Torment: Tides of Numenera - Alpha Preview
 

GameHorder has previewed the alpha-version of Torment: Tides of Numenera:

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Thank you for the info, Kuki!

:excited:

how long has this game been in development?

The kickstarter launched in 6th march, 2013.
When did they actually started working on it? Probably a few months before.
They enterd production few months after june last year me thinks.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects…a/posts/874905

My inner-thinking when seeing this:

I hope this is cool! Errr…those graphics…I'm sorry…very poor. That animation framerate…from 1995. That huge text-box…is this a text adventure? I know it is a throwback game, but nobody wants to terrible technology from back then. I'm being mean again! I should be nice! But they are selling me a product; shouldn't they try to adhere to modern standards?

I want to like it…but again, after years of effort this is all they have to show? Am I doing them a favor or are they selling a product? Is this truly what backers wanted? Surely people want modern tech and quality of life along with the epic story and settings of the original? …sigh…

Imo, stat pool interface does not fit, yet.

Dialog UI is a very massive thing, more frame and border than information. That's indeed from the 1990s. I don't think there is much screen space left for animated gameplay sequences if they don't want to fade and popup the box permanently. Maybe they should go fullscreen for the text wall.

I'm intrigued, that's for sure.

You didn't seem to play PST. That is OK, not everyone can understand it.

PST was highly, highly over-rated. It was a boring novel set inside an Infinity Engine game. You walked along clicking on the various parts of the different chapters, and your total interaction was clicking different lines of dialogue. Every once in a while, you'd stop reading to fight a couple creatures :biggrin:

Morte was amusing though.

What does your comment mean? Are you trying to make a sensible argument about the merits of old-time text adventures or is this flaming? I mean, are you saying I'm too dumb to understand PST or are you simply saying PST is better off with older graphics?

Once again, dear internet, I must DEMAND a higher caliber of posting! I mean, Archangel, surely you understand the irony of you posting a short, non-elucidating post when discussing PST, a game universally noted for its insightful and well-written text.

I don't think he is saying anything more then you are demonstrating.

Pure goodness!

Can't wait for this!

Damn, my first impressions are bad, glad this is an alpha. I hope those who are giving feedback and testing the alpha are not all fan boy types who will say everything is wonderful, and offer no criticisms. Here is my harsh critique: Way too much text and verbosity, they should cut that down by half, at least. Do they have an editor? Too much text! I was exhausted just from watching the video…

I just want to skip all that beginning part, and go to a character sheet and choose my character class and stats that way. And then go straight to the graphical world on screen, and start the game, and not only have huge walls of text to read, with hardly any graphical world representation. Is this supposed to be a text only adventure? I know that isn't true, but this is the major impression that exhaustive beginning gives to the player…I'm glad this is an alpha, and not the final product. Or, at least give an option to skip all that beginning gobbledygook, and let the player make their character like its done in most rpgs, that is, straightforwardly, and then go straight to the graphical world to begin the game afterwords. I fear that most players will lose patience from that long drawn out beginning, and say screw this, and have such a bad first impression, that they give up on the game, before it even starts.

I think this is great! The writing is good and engaging and I like the ui quite a lot actually for being a part of the game world. I do think they need to have a little M under the Might bar an S for Speed and I for intellect respectively so you can tell at a glance. Either that or tooltips when you hover over the bars with your mouse.

The effort bar looks temporary and will be improved no doubt. I just wish the camera was zoomed in more so I can see the action. When you criticise the game just remember that this was kickstarted for fans of planescape torment and those fans don't necessarily want some of the modern conventions. Also this game is meant to be quite literary and for me I found reading it to be engaging.

tldr
If you didn't like what you see maybe your not the audience?

They asked for money and I paid quite some upfront, so I should be the audience they are targetting at. ;)

I think for a character creation it's way to tedious. You don't make any lasting choices there, you are simply determining your stats, class and descriptor through a lot of words. If you're aiming for some sort of random result, maybe it's ok. But I would also prefer a skip option. It's the old problem, I know.

