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

[Zorba the Hutt]

What is current predicted release date?

Wonder if this means extra dev time like WL2

 

[Abu Antar]

I played it for 5 hours today. Mixed feelings so far. I never expected the game to be nearly as good as Planescape, and for good reason it seems. It is nowhere close. Combat is bad (knew this from the alpha already but though improvements were made). I have avoided it when I can. In the first encounter, the companion I had with me suddenly couldn't be used at all and the turn order in the top screen stopped working. So I had to use the Castoff to do shit and it took forever. The first area is also very ugly and not visually pleasing to the eyes. Get out of that place, and you meet more companions. One that got on my nerves after two lines of dialog. The writing is otherwise good, I have to say. Not close to Plansecape good, but better than most rpgs these days.
Environments as a whole are a bit mixed. I like most backgrounds that I have seen, but some of them just look plain ugly. Character models are atrocious. I don't care that much about character models in these types of games, and I still find them hideous. Just ask get help from Obsidian or something in this department. The music is solid. Sets the mood, so to speak. Probably the best aspect of the game along with the writing.
I'd say that the game doesn't look as good as Pillars of Eternity's best areas, but it looks far better than Wasteland 2.

I don't know what to think of the might/speed/intellect formula yet or how they are used up for certain tasks. I need to play more to give a better opinion. It has worked decently so far, so it isn't a disastrous system. It can probably be judged better after more levels and abilities are gained.

The game still needs heavy optimization. That's not a big surprise, but my god, sometimes I think the game has crashed, then I wait 2 minutes and I am good to go again. I'd have thunk that it's my computer but I have played recently released games and they work, so more fine tuning on their part.

 

[StaticSpine]

it would be shorter not only than PST, but also PoE and W2.

W2 and PoE are way longer than PS:T, no?

I haven't finished PoE, but W2 took ~60 hours and I checked my two last PS:T runs - they were both <30 hours.

 

[Infinitron]

Character models are atrocious. I don't care that much about character models in these types of games, and I still find them hideous. Just ask get help from Obsidian or something in this department.

What. But they look like Pillars of Eternity

I never expected the game to be nearly as good as Planescape, and for good reason it seems. It is nowhere close. Combat is bad

This is also funny.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/torment-tides-of-numenera/torment-tides-of-numenera-early-access-review

Torment: Tides of Numenera Early Access review

Torment: Tides of Numenera wears its strangeness on its sleeve. It begins with a cavalcade of information, of alien descriptions and bizarre memories absent context. You are flung into its dream-like world almost naked and utterly clueless, forced to relive brief sequences where the choices you make will construct your version of the game’s protagonist: the Last Castoff.

Tides of Numenera's precessor, Planescape: Torment, is in our list of the best RPGs on PC.

After wandering through these unusual, often surreal, memories, you’re faced with numerous potential versions of yourself, all dependent on the choices you’ve just made. And then there’s a fight that you can only win by delving into the minds of a menagerie of beasties, and yet more choices to make, and a Choose Your Own Adventure-style flashback that’s as confusing as it is fascinating.

This is just Tides of Numenera’s character creation.

As introductions go, Tides of Numenera’s is dense. I can’t think of any denser. You are flung into the deep end, clueless, as thousands of tiny details are thrown at you at a million miles per hour. There are so many decisions to make, but they all amount to guesswork and gut instincts, which is brilliant, sure, but also a bit nerve wracking as you start to worry about how it’s going to affect the rest of this very peculiar game.

Some of your decisions will impact your ability pool, broken up into might, speed and intellect, but it feels more like you are rapidly constructing a person rather than a traditional RPG avatar. These are personality quirks, opinions and events that have already taken place rather than simple numbers on a sheet.

Ultimately, the choices I made during the introduction left me with a mystical fellow with a strong desire to understand the world and the universe, attuned to the blue and silver Tides – the name given to the game’s alignments – which represent a variety of goals and desires and traits. Blue and silver represent logic, wisdom, power, knowledge and probably a few other things that I’ve already forgotten because bloody hell there’s a lot to remember.

