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Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter by InXile [Complete; $4.3 million funded]

T

trab pu kcip

Member
I cant even find a good picture....he looks way too normal everywhere
where's that dramatic colin look?!
colinwyyjo.jpg


SquiddyCracker said:
Oh and trab, I'm pretty sure we got dev confirmation of beards being in the game - so it really does have everything you could ever think of!
Click to expand...
haha how the hell did I only see that now? this is relevant to my interests.
still kinda want a vampire bloodline-esque test to determine the stats though.

what about the shirt guy from the party btw? did he make it into the game? I remember this having a ton of votes
 
S

SparkTR

Member
Highlights from the PC PowerPlay magazine article:

  • The bulk of the article related to the setting and story, which we all know about.
  • No 'baddie about to destroy world' storyline
  • Mentions sentient moon
  • Not striving for an extremely long 80-100 hour experience, but
  • Players won't see everything in one playthrough, focus on replayability and reactivity
  • Not trying to make it super accessible, only satisfy fans
  • Aiming for Torment to be the best written RPG of its kind.

The images were mostly Kickstarter screenshots and art-work, but there were two 3D models of enemies/NPCs that I haven't seen before. They looked nice.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
SparkTR said:
Highlights from the PC PowerPlay magazine article:

  • The bulk of the article related to the setting and story, which we all know about.
  • No 'baddie about to destroy world' storyline
  • Mentions sentient moon
  • Not striving for an extremely long 80-100 hour experience, but
  • Players won't see everything in one playthrough, focus on replayability and reactivity
  • Not trying to make it super accessible, only satisfy fans
    [*]Aiming for Torment to be the best written RPG of its kind.

The images were mostly Kickstarter screenshots and art-work, but there were two 3D models of enemies/NPCs that I haven't seen before. They looked nice.
Click to expand...
sexy goals, good
 
E

Eusis

Member
Some reasonable level of accessibility is good, but a lot of companies are going overboard, like Nintendo's baby treatment of their audience. I wouldn't be surprised if it was still way more accessible than 90% of the computer games from the early 90s and prior.
 
T

trab pu kcip

Member
SparkTR said:
Highlights from the PC PowerPlay magazine article:

  • The bulk of the article related to the setting and story, which we all know about.
  • No 'baddie about to destroy world' storyline
  • Mentions sentient moon
  • Not striving for an extremely long 80-100 hour experience, but
  • Players won't see everything in one playthrough, focus on replayability and reactivity
  • Not trying to make it super accessible, only satisfy fans
  • Aiming for Torment to be the best written RPG of its kind.

The images were mostly Kickstarter screenshots and art-work, but there were two 3D models of enemies/NPCs that I haven't seen before. They looked nice.
Click to expand...

aw how illegal would it be to make some scans for us? :/
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
SparkTR said:
Highlights from the PC PowerPlay magazine article:

  • The bulk of the article related to the setting and story, which we all know about.
  • No 'baddie about to destroy world' storyline
  • Mentions sentient moon
  • Not striving for an extremely long 80-100 hour experience, but
  • Players won't see everything in one playthrough, focus on replayability and reactivity
  • Not trying to make it super accessible, only satisfy fans
  • Aiming for Torment to be the best written RPG of its kind.

The images were mostly Kickstarter screenshots and art-work, but there were two 3D models of enemies/NPCs that I haven't seen before. They looked nice.
Click to expand...

That sounds alright.
I'm happy to just leave them to it and see the results in a year or two.
 
N

Naito

Member
SparkTR said:
Highlights from the PC PowerPlay magazine article:

  • The bulk of the article related to the setting and story, which we all know about.
  • No 'baddie about to destroy world' storyline
    [*]Mentions sentient moon
  • Not striving for an extremely long 80-100 hour experience, but
  • Players won't see everything in one playthrough, focus on replayability and reactivity
  • Not trying to make it super accessible, only satisfy fans
  • Aiming for Torment to be the best written RPG of its kind.

The images were mostly Kickstarter screenshots and art-work, but there were two 3D models of enemies/NPCs that I haven't seen before. They looked nice.
Click to expand...

