Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Schizophrenic monolog]

I am totally virgin to the plot; the trailer is awesome but I am bit mixed on the story spoiler hmmm...

So far it reminds me of a mix between legacy of kain vampires AND stargate's Ra (the 1994 movie)?

What are the chances you are the changing god itself?

The only thing I'm pretty sure about, is the fact that the trailer didn't had any spoilers.
The story revealed in the trailer is something you learn about in the first minutes of gameplay.

I'm pretty sure that there'll be some twists and turns in the main plot....

 

[Luckmann]

What can changing god the nature of man?!?!?

Btw, is that "1 billion years in the future" ok lorewise? Is there an explanation (in the Numenera setting) on why humans haven't changed in such a long time?

They haven't been around for that entire time. In the setting, humans mysteriously reappeared in the world only a few thousand years ago.

10 000 years is the given timeframe, IIRC. So assuming humanity came back "bare bones" so to say, it makes sense that the world is still being "explored". Also, humanity was almost wiped out not that long ago, too, by some faction I know nothing about (I forgot the name). It's odd that there's aliens and other sentient lifeforms on the planet, but it's all still scientifically retarded. If it was just humanity, I would've had an easier time buying the whole "Nobody knows how this shit works", but the literal aliens should still have some form of historical and technological continuity. I dunno, maybe it's explained somewhere, like in an in-game codex we'll never get, but I haven't seen it (yet).

I also ask myself why there seems to be nothing about how humanity came back, or from where. I doubt it's related to the game, but it's "only" been 10 000 years, and I just feel like it'd be strange if they reappeared without any prior knowledge, and if such was the case, there should still be some records of that. I bet the human trans-galactic empire is still out there, it's just that they mind-scrub delinquents and dump them on viable planets every couple of millennia.

- "What about this shitty little planet over there?"
- "Yeah, sure, why not. Let me swing the ship around, open the door and just push 'em out, they'll find their way."

So wait... I thought that becoming/retaining conscious after being used as a vessel was what made the player character special.
Also I thought that this Changing God (lamest nickname ever) chose average joes as vessels that were left empty after discarded.
Mentioning The Sorrow in the game intro... all of this, lamest shit ever

Potentially (very) minor spoilers:

Spoiler

The first is likely true; the Last Castoff is capable of recalling memories, and while it's not made very clear in the game beta (the others treat this as normal), I believe that most Castoffs are left completely blank or otherwise completely fucked up (Riastad is or was supposed to be a psychological trainwreck, but Matkina seems surprisingly balanced).

For example, in the Numenera RPG, the "Castoff" Descriptor (which is presumably for "regular" castoffs) gives you an "inability in all tasks related to lore, history, and memory." "Inability" is just a fancy rules-relevant way of saying skill penalty. This obviously don't apply to The Last Castoff, as you even have a skill dealing specifically with recalling memories, and no penalties to any lores.

How Castoffs are "created" or how The Changing God actually "leaves" them is never revealed, as far as I'm aware. They could be clones, or they could be regular people that's been mind-napped. I'm inclined to believe it's the former, however, because they are all part of his experiments, and each is supposed to be somehow "better" than the last. Riastrad was supposed to have been close to perfect, and The Last Castoff is an even latter version.

The process of moving consciousness has something to do with The Tides, as does whatever The Changing God is trying to achieve, and The Sorrow is some anti-Tides-fuckery-entity that takes offense at this, much the same way Shades took offense at you not saying dead in Planescape. No idea why, though - in Planescape it was about preserving balance, and every time you didn't die, someone else did.

 

[Popiel]

I dunno, maybe it's explained somewhere, like in an in-game codex we'll never get, but I haven't seen it (yet).

Spoiler from p'n'p Numenera - it's not. Setting is pure shit. Nothing is explained, everything is MUH WEIRDNESS, WE ARE LIKE PLANESCAPE RIGHT???!!!1 They can try to fix that in video game, but I doubt they'll try.