Then my screen got flipped upside down and the game crashed. Without an auto-save feature, I was forced to start again. I think I made most of the same choices, because I ended up with the same Last Castoff. There are bugs and missing features and an ugly UI to contend with, but restarting didn’t faze me; in fact, I probably needed that second run-through of the introduction so I could soak it all in.

Planescape: Torment’s influence is pretty strong from the get-go. Or, at least, Tides of Numenera is concerned with a lot of the same questions and themes as Black Isles’s classic exploration of identity and mortality: dreams, memories, what makes a person, never-ending life. It’s more high falutin, however; not as easy to digest as its predecessor. And the text, of which there is a great deal, frequently devolves into obstinately nonsensical prose evocative of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but like Wonderland, the Ninth World and the city of Sagus Cliffs is a fascinating place that demands to be explored.

There’s a fountain in Sagus Cliffs that has no water, and is instead full of thousands of purple, gravity-defying fish. Criminals are punished by being drugged, which makes them spew gibberish, and the words create a fleshy homunculus that slowly strangles its victim. One of your first companions is a woman who is actually several versions of the same woman from many different dimensions. Another companion is a man covered in living tattoos. The guards of Sagus Cliffs are constructs that exist only for a single year, because they are crafted out of time sacrificed by the town’s denizens.

It’s a mad place, then, where almost every object and person you can interact with promises to expand on this weirdness through flashbacks and world-building, fleshing out an alien realm that’s as intriguing as it is absolutely bonkers. Planescape: Torment’s city of Sigil seems almost mundane in comparison.

I felt lost throughout most of my time wandering the Ninth World. It’s an appropriate feeling. The Last Castoff is the physical remains of an immortal body-hopper, with a newborn soul now inhabiting it. I was lost and so was he. Visions from previous lives can come at any time, just from looking at or touching random objects, and every revelation poses more questions than it answers.

The more time I spent wandering the streets of Sagus Cliffs, the more baffled I became. But it was a great kind of bafflement! The world defies expectations and is quietly subversive. Even when I thought I had begun to understand what was going on and who I was, I would immediately start second-guessing myself. And what strange questions I’ve been pondering, like: “Am I a God?” or “Why am I still carrying this weird fish in my pocket and how is it still alive?”

Playing Tides of Numenera feels like playing a great tabletop RPG, where the Game Master favours narrative over action-packed lootfests and dragon-slaying. That’s not surprising, since Numenera is actually the setting of a tabletop RPG, created by D&D game designer Monte Cook, which “focuses on story and ideas over mechanics.” The sometimes obtuse rules of D&D have been replaced with philosophical concepts and surrealism, making it a less fussy, though undeniably stranger, system.

In videogame terms, it’s more like an adventure game than a traditional RPG, with its long, meandering – but intriguing – conversations and esoteric puzzles.

Sometimes, it delves into the more conventional aspects of RPGs though – and right now it’s worse off for it. Take combat, for instance: plodding, turn-based fights absent excitement. Interactable objects dotted around the place might confer surprising bonuses on you or your party, requiring skill checks and a spot of luck, and conversations and story seep into battles with interesting results, but the actual act of fighting is slow and weightless and ultimately just a wee bit dull. Avoiding fights or trying to cut them short can be a lot more interesting – allowing you to be shrewd or clever rather than just violent.

Fighting is only a tiny part of Tides of Numenera, though, and you have a lot of freedom in how you deal with the various crises that crop up during your adventure. I suspect that this might end up being one of those few games where you can get through it while hardly engaging in violence at all.

The version I’ve been exploring is the Kickstarter backers build, which is also what you lovely lot will be able to get your hands on when it launches on Steam Early Access. It represents about a fifth of the game, in a very unfinished state, and really you should avoid it unless you are willing to spoil the game for yourself a wee bit in the name of helping inXile bug hunt, which is undeniably a noble goal.

