Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[agris]

Looking at it that way, I must say that I would probably play a lot more adventure games if they were like this.

There's a lot of good adventure games out there, check out the subforum (Primordia, MRY's game, is very good fyi). I'm not saying TToN a shitty game, but I don't think it's a very good one.

 

[Tigranes]

An hour in and the game feels like a chaotic jumble of wacky shit. Environments mostly look like Sanitarium, except the latter was at least supposed to be the protagonist's nightmares, and there are memorydumps and characterdumps everywhere of weird kinds, and more made up names than you can throw a stick at. That's not necessarily a minus for me, since a PST successor should have a little bit of schizophrenia in its world, but we'll see how the pacing pans out over the longer term.

Faffed about testing mechanics in the first real fight and I'm glad you can 'fail' to progress.

 

[Roguey]

It's a bizzare feeling to be in 2017 and play a game so heavy on text, so light on action and with decent production values. You can almost play it like a point&click adventure. A game like this shouldn't even exist in this day and age, but it does, and that's encouraging even with all the shortcomings.

Puzzle-less adventure games/walking sims aren't anything unusual now.

the entire crisis combat system is lame, it's the fucking 2-action system from nuXcom! I know how much old-school RPG and strategy gamers loooooove 2 action TB combat.

You mean like D&D...?

 

[Blaine]

God damn it, I despise D&D so much. It's the World of Warcraft of tabletop RPGs.

If I could go back in time, I wouldn't kill Hitler. I'd kill Gary Gygax so that I wouldn't have to suffer like this.

 

[United Nations]

An hour in and the game feels like a chaotic jumble of wacky shit. Environments mostly look like Sanitarium, except the latter was at least supposed to be the protagonist's nightmares, and there are memorydumps and characterdumps everywhere of weird kinds, and more made up names than you can throw a stick at. That's not necessarily a minus for me, since a PST successor should have a little bit of schizophrenia in its world, but we'll see how the pacing pans out over the longer term.

Faffed about testing mechanics in the first real fight and I'm glad you can 'fail' to progress.

Sanitarium is a great game to be modeled after.

I get reminded of it through all kinds of media.

 

[MRY]

Wait, what? PST is very much an adventure game wherein you're piecing environmental and character-specific knowledge together, some of which are controlled by RPG-derived statistics, to advance a story.

No, it isn't. It's a "game" and it's an "adventure" in the colloquial sense that Treasure Island is an "adventure" story, but when you put the two terms together, you're invoking one of two traditions: the third-person, inventory-puzzle-based Sierra/Lucas/Westwood/etc. tradition or the first-person, environmental-puzzle-based Myst-like tradition. PS:T resembles neither of these genres in any meaningful way. It does not have anything remotely resembling the depth of environmental puzzles in Myst, nor the camera point of view, and Myst-likes typically don't have interactive dialogue or well-defined player characters. The comparison to the Sierra/Lucas tradition is only slightly less absurd. The basic units of interaction in those games are (1) inventory item on environmental hotspot and (2) inventory item on other inventory item to combine them. They do feature some dialogue, but the dialogue is not the principal form of gameplay, and the trees are very sparse compared to RPGs'. They almost never feature "branching" dialogue or choice and consequence. They almost never feature configurable character builds or skill checks or stat pools. They almost never feature party members, leveling up, or isometric views.

I'm not quarreling with your criticisms of TTON, but with your mischaracterization of adventure games. It's just totally off. The core mechanics of a game like PS:T or a jRPG are totally foreign to adventure games, except at a meaningless level of abstraction, and the core mechanics of an adventure game are totally absent from PS:T or a JRPG, except at a meaningless level of abstraction.

[EDIT: I'm not quite sure why my dander got so up on this subject -- it's really the characterization of jRPGs as adventure games that annoys me, but this was close enough...]

 

[agris]

the entire crisis combat system is lame, it's the fucking 2-action system from nuXcom! I know how much old-school RPG and strategy gamers loooooove 2 action TB combat.

