Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[DeepOcean]

Didn't Hong Kong also suffer from purple prose and random NPCs giving you their life stories the moment you met them?

Yes, it does suffer a bit from that but how do you make a Torment game where both the characters and NPCs have less dialog interaction and are less expressive than a game with 1/4 of your budget? What I'm curious about is that some people tried defending this game as if it was unfair to compare it to the original but even compared with other kickstarter games, it disappointing. And it isn't the case that Torment is that much bigger game for someone to claim that the lack of quality was because of quantity.

 

[Luckmann]

Even for kickstarter standards this game is light on content. Hong Kong, Dragonfall, Divinity, PoE and even Inxile previous game, Wasteland 2 had more content than this and if you think about it, most of the time you will spend reading, meaning that the amount of actual content beyond reading lore dumps is pretty small. Fuck, even the characters on both shadowrun games were more expressive and you had more extensive dialog with them including whole personal quests.

You had more interactions with the NPCs on Hong Kong than you will ever get on every single NPC on NumaNuma. Your storyfag game has more limited character interactions and barely developed characters than even a game about shooting dudes in the face on missions? Wow, I would be fascinated to see a post mortem and get to know the kind of BS that destroyed this game.

Wow, I didn't think about this. But the party members in SR games are really much more lively and interesting.

As evidenced by the fact that Shadowrun: Hong Kong made me want to pork an asian orc rat-shaman.

What or who did Tides of Numenera make me want to pork? Nobody, that's who.

Spoiler

Not even Rhin.

 

[Prime Junta]

Relax Luckmann, the Oom DLC is on the way.

 

[MRY]

This feels like a composite of various Codex posts: https://www.senscritique.com/jeuvideo/Torment_Tides_of_Numenera/critique/126859307 Did one of you guys write it, or is there a stealth member? (I like what he has to say about Inifere and the whale mere, that's for sure!)

I thought this line was pretty funny:

dans TToN, vous ne lirez jamais un banal « Il fait sombre » ». Ce sera plutôt : « Vous êtes aveuglé par l’obscurité de cet endroit que la lumière semble ne jamais avoir touché, comme si un gouffre s’apprêtait à vous aspirer dans ses entrailles anthracites. »

In TToN, you'll never read a banal "It is dark." Instead, it will be: "You are blinded by the darkness of this place, which the light seems never to have touched, as if an abyss were about to suck you into its anthracite entrails."

"Anthracite entrails" is for sure going into my TTON glossary.

(And yes, I did have such a list of words I encountered "in the wild" that I thought would be nice to throw in to a particularly over-the-top character, like paresis, stope, anastomoses, chelation.... I never really had a character that gave full opportunity to such splendiferousness*, though.)

(* By the way, it's beyond awesome that "splendiferous" was not actually a Lucius Sweet neologism, but a real word with venerable roots.)

 

[DeepOcean]

Relax Luckmann, the Oom DLC is on the way.

If you tell it to become a ladyboy, at least you can claim it was just a nanite toy.

 

[Prime Junta]

This feels like a composite of various Codex posts

Fuck that, it feels more like a digest of my review.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

inXile are made up of interns with no clue on how to develop a game.

 

[Roguey]

Why would anyone say a thing like after Tides of Numenera was released? You released an $8 million visual novel.

 

[passerby]

For example rushing to release new content for a game that is already dead sales wise, you would think that grizzled veterans should knew better...

They should save Ooom, voluminous codex and few cut areas with already finished renders, for enchanced edition. Make few decent portraits for some major characters.
Make some gameplay improvements, for examle I'd make a Strength, Speed and Intelligence pools replenishable by consumables of limited supply, instead of resting.
So you would have to carefully choose when to spend effort, and be actually forced to live with consequnces of failed checks, that supposedly have some cool reactivity in this game.
You could figure out few more such overhauls to the systems that wouldn't require much work.

Then release EE with a new steam ID, free for existing customers.
It'd get at least "mostly positive" rating, with at least some positive review on the first page, plus some publicity related to EE release and several tens of tousands units could be moved over time at respectable price, to break even at least.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

Why would anyone say a thing like after Tides of Numenera was released? You released an $8 million visual novel.

He probably never even played it, tbh.

 

[Iznaliu]

It'd get at least "mostly positive" rating, with at least some positive review on the first page, plus some publicity related to EE release and several tens of tousands units could be moved over time at respectable price, to break even at least.

That is simply too much work for Fargo.

