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

[Florian Gheorghe]

Just figure it out why they didn't include the ability to double click on the map in a region to go there : because of consolization. You need to get your character to run everywhere. PS:T had this, even Pillars of Eternity.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

If the game unlocks on 28, New Zealand will be the first one to get it like in a couple of hours.

 

[Fry]

Pretty sure it's a global unlock at 10:00am PST/18:00 GMT.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

we do have countdowns on GOG and Metacritic.

 

[Cyberarmy]

GoG says 34 hours and 32 minutes for me. (GMT +3)

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

This guy pretends to have finished the game by getting a copy in a different country on Friday :

"I just beat the games in 40 hours good storyline

But lack of environnement 2 big city and 2 or 3 dungeon of 1 or 2 maps
Maybe i miss content i LL see that on m'y second run

The end arrive too fast many big revelation in one time

10 combat and eventualy 4 or 5 that they are part of main story

And there are only the three choice on the screen

I'm on Xbox one and the day one patch IS 7.8 giga".

"Protip impossible to return backward when you finish a zone so finish all of the quest before".

https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=17167

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

they also seem to have cut the Foci system. There was more in the Alpha and now we are only left with 3.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

more from the guy:
"you can't join faction in the same way than planescape torment

I did not feel i rush but there is a lot of thing to do i know that but you have to make choice you can't do everything in the first run
the game is awesome it s just that it lack of different environement when you see the trailer you see almost all the map of the game"

So there you have it folks! There won't be any region we didn't see in the trailer or they showed us in the presentation. Also the faction thing it's another decline. This game will be nailed to the ground here.

 

[FeelTheRads]

"Protip impossible to return backward when you finish a zone so finish all of the quest before".

That sounds dubious... did they really make it that you can't go back after you finish the main quest in one area? That's really fucking shit.

What was it? Too confusing for their target audience that they could go back to an area that wouldn't help them advance the story?

 

[ArchAngel]

"Protip impossible to return backward when you finish a zone so finish all of the quest before".

That sounds dubious... did they really make it that you can't go back after you finish the main quest in one area? That's really fucking shit.

What was it? Too confusing for their target audience that they could go back to an area that wouldn't help them advance the story?

Console peasants are easily confused...

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

"Protip impossible to return backward when you finish a zone so finish all of the quest before".

That sounds dubious... did they really make it that you can't go back after you finish the main quest in one area? That's really fucking shit.

What was it? Too confusing for their target audience that they could go back to an area that wouldn't help them advance the story?

I'm also very disappointed by this. So, if we go to Valley of Dead Heroes we can't go back to finish other quests.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinm...r-torment-tides-of-numenera-writing-the-game/

The George Ziets Interview Part 4: Writing For 'Torment: Tides Of Numenera', Writing The Game


Torment: Tides of Numenera. Credit: InXile

George Ziets is the Lead Area Designer for InXile's RPG Torment:Tides of Numenera. He graciously consented to devote a good deal of his time to this four-part interview about the video game writer's job and the special challenges and opportunities of writing Torment. The interview took place through email and has been edited for comprehension.

Ziets received a Masters degree in Cognitive Psychology with an emphasis on Human-Computer Interaction in 1999. (Disclosure. I was a member of his thesis committee.) In 2001 he took a job writing dialog for the MMO Earth & Beyond. Since then he has held various positions as a writer, designer or creative lead on games such as Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Neverwinter Nights 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Dungeon Siege 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Torment among others.

Minor spoilers follow.

Kevin Murnane: The writing style in Torment is rich and evocative in a way that complements and enhances both the visuals and the unfamiliarity of Torment’s world. The game doesn’t read like, say, a Wasteland or Pillars of Eternity game. Was that something that developed on its own or was it something the team set as an early goal?

George Ziets: That was a goal. We were aiming for the same writing style and richness as our predecessor, Planescape: Torment. For example, when I was writing dialogues, I would often play Planescape: Torment for a few minutes at the beginning of the day, just to keep the sensibilities of that game in my head. This was especially true in the early days, when we were writing our first dialogues and setting the tone for the rest of the game.