 

[Luckmann]

I dunno, maybe it's explained somewhere, like in an in-game codex we'll never get, but I haven't seen it (yet).

Spoiler from p'n'p Numenera - it's not. Setting is pure shit. Nothing is explained, everything is MUH WEIRDNESS, WE ARE LIKE PLANESCAPE RIGHT???!!!1 They can try to fix that in video game, but I doubt they'll try.

I dunno, I kinda like the setting as it's described and characterized. As far as I'm concerned, where humans came from isn't really a major point or something that somehow needs to be "fixed" in the video game, either. It's not stranger than the origin of the Lady of Pain and shit like that. Some things aren't meant to be explained, or simply isn't within the scope of of a given narrative. It's the conflicting pieces that gets to me, like how there's non-humans and aliens on Earth, too, but humans still don't have a clue about the greater cosmic/historic narrative/contexts. I would've had an easier time buying it if it was only humans and only ever humans (and variations thereof).

 

[Prime Junta]

I also ask myself why there seems to be nothing about how humanity came back, or from where. I doubt it's related to the game, but it's "only" been 10 000 years, and I just feel like it'd be strange if they reappeared without any prior knowledge, and if such was the case, there should still be some records of that. I bet the human trans-galactic empire is still out there, it's just that they mind-scrub delinquents and dump them on viable planets every couple of millennia.

One of the core tenets of Numenera is that none of the previous "worlds" will ever be explained, nor how humans reappeared on Earth.

 

[Turjan]

At least I know where Thaos ended up when I banished him from Eora.

 

[Infinitron]

Surely what this game needs is more deep lore.

 

[Turjan]

One of the core tenets of Numenera is that none of the previous "worlds" will ever be explained, nor how humans reappeared on Earth.

That's actually a good thing. I'm not sure why many players want to have explained everything, as that usually takes all the mystery out of a setting. What is there left to find if everything is known?

 

[Roguey]

Colin obviously just had to mention the nakedness of women in the game and how he fought against it but was overruled because of the target audience of the game.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...eciation-station.101693/page-108#post-4832589

There was a lot of marketing hype and speak in it, and that worked for the audience at the time, which wasn’t solely the team. The goal was to get the project into production, and there were elements about it that were part of the vision, yes – as an example, Morte’s outlook didn’t change from the vision doc, and yes, it was important to me that both Annah and Fall-From-Grace be extremely good-looking in their own way even if the player character wasn’t. Sue me.

Shut down by the lead designer.

Also: I knewwwwwwww it.

 

[Prime Junta]

One of the core tenets of Numenera is that none of the previous "worlds" will ever be explained, nor how humans reappeared on Earth.

That's actually a good thing. I'm not sure why many players want to have explained everything, as that usually takes all the mystery out of a setting. What is there left to find if everything is known?

It can be a good thing. It depends on where you want to take it.

Consider my favourite "deep time" setting, Malazan, and ignore the last couple of volumes of it which explained way too much. You're hit with an avalanche of mysterious shit -- Jaghut Tyrants, levitating mountains which are relics of the K'Chain Che'malle, an entire people of undead 'thals, and so on and so forth. But you don't know anything at all about them, beyond the relics they left behind. That's awesome in every way, and the setting suffered when the author decided that he actually had to introduce you to a living K'Chain Che'malle and show you how Tool's people lived before they were undead-ed.

But that's not what Numenera does. It takes the "nothing shall ever be revealed" premise and continues with "therefore everything is allowed, nay, encouraged." You can throw in a half-functioning armoured railway system, a bunch of blobs made of nanites, a fishlike alien, and a levitating monolith made entirely out of sentient eyeballs, and it's all awesome. None of it has to have any relation to anything else. It's all completely random.

So yes, it is a good thing to leave unexplained mysteries, and one it would behoove fantasy authors to remember. But those mysteries still have to suggest an underlying logic. Maybe the author worked it out but isn't telling, or maybe he just made it look like he did, but it has to be there. Otherwise it's just confetti.

