lower common denominator to please
Uh, that's bullshit. Planescape: Torment was a game developed by a major publisher named Interplay for a mass market and featured promises of "HOT BABES" in its vision document.
Numenera on the other hand is custom-made for a niche audience of backers. Please don't fucking delude yourself.
I find it pretty intriguing how very different the T:ToN vision document is from the PS:T vision statement, actually. Of course, one is an internal document while the other one is intended for a general audience (you could call it a marketing document if you wanted to be mean about it), but nonetheless it will be interesting to see whether the differences between the documents will materialise in tangible differences between the games.
When you look at the PS:T document and compare it to the final product, it highlights a lot of things that people rarely mention while discussing why the game is so great (profound thematic content, lots of text, etc.) but which I think are actually pretty important for creating the particular mood of the game. For instance, as far as the "hot babes" thing goes, I'd say it's really one of the defining characteristics of the Nameless One - and one of the more important themes of the story, actually - that despite (or perhaps because of) his being a scarred, dried up hunk of meat that smells of formaldehyde, women are drawn to him. The game makes this point, too, since lot of characters comment on the Nameless One's appearance, which is one of the things that really sets the writing apart from games with no fixed protagonist.
Much of the PS:T writing isn't exactly subtle or high-brow, either - I'm really reminded here of MCA's comment in the
Iron Tower roundtable about how the important thing about writing companions is to have an immediate, direct hook that makes them memorable and distinctive, and that they have strong personalities and opinions to allow them to act a sounding board the PC. I think a lot of people overlook that Torment is, in many ways, a flamboyant and occasionally very funny game. Of course, those qualities intertwine with the serious elements of the narrative, which gives the game a very distinctive tragicomic vibe, but the weirdness of it all is really one of those things that makes the game memorable, and I think a lot of that comes across in the vision document's "SO AWESOME!" attitude and fixation with ego-stroking. You could say that the PS:T starts with what is in many ways a wish-fulfillment premise and then dresses it down by examining all the problems that it brings. It's the latter part that people remember the most, but to get there you really need the former too.
The T:ToN vision document, on the other hand, stresses things like "deep, personal themes", "epic narrative", "mystery" and how companions will be "nontraditional, complex and believable". It does also say that the game will be "irreverent and entertaining", but looking at the document as a whole, it's a lot more low-key and serious, isn't it? Of course, InXile couldn't possibly say the sort of things that the PS:T vision statement has in it even if they wanted to or they'd invite the wrath of an army of angry Kotaku feminists, so it might just be that too, and I don't think that it's even particularly important for T:ToN to match PS:T exactly in terms of style. I do look forward to finding out, though, whether the emphasis on emulating the, hm, serious and even "high-brow" elements of PS:T that you see in the T:ToN vision document will result in a different type of aesthetic and ambience in the end.
