In Progress I don't know where this is going - Torment: Tides of Numenera Blind LP/Impressions

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I thought instead of posting my impressions of the game in the Numenera thread, where they would emerge once in every couple of pages, given the speed with which the thread is growing right now, I could structure them as an LP here.

This way someone might find them useful in answering for himself the question of what does one life matter whether the game is worth it, and I guess some discussion may even form.

I'm going completely blind into the game, after I forced myself not to follow any updates on it during development, and I haven't played or know anything about the beta. I thought this way there would be less chance of me hating the game by the time I get to actually play it.

Disclaimer: I don't know if I'll finish this, or how regular I'll be updating it.

I'll skip character creation and just present you with my character:

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Suspecting the interview at the beginning was in fact character creation, I tried to give answers which would get me out of the presented situations, and I ended up with a "Slick Jack" character, which I suppose is the way to say "Diplomat Rogue" if you used to be bullied by other kids in primary school.

So, I'm a novice at Sucker Punch. I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed of that fact. I took some points in technical knowledge, just because every time I play a game where I can be a scientist, I always tend to postpone investing in that skill for a second playthrough and never get to it.

Still, I do give points to Torment for deciding to use this way of creating a character and introduce you to the atmosphere of the setting at the same time.

I found it a bit strange that I'm not allowed to customize my character's appearance. Or maybe I'm just dumb, there was an opportunity to do that during character creation but I missed it?

Damn, about 60 minutes into the game and I can't unhook myself from conversation trees.
We start off with huge infodumps. Mr. Writer commands that you know all the bits he deems important from the start:

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I believe all those questions should be for the player to find answers to by exploration and one by one, instead of dumping everything on his head through dialogue with literally the first person he meets. Also, having spent an hour mostly in interactive reading, by now I'm itching to just walk around and explore the world.

Two NPCs serve as a tourist brochure presented through both their dialogue with you and the dialogue between them. I think this somewhat masks their purpose.

Also, when I get answers to my questions beginning with "An excellent question!", I want to shoot somebody.

Anyway, to summarize the story up to this point - I have just awoken with incoherent memories of my past lives in a body which I don't quite recognize. The body doesn't seem to mind though, which is a relief. It seems I have crashed onto the surface of a planet I am not familiar with, but the good news is that I'm alive and unharmed. I also understand that I am hunted by a dark force that wants to do bad things to my soul, and I have visions of my past lives. The body I'm occupying was until recently being used by an entity called the Changing God. He discarded the body and poof, my soul goes in it. This, I am informed by the NPCs, is normal practice around here, and there are many more people like me.

After some more blabbering that doesn't make much sense, at this point at least, ffs world and lore(tm) exposition, I am officially allowed to explore. Thank you, dear game!

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To mention something positive - I find the interface and tutorial messages to be very effective. As someone without any prior knowledge of the game or of the Numenera ruleset, I had no problem figuring out how to preform any action or the basics of the rules.

Overall impression: I hope this gets better when I get to the inevitable open city. So far, they've got my curiosity and attention but they should really slow down with relaying how intriguing, interesting, mysterious everything is. I don't want to wake up pregnant.

 

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As I learned during my inspection of the shattered dome area, exploration can indeed be a major activity in this game. Inspecting objects and passing skillchecks to manipulate them or to learn something about them is fun. Also, a tutorial message told me I can use other characters for skillchecks if they have a better chance of success. That's cool, so it's not always "the party leader speaks/does things".

What I don't find cool is that I can always see my chance of success as a percentage number. It takes away some of the mystery and suspense. I would have preferred an expression with words - "unlikely, somewhat likely, coin toss, likely, very likely" for example.

Apparently I can't command my NPCs separately, they just follow me around. I rather dislike that. Commanding your characters separately could have had uses in solving quests if it were possible, and now I know there won't be such uses. In a similar way, apparently there is no such thing as walking over traps in Numenera, because like a good grognard, my reflex was to look for a "search for traps button" in the interface, but there was nothing like that.

