Torment: Tides of Numenera - Crisis System

Adam Heine answered a few questions from a fan on his personal blog about the Crisis System that will used in Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Two related questions from the AMA desk today.

Baudolino05 (aka Alessandro, from our wonderful fan-run Italian tumblr) asks:

"What can you tell me about the quest design in T:ToN? I mean: only part of the quests will be handle through Crises, right? As for the remaining part, can we expect complex/interrelated quest-lines? Will they feature puzzle-solving/exploration elements like in the original Torment? No combat at all, right?"

Along similar lines, Surface Rfl says:

"One additional question more about Crises themselves, since you mention their apparent duration as one reason why saving in TB would be possibly, or most likely, allowed.

Im wondering about their general structure.

Does your answer mean that all of a Crises will be done in TB mode and so be all combat related? I thought there will be other things to do inside Crises. And usually, for things other then combat, we go back to normal real time gameplay in games like these."

Torment's Crisis system (which we introduced in ridiculous detail here) might best be thought of as our "more than combat" system. Or better yet, think of it as a tabletop encounter, where combat is certainly one way to handle things, but where players have many, many more options available to them as well.

Yes, Crises are all turn-based. But no, they are not necessarily all combat. We use the Crisis system whenever there's some kind of time-based pressure the player must deal with. For example, it would be a Crisis to sneak out of a prison or to try and rescue people from a rampaging horror. In the first case, the pressure comes from the guards who are patrolling or responding to alarms. In the second, of course, it's the horror itself that provides the pressure. In both cases, while combat is a possibility, it's not the ideal solution to the problem.

So the "other things" you can do depend on the individual Crises themselves. You might be repairing (or disabling) ancient devices, persuading people that you're on their side, creating distractions to temporarily stop the horror, etc. We wouldn't be able to do this kind of thing well in a massive dungeon crawl game, but since we're focusing on quality over quantity — on a dozen or so handcrafted scenarios, woven tightly with the narrative and environment — we can afford to make each one really interesting.

As for quests, certainly there will be some that result in a Crisis, but just like PST there will be many quests (maybe most quests) that you can solve with just conversation and exploration. We're excited about the Crisis system, but this is still a Torment game, after all, and that means that conversation and narrative are king.

More information.

We use the Crisis system whenever there's some kind of time-based pressure the player must deal with.

Let me be clear - I don't like this.
Is Torment2 RPG or "I need to pee right now!" Sims?
I don't want to be pressed to send my hero to the toilet in the middle of a fight or a chat, just as I don't want him to piss his pants.
And don't advocate it by saying, yea, that's why it's called - Torment!

Crises are time constrained situations solved through a Turn Based system. The only reason time is even mentioned is that otherwise it wouldn't be different to the walk and talk part of gameplay.

For me it's still "we play out multi-solution quests in turn-based mode".

Time-based pressure is fine at a tactical level; just don't make me play for 20-30 hours then lose because I went exploring. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Fallout…)

I'm a backer of this game, but it's off-putting to read that there will only be around a dozen or so combat encounters in the entire game. I know this game is supposed to be all about story, but come on, there needs to be more action than that! Hopefully that is something that changes in the final product.
Or maybe I am misunderstanding what they mean in the crisis system, hope so.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
I'm a backer of this game, but it's off-putting to read that there will only be around a dozen or so combat encounters in the entire game. I know this game is supposed to be all about story, but come on, there needs to be more action than that! Hopefully that is something that changes in the final product.
Or maybe I am misunderstanding what they mean in the crisis system, hope so.

They have said explicitly that if you want to play a fighter focusing even on a specific type of weapon, that's a perfectly legitimate character concept. I thereby conclude that there will be more than a dozen fights in the game.

I could be totally wrong but I'm assuming there's only 12 crisis points, not total combat scenarios. Only 12 potential combat scenarios in the entire game seems very odd.

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
They have said explicitly that if you want to play a fighter focusing even on a specific type of weapon, that's a perfectly legitimate character concept. I thereby conclude that there will be more than a dozen fights in the game.

greywolf00 wrote - "I could be totally wrong but I'm assuming there's only 12 crisis points, not total combat scenarios. Only 12 potential combat scenarios in the entire game seems very odd."

I agree with both of you, I think I am just misunderstanding or misinterpreting the interview. Fingers crossed anyway.