You mean like D&D...?

You aren't specifying version, but I'll go ahead and assume you mean my favorite 1st/2nd ed. Yes, AD&D combat mechanics are split into a move and attack phase, but encompass a set of granular actions that are not reflected in XCOM nor TToN or any cRPG that I'm aware of.

Thanks for playing, (don't) try again.

 

[Ismaul]

I don't want to debate anything about TTON's merits, but I've always found this Codex meme (which is often applied to PS:T and jRPGs) dumb. Adventure games are not RPGs without combat. That description might hold for some very "streamlined" modern adventure games, but you could just as easily describe those games as platformers without platforming. The heart of adventure games are environmental and inventory-based puzzles, which are basically entirely lacking in PS:T or jRPGs. Moreover, linear adventure games are really linear -- vastly more linear than any RPG. They tend to offer two or three rooms that you can explore at a time before going to the next one, with no choice in where to go or when.

B-but Blade Runner. Y'know, a good adventure game? Oh and Dark Earth. C&C, branching, dialogues choices n shit.

I agree PS:T isn't an adventure game, but adventure games aren't necessarily linear or inventory based.

 

[agris]

Wait, what? PST is very much an adventure game wherein you're piecing environmental and character-specific knowledge together, some of which are controlled by RPG-derived statistics, to advance a story.

No, it isn't. It's a "game" and it's an "adventure" in the colloquial sense that Treasure Island is an "adventure" story, but when you put the two terms together, you're invoking one of two traditions: the third-person, inventory-puzzle-based Sierra/Lucas/Westwood/etc. tradition or the first-person, environmental-puzzle-based Myst-like tradition. PS:T resembles neither of these genres in any meaningful way. It does not have anything remotely resembling the depth of environmental puzzles in Myst, nor the camera point of view, and Myst-likes typically don't have interactive dialogue or well-defined player characters. The comparison to the Sierra/Lucas tradition is only slightly less absurd. The basic units of interaction in those games are (1) inventory item on environmental hotspot and (2) inventory item on other inventory item to combine them. They do feature some dialogue, but the dialogue is not the principal form of gameplay, and the trees are very sparse compared to RPGs'. They almost never feature "branching" dialogue or choice and consequence. They almost never feature configurable character builds or skill checks or stat pools. They almost never feature party members, leveling up, or isometric views.

I'm not quarreling with your criticisms of TTON, but with your mischaracterization of adventure games. It's just totally off. The core mechanics of a game like PS:T or a jRPG are totally foreign to adventure games, except at a meaningless level of abstraction, and the core mechanics of an adventure game are totally absent from PS:T or a JRPG, except at a meaningless level of abstraction.

Yeah, I don't take your rebuke lightly, I know you give your posts thought. Your emphasis on presentation and camera makes me wonder: do you consider Stasis an adventure game? If we swap environmental puzzles for logical puzzles, wherein pieces of the puzzle are revealed in dialogue based on a character build and not combat or itemization, does that not make it an Adventure Game? Do ag-1) inventory/env. hotspots and ag-2) combination of them not translate to rpg-1) to skill-choice deployment to receive information and/or items and rpg-2) utilization of them to resolve a blocking component result in the same game, functionally, as what you've outlined above?

If TToN/PST had a Fallout1-esque robust skill development/use system, or a BG1/2-esque focus on character itemization/combat development to advance past combat encounters, my points would be complete shit. But Torment didn't have this, and TToN has even less of it. Thus, I refer to it as an adventure game.

edit: I don't feel like I'm abstracting to a meaningless level, but perhaps I am. To me, PST doesn't play like any other cRPG, and I would argue that's due to the heavy adventure game influences. Influences that make it more an AG than a cRPG.

