Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Iznaliu]

What women?

Actually read your own posts for once.

 

[YES!]

What women?

Actually read your own posts for once.

I did. What women?

 

[Iznaliu]

I did. What women?

There's no point teaching a dolphin to walk.

 

[YES!]

I did. What women?

There's no point teaching a dolphin to walk.

No shit. And there is no point in asking you to explain something too.

 

[Black Angel]

Now KISS!

 

[Anomander Rake]

what is numenera 2? Please explain. Is it a sequel to this fabolous game?

 

[undecaf]

Is it a sequel to this fabolous game?

Think it's some project by Monte Cook Games. Not a sequel to this thing here.

 

[Iznaliu]

Think it's some project by Monte Cook Games. Not a sequel to this thing here.

There's no chance of a sequel to T:ToN since it didn't sell very well.

 

[MRY]

For a while I had the crazy idea of pitching a Wormwood-Studios-developed Numenera adventure game spin-off to TTON -- Vic's art is really perfect for the setting and Primordia is a decent enough proof of concept, and I have some familiarity with the setting -- but then I realized I'd much rather work within my own IP. Also, I suspect the potential financial upside is sufficiently slight (Primordia has only grossed about $600k) that it wouldn't have had much appeal for inXile or Monte Cook.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

For a while I had the crazy idea of pitching a Wormwood-Studios-developed Numenera adventure game spin-off to TTON -- Vic's art is really perfect for the setting and Primordia is a decent enough proof of concept, and I have some familiarity with the setting -- but then I realized I'd much rather work within my own IP. Also, I suspect the potential financial upside is sufficiently slight (Primordia has only grossed about $600k) that it wouldn't have had much appeal for inXile or Monte Cook.

Tides of Numenera 2 - More Torment For You.

 

[MRY]

To be honest the setting seems better suited to an adventure game with all the scavenging and one shot items and inscrutable artifacts to tinker with. So it might have caused less torment.

 

[Jenkem]

There's no chance of a sequel to T:ToN since it didn't sell very well.

There's always KICKSTARTER

 

[Prime Junta]

the setting

Fuck the setting, it's dull. Just do your own thing, or if you insist, pick some other setting.

 

[MRY]

Yes, as I noted above: "I realized I'd much rather work within my own IP." It has nothing really to do with the merits or demerits of the setting and more to do with the fact that I like worldbuilding much more than I like reading setting manuals.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Mry, I don't know if you are still planning for this game to come out, but don't leave us disappointed and do your best to make it happen , with or without a numenera setting..

 

[MRY]

Yes. As Bilbo sang, though, the road goes ever on and on. I was just hiring a new illustrator -- whose work with dazzle you all, I'm deadly serious -- and in doing so had to prepare his contract. So I loaded the last illustrator's contract, and saw that it was dated June 2014. As Roger Murtaugh would say, "I'm getting too old for this shit." That said, in writing an email introducing our new artist to the rest of the team, I was really dazzled by the achievements of the assembled crew; it's just that so many geniuses means a lot of false starts.

Still, we are making considerable progress and someday will have something to show. I guess there's no harm in showing rougher stuff to the Codex than I would advertise elsewhere, but I'm still not quite at the point where I want to share the current iteration.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yes, as I noted above: "I realized I'd much rather work within my own IP." It has nothing really to do with the merits or demerits of the setting and more to do with the fact that I like worldbuilding much more than I like reading setting manuals.

How about a game that covers TTON's development? Make setup that mimics Apocalypse Now, you as Martin Sheen, traveling through Vietnam/corporate halls of InXile while everything around slowly descends into madness. Fargo as Colonel Kurtz, formerly charismatic leader, now a broken man, torn apart by what he unleashed upon the world.

In the opening cinematic Fargo/Kurtz launches the latest TTON build and from there he just keeps repeating...the horror...the horror

 

[Iznaliu]

In the opening cinematic Fargo/Kurtz launches the latest TTON build and from there he just keeps repeating...the horror...the horror

This would be perfect if you could get Fargo to voice himself.

 

[Roguey]

Time for another fashionably late, controversial Roguey assessment.

