Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[nikolokolus]

It is just plain amateurish writing. I would expect this from fanfiction writers not from professional writers (not that distinction is clear on the video game world anyway). My God, the main plot of this game is just awful and I don't say awful in comparison with the original Torment but just awful, awful on its own right.

The problem with most writers involved with cRPGs is that they really think they are writers in the traditional sense of the word, instead of developers that provide game content tied by a narrative structure. I see some posters accusing the writers of not playing cRPGs, but in reality they must not be playing any games at all. Hell, even most triple-A games have better writing than most cRPGs, not just storyfag cRPGs. When “God of War” has better writing than one of the most expected narrative cRPGs of the decade, you know cRPG writing is going down the toilet.

To make matters worse, you can tell they are trying to ape the esoteric language of Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe, but with none of the former's wit, or the latter's elegance. It comes off like reading the worst purple prose of Gary Gygax in Gord the Rogue, or his other fantasy novels.

 

[Spectacle]

Is this game ready to play, or does it need a few months of patching?

 

[an Administrator]

Is this game ready to play, or does it need a few months of patching?

It's polished

 

[Pirata Alma Negra]

Planescape: Torment is Deus Ex, and Tides is Invisible War.

Yeap, spot on. A very cut-up and consolized version, with only the surface elements of what made the previous one great.

I think the gameplay sucks, as well the writings, the side quests etc etc...

But what makes this consolized? Just because you can't control each companion and every1 follows you?

Combat isn't supposed to be relevant anyway, remember.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Is this game ready to play, or does it need a few months of patching?

It's quite polished for a CRPG, that is, not entirely broken beyond repair like these games usually are on release.

Still some problems here and there, so might want to wait at least for first 1-2 patches.

 

[skyst]

Could someone link me to an explanation of backer content in the game if one is available? I did some searching about and came up empty handed.

Spoiler

The shit in the Valley of Dead Heroes with the mask of Prosper, constant incline references and the blobber guy really irritated me, but I guess I'm a masochist and what to see the rest of this crap laid out for me.

 

[Schizophrenic monolog]

The journal is one of the worst things about this game. I don't really know if the game gives you enough information to be able to complete the quests without it, but with it you really don't feel like you're doing anything. Might as well have "solve this quest for me" buttons.

Maybe they'll consider this button for their next patch.
After all, they probably still want the PS4 players to advance with the plot...

 

[Schizophrenic monolog]

Is this game ready to play, or does it need a few months of patching?

It's quite polished for a CRPG, that is, not entirely broken beyond repair like these games usually are on release.

Still some problems here and there, so might want to wait at least for first 1-2 patches.

I must admit that 'till now the game runs smooth on my beast.
It's even support my 3440*1440 resolution!
And not a single bug nor crush...

 

[Irenaeus]

but a Spanish person probably wouldn't qualify as white unless you were told they were Spanish beforehand.

I think you haven't traveled much to say that, Spaniards are not like south-americans in regards to appearance, and hell, some people from south america like the Argentinians can be more white than a German.

I come from Argentina and I am very white.

Irenaeus how white is he?

He's 100% white.

 

[Schizophrenic monolog]

There are a few Youtubers doing PTs, colonel RPG for example.

I would actually pay monies for a fully narrated PT by Wayne June.

And you can watch Pat Rothfuss playing TTON (he wrote Rhin)

http://www.twitch.tv/patrickrothfuss/v/125536659?sr=a&t=5s

Oh, he failed the very first skill check and effects were actually quite interesting. Maybe this might have some replayability after all.

And lol, he found some money in a dumpster and started ranting how it's not realistic.

Yeah.
That's just bad design.
Infront of those homeless children's, who beg you for shins, there's a pile of money...

 

[Lurker King]

To make matters worse, you can tell they are trying to ape the esoteric language of Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe, but with none of the latter's wit, or elegance. It comes off like reading the worst purple prose of Gary Gygax in Gord the Rogue, or his other fantasy novels.

Yes, most writers involved in this game not only want to write a book, but they also have terrible literary influences and bad style. In other words, their conceptual stance regarding the relation between developer and player is compromised because they hijacked the gameplay from player's hands in order to write a visual novel, and their conceptual stance regarding the relation between writer and reader is also compromised by mistaken assumptions about the writer's craft.

