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Game News Torment Kickstarter Update #2: Stretch Goals

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: InXile Entertainment; Kevin Saunders; Mark Morgan; Monte Cook; Mur Lafferty; Nathan Long; Planescape: Torment; Tony Evans; Torment: Tides of Numenera

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.
 

Roguey

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Female PC looks good. :thumbsup:

Mur Lafferty as a writer? Never read her, but it's an :incline: because https://twitter.com/mightymur/status/306417601045749760

One Dungeon Evans? Who designed the most irritating dungeon in MotB? Not so great.

More involvement from Cook is :decline:

The Toy sounds cute. I'm surprised there's no "waaaaaaaaaah only four companions" rage yet but it is early.

Lolled at all the misogynerds in the Kickstarter comments.
 

Kem0sabe

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The less companions the better the chance they are more fleshed out. I would take most of the Planescape npc´s over the ones in the remaining infinity engine games.
 
Unwanted

Sacred_Path

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Dialogue should make heavy use of emoticons.

Probably need 20 more writers for that so best set it at 10m dollah
 

Tommy Wiseau

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Only four companions really lowers the chance of there being romances for both genders and adequate same-sex representation. How can I discover the meaning of life if I never fall in love with somebody? :troll:
 

Roguey

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The less companions the better the chance they are more fleshed out. I would take most of the Planescape npc´s over the ones in the remaining infinity engine games.
Oh I know but there was a lot of teeth gnashing when Project: Eternity announced they only had five companions for 1.1 million and that's one more than what Torment has.
 

Captain Shrek

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Uninteresting update.

They should be quick about the Gameplay mechanics. I am sure that TB will make some of the pledgers withdraw. Best done early than late.
 

Roguey

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Uninteresting update.

They should be quick about the Gameplay mechanics. I am sure that TB will make some of the pledgers withdraw. Best done early than late.
As I understand it they're going to put it up to a vote after the the campaign ends. Real time with pause is probably going to win.
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
Uninteresting update.

They should be quick about the Gameplay mechanics. I am sure that TB will make some of the pledgers withdraw. Best done early than late.
As I understand it they're going to put it up to a vote after the the campaign ends. Real time with pause is probably going to win.
Have they actually discussed this?
 

winterraptor

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Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera
The Toy can get in any shape for you, if you know what i mean :smug:

if_you_know_what_i_mean_mr_bea.jpg
 

hiver

Guest
I hope that Goo, is actually a nano goo. There are those wild clouds of nanobots roaming around in some places of Ninth world, and i want my own little rogue blob of nano cloud, who of course by getting separated from the bigger swarm, or being ejected out becuase of faulty "OS" - has much less "power" and capabilities then the swarm. And thus it fits that it "learns" after you find it.
 
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Uninteresting update.

They should be quick about the Gameplay mechanics. I am sure that TB will make some of the pledgers withdraw. Best done early than late.
As I understand it they're going to put it up to a vote after the the campaign ends. Real time with pause is probably going to win.

Not if I can help it (and most of the Codex too). :roll:
 

derpherp

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For some reason I didn't expect such an intense backlash to the...inclusion of a female PC option. None of this shit comes up in the wide variety of games that just kinda have one by default. The only reasons I can imagine it having NOT been default for Torment are: 1. the original was a fixed male 2. high writing quality standards technically would prohibit the nonsensical treatment of women PCs essentially as men in all but a few specific instances which stick out like a sore thumb. Therefore including a PROPERLY WRITTEN female PC/interactivity thereof would be a significant resource commitment.

But seriously, how many non-jRPGs have fixed male protagonists? Risen, Gothic, Witcher, PS:T... Not trying too hard but I can't think of any others.
 

Roguey

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As I understand it they're going to put it up to a vote after the the campaign ends. Real time with pause is probably going to win.

Not if I can help it (and most of the Codex too). :roll:
This forum has 11,000 members at most (many of those abandoned or alts) while Torment already has over 30,000 backers and may very well have roughly as many as Eternity by the end.
 

Kem0sabe

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For some reason I didn't expect such an intense backlash to the...inclusion of a female PC option. None of this shit comes up in the wide variety of games that just kinda have one by default. The only reasons I can imagine it having NOT been default for Torment are: 1. the original was a fixed male 2. high writing quality standards technically would prohibit the nonsensical treatment of women PCs essentially as men in all but a few specific instances which stick out like a sore thumb. Therefore including a PROPERLY WRITTEN female PC/interactivity thereof would be a significant resource commitment.

But seriously, how many non-jRPGs have fixed male protagonists? Risen, Gothic, Witcher, PS:T... Not trying too hard but I can't think of any others.

Gamers are by definition mostly men, and a misogynist culture still prevails in most of the world, so it comes as no surprise that those same men have problems with a female player character even if there is a male one available.

It would be an interesting topic of conversation to compare the sales numbers of female driven games (like Good and Evil, the last few Final Fantasies) with their male driven counterparts. Would it be safe to assume that Male protagonists sell more?
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
As I understand it they're going to put it up to a vote after the the campaign ends. Real time with pause is probably going to win.

Not if I can help it (and most of the Codex too). :roll:
This forum has 11,000 members at most (many of those abandoned or alts) while Torment already has over 30,000 backers and may very well have roughly as many as Eternity by the end.
Hey Roguey! you were supposed to give me a Quote from Sawyer detailing how LoL inspired him.
 
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As I understand it they're going to put it up to a vote after the the campaign ends. Real time with pause is probably going to win.

Not if I can help it (and most of the Codex too). :roll:
This forum has 11,000 members at most (many of those abandoned or alts) while Torment already has over 30,000 backers and may very well have roughly as many as Eternity by the end.

I don't think biotards will be major supporters of this, unlike PE (and Obsidian did mostly target that particular group in their pitch). So there's a good chance TB will win. Even PST fans admit its combat is the shittiest part of the game...
 

winterraptor

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Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera
So the vote is going to be purely by the unwashed masses therefore subject to mob numbers? Or in-house?
 

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