 

[Roguey]

You aren't specifying version, but I'll go ahead and assume you mean my favorite 1st/2nd ed. Yes, AD&D combat mechanics are split into a move and attack phase, but encompass a set of granular actions that are not reflected in XCOM nor TToN or any cRPG that I'm aware of.

Thanks for playing, (don't) try again.

I'm talking about in the context of a computer role playing game.

 

[Canus]

Has anyone worked out if it's worth upgrading Edge when you level up? I'm finding the level up system slightly bizarre, and not in a particularly good way.

 

[Hellion]

Upgrading Edge and having a few backup potions in your inventory (the ones that restore your stat pool points) essentially means that after a certain point in the game you can't possibly fail any skill checks.

 

[Jinn]

Has anyone worked out if it's worth upgrading Edge when you level up? I'm finding the level up system slightly bizarre, and not in a particularly good way.

What are you having trouble with? Upgrade your Edge for whatever pool you plan on using the most in conjunction with the skills and abilities you have chosen to focus on. Or, upgrade Edge on something you don't utilize much so you can get through a few instances with it.

 

[Excidium II]

I found it p. useful

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

The comparison to the Sierra/Lucas tradition is only slightly less absurd. The basic units of interaction in those games are (1) inventory item on environmental hotspot and (2) inventory item on other inventory item to combine them. They do feature some dialogue, but the dialogue is not the principal form of gameplay, and the trees are very sparse compared to RPGs'. They almost never feature "branching" dialogue or choice and consequence. They almost never feature configurable character builds or skill checks or stat pools. They almost never feature party members, leveling up, or isometric views.

Whilst I detest putting rigid boxes around every single idea of yesteryore, that is a couple decent points. There's overlap, but of course Torment plays little like Monkey Island, all in all, though it arguably owes a lot to Infocom and the like, the extents of which are debatable. On the topic of adventure games (capital A, G) in particular I think a lot of the new wave of devs got that stuff all wrong (not that they're alone). Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's just paying tribute. But you're not going to get a game like Monkey Island when you develop a game just like Monkey Island, etc. Sierra are a peculiar topic here in particular. Lord knows they all have their trappings and failings, but an updated Police Quest wouldn't look that different to say L.A. Noir with a bit more brains than brawns that that had. At the core that's a serious Police Sim trapped into the tools they had back then which happened to play somewhat like Leisure Suit Larry because it was filtered through the same, for the purposes, limited tech -- the dreadfully realized car driving bits being the more obvious example.

And for all the obviously 1980s Sierra flaws, The Colonel's Bequest makes your average detective romp where you crazy combo the cat on the mobile phone to McGuyver a snooping device or rid the beggar off his coin whilst the actually detective bits solve themselves in cutscenes or two hundred mini speeches look wave of the future dude, 100% electronic. That's not a dig at good inventory puzzles etc. and all that at all. It's just that for some weird reason it's become a synonymous up to the point that is template ever repeating, when the best studios of yesteryore were nothing like that. Likewise, it's never been written in stone by anybody that adventure games should never contain much of branching dialogue or plot points... actually, the Interactive Fiction scene has toyed with that a plenty, and one or two of the most interesting Infocom games were completely devoid of puzzles. On the more audiovisually end of things naturally, budget is much more of an issue nowadays... big adventure games buff here obviously.

Still totally looking forward to Thimbleweed Park mind! And back on topic... curious about Numenera too, naturally.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wait, what? PST is very much an adventure game wherein you're piecing environmental and character-specific knowledge together, some of which are controlled by RPG-derived statistics, to advance a story.

