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

[StaticSpine]

You're paying twice/triple for one and the same game. That's dumb.

Eh, dude, it's not just about the money. We support the company we believe in. Don't be so mercantile.

 

[Morgoth]

Well I don't believe in InXile just not yet.

 

[Gondolin]

Day-one purchase paying for a beta

Someone modify to read "paying for an alpha".

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

 

[Echo Mirage]

Back to the whole lore of the castoff's, there was an update for this with the video release that I didn't see mentioned here.

Lore Update: Endless Battle

Colin here. This lore update begins to explore some of the backstory of the largest conflict in the castoff community – a conflict that (as the name suggests) still burns a century later. As usual, this update is probably not essential to playing or understanding the game’s story, but it does provide a backdrop for a larger comprehension.

On the broad plains of the Verxulian Waste, south of the Valley of Dead Heroes and far to the east of the Oasis of M’ra Jolios, a battle has raged for centuries. Most wars in the Ninth World are short affairs, heavily dependent on the cyphers and artifacts the combatants bring to the fight. With the possibility of a single artifact dramatically altering the terrain of the field (whether through reality shaping, gravitics, dimensional warping, time dilation or compression, consciousness alteration, psychic aftershocks, or more), the potential for utter devastation from the poorly understood machines of the past is ever present.

How then does a battle burn for centuries in an age where opposing forces could wipe their foes from the very face of reality and history?

Centuries ago, the Changing God met one of his children for the first time. This castoff, who claimed the status of the First Castoff, the eldest sibling of all his heirs, had been badly hurt in a struggle with the Sorrow, her skin utterly burned away. She wore a mask to conceal the damage, but her castoff regeneration was unequal to the task of restoring her. She sought answers from her sire, tracking him across the Ninth World to find him. She wanted to know why the Sorrow attacked her and the other castoffs, how they could stop it, and how she might earn a new body for herself.

The two of them were inseparable for a time as she awaited his aid in growing her a new body to replace the scarred wreckage of hers – they traveled together, seeking truths and long-buried secrets. But their alliance was shattered when at last she demanded that the Changing God stop deferring her; her body was beginning to decompose. Yet the Changing God refused to transfer her consciousness – he gave her a bottle of embalming fluid and told her to make do with the body she had. They fought, the confrontation teased out greater truths from her sire, and she realized that he had been hiding too much. Rather than share his secrets, he turned his back on her. She demanded his knowledge, and suddenly their personal struggle turned into a larger battle, each pulling their friends and allies into an ever-expanding conflagration.

Their feud created a schism in the castoff community. Dozens of castoffs flocked to both sides, coming to stand for the side they thought right. Some sided with the Changing God, believing that he had a plan to stop the Sorrow’s genocide, or from a loyalty to the man responsible for their creation. Some sided with the First, believing that she had their best interests at heart against a man who had proven himself time and again to be focused solely on himself.

Realizing that the First was an existential threat, surpassed only by the destructive power of the Sorrow, the Changing God marshaled his forces to eliminate his foe, and this is when he discovered she had secrets of her own: she possessed a reality splitter she called Reconciler of the Truth. He discovered that his weapons were worthless – every time he launched a massive attack, she simply replaced the reality with one where the event didn’t occur, and then merged the realities together, collapsing them into a single observable state. Twice a day, she changed the course of the war, pushing ever closer to the Changing God’s headquarters as he struggled to launch multiple stratagems that would divert her attention.

After failing to destroy her several times, he sought a counter and at last managed to discover and repair a similar device that he named Heaven’s Rejoinder. Now time in the Endless Battle is torn, multiple parallel realities rolling and twining around each other, merging and splitting again with the major attacks. The two sides move and counter-move, trying to act secretly in ways that will allow them an undeniable victory, so much of the Endless Battle is fought in shadow, in clandestine tactics and small-squad engagements. They build and layer their feints, giving ground on certain fronts so that they can advance on others in separate realities.

