Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[HeatEXTEND]

"""""roleplaying"""""

 

[Roguey]

This is an incredibly disappointing box. It's just black with no art other than the title and a tide thing on the back. It's about as big as a classic PC box but all it has inside is the disc in a cardboard sleeve and an instruction manual (which uses high quality glossy paper to its credit, though at 40 pages it skimps on details). They might as well have sent a keepcase.

The foreword by McCuck is worth a laugh, particularly the one sentence.

Back in 1999, I was honored to be part of the team that delivered Planescape: Torment, a game that PC Gamer magazine called the best RPG of all time. It was a philosophical game that asked its players, “What can change the nature of a man?” For years, people have been asking for a follow-up, and for years... nothing. But in 2012, inXile CEO Brian Fargo asked me to help him make it a reality. The idea of writing a companion game to one of the most adored RPGs of all time was daunting, if I may understate the case. But after a bit of frantic soul-searching, I agreed. We assembled our initial team and started planning our Kickstarter. We went live in March 2013, asking initially for $900,000. We honestly weren’t sure we’d even make that goal. So it came as a bit of a surprise to us when we reached that in a mere six hours, and wound up becoming the most-funded videogame in history at that point.


We’ve never wanted to take PST’s place, nor to create a cookie-cutter experience that mimicked the exact flow of the original. We just wanted to create a worthy successor. So how did we go about that? Well.

We replayed the game, analyzed what made it so effective, and used that analysis to create the pillars on which we rested our vision of a Torment game. First, we needed to set it in a world unlike any other, and fortunately our pal Monte Cook happened to have launched his own successful Kickstarter a short time before ours - his amazing Numenera setting. Second, our goal has always been to create another thoughtful game with a deep, thematically engaging narrative. We didn’t want to write a “save the world, save the princess” story – a Torment story must be deeply personal, and while it can certainly scale epic heights, it must always, always remain focused on the personal experience of the protagonist. Third, we wanted to make sure that the choices in the game mattered. That’s a core tenet of inXile’s design philosophy, too – that the world must react to your choices, to change with your decisions, and that the consequences will be more than merely cosmetic. We wanted to create an experience that is different on every playthrough.

So if anyone asks you, here’s what you can tell them. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single player, story-driven, sci-fi/fantasy game set on Earth, one billion years in the future. You should definitely emphasize those last words for maximum effect.

We hope we’ve succeeded in our goals. We think it’s a really neat game. We hope you will too. And if you do, you should thank the Kickstarter backers who made all this a possibility, and then a reality.

I’m confident that I can speak for everyone at inXile when I say this: Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. We truly appreciate the chance to make this game for you.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

The artwork book tells the story of how 1/3 of the game is missing from the final product and remains a testament to that fact with the artwork from the initial Kickstarter.

 

[Haba]

I haven't even opened my box. I'd sell it off at eBay, but nobody seems to be buying them.

Also; how fucking retarded you have to be to make EVERY GOD DAMN COLLECTORS EDITION HAVE DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS?

I have my classic RPG boxes all neatly lined up with their beautiful box art at display and then I have those monster-sized abortions that look like shit and don't even fit the shelf.

Only KS that did it correctly is Larian.

 

[FeelTheRads]

and used that analysis to create the pillars on which we rested our vision of a Torment game

Now we know who wrote all that unreadable wankery in this game.

 

[ArchAngel]

Ok now that freezes during crisis were fixed I went back to play one of the crisis again (one you do for the Order of Truth), it was long and kind of boring.

Spoiler

I did it with stealth using the kid while the rest of the team fought peerless that did nothing until a stealthed girl walked by and then they decided to attack the rest. So fucking stupid.
At least there was a bit of challenge to it as I only had one healing item and peerless attacks didn't miss even once even with both my "tanks" having both evasions high (30 to 40%)

 

[imweasel]

We replayed the game, analyzed what made it so effective, and used that analysis to create the pillars on which we rested our vision of a Torment game.

Funny, after playing this game I was absolutely certain that the developers had never played Planescape: Torment...

 

[Lord Andre]

We replayed the game, analyzed what made it so effective, and used that analysis to create the pillars on which we rested our vision of a Torment game.

Funny, after playing this game I was absolutely certain that the developers had never played Planescape: Torment...

