inXile has offficially announced its Kickstarter for a new Torment. Let all Tappers commence their orgasmic peals of joy. Don't disappoint me, people!
Rule #2: Double-tap
My first thought looking at their Kickstarter Page was "HOLY FUCK! 1.3 Million already? They could hit ten million by the time fundraising ends! What makes these guys so much more special than Project Eternity or Double Fine?"
My second thought: "I understand there's more than enough talent on hand to make two killer games, but why couldn't these guys and Chris Avellone have just gotten together and made Planescape: Eternity?"
Basically we now have two different games that are spiritual successors to Planescape: Torment, made by two different teams, both of which are staffed by the original creators of Torment. It is awesome. But also a little weird.
Yeah Dix is right. Planescape is a D&D setting and I don't think they wanted to wrangle with adapting the rules and conventions again as well as securing the rights to use it. I think it's a good call to steer clear of that, for focus' sake, but I'm a little worried they might over-egg the philosophical angle with 'What can change the nature of a man?' type questions. In PS:T that quandry was at the core of the experience but it bobbed to the surface as you played the game, it was subtle and organic. With Torment: Tides of Numenera, they seem to be banging that drum already. 'What does one life matter?' I kind of wish they'd kept that one in the bag. I suppose they need a soundbite to get people into the mood.
Either way, very exciting times! Wasteland 2, Project Eternity and now Torment: Tides of Numenera! Of the three I think I'm looking forward to Project Eternity the most just because of Chris Avellone (Torment was his baby and I adored it, but from all accounts Obsidian's work on New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights and KOTOR were extraordinary) but the other two look/sound very promising. I honestly thought we'd never see any more rich pseudo text-driven RPGs, what with voice work and fully realised 3D worlds sucking up budgets but I'm so glad I'm wrong. Hurrah!!
Edit: By the way, it's worth checking out the updates because they're really interesting.
Dix is correct. Colin (McComb, who is a friend of mine and Creative Lead on Tides of Numenera) told me that they were unable to get Wizards of the Coast to release the Planescape license to them. In a way that's probably a good thing, since they'd likely have been shackled to the D&D system and subject to Wizards approval for stuff. Colin's opinion, and I agree, is thatPlanescape isn't necessarily important, but a Planescape-like setting is. Something... bizarre and lived-in. This world seems like a good choice to me.
I've been trying to get Colin to use us as an outlet for smaller pieces of news and updates. He's been kinda busy though.
This team is very close to the original Black Isle stuff. Brian Fargo and Colin were all over the Fallout franchise and the original Torment - Colin was essentially Avellone's #2 - and much of the team comes from the same pedigree. I have confidence the game will deliver, provided we gamers haven't been changed by modernity. Will we be able to enjoy isometric, turn-based RPGs? I think we will.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
I hadn't really paid much attention to Project Eternity, but it looks like cause for enthusiasm as well. I really like the new setting for Torment: Numenera. It's science fiction fantasy from one of the D&D 3rd edition guys apparently. A world that exists in the ruins of several ancient civilizations, with all its mysteries and secrets waiting to be discovered and plundered. That really gets my juices flowing. It actually sounds more interesting to me than Planescape.
Steerpike, if you could convince Colin that would be stellar.
EDIT: Oh, and it's already funded.
Rule #2: Double-tap
So with the release of Wasteland 2, Tides is now the focus. I've recently realized something: I don't really enjoy role-playing via dialog trees. I think I've always known this, but just not on a conscious level. It's why, though I enjoyed the story, I never really clicked with Torment (the garbage combat didn't help either).
I hope this game is a grand success, but it's not something I'm eagerly anticipating.
Rule #2: Double-tap
Torment is heavily dialogue-driven, though it has its share of combat. I think Wasteland 2 is a lot more combat intensive, which makes sense because that's the style of game it is. One challenge with dialogue is flow. Things have to flow like a normal conversation would, and I've discovered that it's actually almost impossible to manage that. Plus, since dialogue is a game challenge now, rather than just story exposition, it's more open to save spamming and so forth, meaning all branches - even obviously "wrong" ones - need a good fleshing out.
