Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[karfhud]

It's already bad enough that the game's premise is practically identical to PS:T.

That's the whole idea, to make the main theme identical to PS:T's, isn't it?

Psst, this one is the Dak'kon equivalent, not the Morte equivalent

Actually, now that I think of it, you're right. I wouldn't be a big fan of Dak'kon's brief description either.

 

[tuluse]

It's already bad enough that the game's premise is practically identical to PS:T.

That's the whole idea, to make the main theme identical to PS:T's, isn't it?

Not really.

 

[StaticSpine]

accidentally found this in the internet

http://mazhlekov.com/en/drawings/ - more here!!

 

[Infinitron]

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3909

Hello everybody.
My name is Viktor Mazhlekov, I'm an artist and CRPG lover. I would like to tell one huge THANK YOU to inXile for enriching the RPG genre with new masterpieces and I hope to be a witness of more CRPG's in future!
I would like to say also THANK YOU to all fans, supporters, RPG evangelists, lovers etc. which support was crucial for the birth of Wasteland and Torment!
Here I will put all my art created especially for Torment. This game was such inspiration for my imagination...

 

[StaticSpine]

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3909

Hello everybody.
My name is Viktor Mazhlekov, I'm an artist and CRPG lover. I would like to tell one huge THANK YOU to inXile for enriching the RPG genre with new masterpieces and I hope to be a witness of more CRPG's in future!
I would like to say also THANK YOU to all fans, supporters, RPG evangelists, lovers etc. which support was crucial for the birth of Wasteland and Torment!
Here I will put all my art created especially for Torment. This game was such inspiration for my imagination...

Oh, it's a fan-art. I saw the logo and though it's official.

 

[Infinitron]

hiver asks Adam Heine a question: http://www.adamheine.com/2014/07/what-is-numenera.html

What is the numenera?

From the AMA pile, Surface rfl says:

In a recent interview, among lots of superb stuff (great companions concepts! can we call the ball of goo... Ballte? Goolte? no? ..damn...), - ive noticed this line:

- "Magic" in Numenera is performed by tapping into the ubiquitous numenera around you--even in the air and the dirt--and using it to reshape the world. -

I know thats most likely a convenient background lore explanation explanation and i dont expect "magic" to be realistically explained, but im curious when it comes to the setting... what exactly does this "ubiquitous numenera" mean?
Did you refer to various technological remnants of previous epochs like cyphers, artifacts and other actual numenera that the player will find, or maybe some kind of more microscopic nano machines saturation... or is it something else?
Im asking because so far ive gotten use to thinking about numenera as small objects basically, and any still functioning or malfunctioning rogue nano machines as something exactly specified, like the Iron Wind, for example.

-?

Yes to all of the above.

So a brief recap for those unfamiliar: the setting of Numenera and Torment is Earth one billion years in the future, known as the Ninth World. A billion years is as far removed from us as we are removed from being single-celled organisms. In those epochs, a number of great civilizations have risen and then disappeared into obscurity, each one orders of magnitude more advanced than all but the wackiest science fiction could even imagine.

The people of the Ninth World, however, are at approximately medieval technology levels, but they live among the debris and leftovers of a billion years of civilizations. Of course there are no books or other degradable things still lying around, but there are massive monuments made of metals nobody recognizes, giant crystals floating in the sky, mutated descendants of bioengineered creatures, automated military constructs following orders that don't make sense anymore, and other weirder things that have withstood time.

The Ninth Worlders don't understand how to make any of this stuff, but they know enough to cobble together useful artifacts from what they find.

To (finally) get to the question, "this stuff" is the numenera, but it doesn't just mean sci-fi devices you find lying around (you actually don't find sci-fi devices lying around much, but have to cobble your own). It also means the invisible forces still in the air. It means the datasphere that some civilization built around the planet -- the one that can be accessed if you know what you're doing (not that you'll understand what you find) and beams the occasional strange vision (known as glimmers) into people's heads at random. It means the creatures that look like they stepped out of a horror film. It means the dirt itself, which has been worked, refined, manufactured, or grown and then ground back into soil by time.

Although we do frequently use "numenera" to refer to the items and devices you will find in Torment, it really is ubiquitous and can be used by the clever or knowledgeable in infinite ways.

 

[norolim]

A rather lengthy interview with the developers (Adam Heine, Kevin Saunders and Jeremy Kopman) in the biggest Polish games site GRY-Online. In English.
Don't bother checking what's on the other 7 pages of that article: it's the same, but in Polish.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

Don't bother checking what's on the other 7 pages of that article: it's the same, but in Polish.

 

[norolim]

Don't bother checking what's on the other 7 pages of that article: it's the same, but in Polish.

What?

 

[Sensuki]

Pototoland interviews > English noobs

 

[Roguey]

I'm iffy about randomness.

Since there are only about 10 big crises they'd have to be the most bungling people in the world to mess it up.

Glad they decided to drop action-points, hope they stick with that decision.

