mistborn series. Mistborn was very cinematic and would make a great series of movies, but the characters were superheroes acting in ways in which I couldn't relate. When Rothfuss writes his characters, they remind me of people I actually knew back in college, and some of their situations bring me back to real situations I or close friends had gone through. Rothfuss is my favorite author of his generation, so this Kickstarter is getting tempting for me with this inclusion.

 

[Lancehead]

So many writers, hope they all manage to stay on the same page.

 

[evdk]

So many writers, hope they all manage to stay on the same page.

The world of Numenera is supposed to be pretty diverse, so hopefully the ends result won't feel like a disjointed mess.

 

[Jaesun]

This is going to need a shitload of continuity passes.