Torment: Tides of Numenera. Credit: InXile

Murnane: How did the imaginative breadth of Torment’s world contribute to storytelling? For example, some of the creatures in Torment don't appear in any of the other Planescape games. How did this freedom to create original creatures, artifacts and technologies that were designed to meet your storytelling needs affect the way stories are told in the game?

Ziets: It certainly gave us a greater ability to be imaginative and original, but the ground rules of storytelling remained the same. For example, we still needed a strong, coherent narrative and we still needed to make sure that we parsed out revelations a little at a time to make sure the player always had unanswered questions.

We did have limitations regarding some elements in the world. The nychthemeron, for example, is actually a creature from one of the Numenera sourcebooks, and its abilities and personality are based on its description in that book. We wanted to include at least a few of our favorite creatures from the Numenera sourcebooks, like the nychthemeron and the murdens, for fans of the tabletop game.


Torment: Tides of Numenera. Credit: InXile

Murnane: In an earlier part of this interview you spoke of how collaboration with artists, level designers, animators and others can enhance the writer’s contribution (and vice versa). Torment’s world provides great opportunities for imaginative creativity. Did this affect the richness of the collaborative interaction among the teams that made the game?

Ziets: Yes – especially with the level artists. I’ll give a quick description of how our level design process worked. For a zone like Sagus Cliffs, I would figure out what levels we needed and determine the characters and objects that would be present in each one. Then I’d sketch out a rough, top-down map on graph paper and hand that to a level designer. They’d block out the level in our tool – literally “block out” with vague shapes like cubes and cones to represent buildings, obelisks, etc. At that point, we’d pass the level to the art team.

Our artists knew the general flavor of the level – I’d provide a paragraph or so of description to set the stage – and they knew the most important features that had to be there. But apart from that, they could indulge their imaginations and make things as wild and interesting as they liked. They could also add visual elements to the levels, and those were often so cool that we ended up incorporating them into quests or writing new dialogues around them.

One example of the latter – in the Underbelly district of Sagus Cliffs, you’ll find a green obelisk covered in dark, blinking spheres. In my original level map, it was labeled as “weird numenera object,” and I left the details to the artists. We loved the result so much that we wrote a special dialogue in which the player can interact with the object in different ways and see what happens.


Torment: Tides of Numenera. Credit: InXile

Murnane: Sometimes you find little, tucked away places in games where it seems like the writers or artists were given freedom to do whatever they liked without the need to contribute directly to gameplay as long as it worked within the game design. Torment’s world seems ideal for this sort of thing. Were the writers allowed more leeway to add things like this than they normally would?

Ziets: Designers and writers were given a lot of freedom to develop weird and unusual characters, encounters, relics, and more. To take the example of Sagus Cliffs (the first city in the game), I wrote an initial design document that defined the major quests, characters, and locations. Then I turned the content over to the writers and area designers, who further developed the characters and locations, giving them their own unique twists, and enhancing the strangeness of everything.

Among our favorite sources of inspiration were the backer NPCs (characters created by backers of our Kickstarter campaign who contributed a certain amount of money). We found ways to fit them seamlessly into our world, expanded upon the lore and personalities provided by the backers, and weaved stories and secrets into their dialogues for players to discover. Our setting put almost no limits on our creativity, so every character has their own bizarre story to explore.

Murnane: “Talk to everyone because they may have something important to tell you” is RPG boilerplate. Oft times all this talking to NPCs doesn't amount to much. Not so in Torment where you talk to a random guy who, apropos of nothing obvious, tells you about the bizarre reproductive practices of his species. Torment is a lot more fun to read than many other games and it seems like it was more fun to write as well. Was it?

Ziets: Absolutely. I’m a big believer in the relationship between the writer’s fun and the player’s entertainment. If the writer is having fun, the player probably will too. And our writers had a great time writing for this game.

This is the final installment of a four-part interview

• Part 1. Writing For Video Games, The Writer's Job
• Part 2. Writing For Video Games, Collaboration in Game Development
• Part 3. Writing For Torment: Tides Of Numenera, Engaging the Player
• Part 4. Writing For Torment: Tides Of Numenera, Writing the Game

Torment: Tides of Numenera releases on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on Tuesday, February 28.

