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Development Info Torment Kickstarter Update #41: Moving Floors, Ray Vallese Novella Released

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: Brother None; InXile Entertainment; Ray Vallese; Torment: Tides of Numenera

inXile released a new Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update today. Like yesterday's Wasteland 2 update, its primary purpose seems to be inform people of the upcoming Bard's Tale IV campaign and all its implications:

We’re very excited about our upcoming Kickstarter for The Bard’s Tale IV, which we recently announced will kick off on June 2nd! Follow our countdown on our official The Bard’s Tale IV site or sign up to get notified when we launch. We have also provided an early viewing of the Kickstarter tiers we plan to make available, you can join the discussion on our official forums.

If you’ve been with us along this wild crowdfunded ride, you may recall we funded Torment: Tides of Numenera while Wasteland 2 was still in production. This is grounded in our business philosophy going back to Brian’s days at Interplay. Running production cycles one at a time, only starting one as you close another, leads to redundancy in different departments at different times. For a small company like ours, but even for larger companies, this hiring-firing cycle can be par for the course even though it is undesirable and harmful to people and companies. But just as crowdfunding helped us make the kind of games publishers were not interested in, your support also helped us avoid this cycle. By having a small pre-production team focused on the next game while the current one is in full production, everyone is kept productively busy.

The majority of inXile’s staff is working on Torment: Tides of Numenera, and this will continue to be the case until it launches. No one is transitioning off of Torment until their work on the game is complete. A few people have been working on the Wasteland 2 Game of the Year Edition improvements, and as that moves through finalization and testing we’ll have those team members shift over to Bard’s Tale IV. As with Torment, Bard's Tale IV will have a pre-production period where a small focused team can work on the game’s story, concepts, systems, and look, getting us ready to jump into full production as soon as the time comes. But rest assured, until Torment is in your hands, it will continue to be inXile’s main focus.

Meanwhile, our work on Torment: Tides of Numenera has been progressing very well, including updating the game to use Unity 5. We’ll have more on the game’s production soon.

As a small but significant aside, our pledges counter on our official website now has us over 90,000 pledges! It’s exciting to see your support still carrying on so strongly, and we’re curious to see what the future brings.​

The update also announces that Ray Vallese's From the Depths: Indigo, the next novella in the pentalogy based on Torment's metaphysical Tides, has been released. Adam Heine's novella, released last year, was quite good, so I have high hopes for this one as well. There's also a technical segment by Nathan Fabian, a backer who has been been assisting inXile with the game's animation system, about the creation of animated floors via texture manipulation. I won't quote any of that here, but here's the result:

8b40655fc624c9b717ec19ce999c3b39_original.gif

Not really a gameplay video, but we'll take what we can get.
 

Crescent Hawk

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Damn that looks great. One game that is terrible as an actual videogame, but actually managed to grab my attention was Sunless Sea, kind wish somebody made more weird well written worlds, that slowly unveils itself to you. The Unterzee is a great place, full of incredible experiences. I think this type of emergent narrative should be used. Only saying this because I know what to expect from Torment gameplay.
 

Crescent Hawk

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Damn that looks great. One game that is terrible as an actual videogame, but actually managed to grab my attention was Sunless Sea, kind wish somebody made more weird well written worlds, that slowly unveils itself to you. The Unterzee is a great place, full of incredible experiences. I think this type of emergent narrative should be used. Only saying this because I know what to expect from Torment gameplay.

Uh, right. The issue with Sunless Sea (and by extension Fallen London)'s much vaunted writing is that its flaws are not readily apparent. It is only later when things are unveiled that one realizes that there isn't really anything there, its just a mishmash of cool-sounding shit that doesn't, couldn't fit together in any coherent worldbuilding way. It's just that Kennedy shrouds everything in mystery and obscurantism so readers don't realize it up front.

This tonal and logical inconsistency is because the Failbetterverse was written piecemeal over a long period of time, and these pieces have accumulated into the mess it is today, without the benefit of editing to retcon out the pieces that don't fit well - because people already paid for the extra content and their little pets and whatnot. So we have what Kennedy thought was a good idea at point A (maybe he read some Pratchett), followed by what he thought was a good idea at point B (maybe he read some Mieville), and not something that had been planned out and thought through extensively in advance.


