Torment: Tides of Numenera

The answer is “only if nothing changes” and many of the previous worlds (civilisations / owners of Earth) have been capable of great feats of engineering on macro, nano and quantum scales. A billion years is a long time, and the mystery of what has gone before is part of the attraction.

Actually, 1 billion years from now, the Sun’s radius won’t be even 10% bigger. It will start the process of turning into a giant red star in 5 billion years from now, and, as far as I know, it will never become a nova.

So what he’s saying @JMR, is that no, you may not have your money back.

Release date: February 28, 2017!

We are extremely excited to announce that Torment: Tides of Numenera will be releasing February 28th, 2017! It has been a long journey, and without your help on Kickstarter it would never have happened. We could not be happier to be delivering a successor to the Torment name and legacy, and we look forward to you enjoying it early next year.

When the game releases, those of you who already have your Steam keys redeemed for the beta version of the game will auto-update to the final build, and those of you who are planning to enjoy the game DRM-free from GOG will be able to as soon as that version is ready. We will also make a key exchange option available around that time for those of you who want to deactivate your Steam key and switch to GOG. At that point, most of the remaining digital rewards will also be made available to you.

Excellent! I wanted to buy an early copy just to support them (I did for Divinity Original Sin 2 already) but haven’t had the funds to pull it off just yet. Clock’s ticking sounds like!

I hope whatever content isn’t available for early access is polished better than the back half of Wasteland was, is my only big concern.

Awesome! Can’t wait to play this one.

It was announced today that the game has gone gold, and that announcement comes with a new video. You’ll find both below.

January 12th, 2017 – Wroclaw, Poland / How do you present the intricacies of meaningful choices and their complex consequences in a game trailer? It is probably impossible - unless it’s via an interactive trailer, where you can make decisions and try out different outcomes yourself.

This is why Techland Publishing and inXile Entertainment have created an interactive quest video for Torment: Tides of Numenera - to effectively demonstrate how combinations of choices allow players to shape their own stories and leave a mark on the game’s world.

The video is narrated by creative lead Colin McComb, who - not unlike a traditional RPG Dungeon Master - guides the player through the quest, revealing secrets and subtle details of the world of Numenera.

Although it features several different endings, the quest showcased in the video is but a tiny sample of themes, stories, and subplots players will get to experience in Torment: Tides of Numenera. As the game has recently gone gold, players can start their final preparations for February 28th, when this science-fantasy RPG will launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

That is a ton of fun. I kind of wish I’d pre-purchased this instead of Divinity Original Sin 2 - not because I have buyer’s remorse, but because this is almost out and that doesn’t even have a tentative release date yet (that I know of)!

Woah. I didn’t know it was coming to the consoles too. I wonder if I can eventually redeem my backer key to get a console version? Or am I locked into getting it for PC? Since it’s turn based combat, not RTwP, controls shouldn’t be a problem on consoles.

They did delay it for that reason after all…

That was the only reason?

Combat trailer:

I kickstarted the game and have registered on Steam but the release/gold master isn’t yet available for download, correct?

That’s correct. End of this month or next, as I recall.

IIRC you weren’t a big fan of the Numenera rules, right? But you liked the setting?

Absolutely correct, yeah. I find it a little infuriating to play in tabletop because the core mechanic involves paying resources to improve odds of success, rather than paying odds to improve failures into successes (so it’s more like “gambling” with your character’s resources rather than applying them to problems).

The setting itself, and some of the other ideas in the system (e.g., character creation via stringing together descriptive phrases) are very cool, though. So I’m pretty excited to play it digitally (where the very openly “gamey” mechanics don’t rub me the wrong way as badly, for whatever reason; hell, I don’t even know for sure if spending down Pools to reduce TNs made it into the videogame variant intact during Crises).

And it releases 2/28/17, btw :)

Haven’t played the betas because I want it to be special. Been reading the Numenera sourcebooks and oiling myself up. I am not buying any new games until Mass Effect, and Torment is long owed to me.

I believe it did - I only played a little (I really like it from what I saw) but when asked to do something like try to interface with a piece of tech or score a hit with an ability, you spend pips from your associated stat pool and improve your success % by 15 or so each point (that may vary on other factors). You also spend resource points to improve aspects to your skills and weapons, for example I had a weapon that dealt 3 damage +3 damage per speed pip I spent, up to 3 pips could be spent per attack.

I like the system well enough. I think you are correct, this feels more like gambling rather than converting failure into success, but to me it’s not different than how DnD works except you can actually apply something to your success to affect the outcome, rather than hoping your base skill is enough to get the job done. Some challenges I saw had a very, very high starting chance to succeed and I think that was how I built my character (like 90% without spending any points) while other things were low, like 60% base chance. I think I like the system so far.

But also consider if you can change failure into success with the spending of some points after you see the outcome, you’re going to fail a lot less frequently, and they have hyped that failure is not “failure” but rather the opening of another path and different opportunities, so there may be something to that as well. The time I failed in the demo I failed to get a cool item floating in some tar, and fell in and got covered in this junk. However, the actual status effect (covered in this tar like substance) was kind of cool because while it was a debuff that slowed me down, it also provided an additional point of armor and lasted until I rested.

Kind of a cool touch.

I’m super pumped to play this for real!

Lots of press got to play the PS4 version recently and I’m guessing some sort of embargo lifted because many sites have some (very positive) impressions. I only read one (from IGN; below) and I really thought it was an excellent sell on the game. Having played it just a little myself (and doing a little video for some of my friends, which I’m loath to share because man was I not collected when I put this together - I should have waited until I was more experienced with the game myself, but I also don’t want to play too much before launch!) I know what he’s talking about, at least in part.

There is a particular video, “Playing Evil for Evil’s sake” in that article that I urge anyone not planning on playing evil to watch, because it’s amazingly well thought out and crazy/horrible/awesome and if you don’t play evil you’ll never see it. If you are going all in on being a dick though, do steer clear. :)

They were playing the PS4 version and it seems really nice to play with a controller. I’d hate to have to walk up to something and then steer around a bit waiting for a button prompt to interact (right, Final Fantasy XV…!?) but otherwise it seems quite comfortable, and a good game to play on a couch if you have a good set that reading text on isn’t a chore, I suspect. I’m just glad more and a larger audience can have access to it, I have several console gaming buddies I think would really dig this.

Another very positive impression in Ars