 

[Schizophrenic monolog]

but a Spanish person probably wouldn't qualify as white unless you were told they were Spanish beforehand.

I think you haven't traveled much to say that, Spaniards are not like south-americans in regards to appearance, and hell, some people from south america like the Argentinians can be more white than a German.

I come from Argentina and I am very white.

Irenaeus how white is he?

He's 100% white.

Look at his mouth.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this white dude probably had a stroke while this picture was taken...

 

[an Administrator]

Such a lame plot twist

 

[MRY]

>implying you aren't obsessively checking every corner of the internet to see how people react to your work

Where did I imply that? I'm always candid about this insecurity/neurosis of mine! I feel like I specificialy posted in this thread that I was desperate for such reactions?

 

[Prime Junta]

God damn it, this game is terrible... how could the screw it up so badly?

 

[Lurker King]

God damn it, this game is terrible... how could the screw it up so badly?

Their Glassdoor is legit the worse rated company I myself have seen on there, few reviews but still.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

It's all these things taken together that makes the overall experience rather poor, rather than just having some aspects that are bad. And I maintain that that's a real shame, because the game comes very close to truly being amazing.

 

[Urbanolo]

Finished it, took 24 hours. I liked it quite a lot and in my opinion the combat system, albeit slow, was miles better than W2 one. Too bad after inceasing the edge the skill checks are auto - wins. One of the highlights of my playthrough was when I failed a skill check and thanks to it have found an artifact that permanently boosted one of your skills, if you pass the skill check you just get money. Recommended, will surely replay the game after few patches, trying to fail all the possible checks next time.

 

[bataille]

There are a few Youtubers doing PTs, colonel RPG for example.

I would actually pay monies for a fully narrated PT by Wayne June.

And you can watch Pat Rothfuss playing TTON (he wrote Rhin)

http://www.twitch.tv/patrickrothfuss/v/125536659?sr=a&t=5s

Oh, he failed the very first skill check and effects were actually quite interesting. Maybe this might have some replayability after all.

And lol, he found some money in a dumpster and started ranting how it's not realistic.

Yeah.
That's just bad design.
Infront of those homeless children's, who beg you for shins, there's a pile of money...

The little fuckers just don't have the tab key to highlight the secrets.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, skill check balance is a big problem unfortunately. They seem to have packed a lot of extra content into failed skill checks, but you barely ever get to see that shit unless you try to fail deliberately. Even the tutorial area is much more interesting if you fail literally the first skill check in the game.

Edit: corrected my spelling, thank you kind stranger.

 

[Lady_Error]

What's retarded is you thinking that your opinion or tastes are somehow better than anyone else's. I'm certainly not the only one who thought the mortuary wasn't that great.

Yeah, but it's typically dumbfucks who think so.

Case in point:

Took me 4 attempts until I managed to get out of mortuary before getting bored out of my ass. Never would have if people wouldn't keep pestering me that the game is amazing.

Also the mortuary is perfectly suitable in tone and in gameplay with the rest of the game.

Translation:

The butthurt must be truly strong that pointing out anything that was less than stellar in PST is perceived as some sort of heresy.

Case in point, the 3D rendered character portraits in PST aren't that great either. And lots of stuff had to be cut too. Yes, it's probably still the best RPG, but your retarded fanboyism is the reason why you cannot enjoy anything else lately.

I remember clearly when I butthurt you so much at some point that you went into a rating frenzy going through my post history to rate "retarded" left and right.

If anything, I've been rating your posts as butthurt, simply because you're an eternally butthurt faggot. And I don't need to go through your post history to do that.

 

[Sigourn]

Planescape: Torment isn't perfect. It could have been much, much better in certain aspects, from gameplay to stylistical choices (like Lady Error mentioned, the horrible portraits).

1. The shitty wheel-based commands.
2. The downright awful combat. "You are not mean to fight" my ass, if fights weren't important then they should have got rid of them altogether.
3. The aforementioned 3D rendered character portraits, not to mention the character & monster art found in the in-game's bestiary.
4. And just like Numenera, cut down on the amount of pointless prose and dialogue, though Planescape was admittedy much better in this regard.

