Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Prime Junta]

Prime Junta review is pretty spot on; but I feel you have been unfair to Mark Morgan.

What made good the OST of PST was that it melted perfectly with the companions and the story (let's not forget every companion or pivotal NPC had his own theme, that also played when you talked with them).

What would you think about PST OST without the story hearing it for the first time? Pretty much what you think of it with TTON.

I don't think the fault is Morgan's. The failure is in the games for failing to make anything of what he composed.

 

[Roguey]

The problem with Morgan is that he ran out of ideas to plagiarize and recycle.

 

[Lacrymas]

Why is mystery so important to weird? I just described a lot of weird things, but none of them mysterious. Incoherent doesn't mean mysterious.

 

[Prime Junta]

Why is mystery so important to weird? I just descried a lot of weird things, but none of them mysterious. Incoherent doesn't mean mysterious.

Incoherent doesn't mean weird either.

I do think that mystery is important to weird. Once you reveal the mystery, the weird loses a lot of its edge.

 

[DeepOcean]

Numenera is worldbuilding for people who don't like worldbuilding, and just want a big ol' sandbox where they can put whatever the hell they like. The beellion years thing with all that it implies is just a means to an end; a convenient excuse to provide that.

It's pretty clear that this is the focus for Monte Cook Games. Their next one, The Strange, takes this a step further. In it, the idea is that secondary worlds called Recursions more or less spontaneously appear, and players can shift in and out of them, becoming a version of themselves fitting each Recursion. Meaning, absolutely anything goes, even more so than in Numenera. The recursions described in the base materials includes boringworld (this), one that happened when something like World of Warcraft became a recursion, and one really old vaguely Cthulhoid sci-fi-horror one.

I can see how you could have fun with that. It's also not at all what I want from worldbuilding.

Yep, that sort of shit may work if you have a good DM and is inventing some crazy story of your own with a few other people but it is not a CRPG material, I don't trust game developers that mostly only have a few years and need to worry about a ton of stuff to make complex worldbuilding on this short time.

PoE suffered from this too with Obsidian trying to create a whole world mythos when they didn't have time and resources for this, especially time for working on each aspect of the setting over and over. The result was that even DnD has a much more developed setting just by the virtue of years of iteration and multiple writers working on it over decades, son, you can't beat that shit.

Fargo did a marketing stunt by using Numenera but Numenera isn't a much more developed setting than the PoE one, and as you said, prone to convenient space magic. It is actually worse than the PoE setting, because the PoE world is a facsimile of Forgotten Realms, a kinda cynical atheist moral post modern relativist take on DnD but still a copy. So you still have some tropes that are relatable like barbarian tribes, colonization, ancient uber powerful atlantean civilization, polytheistic religion.

NumaNuma doesn't even have some basis of rules. A good writer would just take that opportunity and do what Fallout 1 or Gothic 1 did, fuck anything outside this little place here, wanna know what happens out of southern California? Well, you will have to wait the next games son. Wanna know how the world is outside the prison? You will have to wait Gothic 2 son.

I was really shocked to notice that when you finish Sagus Cliffs, you barely get to know it, it had no tangible story beyond some vague concepts and to make matters worse, they decide that without even developing the meat of the game to have you talking with characters that speak of all those other crazy vague planes shit. Sigil on Planescape Torment however...

 

[Rostere]

Beat the game in 16 hours (fast-forwarded through most dialogues) with a diplomatic character and Matkina, Rhis & Erritis.

The game is thoroughly mediocre in every aspect - graphics, mechanics, story, combat, amount of content, themes, music, pacing, characters and so on.

Enjoyable but unremarkable - 7/10.

Way to be a colossal fag, you fucking idiot.

In a game focused on writing, you skip reading most dialogue?

That's like saying you played Starcraft, only to skip all actual gameplay by cheating. You are missing the entire point of the game.

 

[an Administrator]

Ludo Lense nailed!

"[Rhin] She's actually one of the reasons i play the game to the end"

 

[mastroego]

Way to be a colossal fag, you fucking idiot.

In a game focused on writing, you skip reading most dialogue?

That's like saying you played Starcraft, only to skip all actual gameplay by cheating. You are missing the entire point of the game.

Actually, it would be like playing Starcraft without wasting a single thought about strategy, and winning anyway.
So...

 

[Rostere]

Actually, it would be like playing Starcraft without wasting a single thought about strategy, and winning anyway.
So...

No. In Starcraft, the main selling point is RTS gameplay. In Torment, the main selling point is writing. The writing is not a gameplay element, so it is indeed fully possible to "win" without ever reading anything other than rudimentary quest information, like in exactly any other RPG.

He skipped the writing, yet feels entitled to give his opinion on the game. That is like giving your opinion about Starcraft, without having experienced its RTS gameplay, which is the main selling point of that game.