 

[Mynon]

Some people are blaming your forum and "culture war" for this game's poor reception on steam
http://steamcommunity.com/app/272270/discussions/0/133258593395684693/?ctp=7#c1326718197214958341

 

[Iznaliu]

Some people are blaming your forum and "culture war" for this game's poor reception on steam
http://steamcommunity.com/app/272270/discussions/0/133258593395684693/?ctp=7#c1326718197214958341

The worst part about it is that when other people read those people and believe what they say, they say "Fallout 4 is totally an advance in RPG design over the old clunky behemoths"

 

[HeatEXTEND]

people read those people and believe what they say, they say "Fallout 4 is totally an advance in RPG design over the old clunky behemoths"

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/trigger-the-codex-with-a-statement.112015/

 

[Redshirt #42]

I finally finished the game yesterday. I played it right after release up to Valley of Dead Heroes, then forgot about it for two months and picked it up again on Friday.

It's quite amazing how completely on point Darth Roxor's pre-release review was. I really didn't want to believe in it but it's all true. Almost all the interesting bits of writing were hidden in minor characters. The main story was completely devoid of positive surprises. The way they tried to follow the "pattern" of PST's story felt forced. The companions ranged from unbearable to bland. The only tolerable one was Rhin and the only genuinely good and amusing one was Erritis, so I certainly had no issue with the fact that you can't have more than three of them in your party. The crisis system makes PST's perfectly serviceable but oft complained about combat system look stellar in comparison. Finally, even though The Bloom was certainly interesting, overall, TTON made me want to avoid the Numenera setting like the plague. Since I felt it was the most appropriate one for the general theme surrounding the game, I went with the

Spoiler

"Let's all become a woman! She's a girl so she's innocent, mmkay." - ending.

All things considered, I'd say that inXile tried too hard to make (what they thought is) "a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment" instead of a genuinely good RPG inspired by PST's principles. Watching Matt Chat interviews with MCA and Guido Henkel really makes you realize what a great and genuine team effort PST was, whereas in TTON's case it seems like they were completely dominated by certain divas and "grizzled veterans" on their team, whom none dared to challenge (or at least they weren't challenged enough). If TTON were a cheap indie game made by a small studio of people new to the industry, it would perhaps be "good for what it is". But as it stands, I can't see how TTON is anything but a failure that did more harm to the genre than good.

 

[Prime Junta]

whereas in TTON's case it seems like they were completely dominated by certain divas and "grizzled veterans" on their team

Funny, my impression is the opposite. PS:T had a clear, single, unified creative vision and the whole team was pulling towards that; T:ToN is like an anthology of short stories written vaguely around a common theme. Some of those short stories are pretty good (MRY's, Chris Avellone's, and Pat Rothfuss's contributions for example), others are frankly bad, yet others are somewhere in-between, but they fail to cohere into anything interesting.

I.e. PS:T smells like an auteur's work, whereas T:ToN smells like a collaboration by volunteers.

 

[Infinitron]

Yep, lol at describing PS:T as a non-"completely dominated" project.

Common phenomenon: Somebody comes up with a political/social theory of something (in this case, "pretentious hipster auteurs are ruining gaming, things were better when games were made by egalitarian teams of humble, unassuming nerds") and tries to make reality match it.

 

[Redshirt #42]

Funny, my impression is the opposite. PS:T had a clear, single, unified creative vision and the whole team was pulling towards that; T:ToN is like an anthology of short stories written vaguely around a common theme.

That's kind of my point though? Planescape had a clear and unified vision precisely because it was a team effort. There weren't some individuals who just pushed their dumb ideas or personal opinions into the game no matter what (see Colin McComb's gripes about it in his PST stream). Even when it came to something seemingly as trivial making the box art for PST (long story short, they had a famous make-up artist and everything ready for the shoot but then the expensive model who was supposed to be TNO didn't show up - so instead of an expensive model, it's Guido Henkel's face on the cover), Henkel told about how he felt bad about it because it was such a collaborative effort and only agreed to it because it was someone else's idea in the first place and they all encouraged him to do it.

Meanwhile, in TTON, the big name writers got to do whatever they wanted (hit-or-miss, mostly miss) because there wasn't anyone to challenge them and rein them in. Well, personally, I'm pretty sure that someone like Kevin Saunders (who proved his competence as the lead designer for MOTB) would've been able to keep some semblance of a unified vision for TTON too but the grizzled divas wouldn't accept it. Because their amazing writing skills would carry the game to its success (due the whole fundamental misunderstanding that "Planescape: Torment is the best book you'll ever play, haha!"), with the backing of the genius marketing skills of Brian "Gamer Shoes" Fargo. When you hear McComb complain about titties in 90s era video games or instantly whine about the "whiteness" of fan drawn portraits for Numenera, it becomes quite clear that this guy doesn't have his priorities set straight.

