Torment: Tides of Numenera - Interview @ Redbull

Tides of Numenera and the tides of crowdfunding

We speak to the team behind the spiritual successor of 1999’s critical darling Planescape: Torment.

It's been well over two years since inXile Entertainment's ambitious RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera was successfully funded on Kickstarter, raising over $4.1million to help bring the game to life. While we've not heard too much from the team since the game was funded, inXile has been steadily plugging away to keep its vision alive.

Originally slated to land last December, the game's release has been moved back to this year, all so that the team can meet the ambitious stretch goals the community voted for with its wallets. The finish-line is definitely in sight though and ahead of the game's final release, we spoke with project lead Kevin Saunders and design lead Adam Heine on what to expect from the final game, updating gameplay for a new century, and the team's take on our world a billion years in the future.

Numenera is based in our world, but a billion years in the future. How is that different to it being a new world altogether and what are you preserving from the present that players will recognise in Numenera’s far future?

Adam Heine: The difference is that in knowing the Ninth World is (or once was) Earth, it forces one to imagine how and why. There is no magic, so if that man is capable of healing someone with just a touch and a few muttered words, how is he doing that? Is it some hereditary mutation, some change done to him by ancient technologies he stumbled upon in the wasteland, or is he drawing on unseen powers in the air? Do the words even matter (he certainly believes they do)? If there's a standing dome of water – held in by nothing but a few stone obelisks – then somebody in the past had the technology and desire to build it. Why? How does it work? And how powerful must that civilisation have been to have created such a thing?

These questions aren't raised in a typical fantasy setting. But for every weird thing in the Ninth World, one has to ask how it got there, why, and what it was originally for. The answers to these questions are rarely given in the Numenera setting, but that's not the point. The point is to ignite the imagination.

Nothing from the 21st Century will have survived a billion years from now, but what players will recognise in the Ninth World is humanity. Nobody knows why humanity emerged again on Earth some thousand years ago – barely changed from the way they are today – but they are obviously people, with all of our same flaws and struggles and loves and fears.


The Tides of the title are, according to a recent interview, ‘essentially a way to get around big fights’. We’re still a little unclear on how they work. Is their use in the game only to manipulate NPCs? Is it fair to characterise them a bit like karma, where characters or quests will only be open if you are a very just person? And if that’s all they are, why such prominence in the game’s title?

Heine: The Tides aren't a gate for fights, but rather an alignment system. They play two main parts in the story of TTON. First, they change based on the PC's choices, but unlike PS:T's alignment axes of good/evil and law/chaos, the Tides are focused on the type of legacy the PC is building. The player's Tides are determined by his words and actions – not by a set of morals or inscrutable motivations – and they have a subtle effect on many aspects of the game, including manipulating NPCs and conferring bonuses and item effects.

The Tides also are a natural force, akin to gravity or magnetism. This force has been harnessed by the PC's sire, allowing him to jump from body to body in his apparent quest for immortality, and it may be an unforeseen side effect of the Tides that creates the cast-offs. The Tides are an important, underlying facet of the game's story. (…)

Originally Posted by mercy
Numenera's 4.1 mil minus Amazon+Kickstarter+taxes was probably already spent on Wasteland 2 development.