A question I can't recall being answered--is this using squares or hexes?

 

[Athelas]

The description of how Crises will play out makes me think they should have licensed the D:OS engine. Of course, it's obviously not possible anymore at this stage.

I wonder how the lack of action points will work with their stated goal to have you do various little things in battle like talking and interacting with the environment.

A question I can't recall being answered--is this using squares or hexes?

inb4 they build all the levels and have to go with squares because they didn't plan for hexes at the start...again.

 

[tuluse]

Latest word is that it's going to be gridless.

 

[throwaway]

Sorta iffy about the number of Crises. Expected the number to be somewhere between 30-40 (which would already be ~1/3 of the combat instances that RPGs usually have). Pretty ballsy on their part I guess but even taking into account the number of minor extra crises I'm afraid of the game featuring only "boss-type" instances. Call it comfort but the first few (20%?) trashmobs I get to deal with are usually enjoyable, in the being an overpowered SOB sort of way.

The bit about trying to communicate tabletop-like opportunities through the UI seems like a design minefield which they're still right in the middle of. Hoping for a future assurance that they've got the walk and talk parts more or less nailed.

 

[Roguey]

Latest word is that it's going to be gridless.

Heh, remember when they tried that for Wasteland 2 and it sucked so they moved to squares? No learning animals at inXile.

 

[Ninjerk]

Latest word is that it's going to be gridless.

This is why Excidium banned himself. Thanks, Brian Fargo.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Despite being uber-hyped about the game per se, I'm a little bit worried about the "short, but dense" part. Not that it wouldn't make any sense. I'm just wondering how much shorter.

 

[Roguey]

If you beat it too quickly just play it again ffs. Multiple times if need be.

If the writing is terminally boring then it won't even matter how long it is.

 

[Infinitron]

New questions from Dr Schultz and hiver: http://www.adamheine.com/2014/07/about-torments-crisis-system.html

About Torment's Crisis System

Two related questions from the AMA desk today.

Baudolino05 (aka Alessandro, from our wonderful fan-run Italian tumblr) asks:

What can you tell me about the quest design in T:ToN? I mean: only part of the quests will be handle through Crises, right? As for the remaining part, can we expect complex/interrelated quest-lines? Will they feature puzzle-solving/exploration elements like in the original Torment? No combat at all, right?

Along similar lines, Surface Rfl says:

One additional question more about Crises themselves, since you mention their apparent duration as one reason why saving in TB would be possibly, or most likely, allowed.

Im wondering about their general structure.

Does your answer mean that all of a Crises will be done in TB mode and so be all combat related? I thought there will be other things to do inside Crises. And usually, for things other then combat, we go back to normal real time gameplay in games like these.

Torment's Crisis system (which we introduced in ridiculous detail here) might best be thought of as our "more than combat" system. Or better yet, think of it as a tabletop encounter, where combat is certainly one way to handle things, but where players have many, many more options available to them as well.

Yes, Crises are all turn-based. But no, they are not necessarily all combat. We use the Crisis system whenever there's some kind of time-based pressure the player must deal with. For example, it would be a Crisis to sneak out of a prison or to try and rescue people from a rampaging horror. In the first case, the pressure comes from the guards who are patrolling or responding to alarms. In the second, of course, it's the horror itself that provides the pressure. In both cases, while combat is a possibility, it's not the ideal solution to the problem.

So the "other things" you can do depend on the individual Crises themselves. You might be repairing (or disabling) ancient devices, persuading people that you're on their side, creating distractions to temporarily stop the horror, etc. We wouldn't be able to do this kind of thing well in a massive dungeon crawl game, but since we're focusing on quality over quantity -- on a dozen or so handcrafted scenarios, woven tightly with the narrative and environment -- we can afford to make each one really interesting.

As for quests, certainly there will be some that result in a Crisis, but just like PST there will be many quests (maybe most quests) that you can solve with just conversation and exploration. We're excited about the Crisis system, but this is still a Torment game, after all, and that means that conversation and narrative are king.

----------------------------------

Got a question? Ask me anything.

​

 

[throwaway]

Wonder how the TToN team feels about the PoE storyboards(/illustrated story sequences?).

 

[Infinitron]

hiver gets personal: http://www.adamheine.com/2014/08/about-what-we-do.html

About What We Do

From the AMA bag of holding, Surface asks:

Not to only ask about Torment - Im genuinely curious about your involvement with that orphanage.

How did it happen, really - and so far away from home? Im imagining you were probably on a vacation and just happened to run into it and then just... felt the call? Am i correct?

And how do you finance it? Seems like an impossible task just for one guy and his wife.

Is it you who is keeping it all together or are you helping or... how does it all work really?

This might be the first question for which my new readers need the backstory. Or just the story, I guess.

Like it says next to my picture over there, my wife and I foster a bunch of kids in Thailand. We're not an orphanage (though we used to work at one). We don't even really like the term "children's home" (though that has more to do with certain connotations that has out here -- technically, we are a children's home). We prefer the term family, because that's what we try to be in every way.