 

[Luckmann]

One of the core tenets of Numenera is that none of the previous "worlds" will ever be explained, nor how humans reappeared on Earth.

That's actually a good thing. I'm not sure why many players want to have explained everything, as that usually takes all the mystery out of a setting. What is there left to find if everything is known?

I agree. I don't understand some players (PnP or otherwise) obsession with having everything explained. I realize that it's interesting to learn more, and I can't say that I wouldn't love to know myself, but once I do, I know the mystery is over and all forms of theorizing is useless. One should also be careful what one wishes for. Remember what happened to Warhammer Fantasy with the End Times and Age of Smegmar. The two latter are technically canonical to the former, but they deviate so heavily in terms of themes and concepts, as well as metaphysical nature that most fans of Warhammer Fantasy considers End Times/Age of Smegmar a completely different setting.

In large settings, "settling" issues will invariably conflict with more ambiguous earlier sources, leading to conflict and issues that cannot be explained either, even with the "true facts!" in black and white, with no unreliable narration.

Better to give hints, maybe even many hints, and have other characters state things as fact, and then have them all conflict as necessary, and never ever settle the issues in a concrete fashion. In some cases, the specifics are meant to be filled by the GM and the players (or other writers), and remain in a "static" sense as an overall setting. I can see how some people want more, but personally I like that. There's systems and settings that are extremely detailed with a lot of shit going on across a huge number of books, supplements and novels, and it sometimes gets annoying how "What year is it? Has the queen rebelled against XXX so the YYY has returned?" is a perfectly valid question.

Like, no, fuck you, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about, because I haven't read that, and we're doing this shit now and the leader of the guild you've never heard about is Marty McFuckface. Shut up and hit the goblin with your stick.

 

[Turjan]

So yes, it is a good thing to leave unexplained mysteries, and one it would behoove fantasy authors to remember. But those mysteries still have to suggest an underlying logic. Maybe the author worked it out but isn't telling, or maybe he just made it look like he did, but it has to be there. Otherwise it's just confetti.

I can see what you mean. There has to be something that you can base speculations on, to try and build a somewhat coherent explanation. This doesn't need to be completely explained, ever. It's nice if the setting throws at you a small morsel at some point, a morsel that lets you reevaluate your speculations. However, I always find detailed answers anti-climactic, as they rarely match the story you imagined yourself.

This may also be the reason why I often hate game endings. Then I know everything, and it's probably somewhat of a mood killer.

 

[Luckmann]

[...]

So yes, it is a good thing to leave unexplained mysteries, and one it would behoove fantasy authors to remember. But those mysteries still have to suggest an underlying logic. Maybe the author worked it out but isn't telling, or maybe he just made it look like he did, but it has to be there. Otherwise it's just confetti.

In this case, what I'm missing is a feeling of "underlying logic", like, I have difficulties grasping just how humanity lost it's memory, not only regarding their return, but the time since then. Again, if it was just humans, it would've been one thing, but there's literal living things in space that have been monitoring Earth for what could be millions of years, and they can be talked to. I feel like I have to stretch myself just a little bit too far to come up with excuses for that.

What's worse is that I genuinely think that the setting would've been better without that facet. It didn't need space-faring alien civilizations to still have weird-ass entities, mutants, machine men, artificial intelligences and so on and so forth. In fact, I think it would've been better to leave that "great unknown" out there, say that there's aliens and alien civilizations out there, we can go there, but they have little to no interest in humans. But I'm talking about alien communities and individuals on Earth and in the solar system.

This is extra strange considering that the character system of Numenera is open-ended and open for interpretation. The same basic system is used regardless of whether you're a human, a cyborg, a werewolf, a monstrous humanoid, or a goddamn stone golem. It would've still been possible to use it for playing aliens, without having aliens explicitly as an option or a staple in the setting.

But now I'm just ranting.

 

[Maculo]

I agree. I don't understand some players (PnP or otherwise) obsession with having everything explained.

Because I want something new to complain about, and complaining about not having an explanation gets old.

