Torment: Tides of Numenera - Update #9, Chris Avellone
 

Chris Avellone will join the team if funding reaches 3.5m.
More information.

Between CA and Pat Rothfuss, I'm very tempted to increase my pledge. TEH EXCITE

Yes and looks like the Kickstarter is picking up a bit again - not that one could be too unhappy with it's previous progress :).

How big will this design team be anyway? Normally I'd say this is completely overkill, but Torment was always about writing and design, so in this particular case I think it's a good thing.

I'm undecided how high I should go. We definitely have to get both Rothfuss and Avellone on board..

"I'm undecided how high I should go. We definitely have to get both Rothfuss and Avellone on board.."

I'm thinking the KS will end around 4 million. It might be a bit higher or a bit lower. A lot depends on how well it ends. That 4 million figure depends on a pretty robust follow-through.

Eternity got $1m in its last 3 days, and a bout $400 the three days before that. Torment is just under $3m, which is about a million more than Eternity at the same point.

I'm guessing $4.5-5 million.

have they mentioned anything about gameplay other than "it's single player and isometric"? Really that's all that matters to me, the whole story is just background fluff for me in games.

The story, and your character's participation in it, is the gameplay in Torment. That said, they claim they are going to make the combat better than it was in PS:T. It'll still be almost entirely avoidable, though.

No, except that and that is based on Numenera PnP rule set.I am opposite here,for Torment I care only about story but it would be nice if they could deliver on gameplay(some combat areas in PS:T felt like chore I wouldn't want to see that in Torment) as well but you can see clearly so far that it isn't primary concern.I would like to know more about combat as well up to same point in campaign Project eternity gave much more info on combat,classes and their roles and potential skills.

hmm… yeah. That doesn't cut it for me. I liked PS:T's combat/gameplay, but I don't remember the story at all, I think the protagonist was dead or something, and there was a talking skull. That's how much I care about that story fluff :)

I, on the other hand, have discovered, that unless a story can draw me into a game, I couldn't care less about mechanics, and I can even put up with a lot of errors and nuisances if a story and its presentation is gripping, immersive, and cohesive.

I am a great fan and enthusiast of story and storytelling. Storytelling (be it the everyday kind that we all do, or the more eloquent kinds, like fiction) is one of the primary ways of the human mind to convey meaning and to teach.

I would not call the story of PS:Torment 'fluff', especially if I was admittedly uninformed and uninterested in stories in general. The quality of it is quite astounding. I sincerely hope that the people who are creating this new Torment game understand what made the interactive story PS:T was great.

That said, I do hope the RPG gameplay mechanics will be fun enough to cater for number crunching fans, too, but I believe the emphasis is well put on interactive storytelling. It's rare enough as it is.

They've mentioned that it is going to be isometric? Shame, I was hoping they'd try to break new grounds.

@Soulbane - Thoroughly agree.

One thing, on the dialogue side, I wouldn't want to see is to be presented with a long menu of options that you have to laboriously select, one after the other, in order to trigger story progressions or quests lurking somewhere in the dialogue tree. Then when you've exhausted the options that character has nothing more to say for the rest of the game… That's a really poor "adventure" style implementation of story aspects, I think and one reason I dislike most adventure/RPG hybrids.

Dialogue options should be mostly exclusive, so if you choose one it sets the game on a different path to if you had chosen another and then you don't have to plough through multiple branching options with every character conversation. Even better I think is to have character interactions and dialogues occurring spontaneously in the world and characters volunteering information rather than just waiting to be clicked on as if they were some sort of branching information terminal (Wiz 8 did ad hoc dialogue rather well, for instance).

So maybe it is to some extent a deficiency in the way some games handle dialogue that tend to turn people off some of the more story driven games.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the story was awesome, but in my case, it's fluff. Look at it this way, to me the formula to know if I like an RPG game or not is sort of like this:
Score 1-10. Multiply score * weight, add it modifiers.