For me, when the dialogue is good, I like the conversations more than turn-based combat. Planescape Torment made me stop and think about the dialogue choices I made. Mass Effect wasn't quite as deep, but the actiony combat helped offset that. There was a time when I'd prefer a slow turn-based system, but in my dotage I tend to get impatient and careless.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
I had some trouble getting into Torment at points, though the writing and dialogue choices certainly weren't the problem - I thought that they were better done than most anything BioWare has produced, as a whole, in terms of getting the feeling I could play a character with some nuance if I wanted. The combat was lame even by Infinity Engine standards, which I think was generally hamstrung by its reliance on the second edition rules for Dungeons & Dragons, wherein combat did indeed pretty much suck.
Also, Torment's magic literally broke the game on my machine because my graphics card is too new. So there's that.
"Home is not a place. It is wherever your passion takes you."
Hey, so this exists as a real game now. I watched AJ stream a bit of it on twitch last night, it looks pretty cool. TONS of words. So many words. But that seems right for Torment.
Anyone else played it? Steerpike, didn't you have some sort of light involvement in the project?
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
I did, very briefly. I had the opportunity to do a lot more than I did, but it was a bad time for me; sort of like getting the chance of a lifetime about a month after you've lost the ability to take advantage of it. In the end I wound up barely being involved. Still, I'm excited to see if I recognize any of its words, and to see how the story has evolved since I worked on it.
The people at inXile are just incredible. Delightful to work with, friendly, so dedicated. For them the project was really a labor of love, and I'm sure they felt a lot of pressure to deliver something worthy of the name. How Kevin Saunders, Colin McComb, and Adam Heine managed that far-flung, global team is entirely beyond me. But you didn't have to work with inXile long to see that that Torment was in very good hands. I hope everyone enjoys it!
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
Steerpike said
The people at inXile are just incredible. Delightful to work with, friendly, so dedicated.
This pleases me. I want to root for InXile and stuff like this makes it even easier. I don't know if I'm prepared to play through so much dialogue though. I'm really becoming more of a show me through gameplay kind of guy, which is odd if you take a look at my gaming history.
Rule #2: Double-tap
Synonamess Botch said
I'm really becoming more of a show me through gameplay kind of guy, which is odd if you take a look at my gaming history.
I'm the same way, actually. I used to consider more text a generally good thing, especially in my younger days, but now a game has to work pretty hard to get me to tolerate short bursts of dialogue. It gets real confusing when I try to play an old JRPG or a visual novel like VA-11 Hall-A, things I know I would have loved ten or fifteen years ago for the reasons I now find them a little bit of a slog.
"Home is not a place. It is wherever your passion takes you."
Synonamess Botch said
Time to put us out to pasture. Well, me anyway 🙂Ok straw poll: who here actually completed Planescape: Torment? And of those, who did it without help?
I completed it without help back in... 2007? That was the first time I'd played it and it was wonderful. My favourite RPG because of the writing, the characters (particularly Morte), the world and its stories, its themes and ideas, Mark Morgan's music, its sly winks and subversions of genre tropes. I didn't give a damn about all the D&D stats and die bollocks. That stuff just bogged it down for me. I've not played many RPGs through to completion but this just consumed me and stayed with me for a long time. Remarkable stuff.
Yup, I started livestreaming it last night, due to finally having a good headset mike and a computer that's good for it. Thanks for stopping by!
I'm about 4 hours in, and enjoying it so far. We're out of town for the weekend, but I'll probably make evening RPG streams a regular thing now that my rig is up to the task. http://www.twitch.tv/litagemini . I'll post a front page on the site when I have my graphics fixed. Right now they still say, like, 2013 and look broken, kind of bad.
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