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

[FeelTheRads]

It becomes meaningful if the ones you kill are important in the game and the game changes as a result. I'm not sure if by meaningful you mean radical changes, but it doesn't have to be the case.

And its meaning is not imposing arbitrary limits: you can kill everyone except these two guys because we were too lazy to come up with an alternate way around it.

At least with this game it's somewhat better I guess if the limitation is "you can only fight in set pieces" since you won't end up banging on an invincible NPC and wondering why he doesn't die.

 

[tuluse]

The fondness for the "kill anyone" feature is something I've never understood -- did it ever have any role other than lulz or, occasionally, a tie to looting civilian homes/shops? Like I don't recall any game where you could use it to move things in a surprising, meaningful direction. At most it was a way to convert good alignment to gold, which is the classic blah Biowarean choice.

If the game is about complete player agency, then I would expect it (see: Fallout). In a game which is about branching narrative (Torment), I don't.

Fallout 1,2, and NV, did offer some interesting solutions because you could just kill people.

Player: I need the [mcguffin]
NPC: If you want the [mcguffin] you need to do X for me
Player: *blam*

It lets the player write their own story more effectively. Torment is not really about the player writing their own story though, it's more about enjoying the story the devs created. Obviously this isn't a hard line in the sand, but a slow blurring as all RPGs are to some degree about player agency.

 

[Athelas]

If PS:T let you kill everyone, and gain the plot-progressing information from their corpse by using the speak-with-dead skill, it would be a better game.

 

[FeelTheRads]

If PS:T let you kill everyone, and gain the plot-progressing information from their corpse by using the speak-with-dead skill, it would be a better game.

Exactly!

 

[undecaf]

The fondness for the "kill anyone" feature is something I've never understood -- did it ever have any role other than lulz or, occasionally, a tie to looting civilian homes/shops? Like I don't recall any game where you could use it to move things in a surprising, meaningful direction. At most it was a way to convert good alignment to gold, which is the classic blah Biowarean choice.

I agree. I don't personally really need that as a specific feature, but I do (think that I) understand where the frustration about it is coming from. It promotes the feeling of being constrained (possibly due to most RPG's being mostly about killing stuff, and because it, yeah, limits the freedom to try things out); even if that would only mean you can't fuck up your session that way, it does pose an artificial restraint. It also removes certain type of trial and error, possibilities to find ways around the proposed system; and if it was planned, a good amount of possible consequences and reactivity from snuffing someone important.

 

[Lord Andre]

Since when the fuck was Torment a BRANCHING narrative game ? Narrative, yes. Branching ? What fucking branching ? Maybe my memory is slipping, but I don't remember any branching in Torment. Just the usual fake C&C, only tastefully done.

Get your head out of your ass people, less freedom has never made a game better. And freedom has never made a narrative weaker. You're confusing sand-box(big map, little content) with freedom.

Best example is Elders Scrolls vs Gothics (1&2). Gothic had freedom and story and branching (a bit) and it wasn't sandbox random generated derp.

A story that breaks when the element of player agency is introduced is not fit for an rpg. A book story is not an rpg story. Because in an rpg, it's not the author's story, it's the player's story.

And to clarify a point, it's not attacking whoever you want that's most important, is knowing that you can. A subtle point that everyone seems to be missing.

 

[undecaf]

It particularly wasn't. And even so, who cares if it was or not - in this context? They are building upon the narrative legacy, not creating a sequel; they know people like high and low end reactivity. Freedom is good if it doesn't trup the point of the game (like how Bethesda wants their shit), and from what it sounds that's what they are trying to strive for.

 

[tuluse]

Since when the fuck was Torment a BRANCHING narrative game ? Narrative, yes. Branching ? What fucking branching ? Maybe my memory is slipping, but I don't remember any branching in Torment. Just the usual fake C&C, only tastefully done.

I never said it was, I said TToN was pitched as one.

Edit: this may be a little confusing because I do compare them directly, but it wasn't about narrative design. It was in regards to "why does TToN have less freedom than PST". It doesn't PST had instant gameovers for attacking certain NPCs. That's no different from not letting you attack them in the first place except it requires a reload.

Get your head out of your ass people, less freedom has never made a game better. And freedom has never made a narrative weaker. You're confusing sand-box(big map, little content) with freedom.

Well I disagree here. I can think of numerous level based games that wouldn't work as open world just to give the most obvious example.

There's also the question of time (and money) spent. In this world we live in, projects have limited resources.

Best example is Elders Scrolls vs Gothics (1&2). Gothic had freedom and story and branching (a bit) and it wasn't sandbox random generated derp.

That's not really an example of anything. Elder Scrolls hasn't had real randomly generated content since Daggerfall. It's more like Deus Ex vs Gothic. Which is better and why?