This really picked my interest (with the best written RPG of its kind ofc).
The article has an artwork I have never seen, the one with the view from space used as background on page 46-47.
 
Z

Zukuu

Banned
I think I'll de-subscribe from the thread. From now on, it's media blackout for me. :p

See you at launch. 0/


Btw, that artwork is really amazing.
 
P

PaulLFC

Member
Just got an email. $4.5 million stretch goal reached :) (+ other info)

First, in case you missed Thomas Beeker’s tumblr announcement at the beginning of May, we did achieve the $4.5M Stretch Goal!

Despite a strong rally throughout April, the total by the end of the month was a bit shy of the $4.5M mark, at $4,428,365. Early in the Kickstarter, we stated that the additional $200K contributed by Brian Fargo (@BrianFargo) and Steven Dengler (@Dracogen) wouldn’t be applied to our Stretch Goal targets and totals because those funds were intended to buffer against the fees and dropped pledges. But when we received the final tally from Amazon Payments, we were pleasantly surprised at how low the percentage of dropped pledges was.

So our net funding was more than expected and we are going ahead with both the stronghold and the expanded reactivity, length, and depth. Thank you all – every Stretch Goal we set was met!
Click to expand...
 
C

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
AstroZombie said:
RPG Codex Interview: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8971
Click to expand...

Good, meaty interview, but I'm concerned about something:

During T:ToN, the player will be hunted by the ‘Angel of Entropy’. Many games settle for conveying a sense of urgency by faking an antagonist's pursuit via scripted sequences - no matter how tardy the Nameless One is, he’s never going to be caught by the Shadows in the Mortuary or in the Buried Village - but you’ve stated on Reddit that “there will be some pressure from behind”. Should we expect time-limits, a la Fallout, or do you have other plans for giving the game's adversaries a sense of involvement in the story?

We’re still talking about how exactly to implement this, and I don’t want to give away too much too early, but we’re designing at a system in which you’ll know that it’s time to move on. It’s not that you’ll always be looking over your shoulder, but if you spend too much time in an area without forward progression, the sense of menace increases until the menace actually arrives.

Again, I want to stress that we do want to keep the pressure on without making you feel like you’ve lost agency or that you have to save at critical junctures so you can go back and experience the game. We intend for this game to be deep and heavily replayable. We understand the tension between providing a sense of realism and urgency, and the desire not to create a frustrating, over-tense game experience. Developing this is part of our early process, and it’s an issue we’re looking at closely.

It’s possible that others you’ve managed to antagonize or cross in some other way pursue you or lay traps for you. It’s a dangerous world, and you’re most definitely not the most dangerous thing in it. We’ve had many new ideas since the Kickstarter and we may have played up our depiction of the Angel, but we will try to achieve that sense of urgency, yes. It won’t be faked urgency – we have no qualms about the outcome of the player’s choices resulting in Game Over. We’re not going to push you into game-ending states at every opportunity, but we’re not going to go out of our way to make sure they never happen, either.
Click to expand...
I hate, hate, hate having a "sense of urgency" in a game where I'm rewarded for thorough and careful exploration. I recently finished MoTB, and it was very bad about this with its spirit-eater mechanics. Faked urgency is totally fine with me.

If, by taking a long time in an area or by completing too many quests, later areas might have extra traps or enemies or whatever, I'd be fine with that. But time limits? I'll mod them out at the first opportunity I get, or have a stressful, severely compromised experience.
 
A Black Falcon

A Black Falcon

Member
Chairman Yang said:
Good, meaty interview, but I'm concerned about something:


I hate, hate, hate having a "sense of urgency" in a game where I'm rewarded for thorough and careful exploration. I recently finished MoTB, and it was very bad about this with its spirit-eater mechanics. Faked urgency is totally fine with me.

If, by taking a long time in an area or by completing too many quests, later areas might have extra traps or enemies or whatever, I'd be fine with that. But time limits? I'll mod them out at the first opportunity I get, or have a stressful, severely compromised experience.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I also really hate time limits in games...
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
time limits are great ways to kill gamer ocd, so I'm all for it as long as the game is enjoyable.