 

[Karellen]

Numenera is worldbuilding for people who don't like worldbuilding, and just want a big ol' sandbox where they can put whatever the hell they like. The beellion years thing with all that it implies is just a means to an end; a convenient excuse to provide that.

It's pretty clear that this is the focus for Monte Cook Games. Their next one, The Strange, takes this a step further. In it, the idea is that secondary worlds called Recursions more or less spontaneously appear, and players can shift in and out of them, becoming a version of themselves fitting each Recursion. Meaning, absolutely anything goes, even more so than in Numenera. The recursions described in the base materials includes boringworld (this), one that happened when something like World of Warcraft became a recursion, and one really old vaguely Cthulhoid sci-fi-horror one.

I can see how you could have fun with that. It's also not at all what I want from worldbuilding.

Yep, that sort of shit may work if you have a good DM and is inventing some crazy story of your own with a few other people but it is not a CRPG material, I don't trust game developers that mostly only have a few years and need to worry about a ton of stuff to make complex worldbuilding on this short time.

Yeah, this kind of thing isn't necessarily a bad thing for a PnP RPG - it can be a good thing that the game master has the opportunity to throw in all kinds of material to expand the campaign without having to worry about consistency. A Star Trek game (just for an example) could present a new, weird alien race on every new planet you're boldly going to, and in so doing, achieve the sort of episodic feel that the actual TV show has. The problem with Numenera (in my opinion) is that there's no meaningful thematic nucleus to tie the disparate elements together. A Star Trek game, to continue with the example, can introduce any manner of new stuff, but the unifying element is the Federation and their stance towards new life and new civilizations and so on, and how the episode of the day tests that. A thematic conceit, in other words. There is no such thing to be found in Numenera; you run into weird things, but the game and its fiction offer nothing meaningful to do with them except to nod, say "yup, that be weird" and proceed to the next weird thing. The problem with this sort of approach should be apparent in T:ToN, which overflows with weird things that are very hard to care about because they're just there.

 

[hexer]

The problem with Morgan is that he ran out of ideas to plagiarize and recycle.

Clean version.
I don't mind he recycled some PST vibes there... one can never get enough of Planescapey music.
Love it!

 

[rado907]

Beat the game in 16 hours (fast-forwarded through most dialogues) with a diplomatic character and Matkina, Rhis & Erritis.

The game is thoroughly mediocre in every aspect - graphics, mechanics, story, combat, amount of content, themes, music, pacing, characters and so on.

Enjoyable but unremarkable - 7/10.

Way to be a colossal fag, you fucking idiot.

In a game focused on writing, you skip reading most dialogue?

That's like saying you played Starcraft, only to skip all actual gameplay by cheating. You are missing the entire point of the game.

Lol, relax, kid. Infodumps are neither the highest form of literature nor the highest form of gameplay.

Your simile doesn't work but thankfully I am here to help. I'm willing to accept that playing Numenera without reading the infodumps is like playing Max Payne 3 without watching the cutscenes. Sure - one can play Max Payne 3 on lowest difficulty and treat the game like a movie. Or one can play the game on max difficulty and treat it like a shooter. Either works.

Hence, feel free to have your immersive intellectual fantasyland experience or whatever you are going for. I, on the other hand, had a pleasant romp through a mediocre RPG with decent graphics, serviceable mechanics, and some rather dull combat encounters. Enjoyed the novelty, got the gist, on to the next thing.

 

[Tigranes]

"I, on the other hand, had a pleasant romp through a mediocre RPG with decent graphics, serviceable mechanics, and some rather dull combat encounters."

It sounds like you'd also enjoy Oblivion

 

[Zero Credibility]

As I try to force myself to continue playing this game I realize - what I really wanted was Planescape: SomethingNew, not Torment: YouWontBelieveIt'sNotPlanescape. A great setting is a large part of what made PS:T work, replace it with this new weirdness for weirdness sake place and you have problems. This was never going to work, you can't just make a sequel to PS:T without anything that was in the original. A question for those that finished this game - why is it even called Torment: Tides of Whatever? Who is tormented in this game and why? Besides the player that is.

 

[an Administrator]

Who is tormented in this game and why? Besides the player that is.

Spoiler

At the ending sequence, Sorrow says that castoffs' existence torments people around them.

 

[Prime Junta]

Who is tormented in this game and why? Besides the player that is.

Spoiler

At the ending sequence, Sorrow says that castoffs' existence torments people around them.

Yeah.

That was actually supposed to be one of the major twists in the whole thing with the Tides. Too bad it's only lightly referenced in sidequest early on in the game, and it has no mechanical effects whatsoever, AFAICT anyway.

 

[Luckmann]

In fact if I remember correctly the GM is encouraged to NOT explain them.

Yeah, no, maybe. All they have firmly stated is that they're not going to explain them. The closest they come to this is in the GM section, "Realizing the Ninth World." From pages 354-355:

Describe, Don't Define

Because mystery is so important to weird, the Ninth World is never about strict definitions or concrete quantifications. "Describe, don't define" might be the number one rule. It not only leaves room for further development later, but it also keeps things mysterious and weird, and that's the most important characteristic of the setting.