(the answer is neither, it depends what you're looking for)

A story that breaks when the element of player agency is introduced is not fit for an rpg. A book story is not an rpg story. Because in an rpg, it's not the author's story, it's the player's story.

Disagree again. It's always a tug of war. Fully emergent is Mount and Blade, and fully pre-written is a jRPG (or hell every blobber ever made, BaK, the goldbox games). TToN will have less agency than Fallout, but that's ok, not everything has to be the same.

 

[Lord Andre]

The question isn't which is better, they're both good, the question is which is closer to an rpg. In which case the answer is gothic.

If you are content to play "adventure games with combat" as the newsbot so eloquently put it, it's fine by me. I understand working on a limited budget. I support these developers that try and bring back the genre. But let's not beat around the bush, the truth is, the industry today (crowd funded and publisher funded) seems incapable of cloning games from almost 2 decades ago much less innovate.

No use arguing in circles though, let's just agree to disagree. That info from Inxile's plans on this is outdated anyway.

 

[Roguey]

I am pretty sure that in the IE games, quests would just break if you killed people. Nobody would acknowledge that the person was dead, etc.

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Biff_the_Understudy

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Biff_the_Understudy

He is not necessary in Baldur's Gate II due to a new feature, in which characters who need to flee or speak lines before dying are in fact impossible to bring below 1 hitpoint.

Turns out the ability to attack anyone was a cargo cult feature, go figure.

 

[Infinitron]

I am pretty sure that in the IE games, quests would just break if you killed people. Nobody would acknowledge that the person was dead, etc.

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Biff_the_Understudy

That's different. He'd get summoned if a dead NPC was supposed to appear in some scripted scenario.

I'm talking about, eg, killing an NPC that later turns out be somebody you have to visit in a sidequest. The quest giver tells you to go talk to him, but you can't, because he's dead. Quest broken.

What Lord Andre here doesn't seem to get is that those 2 decades old games were designed for players who generally understood that going on a killing spree would break their game. Those games "supported" killing everybody, but that "support" was quite unsupported.

 

[MRY]

And to clarify a point, it's not attacking whoever you want that's most important, is knowing that you can. A subtle point that everyone seems to be missing.

I totally get this, and yet I don't. Let me try to explain where I'm coming from.

Here are among the things you cannot do in most RPGs:

(1) Enter every building.
(2) Pick up every scenery item.
(3) Broach any topic you can think of with every NPC (or even any NPC).
(4) Recruit every person you meet to join your party.
(5) Inflict non-fatal injuries on people to coerce them.

That's the product of about 180 seconds of thinking. Obviously "kill every NPC" is also on the list. But why should it have primacy over those other things, which, after all, are the kinds of things that a protagonist does much more often than randomly off someone? Maybe the answer is, "You should be able to do all of those too!" But that's never gonna happen, Ultima VII notwithstanding.

 

[hiver]

The only measure is does it fit with the story, no feature should be asked for just because. If its a lawless PA setting then probably yes, if its a dialogue C&C spiritual sequel to PST then not so much- and there were unkillable NPCs in PST. Cryses should cover the most important parts of the story, but these smaller fights might liven up the place and bring some low level location specific C&C. If they use those only where it would make sense it might not look too horrible.

Gotta be some popamole in the game.

 

[Copper]

Not convinced by the truth/lie stuff either, although I did only skim it, will read again. Let's take a shitty example from NWN2. Two NPCs advise you on the pros and cons of approaching militia/thieves guild. Naturally, I approach both - but digging for info with the thieves leads to a quest I don't want that locks out the militia questline. Now, that's obviously Bob's Iguana Shack bad design, but scripting not accounting for fairly basic player motivations has a long and proud cRPG history, so I have reservations.

I'm trying to avoid this on a project of mine, although deception is far more a central theme there - nobody really is who they say they are, everything's a lie to some degree or another, even if only as a reflection of the character's prejudices. I want the player to have the verbal equivalent of 'kill every npc', which is a fundamental divide between words and actions. NPCs track what you say, but they need evidence (or prejudice) to claim falsehood based on your known actions or associations, rather than your specific choices. The player can always say the wrong thing, or act against what they said they would do.

 

[Copper]

The fondness for the "kill anyone" feature is something I've never understood -- did it ever have any role other than lulz or, occasionally, a tie to looting civilian homes/shops? Like I don't recall any game where you could use it to move things in a surprising, meaningful direction. At most it was a way to convert good alignment to gold, which is the classic blah Biowarean choice.