I'd do something more "event based" like persona 3/4 rather than an actual timer tho
 
C

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
zkylon said:
time limits are great ways to kill gamer ocd, so I'm all for it as long as the game is enjoyable.

I'd do something more "event based" like persona 3/4 rather than an actual timer tho
Click to expand...
I'm not sure they kill gamer OCD. If anything, they exacerbate it. Look at the guides and discussion for Persona 3/4; now players not only have to worry about individual sequences, they can also spend time and energy obsessing over which sequences to complete, and in what order, and whether they should use a FAQ do get all the content in one playthrough or whether they should repeat 90% of the game to get at the bits of new content.

Anyways, there's nothing wrong with gamer OCD as long as all of the content yielded by obsessive exploration is actually worthwhile and interesting.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Chairman Yang said:
I'm not sure they kill gamer OCD. If anything, they exacerbate it. Look at the guides and discussion for Persona 3/4; now players not only have to worry about individual sequences, they can also spend time and energy obsessing over which sequences to complete, and in what order, and whether they should use a FAQ do get all the content in one playthrough or whether they should repeat 90% of the game to get at the bits of new content.

Anyways, there's nothing wrong with gamer OCD as long as all of the content yielded by obsessive exploration is actually worthwhile and interesting.
Click to expand...
gamer ocd is kinda wrong if the point of the game is not being able to do everything. you're not meant to be able to be bffs with everyone in persona 3, so you're limited in time and you have to choose, which makes your decisions meaningful and personal. people that are friends with everyone are free to do so, but they're basically "cheating" and they won't really 'get' the game.

imo persona dealt with this is a very smart manner, there wasn't a timer on the upper left corner or anything, so you didn't feel rushed, but you knew that dicking around and just doing whatever will leave you without strong friendships (like real life! or something!).

the moment it clicked with me that I wasn't gonna be able to be friends with everybody, I picked the people I liked most, and went full bro love with them, and enjoyed it all the more for that.

I dunno, I just really like persona

edit: also people who turn to guides to 100% everything are already beyond saving so w/e!
 
C

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
I think making players engage in choices that seal off content is fine and desirable. Like, it's fine if by siding with one friend, you piss off another. Or if by following one course of action, you make yourself unable to pick another. Or by playing one character, you get special content unavailable to others. The Witcher 2 is a good example.

That's different than sealing off options because you don't have enough time. It adds unnecessary stress and punishes experimentation and exploration. It makes further playthroughs necessary to experience everything, but in an artificial, padded way that means repeating most of the game and probably using a FAQ.

Don't get me wrong, I like Persona 4 so far, and I loved Devil Survivor, but the event-based time limits in these games hurt more than they helped. The in-game time limits in Fallout were even worse.
 
Minsc

Minsc

Gold Member
Chairman Yang said:
Don't get me wrong, I like Persona 4 so far, and I loved Devil Survivor, but the event-based time limits in these games hurt more than they helped. The in-game time limits in Fallout were even worse.
Click to expand...

The water-chip? Or something else, because the water chip time limit gave you like 2 years to find something that takes 2 days (it was basically so overly safe as to be irrelevant). The only time limits that I didn't like in Fallout were the secret radiation ones where you unknowingly develop an all too short invisible countdown to your death, but even that is sorta fitting.
 
C

Chairman Yang

if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
Yeah, the water chip. It wasn't burdensome in practical terms but it continually nagged at the back of my mind.
 
Z

Zeliard

Member
Couldn't agree more with Chairman Yang. Time limits are antithetical to getting lost in a world, both in that they feel artificially "gamey" almost without exception, and that they press the player forward even if they want to remain where they are.

Few people liked the water chip limit in Fallout regardless of the amount of time it actually gave you (which I agree was quite a bit), because many people want to explore RPG worlds at their leisure and not feel like they are being rushed to any extent. I'm not surprised they effectively patched it out (by making the time limit something like 12 years, rendering it totally trivial). I think RPGs and urgent time constraints of any sort are always a poor mixture.
 
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