 

[Grotesque]

McComb complain about titties in 90s era video games or instantly whine about the "whiteness" of fan drawn portraits for Numenera

is this kind of a sick joke or is it real?

 

[Morality Games]

Well, finally beat this.

Spoiler

I didn't think that bug with the Sorrow fragments (only quest I was never able to finish) would come back to haunt me, but not being able to finish it cockblocked me out of being able to destroy the Sorrow, my ideal ending

That aside, it was an enjoyable experience overall.

If they ever release an Enhanced Edition with more endings and edited Crisises I might even consider playing it again.

 

[Redshirt #42]

is this kind of a sick joke or is it real?

You can hear the first complaints in one of his pre-release Planescape: Torment streams which were on GOG's channel.:
https://www.twitch.tv/gogcom
(No idea how to search a channel for its videos on that horrible website. Gamebanshee has all four of the videos embedded here, but they won't play for me.)

As for the portrait thing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Torment/comments/5yhp0s/aligern_custom_portrait_the_other_companions/

 

[Sòren]

(in this case, "pretentious hipster auteurs are ruining gaming, things were better when games were made by egalitarian teams of humble, unassuming nerds")

hey that's probably a pretty good hypothesis



i agree with you infinitron!

 

[Redshirt #42]

hey that's probably a pretty good hypothesis

It's also a highly unlikely hypothesis. Infinitron bases it on the fact that Saunders didn't shit talk his previous employer after he left inXile. Meanwhile, actual evidence (see above) points otherwise, plus this nice summary on page 65

They had Kevin Saunders (who is a competent project manager who knows how to work within temporal and financial constraints - see MOTB) and they let him go. Irrational upper management (Fargo) decision to turn the PC game into a console game in the middle of development was probably the key factor, but we must not disregard that primadonnas like McComb probably don't take kindly to being ordered around and are running to daddy Fargo for protectiion every time they hear something resembling an order.

lol what a pile of Codex wishful thinking

It's always nice to get a "citation needed" rating from an official Codex purveyor of speculation, who has an ample history of being indiscriminate with respect to the truth and falsehood of the articles he posts. You deserve the participation award for trying to goad Kevin to comment on his departure, but that would really be wishful thinking, I'm afraid.

1: Saunders' role on MOTB was formally lead designer, but effectively his job description was the one of a project manager
2: MOTB had a limited budget and development time
3: MOTB turned out to be a very good game in design and execution and is probably the best polished Obsidian title (when it comes to bugs)
1+2+3 -> 4: Saunders is a competent project manager who knows how to work within temporal and financial constraints.
5: Torment was planned and designed to be a PC game and was pitched as such
6: In the middle of development, Torment was changed to accommodate a console version
7: Dramatically changing a project in the middle of development incurs huge costs and results in an incoherent product
8: Consolization of Torment was ordered by Fargo
5+6+7 + 8 -> 9: Fargo's decision to turn Torment into a console game was irrational
10: Saunders was let go from Inxile in the middle of TTON development
11: Saunders' departure coincided temporally with the consolization of TTON
12: Colin Mccomb says things like "I can have (and enjoy having!) reasonable and productive discussions with real conservatives - but not with the modern Republican party." on his twitter, i.e. he can have "reasonable and productive discussions" with people, except when they disagree with his views.
11+12 -> 13: Colin Mccomb is a primadonna of a nu-male variety.
14: Primadonnas, especially those of the nu-male variety, don't like to be ordered around and easily become "offended" by it
15: When faced with what they perceive as offensive from someone with authority over them, primadonnas often go straight to the top to whine and complain

All of that justifies the lighthearted speculation laid out in the post you quoted.

Whether you agree with the speculation or not, TTON still failed to deliver. It might've been a failure because Fargo is out of touch with reality and let his writer divas get away with everything. Perhaps it was Saunders' fault. Or maybe it's our fault for setting our expectations too high. Or...

?

 

[Iznaliu]

Whether you agree with the speculation or not, TTON still failed to deliver. It might've been a failure because Fargo is out of touch with reality and let his writer divas get away with everything. Perhaps it was Saunders' fault. Or maybe it's our fault for setting our expectations too high. Or...

?

A failure this massive cannot be attributed to solely one cause. It was most likely a perfect storm of Fargo & Co. being incompetent, the massive hype creating unrealistic expectation and distorting InXile's ability to work on their game critically without buying into their bullshit, the premise of the game being too derivative, etc.

 

[agris]

It actually makes more sense if you look at their last game released - Wasteland 2. I and probably others were hoping for a similar bump in quality that we saw from HBS going from SRR to Dragonfall. Instead, we got a Doublefine Shit Sandwich(TM) Situation (DFSSS(TM)(C)(R)).