Oh I know its not perfect, but it does create some wonderful moments, and I guess I just love mystery and ambiguity and the fact all the items are cards. It really nails something for me, and yes its not consistent like King of the Dragon Pass, but nevertheless I love the short voyages and brief descriptions that call to your imagination.
 

Kem0sabe

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That animation looks good, hopefully it wont effect performance, Pillars of Eternity had serious performance and optimization problem, and if they are using the same "engine" as Obsidian, all these extra visual flairs arent going to do the game any favors.
 

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
Damn that looks great. One game that is terrible as an actual videogame, but actually managed to grab my attention was Sunless Sea, kind wish somebody made more weird well written worlds, that slowly unveils itself to you. The Unterzee is a great place, full of incredible experiences. I think this type of emergent narrative should be used. Only saying this because I know what to expect from Torment gameplay.

What a curiously off-topic post.
ad_plant.png
 

Sprout

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The update also announces that Ray Vallese's From the Depths: Indigo, the next novella in the pentalogy based on Torment's metaphysical Tides, has been released. Adam Heine's novella, released last year, was quite good, so I have high hopes for this one as well.

Vallese wrote the horrible Planescape: Torment novel...

Been a while, don't you think? Quite possible he's gotten a lot better.
 

Athelas

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The update also announces that Ray Vallese's From the Depths: Indigo, the next novella in the pentalogy based on Torment's metaphysical Tides, has been released. Adam Heine's novella, released last year, was quite good, so I have high hopes for this one as well.

Vallese wrote the horrible Planescape: Torment novel...
http://rayvallese.com/
Why Hire Ray?

I’ve worked with many clients over the years. Here’s what some of them said about me.


“Ray and I have worked together on various projects, off and on, since 1994. We were both a part of the development team for the Planescape line for TSR, and I look on that time as one of the best parts of my career. During that time, he edited Dead Gods, which I wrote, and is now considered by many to be one of the best Dungeons & Dragons adventures of all time. Later, when I was running my own company, Malhavoc Press, I returned to Ray again and again when I needed editorial or design assistance. I consider him to be one of the best editors that I have ever worked with. Ray edited my short story collection, Small Matters, and he is currently editing books for my latest game, Numenera. I can’t recommend him highly enough.”

— Monte Cook, author and game designer, of Monte Cook Games and Stone Box Press

“I have worked with Ray Vallese professionally over the past twenty years, and I say without hesitation that he is a truly gifted editor. He is extraordinarily detail-oriented and has an excellent command of style and the English language, able to discuss at length specific grammatical constructions and… well, that sounds boring. To non-editors, anyway. To people who would consider hiring Ray, let me say this: he is not an invasive editor. He is respectful of your words and your voice, and through his work he brings out the true expression of what you want to say. For my Oathbreaker series, he caught leaden or awkward constructions and rephrased them. He helped develop the stories’ potential and picked up loose ends I had forgotten so I could wrap them up properly and turn them into a complete plot.”

Colin McComb, award-winning game designer and author of the Oathbreaker series
:troll:
 

ksaun

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The update also announces that Ray Vallese's From the Depths: Indigo, the next novella in the pentalogy based on Torment's metaphysical Tides, has been released. Adam Heine's novella, released last year, was quite good, so I have high hopes for this one as well.

Vallese wrote the horrible Planescape: Torment novel...

I expressed the same concern over two years ago (has it been that long? geez...) when Colin suggested we ask Ray to be one of our novella authors. I hadn't worked with Ray before, but was familiar with the Planescape: Torment novel. What I learned was that the quality of that novel suffered from several factors outside of Ray's control. First, it was rushed to meet marketing/production deadlines. Second, it was written well before PST's story had settled and Ray had only a very early draft to go by. Given those factors, of course it wouldn't serve as a good companion to the game.