We take in kids that have nowhere to go. We try as hard as we can to treat them like they were our biological children (we have 2 of those as well, which gives a good point of comparison). We currently have 10 kids -- 9 at home and 1 in college -- from all kinds of backgrounds: orphans, refugees, abused, abandoned, Thai, Burmese, Lisu, Karen. Our only real criteria is that we are their last stop. These kids have had it hard enough; the more stability we can give them, the better they will be able to heal.

So our "children's home" is just our house and our family. We're the parents. We have no employees except a house helper (who is, herself, more family than employee). We almost never both leave at the same time because (1) it's hard on the kids and (2) it's hard on us!

How did this happen? The simple answer is what you said: God called us. The run-on sentence is that Cindy's had a heart for orphans since she was young, so when we felt called to come here (it was a more gradual thing, culminating in a very strange moment at a pastor's conference where we both *knew* God was asking us to go), we had a vague idea of running an orphanage/planting a church in whatever country we ended up in. About a year after we got here, we had something of a reclarification, in which we realized we didn't want to manage an orphanage. We wanted to parent a family.

Financing our home has mostly come from friends and family who support our vision, as well as from our own savings. Over the last few years, our family has grown beyond our income from supporters, and our savings have been gradually exhausted. It was almost exactly two years ago when we were considering fundraising (blech), but then I got this job you might have heard of.

So yeah, your Kickstarter dollars help support orphans in Thailand. That's how awesome you are. Seriously.

You can't believe how grateful I am -- to you the backers, to Colin and Kevin and Brian, to God. I never, ever, ever, ever thought I'd get to be in game design again without quitting everything we do out here (which isn't going to happen). The fact that I get to work on this amazing game, without taking any time away from my amazing kids, has been blowing my mind for two years straight now.

Thank you for the question, too. I appreciate the opportunity to share my family a little bit.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.adamheine.com/2014/08/wait-wait-wait-one-billion-years.html

Wait, wait, wait: One BILLION Years?

AstroBull has a question about the Numenera setting:

I have a question about the TTON time scale. In a previous AMA response, you mention "the setting of Numenera and Torment is Earth one billion years in the future, known as the Ninth World. A billion years is as far removed from us as we are removed from being single-celled organisms." This brings up questions regarding biological evolution. As far as I am aware, many/most characters in TTON will be recognizably human, though I'm sure with changes both genetic and technological in origin. Still, it would take quite the suspension of disbelief for me to believe that Homo sapiens as we know it would exist in this future, rather than some potentially un-recognizable descendent.

Couldn't the premise of ages of civilizations with vastly advanced tech followed by a dark age work for, say, 20 million years? Will there be some explanation as to why humans still exist in the unfathomable distant future?

You are absolutely right. In one billion years, humans and everything else will have evolved, the continents will have come back together and split apart again, and none of it will matter because the sun will have expanded to the point where life on Earth will be impossible.

Assuming nobody does anything about it.

That's the thing, though. In those billion years, at least eight ultra-powerful civilizations have arisen (or arrived) and then disappeared, each one advanced to incredible power far (FAR FAR) beyond what we are currently capable of. And each one messed with the Earth in substantial ways.

At least one of them had mastered planetary engineering and stellar lifting. At least one could fiddle with the laws of physics the way we play with Legos. At least one explored parallel universes and alternate dimensions. And more than one wasn't human.

So why are there humans at all, or anything even remotely close? The Ninth Worlders don't know the answer to that. Their recorded history only goes back about 900 years, before which humans lived in barbaric tribes and isolated farming villages. No one knows how long it's been since the previous civilization disappeared, nor where Ninth Worlders came from. They have a sense that Earth was once theirs, and then it wasn't, and now it is again, but they have no idea how this could be.

Will there be some explanation for you, the player? Not in Torment, and maybe not inNumenera at all. It's not critical to Torment's story, but more than that, it's part of the mystery of the setting. And mystery is critical to making this setting work.

As for why a billion, instead of some other large-but-sufficient number, Monte Cook has a better answer than I could give.

 

[Mangoose]

Will there be some explanation for you, the player? Not in Torment, and maybe not inNumenera at all. It's not critical to Torment's story, but more than that, it's part of the mystery of the setting. And mystery is critical to making this setting work.

Sounds like they hired Damon Lindelof

 

[J_C]

Well, humans didn't evolve like they did just for gags. There is a reason why we have 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 eyes and a humanoid form. Because this form is very effective for our way of life. I don't think that humans would evolve into little grey guys or other alien forms if we would live millions of years on this planet. Sure, there would be some evolution, more (or less) developed brains or bigger dicks, maybe we would be weak because we rely on technology too much. But we would look very similarly to our current image.

 

[MaskedMan]

8 glorious 'thal civilizations and we have to play when the world has regressed to saps once again.