No, it isn't. It's a "game" and it's an "adventure" in the colloquial sense that Treasure Island is an "adventure" story, but when you put the two terms together, you're invoking one of two traditions: the third-person, inventory-puzzle-based Sierra/Lucas/Westwood/etc. tradition or the first-person, environmental-puzzle-based Myst-like tradition. PS:T resembles neither of these genres in any meaningful way. It does not have anything remotely resembling the depth of environmental puzzles in Myst, nor the camera point of view, and Myst-likes typically don't have interactive dialogue or well-defined player characters. The comparison to the Sierra/Lucas tradition is only slightly less absurd. The basic units of interaction in those games are (1) inventory item on environmental hotspot and (2) inventory item on other inventory item to combine them. They do feature some dialogue, but the dialogue is not the principal form of gameplay, and the trees are very sparse compared to RPGs'. They almost never feature "branching" dialogue or choice and consequence. They almost never feature configurable character builds or skill checks or stat pools. They almost never feature party members, leveling up, or isometric views.

I'm not quarreling with your criticisms of TTON, but with your mischaracterization of adventure games. It's just totally off. The core mechanics of a game like PS:T or a jRPG are totally foreign to adventure games, except at a meaningless level of abstraction, and the core mechanics of an adventure game are totally absent from PS:T or a JRPG, except at a meaningless level of abstraction.

[EDIT: I'm not quite sure why my dander got so up on this subject -- it's really the characterization of jRPGs as adventure games that annoys me, but this was close enough...]

God, you're being way too engineerish about it, don't channel your inner Sawyer. When people say it's a lot like an adventure game, they don't necessarily invoke any specific mechanics. The entire experience feels like an adventure game, whatever building blocks made it this way isn't really a point. The core of your experience as a player consists of you running around, talking to people, clicking on shit in the environment and reading the blurbs. Just like in adventure game. The same goes with TTON, I enjoy it a lot, but it might just be I'm as much of a point&click gamer as I am RPG gamer.

 

[MRY]

Ismaul Sure, there are a handful of exceptions to the main models. QFG is another example. But the existence of edge cases doesn't mean terms lack meaning. The notion that PS:T is closer to an adventure game than an RPG because you can vaguely allude to similarities to Bladerunner just strikes me as absurd when PS:T is almost exactly like BG2 in its feature set and mode of interaction and almost nothing like Blade Runner, let alone King's Quest or Myst or Monkey Island.

agris Camera can be a useful cladistic tool, but it's pretty low on the list. I haven't played Stasis. Assuming that its gameplay, like its camera, follows Sanitarium, then yes, I'd say it's a simplified adventure game. I just glanced at this walkthrough, which confirms my impression: take an item, use it on another item, use it on a hotspot, examine a hotspot, fiddle with it in a UI, get another item, etc., etc. It doesn't in any way look like the walkthrough to an RPG.

It has been many years since I played PS:T, but I can recall no puzzles at all in it -- which is to say, no points at which I was presented with some kind of obstacle that required some degree of lateral thinking to bypass. Instead, you're basically told, "Walk to such and such place, talk to so and so, and come back. Along the way fight many enemies and talk to many NPCs and level up and upgrade your stats."

Saying that skill-selection is like acquiring inventory items and dialogues with skill checks are like inventory-based puzzles both abstracts things to the point where they lack meaning and gets the meaning wrong (IMO). It is very rare in an RPG in which a dialogue acts as a "blocker" and even more rare that you have to figure out which skill to use to advance. Rather, RPG dialogue overwhelming is a medium through which you pass, coming out a slightly different points with slightly different effects upon you depending on the choices you make. Thus, you very rarely have a dialogue in which a character says, "I won't talk to you." and the behavior expected of the player is to leave, level, add a skill, come back, talk again, and advance using the skill. Moreover, once you have a skill its use is almost always directly offered to a player, whereas in an adventure game the mode of interaction is to pick an item from your inventory and use it on a hotspot -- not to interact with the hotspot and have it present you with a list of items that will solve the puzzle.

To me, your analysis is basically running something like, "X and Y are the sina qua non of RPGs, and if they're lacking, you have an adventure game." But RPGs aren't "adventure game plus" -- they're just a different genre. Dungeon crawlers don't become beat-em-ups because they lack dialogue trees.