A lot of the time, at least for me, it's about 'I know you're up to no good, but the game wants you to pull off some dramatic betrayal/boring monologue/etc, so I guess I'm stuck with you'. In short, it's about the player wanting to be Indy in THAT scene, and feeling a little bit smug about deflating a hamfisted attempt at drama. (Of course, this is mostly about characters I wish could have been killed.)

I guess some people want the grim-dark immersion factor as well - throw a few fireballs and half the marketplace is dead, not doing their shopping. Not a draw for me, but I can see its place for the right sort of game.

 

[hiver]

I think problems with "killing everyone" come most from games that make you powerful enough to do it, yet try to close that off from you. The games where you easily get OP powers and battle giants and dragons but cant kill some villager. Its really just another way how the great decline affects the cRPG holistic group think from a side, leaving these subconscious dissatisfactions to malinger and fester around.

In games where things are differently presented hardly anyone ever notices because thats simply not the point and feels natural and reasonable.

Besides that, the concept of just killing everyone always seemed like a very poor way to roleplay. It works against the game doesnt it? - well, if you take it to the extreme.

 

[Karellen]

The fondness for the "kill anyone" feature is something I've never understood -- did it ever have any role other than lulz or, occasionally, a tie to looting civilian homes/shops? Like I don't recall any game where you could use it to move things in a surprising, meaningful direction. At most it was a way to convert good alignment to gold, which is the classic blah Biowarean choice.

A lot of the time, at least for me, it's about 'I know you're up to no good, but the game wants you to pull off some dramatic betrayal/boring monologue/etc, so I guess I'm stuck with you'. In short, it's about the player wanting to be Indy in THAT scene, and feeling a little bit smug about deflating a hamfisted attempt at drama. (Of course, this is mostly about characters I wish could have been killed.)

I think the darker side of this impulse is the aversion that players tend to have toward any kind of failure, though. In the structure of a typical single-player RPG, the player doesn't just have agency, but he's the only one that can exercise any agency, and also possesses the almighty power of Save/Reload. Endowed with these powers, the sense of agency that players experience also makes them hypersensitive to failure - since they know they can often avert any defeats or setbacks, a lot of players feel like they should be metagaming any causal systems to progress the story in an optimal way. And if the game tries to goad the player to losing every once in a while for drama's sake, the kneejerk raction can be along the lines of, "you tricked me! How dare you trick me! How dare you! My tears might be flowing like waterfalls now and your jeering laughter is ringing sharp in my ears, but I'll go back in time, and do it right, and this time everything will be different when your defiled corpse lies before my feet and I, yes, I will be the one laughing!"

Basically, the downside of all this agency is that computer RPGs, more than any other genre, foster the attitude that not only should the player win, but he should win all the time. It turns players into sore losers. Of course, having said that, agency is worthless if you can't do anything with it - it makes sense that players feel like they should be able to exercise their judgement and avoid doing things that are obviously stupid and bad ideas. But it's also the sort of attitude that leads some people to be angry because they couldn't pre-emptively take out Kreia in KotOR2 or Anders in DA2, for instance. Ultimately, I think the key thing for narrative-based RPGs is to strive to support reasonable choices, while at the same time dismantling the kind of player hyperagency which incentivises them to metagame for optimal narrative outcomes. Making choices is more interesting if you don't have the superhuman ability to just make everything go perfectly all the time.

 

[FeelTheRads]

but he should win all the time.

What does that have to do with having more options?

But it's also the sort of attitude that leads some people to be angry because they couldn't pre-emptively take out Kreia in KotOR2 or Anders in DA2, for instance.

I don't know what's the case with those but if the game parades someone in your face that you would be able to kill normally but you can't simply because they set the switch to "no kill" in the scripts then that's just dumb shit, it's not a choice and makes nothing interesting.
If they insist on delivering their dramatic moments with characters that need to stay alive then make them in such a way that are logical. Or better yet, just drop the hollywood director wannabee attitude.

Making choices is more interesting if you don't have the superhuman ability to just make everything go perfectly all the time.

None of it is about having everything go perfectly all the time.

 

[Copper]

The fondness for the "kill anyone" feature is something I've never understood -- did it ever have any role other than lulz or, occasionally, a tie to looting civilian homes/shops? Like I don't recall any game where you could use it to move things in a surprising, meaningful direction. At most it was a way to convert good alignment to gold, which is the classic blah Biowarean choice.

A lot of the time, at least for me, it's about 'I know you're up to no good, but the game wants you to pull off some dramatic betrayal/boring monologue/etc, so I guess I'm stuck with you'. In short, it's about the player wanting to be Indy in THAT scene, and feeling a little bit smug about deflating a hamfisted attempt at drama. (Of course, this is mostly about characters I wish could have been killed.)