Exploration and experimentation can yield items as rewards. It's a bit of a bummer that every item I find comes identified and with its stats explained. Ironically, I can find something known as a Cypher and know everything about it at the click of a right mouse button:

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Overall, Torment somewhat reminds me of an adventure game so far. You do get the good ol' highlight button you know from BGII:ToB though, so this spares you the pixel hunting, if you don't feel like examining pictures closely.

As I exited the dome, both NPCs wanted to talk to me, and both urged me to get out of this area ASAP. Bullshit, you noobs, you don't get to teach me how to play an RPG -- you first explore everything, click every dialogue option and then, finally, you advance the objective.

When asked, however, both denied to speak to me about their respective backgrounds until we are out of here. That was actually a good call! In other games I would have gotten a healthy infodump in response.

It's a bit early to give a verdict on that, but for now both NPCs seem to be more on the "comedic relief", "goofy" side, but PST also had its Morte I guess. What was funny years ago feels a bit like an old joke at present.

After exploring the map a little, I proceeded past the trigger which announced the first "Crisis". So, a "Crisis" is basically a state of the gameplay where combat is allowed. To end this combat mode and return to exploration/dialogue mode, you have to either kill everyone who wants to fight you, dissuade them from fighting you, or run away maybe, I'm not quite sure? In this Crisis at least, running away was not a possibility.

A group of NPCs interfered as we were trying to slip from the scene, making that unmistakable impression of "hard-ass stone-cold mercenaries" you've seen in hundreds of games.

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I can't pass this by - someone was apparently feeling very generous about my screen space when he designed this UI for conversations. It would have been bearable if it was a beautiful looking UI, but I wouldn't even call it a decent-looking one. It's very sad. Additionally, how come even companion NPCs don't have their portraits shown during conversation?

After a short exchange of witticisms, where I learned that for some reason their boss wants to dissect me and see what I'm made of, we naturally moved to combat:

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Combat itself seems simplistic at first - I didn't see weapon switching options, nor action points. It seems like you can preform two actions per turn - movement and "action". You have a limited perimeter in which you can move, and it doesn't matter how far or how near you move - your movement is always expended. "Actions" consist of hitting things and interacting with the environment - either to cause damage or to talk to your enemies. Yes, you can talk during combat.

I found it strange that the option to try to intimidate the bad guys' leader came up during the "Crisis" but it wasn't available during our conversation before the Crisis.

Simple as combat may appear to be, I had one NPC knocked out the first time I attempted it. I also got to splatter acid on the bad guys, which felt pretty glorious. On the downside, I don't think the lack of movement/action points can be compensated, the set of possible actions during a turn becomes more limited as a result. I guess combat will get more complex later on.

 

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We mercilessly killed Quoro and his henchmen. He sounded like the kind of guy who wouldn't take such a thing personally, but on the other hand I'm a bit sorry for the missed opportunity to get more information out of him. He had been carrying a device which he had used to block off the exits from the area, but while it was active, there was a chance that from this blocking, the whole platform we were standing on top would blow up. Funny enough, this danger only appeared after Quorro was dead, and not during the actual combat. It would have been fun, I think, if the combat itself was on a time limit.

Live by the sword, die by the sword:

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On a sidenote, what is it with game designers of presumably "spiritual succesors" of old generation classics, and shiny, light beams-emitting loot piles? WTF? I can see for myself where the loot is, do you take players for such idiots?

Even disabling the device though, wasn't a straightforward process. And in this game, I would rather bet that this is not a Bioware style fake choice:

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I'm impressed that I get descriptions when fail a skillcheck, not just when I succeed.

Upon averting that final danger and thus ending the Crisis, I immediately got dialogue from Aligern and Callistege. Their fighting reminds me of old cartoons' sidekicks trying to one-up each other in the infantile way children argue. I don't know if this is the intended effect or just the result of high-scool level of writing skills. I didn't find it very original.

It was a little sad that after such a stellar display of teamwork both the NPCs instited that it's "either me or him/her". The high-school motive persists apparently. Oh well, we've seen games with serviceable writing which were still fun, haven't we? I see this forced choice more or less as a call on the player to judge which NPC he likes better, and finds more interesting.