 

[Irenaeus]

Colin obviously just had to mention the nakedness of women in the game and how he fought against it but was overruled because of the target audience of the game.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...eciation-station.101693/page-108#post-4832589

There was a lot of marketing hype and speak in it, and that worked for the audience at the time, which wasn’t solely the team. The goal was to get the project into production, and there were elements about it that were part of the vision, yes – as an example, Morte’s outlook didn’t change from the vision doc, and yes, it was important to me that both Annah and Fall-From-Grace be extremely good-looking in their own way even if the player character wasn’t. Sue me.

Shut down by the lead designer.

Also: I knewwwwwwww it.

MCA 1 x 0 Colin McSJW

 

[Luckmann]

I agree. I don't understand some players (PnP or otherwise) obsession with having everything explained.

Because I want something new to complain about, and complaining about not having an explanation gets old.

Whether a plot hole or a bad explanation, we can all be sure that it's going to suck.

 

[Rahdulan]

I'm not sure why many players want to have explained everything

Compulsive Wiki Compilers.

Oh god, I just realized that acronym also stands for Christian Weston Chandler. I did not plan for that.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

One of the core tenets of Numenera is that none of the previous "worlds" will ever be explained, nor how humans reappeared on Earth.

That's actually a good thing. I'm not sure why many players want to have explained everything, as that usually takes all the mystery out of a setting. What is there left to find if everything is known?

It can be a good thing. It depends on where you want to take it.

Consider my favourite "deep time" setting, Malazan, and ignore the last couple of volumes of it which explained way too much. You're hit with an avalanche of mysterious shit -- Jaghut Tyrants, levitating mountains which are relics of the K'Chain Che'malle, an entire people of undead 'thals, and so on and so forth. But you don't know anything at all about them, beyond the relics they left behind. That's awesome in every way, and the setting suffered when the author decided that he actually had to introduce you to a living K'Chain Che'malle and show you how Tool's people lived before they were undead-ed.

But that's not what Numenera does. It takes the "nothing shall ever be revealed" premise and continues with "therefore everything is allowed, nay, encouraged." You can throw in a half-functioning armoured railway system, a bunch of blobs made of nanites, a fishlike alien, and a levitating monolith made entirely out of sentient eyeballs, and it's all awesome. None of it has to have any relation to anything else. It's all completely random.

So yes, it is a good thing to leave unexplained mysteries, and one it would behoove fantasy authors to remember. But those mysteries still have to suggest an underlying logic. Maybe the author worked it out but isn't telling, or maybe he just made it look like he did, but it has to be there. Otherwise it's just confetti.

Off topic, but that's one of the reasons I vastly prefer older sci-fi books to modern ones. Take most of Strugatsky brothers' books, for example. In "The snail on the slope" you never learn specific details about the Forest, but it still seems coherent. Or in "Roadside Picnic" characters themselves speculate about the reason aliens came to Earth (hence the title), but we never know for sure. In my childhood this kind of stuff hooked me, and left me thinking a lot after reading these books.
But now everything is over-explained. Even in pretty good books (such as Blindsight) author is so obsessed with his ideas and his world that he feels he needs to spoonfeed every little detail to the reader. I hate it.
PST, to my mind, was great in that regard. Sigil was weird, but coherent. From the looks of it, TTON won't live up to its predecessor

 

[Maculo]

I have not followed the game closely, and it is interesting to see how the story changed. I thought it started out as a lone Castoff trying to figure out what happened, to there being other surviving Castoffs, with a civil war sprinkled in because the Changing One (whatever his name is) did not share his secrets. Now, the Changing One established himself as a god and abandoned his followers.

While I liked the most recent trailer, I think I preferred the Castoff being a loner in a hostile environment. Perhaps the other Castoffs would have been a nice surprise or twist. Moreover, I would think the former Castoffs would avoid staying in large groups due to the Sorrow seeking them out.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

I have not followed the game closely, and it is interesting to see how the story changed. I thought it started out as a lone Castoff trying to figure out what happened, to there being other surviving Castoffs, with a civil war sprinkled in because the Changing One (whatever his name is) did not share his secrets. Now, the Changing One established himself as a god and abandoned his followers.