Despite receiving only about three months of post-release support, it was reasonably polished. I noticed no quest/game breaking games, and the only annoyance was that sometimes characters would freeze for a few seconds during combat.

I have to agree with most of you that it was a bit too wordy. I'd often skim the text walls and then read the brief version that you get when you click the line again, which frankly, should have been the original line to start with in many cases. The conversation with Inifere was the most impenetrable because it was wordy, and the guy didn't give you straight answers to your questions. I was more or less able to figure out what was going on by reading the quest journal text and the relevant codex entries.

Wasn't a fan of the meres. The art was ugly and the text needed to be in a easy-to-read-box. One mere in particular was some pro-illegal immigration nonsense, and I enjoyed that I at least had the option of telling that woman to fuck off and not participate in her scheme.

I didn't dislike most companions as much as I thought would. Erritis was great, and I enjoyed having Rhin and Oom around. Alligern and Matkina were okay, but nothing extraordinary. Callistege was insufferable, so I barely had her around (the scene where you meet her counterpart was funny though). Now Tybir, that guy is the worst. Saying he's straight out of a Bioware game is a disservice to Bioware.

Last Castoff: So you were a Captain?
Tybir: I LIKE MEN
Last Castoff: Uh.. changing the subject, how about a war story?
Tybir: I ONCE SAW A MASSIVE GAY ORGY. I PARTICIPATE IN THEM TOO.
Last Castoff: All right, let's move on to your personal quest.
Tybir: WE NEED TO FIND MY GAY EX-BOYFRIEND

When we got the conclusion of said quest, I let him have it. I wish I had the option to be even nastier. He died miserably in my ending slide and good riddance.

As for the skill check gameplay, like Wasteland 2 before it, it can be a total reload-fest. They talked about how "failures and critical failures aren't always bad, sometimes they are just unexpected outcomes that change the way the situation plays out" but in my experience, that wasn't true, failure just meant failure, and a reload so I could preserve as many points as I could (though of course this happened a lot less frequently in the mid-to-end game when I could pass most things easily enough without spending points and had plenty of stat refillers for things I couldn't).

It shares a narrative pacing problem with Pillars of Eternity: once the climax occurs and you're ready to wrap things up, there's another area worth of sidequests to complete. And like Wasteland 2, this second area is more interesting than the first. They keep doing it backwards. Fortunately, the high quality meant that I quickly got over my initial disappointment, and it only took half the playing time of Sagus Cliffs.

The crises were not the misery I expected them to be, but it's true that most of the ones I experienced were just kind of there. A one by one analysis:

• The tutorial: Well, it's a tutorial. Apparently the longer it takes, the more enemies you have to deal with later in Infestation, which is all right.
  
• Battle against Qorro: More of a kitchen sink tutorial: "Look, you can talk to some enemies! Interact with the environment! Spam cyphers!" It was fun.
  
• The peerless: Like Torment before it, a "spam a bunch of the same enemies on a single map" encounter. Boring.
  
• The abykos creatures from the mirror: Same as above, only to a lesser extent.
  
• Kill a thing in your mind: A "talk to this guy and pass a check to win" crisis. Well, the dialogue was interesting.
  
• Get rid of more of those things in your mind: Okay, freezing these things was fun.
  
• Run Away from the Sorrow: I didn't bother saving anybody because I didn't like any of them. Pretty tense turn-based cinematic gameplay you have there.
  
• Talk to people to avoid a gang war: If not for the (lenient) time pressure, it didn't have to start as a crisis.
  
• Distract a guy while you stat-check your way to victory in an area you're not supposed to be: Now this was an excellent crisis.
  
• Fighting predatory echoes to get the obedient rope: Not all that different from the abykos creatures fight.
  
• Relaxing the spinchter: This wasn't as aggravating as Prime Junta said it was (either they re-tuned it or he kept smashing through its organs like a dummy or some combination of the two) however McComb's claim that if you don't piss off the bloom you won't have a problem is a damn lie. I gave that thing everything it wanted and didn't do anything to upset it, and those things were still there and hostile. I looked it up afterwards, and apparently you need to free the abykos in the cyst so it'll be down there attacking the things and if you kill the abykos, they'll go friendly. However, I didn't free the damn abykos because I thought opening the cyst would anger the Bloom (after all, you're freeing something that it wants contained). Totally unintuitive.
  