I'm going to own up to the embarrassing truth, I don't care. When I first played Torment I was young. The high school level philosophy in the game was brilliant to me. For an year afterwards I thought I could derive real life lessons from the circle of Zethrimon. And I bet you that's why everyone loved it. But it's high school level philosophy... Fuck you, it's actually first college year philosophy and it's written well as fuck. That's it.

By comparison nuTorment has none of that and the lines you unlock by spending intellect are allmost on the level of Fallout 3 persuasion checks.

What these retards today don't seem to understand is that it's not the word count that set PST apart, it was the quality of what was written.

Here, Exhibit A, the best written paragraph in video game history, bar none:

And suddenly, through the torrent of regrets, you feel the first incarnation again. His hand, invisible and weightless, is upon your shoulder, steadying you. He doesn't speak, but with his touch, you suddenly remember your name... and it is such a simple thing, not at all what you thought it might be, and you feel yourself suddenly comforted. In knowing your name, your true name, you know that you have gained back perhaps the most important part of yourself. In knowing your name, you know yourself, and you know, now, there is very little you cannot do.

And there are dozens of paragraphs like that in PST, the game is infinitely quotable.

Compare the end dialogue with the Transcendent one with the fiasco dialogue at nuTorment's end.

There is no quotable paragraph in nuTorment, not one memorable thing written in the whole game. These faggots didn't play PST, they didn't even read the quotes page on wikipedia. Fuck'em, I'm glad the game flopped, fuck these low effort pieces of shit. This game would've been considered shovelware 20 years ago.

 

[Prime Junta]

Jesus, reading that quoted paragraph gave me the shivers. Again.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I don't understand how can he lie about playing PST for TTON when it was obviously he was just playing it after a long time when he did those Twitch streams AFTER TTON was done.

 

[Zed]

Anyone got sales numbers for this heap yet?

 

[Prime Junta]

http://steamspy.com/app/272270

Considering that there were 74k Kickstarter backers and a fair bunch of slackers, that's... not great. As in, no-good. Bad. Terrible.

Edit: also, the review score is still dropping, now at 66% positive. Ai yi yi...

 

[imweasel]

Considering that there were 74k Kickstarter backers and a fair bunch of slackers, that's... not great. As in, no-good. Bad. Terrible.

So they sold something like 42 thousand copies on Steam. I estimate that is somewhere around 1 million dollars in revenue.... Inxile will probably still make money on this game, just not very much.

Any solid info on console sales yet?

What these retards today don't seem to understand is that it's not the word count that set PST apart, it was the quality of what was written.

Indeed. While playing I consistently had the feeling that the game just has a lot of dialogue simply for the sake of having a lot of dialogue. It also almost seems like the devs were afraid of editing it, because a spiritual successor to PST must allegedly have a lot of text and writing quality is only second-rate.

 

[Luckmann]

http://steamspy.com/app/272270

Considering that there were 74k Kickstarter backers and a fair bunch of slackers, that's... not great. As in, no-good. Bad. Terrible.

Edit: also, the review score is still dropping, now at 66% positive. Ai yi yi...

I've also noticed that you can no longer see the number of people in-game on the Steam Community Hub for Tides of Numenera. About a weeks or two ago, I compared the Community Hub for Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity, and was going to make a post about it, but I never did. There were several hundreds more listed for Pillars of Eternity, despite it being shortly after release for Tides of Numenera, and literally years later for Pillars of Eternity. And now they've even turned it off, so that people can't make the comparison in order to gauge the number of active players.

Yes, popularity does not equate to quality, but it was pretty damning.

Edit: As for the review score dropping, so much for the conspiracy theory that it was the RPG Codex (I swear, the weight of public opinion some people attribute this wonderful cesspit is astonishing) pulling down the numbers and trashing the game out of spite (for some reason).

 

[Lurker King]

Two thoughts crossed my mind. That Bubbles and Kevin Saunders must be laughing their asses off over this mess, and that people can be successful for years even when they are completely clueless. Cleve’s comments about the Sirotek brothers reminded me of Brian Fargo.

 

[Sherry]

http://steamspy.com/app/272270

Considering that there were 74k Kickstarter backers and a fair bunch of slackers, that's... not great. As in, no-good. Bad. Terrible.

Edit: also, the review score is still dropping, now at 66% positive. Ai yi yi...