 

[FeelTheRads]

That would also mean the main quest is extremely linear (even more so than PST ) since there's no intertwining between areas. Just push the forward button until you win, basically.

 

[Infinitron]

That would also mean the main quest is extremely linear (even more so than PST ) since there's no intertwining between areas. Just push the forward button until you win, basically.

We've already played a good 33% of the game. Is the beta extremely linear? It sounds like PS:T except you don't return to Sigil/Sagus at the end (but probably with less crappy areas after it).

 

[ArchAngel]

Murnane: “Talk to everyone because they may have something important to tell you” is RPG boilerplate. Oft times all this talking to NPCs doesn't amount to much. Not so in Torment where you talk to a random guy who, apropos of nothing obvious, tells you about the bizarre reproductive practices of his species. Torment is a lot more fun to read than many other games and it seems like it was more fun to write as well. Was it?

This feels like it is missing one more sentence "And you can use that knowledge to solve another quest." Or is the interviewer a retard?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Is the beta extremely linear?

Well, it does have only one location and Sagus Cliffs is really not Sigil in terms of size or amount of content. No, to me it sounds like we'll get half of Sigil in Sagus and half in the Bloom with no way to travel between the two.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

More from the official forum:
"you maybe right they end the story but in the last zone i have the impression that they put a lot of important NPC in the same place and when you see the paper map with the game there is a lot of place that you ll never see".
I sure do hope they will release the cut content in the future for free. I am butt-hurt right now I can barely stand.

 

[Infinitron]

Murnane: “Talk to everyone because they may have something important to tell you” is RPG boilerplate. Oft times all this talking to NPCs doesn't amount to much. Not so in Torment where you talk to a random guy who, apropos of nothing obvious, tells you about the bizarre reproductive practices of his species. Torment is a lot more fun to read than many other games and it seems like it was more fun to write as well. Was it?

This feels like it is missing one more sentence "And you can use that knowledge to solve another quest." Or is the interviewer a retard?

some of the creatures in Torment don't appear in any of the other Planescape games.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

so the guy that finished it confirms we don't get a world map. InXile WTF? We didn't ask for a railgame.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Any word about GOG backer keys?

 

[Hellion]

If what I'm hearing is true, "the Bloom" has some redeeming qualities that pay proper homage to PST, but other than that the game is about 30-35 hours long for a completionist playthrough,

Spoiler

and its "different endings" are offered in a completely Mass Effect-like manner by a huge info-dump right before the end, with our choices essentially affecting a series of black-and-white slides that we see right as the game's end credits roll on the side.

We'll know for sure in a few hours I guess.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

I bet this game could have been made in just 1 year at Obisidan.

 

[fobia]

I bet this game could have been made in just 1 year at Obisidan.

and be named Tyranny?

 

[J_C]

This guy pretends to have finished the game by getting a copy in a different country on Friday :

"I just beat the games in 40 hours good storyline

But lack of environnement 2 big city and 2 or 3 dungeon of 1 or 2 maps
Maybe i miss content i LL see that on m'y second run

The end arrive too fast many big revelation in one time

10 combat and eventualy 4 or 5 that they are part of main story

And there are only the three choice on the screen

I'm on Xbox one and the day one patch IS 7.8 giga".

"Protip impossible to return backward when you finish a zone so finish all of the quest before".

https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=17167

40 hours to beat and he complains about lack of content? 40 hours is more than enough for one playthrough.

 

[Infinitron]

If what I'm hearing is true, "the Bloom" has some redeeming qualities that pay proper homage to PST, but other than that the game is about 30-35 hours long for a completionist playthrough,

Spoiler

and its "different endings" are offered in a completely Mass Effect-like manner by a huge info-dump right before the end, with our choices essentially affecting a series of black-and-white slides that we see right as the game's end credits roll on the side.

We'll know for sure in a few hours I guess.

Please use spoiler tags for things like this