But even this device was not proof against disasters. Over a century ago, the Changing God succeeded in summoning a biological moon and transitioning his consciousness to a body he created remotely within it. The First was occupied in a battle with the Sand Knights, a deadly mercenary company in the employ of the Changing God God who had been stymying the advance of the rebels for over a decade. Her lieutenant, Paj Rekken, was charged with leading an assault on one of the Sand Knights' fortresses, and gained entry just as the First was torn apart in a coruscation of energies. Rekken did not know the First had been destroyed and snapped the realities together quickly to maintain the victory over the Sand Knights. By the time Rekken learned of the First's death, the First was irrevocably lost.

His purpose achieved and his opponent eliminated, the Changing God remained on his moon, above the fray, and returned to his researches. Yet despite the removal of the principals, the battle rages on, its contestants battling for ideologies of transparency, equality, and the common good on the First's side, and for duty, devotion, honor, and the hope of winning the Changing God’s trust on the other – the castoffs on the side of the Changing God do not want the First’s ideology dictating their lives. It is no longer merely a castoffs’ struggle. True, castoffs who are not directly involved in the Endless Battle provide funding to either side, or to both, in order to advance their own agendas – with centuries of knowledge behind them, with organizations of their own to tap, they have no shortage of funds. It is a place where warriors test their mettle, where mercenaries earn coin or renown, and where suppliers of food, flesh, and material can find a buyer of last resort. Though the commanders hold occasional parleys, there are too many here who are invested in seeing the war continue.

There is no chance of peace; the soldiers here are eager warriors and their commanders are intractable, always thinking they have a chance at breaking the stalemate. The battle remains confined to a geographically small area that has been tremendously scarred by the horrors of Ninth-World war; the scars extend through multiple dimensions and timelines. The commanders have found that the reality-bending Reconciler and the Rejoinder have made major destructive weapons worthless, and so they have had to resort to new tactics: hand-to-hand combat, personal reality shields, flights of envenomed arrows, detonations of limited effect and duration, poison gas, and more prosaic mechanical and primitive traps… the best they can hope for is small and incremental progress in their struggle, but they have reached no further than this stalemate. Mazes of trenches crisscross the terrain, with bunkers behind the lines and deep divots of earth torn between them. Portals find occasional use, but the trenches remain the best way to move troops without exposing them to the withering death of pulsing beams and curtains of energy that sweep across the field. Gravitic fluctuations are common in that no-man’s-land, and free-roaming energies crackle and hiss in the air. Quantum slug-throwers pierce the sky day and night, and torn dimensions leave room for ultraterrestrials to step through and wreak havoc.

But they are castoffs. They have lifetimes to learn the craft of war, and they believe that they may yet find a way to destroy their foes.

So not only is theire a lot of them. But their is also an ideological split between them that culminated in an eternal bloodwar.

 

[Infinitron]

Back to the whole lore of the castoff's, there was an update for this with the video release that I didn't see mentioned here.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-successor-thread.79051/page-329#post-3491453
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...site-new-stretch-goal-new-lore-details.94198/

But feel free to bring it up again.

 

[StaticSpine]

I think we should summon CMcC to find out which one is true:

The first version was: Changing God didn't know that his previous shells (castoffs) gained their own mind and consciousness and continued to live their own lives after he abandoned them.
The Endless Battle story says that there were armies of castoffs fighting with each other and Changing God was on one of the sides in that war and he was not very troubled that there are lots of them.

Or he found that out long before the Endless battle started?

 

[Abu Antar]

You're paying twice/triple for one and the same game. That's dumb.

I am paying to get six copies of the game!

 

[Roguey]

I think we should summon CMcC to find out which one is true:

The first version was: Changing God didn't know that his previous shells (castoffs) gained their own mind and consciousness and continued to live their own lives after he abandoned them.
The Endless Battle story says that there were armies of castoffs fighting with each other and Changing God was on one of the sides in that war and he was not very troubled that there are lots of them.

Or he found that out long before the Endless battle started?

Stories change with iteration, the latest info will be the most accurate.

 

[StaticSpine]

I think we should summon CMcC to find out which one is true:

The first version was: Changing God didn't know that his previous shells (castoffs) gained their own mind and consciousness and continued to live their own lives after he abandoned them.
The Endless Battle story says that there were armies of castoffs fighting with each other and Changing God was on one of the sides in that war and he was not very troubled that there are lots of them.