I've also noticed that you can no longer see the number of people in-game on the Steam Community Hub for Tides of Numenera. About a weeks or two ago, I compared the Community Hub for Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity, and was going to make a post about it, but I never did. There were several hundreds more listed for Pillars of Eternity, despite it being shortly after release for Tides of Numenera, and literally years later for Pillars of Eternity. And now they've even turned it off, so that people can't make the comparison in order to gauge the number of active players.

Yes, popularity does not equate to quality, but it was pretty damning.

Edit: As for the review score dropping, so much for the conspiracy theory that it was the RPG Codex (I swear, the weight of public opinion some people attribute this wonderful cesspit is astonishing) pulling down the numbers and trashing the game out of spite (for some reason).

Hi.

Luckmann hello it is nice to meet you although I have seen you posting this is our first conversation. I just wanted to help because I know how well Pillars has sold and there are lots of people still playing it or replaying to get their end-game save ready for Deadfire because the choices you make in Pillars will follow you into Deadfire but you mentioned the Steam people not showing anymore right? Is this what you are talking about because if it is the links for Pillars and Numenera are below I just pasted them for you.

Pillars players - http://steamcharts.com/app/291650#3m
Numenera players - http://steamcharts.com/app/272270#3m

And here is a side by side comparison of Pillars and Numenera and it is no surprise that Pillars continues to come up on top for 7 days or 48hrs or even 3 months!

http://steamcharts.com/cmp/272270,291650#7d



Thanks,
Sherry

 

[Prime Junta]

So they sold something like 42 thousand copies on Steam. I estimate that is somewhere around 1 million dollars in revenue.... Inxile will probably still make money on this game, just not very much.

Won't add up if they've been telling the truth about the "millions" of their own money they've supposedly put into it.

 

[Prime Junta]

Sherry good find with those charts. The story they're telling is pretty dismal for T:ToN and much better for Pillars than I thought -- I expected the current numbers are related to the P2 campaign but it looks like people have been playing it pretty steadily all along.

 

[Infinitron]

Game seems like a failure, but don't hold your breath for a bankruptcy. Siege of Dragonspear must have sold even worse and that didn't kill Beamdog. And they didn't have a warchest of two additional crowdfunding campaigns either. As I said, like a certain RPG protagonist, small game studios can be surprisingly resilient.

 

[Prime Junta]

I'm not hoping for bankruptcy. I'm hoping they see the error of their ways and start making the kind of games they keep promising.

(Besides which Fargo could just sell off some of the gold leaf on his furniture.)

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I'm not hoping for bankruptcy. I'm hoping they see the error of their ways and start making the kind of games they keep promising.

That's some Dumbfuck grade optimism, even for a pinko commie that believes in an eventual Utopia via communism.

 

[Lurker King]

Game seems like a failure, but don't hold your breath for a bankruptcy. Siege of Dragonspear must have sold even worse and that didn't kill Beamdog. And they didn't have a warchest of two additional crowdfunding campaigns either. As I said, like a certain RPG protagonist, small game studios can be surprisingly resilient.

Even if SoD sold poorly, it didn’t eat their profits, because it wasn’t an expansive game and BG(EE)1&2 together sold more than 1 million copies. W2 sold more than 600k, which is not bad, especially considering the ridiculous price tag and the fast development cycle. On the other hand, discussions about bankruptcy are pointless because we don’t know their payroll, etc. InXile doesn't inspire any confidence because they are making a bunch of games at once.

 

[Junmarko]

 

[Luckmann]

So they sold something like 42 thousand copies on Steam. I estimate that is somewhere around 1 million dollars in revenue.... Inxile will probably still make money on this game, just not very much.

Won't add up if they've been telling the truth about the "millions" of their own money they've supposedly put into it.

Well either they've been telling the truth, meaning that the state of the game is even more unforgivable as it's been in development for over 4 years and with a budget of at least 7 millions, or they're lying piece of shit that not only lied about giving the game additional funding, but also likely diverted funds to other projects, thinking they'd make up the difference by means of new kickstarters.

Either way, it doesn't paint a very flattering picture of inXile and Times of the Nu-Men Era, does it?

 

[Lurker King]

they're lying piece of shit that not only lied about giving the game additional funding, but also likely diverted funds to other projects, thinking they'd make up the difference by means of new kickstarters.

That is more likely. They are more dishonest than incompetent.