I found Callistege to be the more manipulative of the two, but also the more intriguing. It felt like this was what the writer was trying to demonstrate, though not as overtly as to be annoying. Aligern on the other hand had mostly been complaining about things, which in some universe is probably considered comical, but I thought I don't have the patience for it. So, with an overwhelming majority, the election was won by the woman.

The dialogue for these two is nothing to write home about, and nothing that anyone should write anywhere really, except maybe for an adolescent audience.

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And so, having looted the bodies, me and Callistege set off for Sagus Cliffs. This is a city btw.

 

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I just couldn't resist adding this screenshot of an item description. Take it as you will:

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So, with that out of the way... entering Sagus Cliffs. Cities in RPGs. What should we expect of them? Some of the great examples, in no particular order - Tarant, Athkatla, The Hub, Vault City, Sigil, Baldur's Gate... What I expect is a lot of quest hooks, beautiful architecture, numerous districts. In all these respects, I have to say that what I saw of Sagus Cliffs looks very promising, and the city itself seems to be massive.

Returning to the log of things that struck me as interesting, the "Buzzer" I found seems to be a ranged weapon which doesn't need ammo to fire. Sad.

In another unfortunate turn of events, the first thing I found, or rather was approached by was the local Tourist Brochure NPC. This is getting tiresome.

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I'm beginning to think this game got its writing backwards, and probably even thinks this passes for deep roleplaying: When an NPC is asked a question, the first answer you hear is always The Loredump, Mr. Writer speaking. The second time you ask the question, you get the short version - the one that by any rules of common sense and logic you should have gotten first. First the broad picture, the in-character response of the NPC, and then, if the player is interested, only then give him the detailed response and lore. This is so wrong as it is. Just look at this typical example:

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Consider if the second response isn't actually much more fitting to be the first response.

In a more normal-sounding conversation I met a guy called Tybir. He asked me to help free a buddy of his who was being slowly executed at the square. I decided to go with his plan, just to see what will happen. Tybir seemed like a melee fighter, which was a role I thought I need filled in the party as well.

Working towards the enlightened goal of saving a man's life, it turned out I had to pose as a government official. For this, I need a specific badge, conveniently available for buying/stealing from a shopkeeper in the Government district:

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The game mechanics are slowly receiving twists. In this case, the "Edge" resources. It seems I have a character with "Edge". Eh, inXile, if you only knew...

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This is another occasion where I have to commend the game for the way party members can help out in skillchecks. Good job there.

It turned out that Tybir was actually a crook, not a fighter, and a better crook than my PC. We will be getting along well I guess. Even though he turned out to be a pervert, if I understand correctly his casual mention of some implicating circumstances.

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We acquired the pardon for Tybir's friend and it worked like a charm. I kinda expected more skillchecks.

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As soon as the guy, called Ris, was able to talk once again however, we dived into his and Tybir's story. It turns out the two of them tried to steal a load of booze, but Ris got caught for it. What Ris didn't know at the time was that within the cargo, there were hidden items of interest of the City Council. The conversation ended with Ris promising to get back at Tybir who said he never got paid for the job.

What's more interesting however was that I learned of the existence of a "cult" that learns people's memories by eating their corpses. I wonder where's their office. I bet they would have lots of interesting information.

I also got a level up. Levelling up works a bit different in Torment. You can advance in one of four ways. Once you advance in each of them, you gain what's called a Tier. Which I suppose corresponds to a "level". Needless to say, I went with "Increase Edge".

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This practice of being able to ask the same question twice leads to some situations which look hilarious if one imagines them as real conversations:

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"He stared eternity in the face and did not blink", says a merchant of sculptures. Where have I heard this...


* * *

I've spent... almost three and a half hours just in Circus Minor, talking to everybody. I've taken a couple of quests, related to my past lives, as well as a quest to retrieve a runaway slave. The latter seems to be the most interesting.

 

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I'm going to make a small separate rant post, before I return to the LP.

I am very disappointed by the decision to structure the dialogue with all party members in the same way. What I mean:

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Since I went into this game with minimum prior or meta knowledge, I do not yet know the full list of writers. But I will find out who they are, I will find them, and I will tell them the following.