But yeah, the game isn't perfect, it's just a very good game that stands out for its setting and writing.

 

[bataille]

Yeah, skill check balance is a big problem unfortunately. They seem to have packed a lot of extra content into failed skill checks, but you barely ever get to see that shit unless you try to faiil deliberately. Even the tutorial area is much more interesting if you fail literally the first skil check in the game.

Seeing how there are many hundreds of intellect checks with interesting outcomes for failures, maybe playing as a warrior is the way to go this time around?
It's like the developers passively-aggressively renounce PST with its 'play the mage fagit' shtick while pretending like it's the same way in numenera LMAO. "Yes, we have the same WISDOM & INTELLIGENCE thing going on in our spiritual successor! Enjoy your mages, good sir! Thanks, and fuck you!"

Or maybe it's just an attempt to validate glaive and jack playstyles without skewing believability of the world with 300 possibilities to use might to destroy machines, people, objects and other things, or 300 instances of pickpocketing.

 

[Luckmann]

Planescape: Torment isn't perfect. It could have been much, much better in certain aspects, from gameplay to stylistical choices (like Lady Error mentioned, the horrible portraits).

1. The shitty wheel-based commands.
2. The downright awful combat. "You are not mean to fight" my ass, if fights weren't important then they should have got rid of them altogether.
3. The aforementioned 3D rendered character portraits, not to mention the character & monster art found in the in-game's bestiary.
4. And just like Numenera, cut down on the amount of pointless prose and dialogue, though Planescape was admittedy much better in this regard.

But yeah, the game isn't perfect, it's just a very good game that stands out for its setting and writing.

1. Granted. It never worked well, I always hated it. I hated it in ToEE too.
2. I call bullshit. Yes, the combat wasn't good, and the encounters were shit compared to games like Baldur's Gate II and Icewind Dale, and often the options to even make truly interesting encounters weren't there - but the underlying system was solid. It worked. You didn't want to kill yourself just because there was combat, nor did you ever feel like you had to fight the game just to do something relatively reasonable. It's by far the game's weakest point, but it's not nearly as bad as some would claim.
3. They didn't look good, but that was largely due to the limitations at the time. For when it was done, it didn't look bad. That said, I would've preferred actual 2D art, so fair enough.
4. Torment was infinitely better than Tides of Numenera in this regard. It doesn't really even need to be brought up for Torment - the offenses are few and far between, enough to actually notice when they're around. The same is not true for Tides of Numenera. The content density is so high that you're practically walking a few metres and then have something weird pop up, veiled in purple prose and a thesaurus. This simply isn't true for Torment.

God damn it, this game is terrible... how could the screw it up so badly?

I believe you and I will be in like mind on this, that if you keep playing, you'll notice how much there could be a good game, but there just isn't, and it's way worse than if the game was just straight-up plain shit. Never before has the rating been so apt, I think. Almost everything is off just enough to make for a terrible whole. It's genuinely depressing.

 

[Zetor]

About the crises: it's definitely an idea that could have had potential, as illustrated by the 'space station tour' crisis. Trying to avoid spoilers, so no specifics, but it has about the same tension level as the Aztech run in SR Dragonfall (before everything goes to shit, anyway) despite being 100% noncombat unless you fuck up. You have to split up your team in a way that makes sense, and each party member will be under escalating pressure to 'do their job right' to get through the entire thing without hitting the worst fail state (combat). It also has multiple win / fail states depending on which way you want to play it (though I'm kinda sad that there is a "best" outcome that basically gets you everything instead of having to make a hard choice).

Sadly all other crises I've seen - including endgame stuff - are either dumb combat encounters, slightly smarter combat encounters where you can use an item to get a peaceful resolution (or make the bad manz go away faster), or that one simplistic "talk to everyone repeatedly to de-escalate the situation" crisis in the mutant slums.


e: also, regarding backer stuff, I'm pretty sure 80+% of all side content in the Valley/Necropolis maps is backer shit, and I don't just mean the tombstones.