• Waiting for the chamber to recharge: I didn't bother fighting the First because it seemed like my only options were giving in to what the Changing God wanted or giving in to what the person who hates him wanted. Turns out it doesn't matter, you're railroaded into the same result! This was boring, I just stood there skipping my turns while everyone else fought.
• The three crises on the hill: I thought it was incredibly odd how the nonviolent methods of dealing with these encounters seemed harder and more time-consuming than just mowing your way through them (which was rather easy given all my abilities and massive collection of unused cyphers that had gone untouched since Qorro).

Overall, I enjoyed Tides of Numenera (as much as Wasteland 2), and I realize I've been much too harsh on Colin McComb based on the more extreme opinions of other posters. Interesting world to explore, interesting people to talk to, and it doesn't do anything I care about significantly worse than any other RPG. I believe that if it had been released anywhere from 2000-2013, it would be considered a Codex Classic. As for reasons it's not:

1. A big one is that we're post Divinity: Original Sin/Underrail/Age of Decadence/Dragonfall/Pillars of Eternity/your new favorite RPG(s). Compared to the new classics, ToN just doesn't shine as bright.
   
2. It doesn't live up to whatever lofty ambitions you thought a Torment spiritual successor should have. Possibly would have been received better if it was simply called "Tides of Numenera."
3. What you really wanted was Mask of the Betrayer with a larger scope. MotB had great narrative/combat pacing (a drum I've been beating for a long time), and it's unfortunate inXile didn't realize that's the direction even the grognard story-fans wanted their narrative-heavy RPGs to go in even if they said otherwise (Chris "less text, more combat" Avellone was right).
4. All that behind-the-scenes inXile/Codex drama of course.

Now that I've played it, it's pretty unfortunate to see that it bombed, but inXile only has itself to blame for letting the scope balloon up the way it did (I felt the pain of re-purposed cut content when I saw those swimming animations in that single small map near the end). They could have broken even or had a negligible loss if they had stuck to the crowdfunded budget. When you risk big, you're accepting the possibility of a big loss, and unlike single player RPGs, there's no quick load button.

 

[Cross]

Interesting world to explore, interesting people to talk to

I'd often skim the text walls

I was more or less able to figure out what was going on by reading the quest journal text and the relevant codex entries.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

So basically, it's a great game, as long as you don't experience any of the content, but skip most of the text and save-scum the mini games.

 

[Roguey]

Stat checks, not minigames.

Interesting world to explore, interesting people to talk to

I'd often skim the text walls

I was more or less able to figure out what was going on by reading the quest journal text and the relevant codex entries.

"This information is interesting, but it could and should be conveyed in a more concise manner." (which is done when you click on "Tell me about x again").

They should have done it the other way around. You get the brief version first, then if you click on "Can you expand on x?" you get the long version.

 

[Iznaliu]

1. All that behind-the-scenes inXile/Codex drama of course.

And all of the broken promises from InXile, such as the Italian translation.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Stat checks, not minigames.

That's what I mean. Skill checks are basically a minigame.

And you're wrong for savescumming themby the way, because that's one InXile promise that came somewhat true and there places where failure leads to interesting outcomes. The fight with Quarro right at the start of the game is one example. You can send him away by talking, but should you fail and have to fight, it leads to better xp reward.

 

[Roguey]

And you're wrong for savescumming themby the way, because that's one InXile promise that came somewhat true and there places where failure leads to interesting outcomes. The fight with Quarro right at the start of the game is one example. You can send him away by talking, but should you fail and have to fight, it leads to better xp reward.

I did fail and rolled with it, hence why I was able to evaluate the crisis.

I reloaded whenever I failed and didn't get an interesting outcome (which seemed to be more failures than not). These places tended to be ones where you could spend a point to retry (as if I'd spend a point to spend even more points, with the lone exception being the stuck door in the anchorage; I noticed that the check became easier after I failed the extremely-unlikely first check).