Or he found that out long before the Endless battle started?

Stories change with iteration, the latest info will be the most accurate.

You are not CMcC, Roquey

 

[hoverdog]

I think we should summon CMcC to find out which one is true:

The first version was: Changing God didn't know that his previous shells (castoffs) gained their own mind and consciousness and continued to live their own lives after he abandoned them.
The Endless Battle story says that there were armies of castoffs fighting with each other and Changing God was on one of the sides in that war and he was not very troubled that there are lots of them.

Or he found that out long before the Endless battle started?

Stories change with iteration, the latest info will be the most accurate.

You are not CMcC, Roquey

or is he? :dramatic music plays:

 

[Brother None]

You are not CMcC, Roquey

He is correct though. As we mentioned I think a few updates ago the main storyline has gone through iterations some time ago (with assists from Chris Avellone, Nathan Long et al), when you see a more recent lore piece contradicting an older one, assume the newer one is correct.

 

[Echo Mirage]

I liked the older iteration better. The changed god knew nothing, or next to nothing about his castoff's. And the god himself comes off as an enigma or a myth. The truth you which you would need to dig deep and search across space and time to unearth.

Now their isn't much of a mystery who you are, what you are, or why you were castoff, when random drunks beside the road can answer all the questions you have.

 

[Zeriel]

I liked the older iteration better. The changed god knew nothing, or next to nothing about his castoff's. And the god himself comes off as an enigma or a myth. The truth you which you would need to dig deep and search across space and time to unearth.

Now their isn't much of a mystery who you are, what you are, or why you were castoff, when random drunks beside the road can answer all the questions you have.

Same. First iteration seemed much more in line with Torment 1, but maybe that's why it was changed. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but the story change was the only thing about this update I didn't like--the video was good enough to make up for it, though.

 

[Nihiliste]

The change to the lore will be fine as long as its implemented well. Story is one of those things where I'm happy for them to branch off in new directions if that's where their vision takes them; Torment was great because the story was unique, so trying to capture similar themes isn't really necessary as long as the narrative is unique and immersive.

 

[Duraframe300]

I think we should summon CMcC to find out which one is true:

The first version was: Changing God didn't know that his previous shells (castoffs) gained their own mind and consciousness and continued to live their own lives after he abandoned them.
The Endless Battle story says that there were armies of castoffs fighting with each other and Changing God was on one of the sides in that war and he was not very troubled that there are lots of them.

Or he found that out long before the Endless battle started?

Stories change with iteration, the latest info will be the most accurate.

You are not CMcC, Roquey

or is he? :dramatic music plays:

That would be the most amazing reveal in codex history.

 

[Athelas]

I liked the older iteration better. The changed god knew nothing, or next to nothing about his castoff's. And the god himself comes off as an enigma or a myth. The truth you which you would need to dig deep and search across space and time to unearth.

Now their isn't much of a mystery who you are, what you are, or why you were castoff, when random drunks beside the road can answer all the questions you have.

That was the case in the original Torment too, you just never knew the right questions to ask.

 

[Sprout]

I liked the older iteration better. The changed god knew nothing, or next to nothing about his castoff's. And the god himself comes off as an enigma or a myth. The truth you which you would need to dig deep and search across space and time to unearth.

Now their isn't much of a mystery who you are, what you are, or why you were castoff, when random drunks beside the road can answer all the questions you have.

It does seem a better premise. But then again, it's a bit moot to dissemble at this point as we have no idea what's going on with the development itself. For all we know it is better this way for the story as a whole. The writers seem to think so, and since we are trusting them to write a successor the the fricking torment, I presume them to be competent.

 

[CMcC]

I think we should summon CMcC to find out which one is true:

The first version was: Changing God didn't know that his previous shells (castoffs) gained their own mind and consciousness and continued to live their own lives after he abandoned them.
The Endless Battle story says that there were armies of castoffs fighting with each other and Changing God was on one of the sides in that war and he was not very troubled that there are lots of them.

Or he found that out long before the Endless battle started?