• I sincerely want to know if you consider this uniform means of structuring "dialogue", as an interrogation or a job interview, the best you are capable of. Really, is this the best you can do?
• I sincerely want to ask: do you think this uniformity provokes attachment to the NPCs on the player's part?
• I sincerely want to ask of you: does it feel satisfying for you to have such kind of "dialogue" when you play the game? Is this akin to the way you have actual conversations with your relatives, friends, colleagues?
• I am genuinely interested if you would describe such a dialogue structure with any of the following adjectives: engaging, intriguing, imaginative, thought-provoking, attractive?
• I am dying with curiosity: do you believe this uniform way of structuring and presenting information about party member NPCs contributes to their characterization as the player's companions, each of them with an unique personality, worthy of being fully explored by the player?
• Are you really satisfied to see this?

 

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Having explored Circus Minor, I decided to move on to exploring the Government district. By now I'm a bit disappointed that the city areas are so small, compared to PoE, let alone the Infinity Engine games. I wonder if the customary rectangle which designates the currently viewed area while looking at the area's map (M key) is intentionally removed so as not to remind players how small the areas are. To their credit however, they can be zoomed in pretty close and still retain their visual quality.

Standing in front of the City Council building, I wondered if I qualify as a Sagus Cliffs citizen. After all, I fell from the sky, my place of origin is unknown. Trying to enter the council brought me to a conversation with a woman named Sigyn, which inadvertently answered that question.

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In our conversation, I had the rare opportunity to answer a question as opposed to just interrogate. I decided to hide the fact that I am looking to escape the black tentacle demon thing (aka "The Sorrow") that was hunting for my soul. Other than that choice, there was nothing else in this conversation except for another huge infodump. My next stop was the Order of Truth.

The first thing that struck me upon entering the area was that this must be the first place in this game to have carpets. The second was how much the design of the place reminds me of BGII and the Planar Sphere.

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Without so much as an introduction, even given the fact that I was bringing Callistege, I had another round of interrogation options open to me with a person called "Min of Tan Liang" who I can only presume was the chief of the Order of Truth. I don't get to ask him about him or the Order, but I do get to ask about "that machine behind him". Weird. Also, both he and Sigyn before him referenced "Slave Families". I guess I've missed that particular loredump, but I don't get an option to ask about them either.

I had examined the area and had just decided to go complete some of the secondary quests, because by now I've collected a few, when Salimeri started trying to involve me in at least one other quest - clear some location of bad guys so that she can resume her work there. I decided to start with that one.

 

[lightbane]

I can't wait for the Codex's review of this game, which will be immediately followed by at least two more to counter the previous review's highlights and such.

 

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I think interest in this one will largely die out by the time the review comes out. I don't see the same antagonism and people splitting into groups over Torment.

I have more LP material btw, just didn't have time to type it up today

 

[aleam iacis]

The conversation options seem appalling. In addition to what you pointed out, I'm a bit curious as to whether or not the options which seem like they could have a big difference, like posing as Adahn (really?) have any real long term or game play effect or if within the conversation they quickly figure out you aren't Adahn and there is no real consequence.

I'm interested in seeing further! Also, how long have you played total now and has it still only been one fight?

 

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Just one fight for 12 hours of playing, but I'm really methodically going through Sagus Cliffs and I talk to everybody. I've only completed two sidequests so far and I have around 5-6 more in progress.

I don't know if claiming you are the changing god will have long-term reactivity, beyond just the conversation, because I'm doing the opposite - not telling anyone who doesn't notice it that there is something special about me.

 

[Lord Azlan]

Lovely thread. Interesting to read how you did things compared to my play through.

Character creation. I understand now why they did it, but I think it is the worst introduction I have ever seen. Brave I suppose. PST guys tried to be brave too and do the opposite of what existed at the time such as Grace and no dying. That worked because of the overall threads tying everything thing together.

The choice between companion a or b felt like the one in WL2 where you choose who to save. Felt brave too but only if similar would happen again. Take path A or B. I think WL2 failed in that respect. Was looking for Tides to do better.

Funny. I chose between the companions as I wanted to see the Cult rather than what sort of companions they would be.

The game, initially, reminded me a lot of the museum and gallery in PST. Every few yards was a wonder to behold. Even the execution was sort of awesome the way it was being done.