Actually, perhaps the rule should be, "Describe rather than define, and if you msut define, never quantify." In other words, when talking about abhumans, I might describe them as "misshapen, brutish humanoids that live outside human society." However, you might have to distinguish (define) them from mutants at some point during a game, because in the Ninth World "mutant" means something different (some abhumans might be mutants, but not all mutants are abhumans ... but I digress). I would never say, "There are six types of abhumans, and they are..."

That kind of quantification is the death of mystery.
​

Make of it what you will.

(What, me? I think those are good general rules in communicating a setting to players. It doesn't mean you haven't figured it out for yourself though. And while I understand the reasoning, this is the main reason Numenera leaves me cold while I loved Planescape to death. I do want to know, so I can riff on it and fill in the gaps.)

I think the problem here is that, just like in Tides of Numenera, the writers actually have no fucking clue what the answers actually are. Like, I think it's actually good to have gaps that can be filled by imagination or speculated upon, but I think it's very important that the writers themselves have a firm grasp on what the actual answers actually are, how it all fits together, in order to be able to be evasive in a believable fashion, and consistently hinting towards various themes and ideas in a manner that makes sense - because they know the answers, the subtle hints and tangentially related events or exposés are always relevant, because somehow, it's all intended to tie together. And if, by chance, the writers and creative directors don't know these answers, they need to work twice as hard to pretend that they actually do, constantly double-checking facts and hints and fluff.

In Numenera, though? I don't think Monte Cook has any fucking clue when or where humans actually appeared in the Ninth World, or what the previous 8 worlds actually were. It's created not as a mystery to be discovered or alluded to, but as an excuse for "lol whatever" world-building. And I think that this is also a problem with Tides of Numenera. If Avellone is to be believed, he actually has no clue what The Nameless One's crime actually was, but at the same time, it's almost inconceivable that he wouldn't, based on the nature of Planescape: Torment, and how you can actually create an extremely consistent narrative of the previous incarnations, who followed who, who did what and when, and so on. We know that the Paranoid incarnation followed the Practical one, and so on.

Can the same be said about Tides of Numenera? No. There's the idea of the castoffs, but it merely serves as an excuse for throwaway narratives that are unconnected to the grand scope of things, despite what the game leads you to believe in the beginning (with the references to three distinct "incarnations" that subsequently became cast off, thousands of years ago, a couple of years ago, and just recently (which may or may not be you). Occasionally, you even seem to suffer "flashbacks" to other castoffs.. after they've been castoff, but it's never explained, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just an event, not a chain of causality that is supposed to make sense if only you had all the pieces.

It's just a lose piece here, a lose piece there, and for all intents and purposes, they're not connected whatsoever. Saying "each mystery just leads to more mysteries after resolving it" is fine, as long as you get to uncover mysteries that spur you on. Just saying "it's mysterious for the sake of mystery and should never - will never - be explained" is lazy as shit. It's like saying "a wizard did it, lol" or "nanobots, lol". It's like when that fat fuck in Game of Thrones responds to the question "How can Samwell Tarly still be fat?" with "The show has dragons, lol, why does anything have to make sense?" and it just makes me want to punch the actor's face in with a tire iron.

Beat the game in 16 hours (fast-forwarded through most dialogues) with a diplomatic character and Matkina, Rhis & Erritis.

The game is thoroughly mediocre in every aspect - graphics, mechanics, story, combat, amount of content, themes, music, pacing, characters and so on.

Enjoyable but unremarkable - 7/10.

"This game is entirely mediocre".
"7/10"

People like you should be put into gulags, and if commies went to election on that promise I'd actually vote for them.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

^ Someone rated that wall of text post agree within 10 seconds of it going live...

 

[Luckmann]

^ Someone rated that wall of text post agree within 10 seconds of it going live...

Always a dangerous gamble with my posts, since I almost always edit them afterward. It's a bold move. Let's see if it pans out.

 

[Prime Junta]

^ Someone rated that wall of text post agree within 10 seconds of it going live...

I read fast.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Yeah, the edit [the entire second quote and your response] was added after the agree :D

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah, the edit [the entire second quote and your response] was added after the agree :D

Well I agree with that too. I'm sure you'll have plenty to talk about in the gulag, Luckmann and rado907.

 

[Ivan]

now that we know that game is "alright" why are people still teething on its dick? i don't expect anyone here is REALLY gonna try the "ammended addition"

I liked Rhin and Erritis, but the game needed the companions to chime in on the maps, on NPCs a whole lot more to give them life. all in all, TTOM =

 

[Lacrymas]

It's far from "alright" though. Very far.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Ivan thinks it's alright so he's assumed the mantle of the codex consensus all by himself, like the good terrible he is.