Buttons stop working, the game briefly freezes frequently, transitioning to a new area breaks the game half of the time and while none of these things are entirely unexpected in a work-in-progress, it’s hardly pleasant. And this isn’t some sandbox that you’re messing around in; it’s a story-driven RPG with a massive central mystery, and you risk dulling some of the surprise by jumping in now, long before it’s actually ready to be shown off.

Wait

A fifth of the game, is it? Brother None, have you been misleading me?

 

[Abu Antar]

Character models are atrocious. I don't care that much about character models in these types of games, and I still find them hideous. Just ask get help from Obsidian or something in this department.

What. But they look like Pillars of Eternity

I never expected the game to be nearly as good as Planescape, and for good reason it seems. It is nowhere close. Combat is bad

This is also funny.

I know, I know. It's bad as in it is broken.

I feel PoE characters look better or I am not remembering correctly.

I also may have failed to mention the godawful UI. It looks terrible. There are no keyboard shortcuts. In the CYOA moment of the game, I could see numbers after each dialog choice, which probably means in what order they should be taken or some such. That section wasn'y complete on the visual front.
The combat UI is also ugly as sin.

I also didn't care for some of the voice acting. The narrator is the one that hasn't really bothered me. I'm still going to enjoy the game, I think. I just want it be be a bit more mysterious. I don't know if that makes sense. In Planescape, stuff didn't always make sense and there was always a sense of wonder. Things were also coherent.

 

[FeelTheRads]

This is also funny.

Yes, because when people say they want the game to be "like PST" they mean they want the combat to be bad.

Well, some do, actually, like the ones who wanted RTwP. I call those true fans.

 

[markec]

What is current predicted release date?

Wonder if this means extra dev time like WL2

They should just release it and then fix most problems with Directors Cut next year.

 

[Infinitron]

OK, talked to Brother None. He says that as far as he knows they've never said the beta is a fifth of the game. We suspect PCGamesN got that by doing math with the expected playtimes (George Ziets said 40-50 hours total, with the beta at 10).

 

[likaq]

Can someone make high resolution screenshot that show these "ugly as fuck character models" ?
I can't play beta and "ugly as fuck character models" on codex can mean everything from "there are really ugly" to " models are 3d instead of glorious 2d therefore they are pure shit"

 

[FeelTheRads]

Here's one those a fairly close perspective:

http://cdn.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/Torment%20Tides%20of%20Numenera%20review%206.jpg

 

[likaq]

Try harder.

 

[agris]

Will someone with the beta please tell me:

Do the city maps have a lot of non-human NPC models walking around? I've seen a few screenshots showing strange creatures in strange cages, but I'm wondering if the city (sagus cliffs?) is truly populated by more than just humanoids, like in Sigil.

 

[prodigydancer]

OK, so let me summarize a little:

1) Even if we assume that there was zero per-production until TToN Kickstarter ended (unlikely), it's been 34 months and the game's current state... well, they rather optimistically call it a beta. (Note that in case of PS:T the road from the vision document to release took less than three years.)

2) Even if we assume that full production didn't start until October 2014, that's still 16 months. Yet at this point evidently nobody even knows how long the game will be. At least we keep getting conflicting reports, ranging from "short-ish" to "40-50 hours." Not surprisingly no-one has any idea about how much of the game the "beta" contains either. 20%? 30%? 40%? Make your bets!

3) It's all kinda fuzzy but between placeholder UI and (hopefully also placeholder) character portraits we can see infodumps, handholding, too eager to help companions, too convenient quests, broken combat and (placeholder?) human models that are generic (because so the almighty Engine demands).

4) inXile is already in full damage control mode. "Hey the protagonist is completely featureless because it suits the plot!" (well, then your plot sucks, lol)

5) Beta testers are p. desperate to find at least something good to say (which is understandable), so we keep hearing "it's good for what it is" and "there's some good (not great) writing - you'll get to it if you're patient enough." Now just let me politely remind you that the game was hyped as a successor to PS:T.