In any event, PS:T does feature: lots of statistic-based combat; leveling up; companions; economy; grinding opportunities; hundreds of NPCs with deep dialogue trees; equipable gear; and dungeons. It also happens to have the standard look-and-feel of an "isometric" (I use the term advisedly) RPG. It doesn't feature: lots of inventory-based puzzles; hundreds of non-character, non-lootable hotspots to examine; progress-blocking puzzles.

Obviously, "RPG" is a capacious term. PS:T doesn't feel very much like Might and Magic. But there is a well-defined subgenre of RPG that PS:T fits neatly within, so I don't see why you'd want to try to move it to "adventure games" -- with which it shares no common ancestors and few key features, and which is a genre that neither common usage nor the game's developers use in describing it. It's just an effort to use labels rather than reasons to resolve an argument.

IHaveHugeNick But PS:T doesn't feel at all like an adventure game to me. I don't spend hours reading dialogue in adventure games, I don't manage a party, I don't fight enemies, I don't decide on my stats. I do rack my brain to solve tricky puzzles, to find hotspots, etc.

 

[Excidium II]

adventure games have puzzles

A mediocre CRPG is still a CRPG

~fin~

 

[Infinitron]

The core gameplay experience of PS:T - running around a city talking to people and doing quests - has direct analogues in both Baldur's Gate games. The dialogue in PS:T is a lot more expansive, but that's a difference of degree, not kind. It is a weird and unusually proportioned RPG, not an adventure game.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

But what is a puzzle, exactly? Rearranging gear for your party is very much a puzzle, even if it's math based rather than absurdist Monkey-island style. Crafting has you clicking items on other items to combine them in unexpected ways. There are dialogue heavy adventure games, it's just that they don't usually have branching outcomes.

You guys are still talking about low level mechanics, but how are those mechanics are perceived on player end? It's not that different.

 

[Blaine]

Upgrade your Edge

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[Immortal]

The first area of this game looks like a 90's Macintosh commercial.. I'm worried in their goal to be "omg so weird technology" they are gonna have a bunch of floaty polygon shapes that are purple and pink trying to make the player feel soooo disoriented broo..

Also why does my character have an "ironic" haircut. kill me.

 

[MRY]

"But what is a skill-check, exactly? Rolling a 1d20 against THAC0 in a battle is a skill-check." "But what is choice and consequence, exactly? Choosing the wrong action in battle leads to your death as a consequence. " "But what is character creation, exactly? Choosing what gear to put on affects your stats and often your cosmetics and has reactivity in combat, and how is that different from reactivity in battle?" "But what is exploring, exactly? Picking options in a dialogue tree leads you down different 'corridors' in which you face different 'obstacles.'" "But what is non-linearity, exactly? You can always zig-zag around a map in crazy ways, you don't have to walk in a particular line." Etc., etc. This is the kind of pointless abstraction I'm talking about.

If you're saying that because rearranging gear is a puzzle, PS:T has puzzles like an adventure game, then Might & Magic is closer to Myst than PS:T is to Monkey Island.

 

[Excidium II]

Also why does my character have an "ironic" haircut. kill me.

It's not a haircut it's alopecia.

 

[Lurker King]

The game is growing on me. The use of anamnesis, scan thoughts and other skills in dialogues is really immersive, even though you don’t have the same feeling of self-discovery you have with PS:T. The facts that you can keep asking the same questions and obtaining different answers, or that companions can help you in dialogues are also interesting. The complaints about UI are overblown. The complaints about the companions not being strange or unique are also overblown. Callistege and Erritis are weird as it gets.

The writing is overly descriptive, for the most part, but you can skip that and focus on the white text. I think what will ultimately decide the quality is the amount of reactivity. I have no illusions that the main story would be even remotely satisfactory. So the deal breaker is the use of skills, quests, hidden content, etc. If the use of skills is just cosmetic, the game failed in its intent. People who don’t appreciate diplomatic playtroughs shouldn’t even touch this game.