Story: Weight 1
Music: Weight 0.3
Voice acting: Weight 0.1
Tactical gameplay: Weight 10
(so basically gameplay trumps everything else)

Then of course there are modifiers:
Party based: +25

Turn based: +25
Real time with pause: +10
Real time: 0

Not open world: +10

Multiplayer: -10 (I actually like games less if they have multiplayer, even if I don't use it)

High Fantasy setting: +10
Dark Fantasy setting: +5
Modern setting: -5
Steampunk: -10

Respawning enemies: -25

@Wolfing - It's strange that you should care about the setting, as that is after all just the backdrop to the story. If you really didn't like stories then surely you'd just be playing chess (its a good game) or checkers or some tabletop war game?

That's a pretty puzzling stance regarding RPGs. But anyway, if that's the case, then story-heavy games like Torment probably aren't for you. There won't be all that much combat in the game anyway, no grind, quality over quantity.

As for systems, it'll have an isometric camera. For combat, Adam and Kevin are designing several systems (phase-based, turn-based and RTwP) and will engage backers in which one to use post-funding. There's a set of core goals each of these combat systems will fulfill which makes us more agnostic to which one exactly ends up being used.

@wolfing: Sounds to me like you're an avid strategy gamer more than an RPG guy. How do games like Civ or Total War stack up in your opinion?

You see, I have a really bad memory, that's probably why story isn't important to me. What that cutscene revealed yesterday is probably gone from my mind the next day. I see finishing the game as a challenge to be overcome, and that's why I play it. But while I play it, I like high fantasy settings more than dark fantasy, and totally hate steampunk settings. I don't mind the occasional gun in Wizardry or a spaceship in M&M but the overall setting is still high fantasy.

Any of those 3 systems are ok with me, as long as I can think of what to do and issue the commands. Some games have you control one character in real time and the other characters, if any, do their stuff on their own, I don't like that at all. That's why some games that are so popular in this site are nothing to me, like The Witchers, the Gothics, etc.

Sort of. I like tactical and grand strategy games but I don't like Real Time Strategy games (like Total War). I used to like Civilization, until I discovered Paradox strategy games (first Rome, then Europa Universalis 3 and now Crusader Kings 2).

What I liked about old RPGs and why I liked games like Pool of Radiance, Wizardry and Might & Magic wasn't the story at all. It was the party creation and management, the growing of the characters from level 1. During battles, what abilities and spells to use. Positioning, resource management. There needs to be challenge too, I don't like 'grind' i.e. battles that are there just to gain experience with little chance of failure.

I also despise twitch in any way, I like to think of tactics and issue the commands. One of my favorite 'RPG' games I've played (to my taste) wasn't even on PC, it was Gladius in the original Xbox (and PS2). It had everything I liked, and it also had a good story that I sort of remember only because I replayed it recently, making it one of the very few RPGs I've ever played more than once.

Have you tired Game of thrones mod for Crusader kings 2?Even if you don't like books/show it's still fantasy game with CK2 mechanics.

I tried it when CK2 was new, was cool enough but decided to give it some more time. Maybe when I finish my current Byzantine Empire game I'll give it another go. (And I love the books/show, just wished the author finished them already)

I like both story based and non-story. Most of the classic crpgs didn't have much story at all, a few lines of descriptive text and 90% of the actual "Story" was found in the manual.

Torment for me is probably one of the best story based crpgs ever - but there was certainly more than just the story aspect to it. I thought the variety of items and all the different locales were also responsible for it being such a good game.

I didn't much like combat in PS:T definitively worst of Infinity engine games,I had some fun but at times felt more like chore.That might be because I don't really like second edition of D&D rules altho I liked both BG who's combat is miles ahead of PS:T but I never liked IWD that much because despite combat that is probably better than BG it doesn't have as good writing .Third edition is much better with Temple of elemental evil as brightest example imo.Also one thing that I didn't like much is that if you want to know full story(in game that is all about story) you need high intelligence,wisdom and somewhat charisma which makes mage only viable choice for playing.One of best writing if not the best in video games that made me replay it multiple times over the years but flawed game in nearly every other aspect.


If you tried it when it came out I think you will be pleasantly surprised with amount of tweaks and added features.You can see full changelog here.

This game is looking increasingly awesome. I'm actually seriously considering going up to a $130 tier, which feels like a crazy amount to spend on a game. If I'm ever going to go that high though it would be for this one.