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- Jan 28, 2011
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Tags: Brian Fargo; Colin McComb; InXile Entertainment; Torment: Tides of Numenera
During Gamescom, it was primarily German websites who published Torment: Tides of Numenera interviews and previews, and it's taken a while for the big English language sites to catch up. Two days after Gamescom, Eurogamer had some Torment gameplay footage (the same footage we saw earlier) with commentary from Brian Fargo and Colin McComb, but it was only yesterday that major PC gaming sites PCGamesN and Rock Paper Shotgun finally released their own articles. The PCGamesN article works well as a companion piece to Eurogamer's video - it's the most detailed description we've seen of what actually went on in that gameplay reel. So that's what I'll post here:
For the gameplay demo, McComb takes Aligern and the party to a place called The Bloom. “It’s an interdimensional slug beast that reaches through time and space. It’s about the size of a city. People live inside of it,” McComb gleefully reveals. “They travel its veins like roads, they live inside its organs, and they travel the interdimensional pathways to reach new worlds so they can exploit the locals for turning profit.”
As you can imagine the area is, to put it bluntly, pretty damn gross. Sci-fi structures lie half-consumed by the gloopy flesh, and orifices line the ‘walls’. One such orifice is of particular interest to the party; called The Maw, it’s a portal to another world that feeds on guilt. Provide it with enough guilt and it’ll let the party through.
It’s time to get guilt hunting, then. McComb explains that every NPC you can talk to will have stories that could be relevant to your quest. He points out a massive square container jutting out from the Bloom’s flesh. “This is a crashed high-speed container, it’s a kind of train that reaches through space and time. A year ago, the Bloom moved into its path and so the container crashed and everybody aboard died. If we talk to the AI that lived inside there we would learn that it feels really super guilty about letting all its people die.”
He continues to explore the town that’s been built into this giant creature’s innards. “This is Hersia, she’s a terrorist who tried to poison the mutants because she believes in blood purity. She feels a little guilty now, and so she’s trapped in an invisible cage.”
[...] Tides of Numenera is clearly an RPG obsessed with its lore and universe, so much so it can resemble an interactive epic novel more than a videogame. But if your play style leans more on the doing rather than the saying, you’re still well catered for.
To demonstrate, McComb decides that he doesn’t want to seek out the guilty in order to open the Maw. Instead he pulls out a trans-dimensional scalpel that one of his characters had handily stashed away earlier in the game. ‘Particularly effective when cutting the flesh of the Bloom’ reads the tool tip. He has a character slice open the Maw - much to another party member’s annoyance - and opens a gateway to another world.
“This is going to have really bad consequences for us later, but right now we’ve opened the pathway to The Lost Anchorage,” says McComb.
It’s amazing how different this new area is to the last. Where the Bloom was hideous and horrifying, the other side of the gateway is majestic with steampunk decadence.
“This is the home of the Last Guards, a race of people who have been trapped here on the space station when they were cut off from civilization,” details McComb. “Their religion now is based around their faith that a ship will come and take them back to their home. They have a lot of faith, they’ve been here for hundreds of generations.”
The serenity of the glittering station doesn’t last long before a fight breaks out, which allows McComb to show off the turn-based combat. It’s what you’d expect of this form of classic combat, but naturally there’s a focus on weird abilities rather than simple sword strikes. One party member unleashes mind control on an enemy who proceeds to slaughter his allies, while Aligern summons Balefire, a creature of fire, to fight for him.
Meanwhile, rather than diligently take notes like PCGamesN, Rock Paper Shotgun used their tier one status to score an extended interview with Brian Fargo. It's an interesting enough glimpse at the Fargo mindset as it relates to Torment's development, although I'm afraid some of the things he says might rub some people the wrong way given recent events. Brian says he's interested in developing new IPs in the future, but that he feels inXile needs to establish itself further first.
During Gamescom, it was primarily German websites who published Torment: Tides of Numenera interviews and previews, and it's taken a while for the big English language sites to catch up. Two days after Gamescom, Eurogamer had some Torment gameplay footage (the same footage we saw earlier) with commentary from Brian Fargo and Colin McComb, but it was only yesterday that major PC gaming sites PCGamesN and Rock Paper Shotgun finally released their own articles. The PCGamesN article works well as a companion piece to Eurogamer's video - it's the most detailed description we've seen of what actually went on in that gameplay reel. So that's what I'll post here:
For the gameplay demo, McComb takes Aligern and the party to a place called The Bloom. “It’s an interdimensional slug beast that reaches through time and space. It’s about the size of a city. People live inside of it,” McComb gleefully reveals. “They travel its veins like roads, they live inside its organs, and they travel the interdimensional pathways to reach new worlds so they can exploit the locals for turning profit.”
As you can imagine the area is, to put it bluntly, pretty damn gross. Sci-fi structures lie half-consumed by the gloopy flesh, and orifices line the ‘walls’. One such orifice is of particular interest to the party; called The Maw, it’s a portal to another world that feeds on guilt. Provide it with enough guilt and it’ll let the party through.
It’s time to get guilt hunting, then. McComb explains that every NPC you can talk to will have stories that could be relevant to your quest. He points out a massive square container jutting out from the Bloom’s flesh. “This is a crashed high-speed container, it’s a kind of train that reaches through space and time. A year ago, the Bloom moved into its path and so the container crashed and everybody aboard died. If we talk to the AI that lived inside there we would learn that it feels really super guilty about letting all its people die.”
He continues to explore the town that’s been built into this giant creature’s innards. “This is Hersia, she’s a terrorist who tried to poison the mutants because she believes in blood purity. She feels a little guilty now, and so she’s trapped in an invisible cage.”
[...] Tides of Numenera is clearly an RPG obsessed with its lore and universe, so much so it can resemble an interactive epic novel more than a videogame. But if your play style leans more on the doing rather than the saying, you’re still well catered for.
To demonstrate, McComb decides that he doesn’t want to seek out the guilty in order to open the Maw. Instead he pulls out a trans-dimensional scalpel that one of his characters had handily stashed away earlier in the game. ‘Particularly effective when cutting the flesh of the Bloom’ reads the tool tip. He has a character slice open the Maw - much to another party member’s annoyance - and opens a gateway to another world.
“This is going to have really bad consequences for us later, but right now we’ve opened the pathway to The Lost Anchorage,” says McComb.
It’s amazing how different this new area is to the last. Where the Bloom was hideous and horrifying, the other side of the gateway is majestic with steampunk decadence.
“This is the home of the Last Guards, a race of people who have been trapped here on the space station when they were cut off from civilization,” details McComb. “Their religion now is based around their faith that a ship will come and take them back to their home. They have a lot of faith, they’ve been here for hundreds of generations.”
The serenity of the glittering station doesn’t last long before a fight breaks out, which allows McComb to show off the turn-based combat. It’s what you’d expect of this form of classic combat, but naturally there’s a focus on weird abilities rather than simple sword strikes. One party member unleashes mind control on an enemy who proceeds to slaughter his allies, while Aligern summons Balefire, a creature of fire, to fight for him.
Meanwhile, rather than diligently take notes like PCGamesN, Rock Paper Shotgun used their tier one status to score an extended interview with Brian Fargo. It's an interesting enough glimpse at the Fargo mindset as it relates to Torment's development, although I'm afraid some of the things he says might rub some people the wrong way given recent events. Brian says he's interested in developing new IPs in the future, but that he feels inXile needs to establish itself further first.