Why can't they both be true?

That is, the First Castoff met the Changing God and revealed the existence of the castoffs. The two of them worked together, then argued with one another, and then fought each other.

 

[Echo Mirage]

I think we should summon CMcC to find out which one is true:

The first version was: Changing God didn't know that his previous shells (castoffs) gained their own mind and consciousness and continued to live their own lives after he abandoned them.
The Endless Battle story says that there were armies of castoffs fighting with each other and Changing God was on one of the sides in that war and he was not very troubled that there are lots of them.

Or he found that out long before the Endless battle started?

Why can't they both be true?

That is, the First Castoff met the Changing God and revealed the existence of the castoffs. The two of them worked together, then argued with one another, and then fought each other.

Doesn't this remove a lot of the mystery of the the Changing God and the castoff's?

The reasons why the Changing God does anything. And the reasons for his abandonment of his castoff's must be well documented if not common knowledge amongst his offspring and the people of the the 9th world. That doesn't leave the player a lot of mystery to unravel. As I said in my post above. The last castoff has gone from a mystery that very few people know anything about. Pushing them along the heroes journey to find out the truth, and make tough choices along the way. To a person of known origin, of a known god, of a known society.

At the very least the numbers of castoff's should be kept to an absolute minimum. And the origins of the Endless battle isn't something we should even be hearing at all right now. It's catalyst should have been something hidden and known only to the the Changing God and the first. Everyone else should have long forgotten. What started it and why. And the people fighting in it no longer care for the reason's. For the last Castoff to even find out what we know now. The player should of had to fight down 666 layers of hell to figure out.

At the very least. The origins of the castoff's, the meaning of the tattoo and the reasons why you were castoff should be the entire driving force behind the reasons you do almost anything. I just feel that ton's of Castoff's having an endless royal rumble cheapens that mystery.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

We've only seen small extracts of the lore. It's too soon to judge it in detail imo, they wouldn't be revealing this as background unless there was far more that we still have to discover.

At this point I'm just going to trust in the writing team and pass final judgement when I play the game for the first time. Will definitely be avoiding the beta and Torment threads when everything is finalised, this is one game where I want as few spoilers as possible, like the first time I encountered PST.

 

[Infinitron]

Just because the castoffs know what they are and where they came from doesn't mean they have any real clue why exactly the Changing God did what he did, or where he went afterwards. He can still be an inscrutable figure.

"Mystery" is one of the game's three pillars. I'm sure they won't disregard it.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Just because the castoffs know what they are and where they came from doesn't mean they have any real clue why exactly the Changing God did what he did, or where he went afterwards. He can still be an inscrutable figure.

"Mystery" is one of the game's three pillars. I'm sure they won't disregard it.

Agreed. But as I said a lot of what we know now should, in my opinion, be pushed so far into obscurity and vagueness that the last Castoff's relation to any of it, such as the Endless battle should be a great unknown. The truth of which a lot of players will never find out unless they walk of the beaten path and make the right choices. Or perhaps the wrong ones.

But as they say. Mystery is one of the game's core pillars. Just right now that pillar is looking a little thin to me.

 

[Nihiliste]

We've only seen small extracts of the lore. It's too soon to judge it in detail imo, they wouldn't be revealing this as background unless there was far more that we still have to discover.

At this point I'm just going to trust in the writing team and pass final judgement when I play the game for the first time. Will definitely be avoiding the beta and Torment threads when everything is finalised, this is one game where I want as few spoilers as possible, like the first time I encountered PST.

Indeed, I'm going to avoid the alpha/beta and any related threads here like the plague. Hard to feel much sense of mystery or wonder when you follow the development of a game too closely.

But as they say. Mystery is one of the game's core pillars. Just right now that pillar is looking a little thin to me.

You have no idea what the rest of the narrative is going to involve.

 

[Snozgobler]

There are still going to be questions surrounding how castoffs are created (I assume the changing god is still singular in their ability to create castoffs), what is the sorrow/angel of entropy and why does it want to remove the castoffs, what the changing god is researching, why the changing god is running (I assume it due to the angel of entropy). etc etc etc