Maybe after you've played through it once, any subsequent playthrough you can choose the cliff notes version of the choices. I like the intro to bg2 but I also know there is a mod that lets you skip it and takes you to athkatla if you know what I mean.

That has to be one of the most intrusive UIs I've ever seen. Painfully bad. I hope you can customize that, somehow.

As other's have said, it is only an alpha. I know opinions on Wasteland 2 vary, but I hated the early beta, and loved the final product. So while I like some of what I see here, I expect the final to be way different. That said, we're in mid august and this is an alpha systems test. No way this comes out 4th quarter 2015. I'm guessing late 2016. Bout a year late, just like WL2 was.

They did say that the UI is getting a rework in next few weeks/months.

What are people even commenting on? Did we see the same video? The video that I saw didn't actually show any real gameplay, just a bit of walking and tons of text. It's very hard to pass judgement based on what little is shown, unless there's some video I haven't seen yet.

It is called Alpha Systems Test, it is not a Alpha build or Alpha Preview.

It's a playable portion of the game and meant to create feedback.

Absolutely loved the voiceovers in game, feels like you are in the room with a real game master and he is narrating events of adventure to you. Hope the rest of the game will be similarly narrated.

I think this describes Planescape: Torment as well. You had the nameless one,walking around to npcs that would proceed to throw walls and walls of text at you. Once you got done with one npc, you would slowly amble to the next and get more walls of text. Every so often, that would stop and you would explore a little dungeon or fight a few battles, then it was back to text-o-rama. Never understood anyone's fascination with that game :)

Hey, how many books have you played that were better or more gloriously verbose? ;)

LOL, none. It was the best book I've ever played on the pc, though not read. I couldn't finish it, as the story was a little dull, but still…..

that was not impressive… but it doesn't diminish the hopes I have for the finished game. :)

Nothing really grabbed me about the game, except I found it neat that they integrated stats so well into the dialogues.

I suppose if the setting and writing had appealed to me, I might have enjoyed it a lot more.

Yes! The stats in the dialogue was amazing. That part of the game was way cool, there was just too much of it. I need way more play time than read time in something that calls itself a game. Today, PST would be called a Virtual Novel.

It is expected that games like these are not for you. As a Bethesda fan, you of course like light reading that requires no thinking.

Performance was expected to be variable across different setups. Remember that this is an unoptimized alpha build and we're giving it to the public (tens of thousands of possible combinations of hardware and software) for the first time. If you see someone playing the game and performance is rough, that's just lack of optimization or compatibility issue you can expect from a game that's still deep in development.

During the bulk of production, we prioritize content creation and features over polish, optimization and bug fixing. Most "player experience" elements like that don't fully come together until the end of the project when most of the game content is locked down.

It's also worth clarifying that the ASTs are not really "alpha builds" of the final game. They're bite-sized chunks of game content meant to get feedback on specific elements of the game (such as, in this case, simple exploration and the conversation interface). These sorts of real-world playtests are very important because they let us hone in on popular backer opinion on how certain specific elements of the game are shaping up. :)

Top-notch writing! I was afraid they will be too sugary, but the first paragraphs drew me in. Reading is more enjoyable, when I completely mute audio so the readers voice doesn't disturb the imagery my mind makes. Skipped most to not spoil anything.

Excellent UI graphics. Good GUI arrangement.

The writing is excellent so I don't mind a virtual novel feel.

I definitely like the PS:T/Adventure vibe from the video and I don't mind the reading, quite the opposite.

PS:T is one of my all-time favourite games so this is one of my most anticipated RPGs and have high expectations.

Yes, action RPGers may want sidestep this one. Walls of text is fine by me. :) By good writers.

Ha, my favorite games of all time are split between Dragon's Dogma and PS: Torment.

Torment is definitely one of my (if not my most) favorite RPG.

Of course, one has to be in a relaxed mood to read, not click-click-click frantically.

I played the AST and I loved it. It was like playing a living and breathing novella. And if the content doesn't look too much for you - it is only an alpha test of the character generation. Heck, every UX in it is a placeholder that will change in the final product.

Don't judge the book by its first early draft.