I think the darker side of this impulse is the aversion that players tend to have toward any kind of failure, though. In the structure of a typical single-player RPG, the player doesn't just have agency, but he's the only one that can exercise any agency, and also possesses the almighty power of Save/Reload. Endowed with these powers, the sense of agency that players experience also makes them hypersensitive to failure - since they know they can often avert any defeats or setbacks, a lot of players feel like they should be metagaming any causal systems to progress the story in an optimal way. And if the game tries to goad the player to losing every once in a while for drama's sake, the kneejerk raction can be along the lines of, "you tricked me! How dare you trick me! How dare you! My tears might be flowing like waterfalls now and your jeering laughter is ringing sharp in my ears, but I'll go back in time, and do it right, and this time everything will be different when your defiled corpse lies before my feet and I, yes, I will be the one laughing!"

Basically, the downside of all this agency is that computer RPGs, more than any other genre, foster the attitude that not only should the player win, but he should win all the time. It turns players into sore losers. Of course, having said that, agency is worthless if you can't do anything with it - it makes sense that players feel like they should be able to exercise their judgement and avoid doing things that are obviously stupid and bad ideas. But it's also the sort of attitude that leads some people to be angry because they couldn't pre-emptively take out Kreia in KotOR2 or Anders in DA2, for instance. Ultimately, I think the key thing for narrative-based RPGs is to strive to support reasonable choices, while at the same time dismantling the kind of player hyperagency which incentivises them to metagame for optimal narrative outcomes. Making choices is more interesting if you don't have the superhuman ability to just make everything go perfectly all the time.

Well, that sounds very true, but also inevitable. The point of a game is normally to win, to master the system, and learn something by doing it. Losing is only fun because it makes victory taste sweeter.

To reduce it down, it's an issue of incentives - if you want to tell the story of a protagonist who fails, you need to give the actor (player) some reason to buy into that story, ideally beyond 'press x to continue'. In my opinion one of ther worst offenders I've played here was Dreamfall - The character is depressed and mopey, but the player is supposed to be active and exploring, so I didn't give a damn about Zoe as a character - she was an obstacle to enjoying the game, not enjoyable content herself. Some people liked her though, so this isn't a hard rule. A good example of these sorts of incentives is probably Mask of the Betrayer - I took a hard neutral stance in Mask of the Betrayer, because both sides seemed like bell ends to me, and ended up fighting the Crusade, which seemed like a tragic waste to me, but they turned on me when I refused to become their messiah, so fuck em. You could see the appeal of the evil option there though, tempting you - not strictly failure, in the game over sense, but moral failure nonetheless (Going jihad on the Afterlife also seems like a moral failure in the context though, but maybe I'm just neutral to the bone.)

 

[DraQ]

The fondness for the "kill anyone" feature is something I've never understood -- did it ever have any role other than lulz or, occasionally, a tie to looting civilian homes/shops? Like I don't recall any game where you could use it to move things in a surprising, meaningful direction. At most it was a way to convert good alignment to gold, which is the classic blah Biowarean choice.

At the very least it's a decent indicator of the game not being a scripted rollercoaster.

 

[Bubbles]

The fondness for the "kill anyone" feature is something I've never understood -- did it ever have any role other than lulz or, occasionally, a tie to looting civilian homes/shops? Like I don't recall any game where you could use it to move things in a surprising, meaningful direction.

Arcanum.

 

[Infinitron]

http://tormentrpg.tumblr.com/post/110928208095/at-a-round-table-discussion-with-some-of-the

At a round table discussion with some of the Torment writing team. - Jason Dora

 

[Sensuki]

waiting Zed's photoshop ...

 

[polo]

Im expecting something awesome for the background statue.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

And to clarify a point, it's not attacking whoever you want that's most important, is knowing that you can. A subtle point that everyone seems to be missing.

I totally get this, and yet I don't. Let me try to explain where I'm coming from.

Here are among the things you cannot do in most RPGs:

(1) Enter every building.
(2) Pick up every scenery item.
(3) Broach any topic you can think of with every NPC (or even any NPC).
(4) Recruit every person you meet to join your party.
(5) Inflict non-fatal injuries on people to coerce them.

That's the product of about 180 seconds of thinking. Obviously "kill every NPC" is also on the list. But why should it have primacy over those other things, which, after all, are the kinds of things that a protagonist does much more often than randomly off someone? Maybe the answer is, "You should be able to do all of those too!" But that's never gonna happen, Ultima VII notwithstanding.

Because we are bloodthirsty savages, only on the surface pretending to be nice people. Slaying villages is fun! Seeing civilians desperately trying to run away, children crying over corpses of their mothers. Seeing a fear in their eyes before you chop their faces of! Thats what I call a good way of spending my free time!