While I liked the most recent trailer, I think I preferred the Castoff being a loner in a hostile environment. Perhaps the other Castoffs would have been a nice surprise or twist. Moreover, I would think the former Castoffs would avoid staying in large groups due to the Sorrow seeking them out.

As per Darth Roxor, a lof of explanations in the early access game come down to "it was castoffs". Literally. That's... not that great.

 

[Jarpie]

I have not followed the game closely, and it is interesting to see how the story changed. I thought it started out as a lone Castoff trying to figure out what happened, to there being other surviving Castoffs, with a civil war sprinkled in because the Changing One (whatever his name is) did not share his secrets. Now, the Changing One established himself as a god and abandoned his followers.

While I liked the most recent trailer, I think I preferred the Castoff being a loner in a hostile environment. Perhaps the other Castoffs would have been a nice surprise or twist. Moreover, I would think the former Castoffs would avoid staying in large groups due to the Sorrow seeking them out.

As per Darth Roxor, a lof of explanations in the early access game come down to "it was castoffs". Literally. That's... not that great.

 

[Prime Junta]

But now I'm just ranting.

May I join you?

The Ninth World is chock-full of that kind of illogic. For example, there's the Datasphere. It's implied that that's the medium through which the Changing God changes, and where the Castoff's Labyrinth is. It's a giant virtual reality and information repository which you can access through special locations, artefacts, and cyphers. It's not esoteric knowledge, i.e. most relatively knowledgeable people know what you're talking about if you mention it.

Yet, somehow, nobody has ever, or can ever, extract any information from the datasphere that relates to its history or its creators: who they were, how long ago they lived, where they came from, where they went. That just makes no sense.

(When I was running a Numenera campaign, the first thing I did was roughly sketch out a bunch of ancient history for it and connect some of the notable features in TNW to it. I just couldn't stand it otherwise.)

 

[FeelTheRads]

Colin obviously just had to mention the nakedness of women in the game and how he fought against it but was overruled because of the target audience of the game.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...eciation-station.101693/page-108#post-4832589

There was a lot of marketing hype and speak in it, and that worked for the audience at the time, which wasn’t solely the team. The goal was to get the project into production, and there were elements about it that were part of the vision, yes – as an example, Morte’s outlook didn’t change from the vision doc, and yes, it was important to me that both Annah and Fall-From-Grace be extremely good-looking in their own way even if the player character wasn’t. Sue me.

Shut down by the lead designer.

Also: I knewwwwwwww it.

Knew what?

Also, I bet he didn't fight anything, but now since it's cool and progressive to be against this stuff and to be alone against everybody it's no big deal if you rewrite your story a little bit, am I right?

And again, it's in the Planescape art direction. If he didn't fight against it there too, then he's not a real progressive, imo.

Yet, somehow, nobody has ever, or can ever, extract any information from the datasphere that relates to its history or its creators: who they were, how long ago they lived, where they came from, where they went. That just makes no sense.

Well, the whole Numenera is about being mysterious and that's part of it. I wouldn't call it illogical, but sometimes I feel the way the MYSTARY! is being enforced is too heavy handed.

 

[Father Foreskin]

There is a thread on ixile forums tton general discussion which claims that the faction system has been compromised. Id link it but i dont know how.

This is just the kind of speculation that kills it for me. I dont have much issues with the console version or inxiles behaviour, i might very well get the game despite of those. However this "it doesnt appear to be there" is starting to stack up

 

[Kem0sabe]

One thing about the trailer, that one Codexer rightly pointed out.

The sorrow is mysterious in the beta, there is no explanation about its nature or motivation, then the trailer outright says it's a force of balance, seeking to remove the changing God and castoffs.

That's a pretty fucking huge spoiler right there.