That these were issues for it also allayed my concerns: for the TTON novellas, there was no need to rush. And we deliberately planned the From the Depths ones to be not at all about the game, just about the Tide concepts and places that would be in the game. (Besides them being a backer reward, the novellas were written to help us define and explore the Tides and to flesh out our region of the Ninth World.) So the factors that worked against the Planescape: Torment novel wouldn't be at play.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I haven't yet read the published draft of From the Depths: Indigo. But, (and not that I'm the Grand Arbiter of what makes a great work of fiction), I felt the early draft was already pretty good, so I believe Adam, Colin, and George when they tell me it came out well. (Ray went through 2 or 3 major revising passes since the version that I had read.) I'm happy that I trusted Colin's judgment and recommendation in asking Ray to be one of our novella writers.

In any case, I mainly wanted to chime in and say that I don't think the Planescape: Torment novel's quality is a just example of Ray's writing. From the Depths: Indigo would be a much fairer piece of fiction on which to judge his writing skills. It you find it lacking, then you can credit Ray (and us) with that failure. (Unfair judgment is a pet peeve of mine. (Not that this is the fault, per se, of the person doing the judging -- it's usually due to incomplete or incorrect information.) We all do plenty of things poorly and make many mistakes and I'd prefer the haters criticize the actual failings. =) )
 

VioletShadow

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I've just finished reading the novella and I must say it is superb! The indigo tide... well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone, it's certainly interesting and let's leave it at that. I look forward to discussing it after some of the codex bros have finished it.
:desu:
 

mindx2

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Codex 2012 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire RPG Wokedex Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The update also announces that Ray Vallese's From the Depths: Indigo, the next novella in the pentalogy based on Torment's metaphysical Tides, has been released. Adam Heine's novella, released last year, was quite good, so I have high hopes for this one as well.

Vallese wrote the horrible Planescape: Torment novel...

I expressed the same concern over two years ago (has it been that long? geez...) when Colin suggested we ask Ray to be one of our novella authors. I hadn't worked with Ray before, but was familiar with the Planescape: Torment novel. What I learned was that the quality of that novel suffered from several factors outside of Ray's control. First, it was rushed to meet marketing/production deadlines. Second, it was written well before PST's story had settled and Ray had only a very early draft to go by. Given those factors, of course it wouldn't serve as a good companion to the game.

That these were issues for it also allayed my concerns: for the TTON novellas, there was no need to rush. And we deliberately planned the From the Depths ones to be not at all about the game, just about the Tide concepts and places that would be in the game. (Besides them being a backer reward, the novellas were written to help us define and explore the Tides and to flesh out our region of the Ninth World.) So the factors that worked against the Planescape: Torment novel wouldn't be at play.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I haven't yet read the published draft of From the Depths: Indigo. But, (and not that I'm the Grand Arbiter of what makes a great work of fiction), I felt the early draft was already pretty good, so I believe Adam, Colin, and George when they tell me it came out well. (Ray went through 2 or 3 major revising passes since the version that I had read.) I'm happy that I trusted Colin's judgment and recommendation in asking Ray to be one of our novella writers.

In any case, I mainly wanted to chime in and say that I don't think the Planescape: Torment novel's quality is a just example of Ray's writing. From the Depths: Indigo would be a much fairer piece of fiction on which to judge his writing skills. It you find it lacking, then you can credit Ray (and us) with that failure. (Unfair judgment is a pet peeve of mine. (Not that this is the fault, per se, of the person doing the judging -- it's usually due to incomplete or incorrect information.) We all do plenty of things poorly and make many mistakes and I'd prefer the haters criticize the actual failings. =) )


I appreciate your reply and glad to know you at least had a similar reaction (even if it was two years ago) at first. Don't know any of Vallese's other stuff so I look forward to reading this and then commenting some more. :salute:
 

Black

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I don't know jack about Numenera so I'll just ask: if the ninth world is Earth gorillions of years later how did it survive? Shirley hunams would blow it up or a random assteroid would.
 

Kem0sabe

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I don't know jack about Numenera so I'll just ask: if the ninth world is Earth gorillions of years later how did it survive? Shirley hunams would blow it up or a random assteroid would.

Accordion to the lore...

GLFec.gif
 

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