WTF, inXile? Seriously, what the actual fuck?

 

[Infinitron]

Your summary is a bit biased.

Even if we assume that there was zero per-production until TToN Kickstarter ended (unlikely), it's been 34 months and the game's current state... well, they rather optimistically call it a beta.

Just like every other Kickstarter game.

Even if we assume that full production didn't start until October 2014, that's still 16 months.

Which isn't a lot.

Yet at this point evidently nobody even knows how long the game will be.

And we won't until they have QA teams playing through the entire game. Also who cares

inXile is already in full damage control mode.

Because of one post?

"Hey the protagonist is completely featureless because it suits the plot!" (well, then your plot sucks, lol)

They originally said that back during the Kickstarter, not now during the supposed damage control.

Beta testers are p. desperate

Prime Junta, are you desperate?

WTF, inXile? Seriously, what the actual fuck?

Just like every other Kickstarter game.

 

[prodigydancer]

like every other

What does one game matter...

 

[Lord Andre]

After watching some let's plays of the beta I can summarize the following conclusions:

- on the whole the game seems on the right track. Colin and friends really gave a 110% in trying to make something special.
- a lot of retards complaining about stuff that is irrelevant in the context of a beta.
- Inxile is gonna' need a full year to pull the shit engine that is unity into something resembling a functional game.
- the usual codex faggots, switched from "Planescape is shitty JRPG with highschool level philosophy" to "OMG, Planescape is the highest written art form known to man, nothing can compare!"

 

[Fry]

Shitposting about games you've never touched based on vague first impressions from the codex?

It's why I come here.

 

[prodigydancer]

based on vague first impressions from the codex?

Sure, because YouTube doesn't exist.

 

[Prime Junta]

Will someone with the beta please tell me:

Do the city maps have a lot of non-human NPC models walking around? I've seen a few screenshots showing strange creatures in strange cages, but I'm wondering if the city (sagus cliffs?) is truly populated by more than just humanoids, like in Sigil.

There are a few non-humanoid NPC's. There's a philethis, the occasional varjellen, some more or less humanoid mutants, a construct, and two guys who look like they took a wrong turn at the X-Files studio. The great majority are human though.

 

[Prime Junta]

Prime Junta, are you desperate?

No. It's quite easy to find good things to say about it.

Taken in isolation and purely on its own terms, this is going to be a good to even great cRPG, and more signficantly, one that does stuff differently than the usual pseudo-medieval/post-apoc fare we're seeing. The C&C and reactivity in particular is top-notch.

But if its ambition is to be a worthy PS:T spiritual successor, it does have problems. Most of these are in the opening and would be pretty easy to address, mostly just by cutting dialog nodes that give too much exposition. Some, not so much: the inconsistent art direction, somewhat rough-looking environment art, and occasionally-clumsy or too-pat quests are likely to stay in. Not sure about the combat; as it is I don't find it particularly enjoyable but I'm willing to reserve judgment until they've got cyphers working properly; they are a central feature of the combat system after all.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Can someone make high resolution screenshot that show these "ugly as fuck character models" ?
I can't play beta and "ugly as fuck character models" on codex can mean everything from "there are really ugly" to " models are 3d instead of glorious 2d therefore they are pure shit"

Sure, though it's my subjective opinion, and also I need to say that they are WAY better than W2 ones, practically heavenly in comparison. Give me a couple of minutes.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Do we have any idea what size the beta approximately is in relation to the full game? I've seen figures such as a fifth and a third being thrown around, and a fifth apparently isn't it. Is it a third then? Where did a third come from?

 

[Excidium II]

inb4 it's the whole game.

 

[Infinitron]

Where did a third come from?

The Infinitron-Brother None Top Secret Chat Protocols(tm)