Torment:ToN - Beyond the Beyond

Torment: Tides of Numenera will be receiving some post release patches soon as well as some new content sometime later according to the latest Kickstarter update. Digital and physical rewards for backers are also addressed in the update so be sure to read it if you are a backer.

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What Comes Next?

Since release, we have been tirelessly reading your feedback, comments, and reports, and using that to plan a few patches for the near future. These will be primarily focused on fixing some pesky bugs that some of our players have encountered, as well as performance and stability optimizations, both on PC as well as on consoles. You can expect to see our first patch coming in the next couple of weeks.

But, we also want to address the longer term. Four years is an extended development timeline for an RPG, and it is a hallmark of our ambition for the game. Torment has the longest script we've ever produced at over 1.2 million words, and provides more nuanced reactivity and more complicated quests and stories than we have ever done before.

Despite that, there were some features we wanted to include in the game that we weren't able to finish in time for release. Companions, in particular, were a big production trade-off. Not only does a single companion take many months of work from writers, scripters, designers, and artists, but because we wanted companions to interact and react to the game world and conversations in a deep way. Their implementation needed to happen later in the development process, when quests and area design were mostly complete. As we were iterating on the companions, we felt the time was best spent building them out deeper as opposed to slamming in a few more on a surface level. These development decisions are never black and white, but we always approach it from a position of what we truly believe is best for the game. As we addressed in a previous update, reducing their number was a necessary trade-off to hit the level of quality we wanted.

But, there's a saying that no work of art is ever truly complete. We certainly know that many of you were looking forward to some of the things we couldn't squeeze into our release build, and it just didn't sit well with us leaving those behind. Now that we have had a time to see your feedback on the game, we also have a better sense of where we can focus our resources to improve.

To that end, we are pleased to announce that we will be working on additional content and updates for Torment post-release. These updates will include:

• Oom ("The Toy" companion).
• Voluminous Codex.
• Crisis system improvements.

Our initial updates to the game will focused on bug fixes, optimizations, and other improvements, while the content additions will come later down the line. Both the patches and content updates will, of course, be completely free for all Torment owners, including backers, PC buyers, and console players. We will have more news on these in the coming weeks and months!
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More information.

Awesome, the lack of more exotic companions is actually one of my very few gripes with the game. I will finish my current playthrough and then wait until Oom is in for my second go.

It seems to be doing well critically but sales seem slow, only 90000 owners on Steam?

Originally Posted by Lemonhead
It seems to be doing well critically but sales seem slow, only 90000 owners on Steam?

Yeah, the user reviews on Steam are seriously tanking. I suppose between the people whose eyes hurt from reading and the crowd mad at inXile for cutting content they get alot of flak. Oh, and people hating it's turn based, because PS:T was RTwP and it had AWESOME combat (or not).

I'm loving the game, best I've played in a long time. I hope the sales pick up, in my opinion the game and inXile deserves it even if I do hope they take to heart that they have to communicate cuts earlier in development.

Can anyone of those who finished the game already what percentage I am at when I just left the city?

Btw: Quite a few bugs in the game still…guess I will have finished already when the patch hits, but some of them were and are quite annoying.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Can anyone of those who finished the game already what percentage I am at when I just left the city?

Btw: Quite a few bugs in the game still…guess I will have finished already when the patch hits, but some of them were and are quite annoying.

Really? I've only encountered a single pretty minor one. Or maybe I'm really bad at spotting bugs…

Well, I guess the biggest one is the one which happens in this building in the very first outdoor zone (don't know the english name). If you enter the lower level you might be stuck in the interface when you enter it, unable to do anything but reload. Now if you are past that and run around too much, triggering too many enemies, the game will completely freeze.

Another one is an aura bug. Its a passive effect which is always on. And it permanently plays a sound. You can "fix" it by leaving and reentering a zone. Also quite annoying.

Then there is a "minor" one which is about a quest which you can complete, but it stays in the log as incompleted and once you leave the city it counts as failed, though you completed it and got the reward.

You can also use all the healing items without using them up. Just trigger them, then trigger them again. If you are not using the crosshair, you will get the heal without "using" the item.

There is an artifact which increases your cypher slot by 2. It's only displayed if you switch to another character and then back. Or actually when you unequip the item again.

Then a few inteface glitches that you sometimes have to click on the border of a button t actually click the button, but nothing massive.

And of course in the German version you also have lots of Typos, Grammar Errors, additional words which make no sense, and sometimes they switch between how they address each other in the dialogue. No idea about the english version.

These are at least the bug I stumbled upon.

I have been lucky and haven't come across any bug except one which was a graphic bug where part of a pop-up message remained on my screen even when zoning. Exit and coming back to game solved it.

I just reached 20 hours last night and I just reached the MA Sanctuary last night with an empty quest log - so got everything done in the earlier places.

Will finish this game then wait a while for memory to dim, get some patches and updates, and then play with some other companions and focus on being a Glaive or Nano.

Overall having a really fun time with the game and look forward to my roughly 2 hours of play time every night after work.

Ah, forgot about that one, but had the sticky tooltip as well two or three times.

Originally Posted by Lemonhead
It seems to be doing well critically but sales seem slow, only 90000 owners on Steam?

Seems it's also the financial successor to Planescape: Torment as well as the spiritual.

Originally Posted by Zloth
Seems it's also the financial successor to Planescape: Torment as well as the spiritual.

Also depends on how expensive it was though.

I mean they got a lot of money via kickstarter. They used the engine of pillars (and maybe some assets? I don't know), but regarding design there isn't really a lot in the game.
Hardly any voice acting. Not a lot of sounds or animations. Not a lot of 3D models. Not a lot of maps to design.

The big majority of the content of the game was text. Very complicated structured text with all it's branches and conditions. But text itself should rather be cheap to do.

Interesting. I was planning on starting ToN within the next week or so, but after hearing about this additional content I might wait now.

Definitely wait. It is only going to get better once it gets a couple of stability patches and some extra content.

I think sales will pick up. This seems like a game that people are still feeling out. This news about new content should help, too.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Can anyone of those who finished the game already what percentage I am at when I just left the city?

Btw: Quite a few bugs in the game still…guess I will have finished already when the patch hits, but some of them were and are quite annoying.

Halfway or so I guess. Depends how much time you spent reading dialogues in the city - it has by far the most NPCs of any area in the game.

Kordanir is obviously a far better bug hunter than I, or I simply got lucky. I actually saw the Cypher ring bug, but as far as I'm aware of none of the others. I'm actually glad I didn't know about the healing ones since I could have exploited it by mistake.

No unfinished quests, one single crash in about 20h playtime which wasn't repeatable.

I've read the console port has more problems though.

Oh, and if I could choose ONE improvement to the crisis system it would be the option to increase the battle speed. I haven't really been bothered by it but except by the middle game battle which I had to replay three times before I figured it out, but still…

I hope they add a lot because I blazed through their original content and am left wanting a lot more. I mean, yes I read fast but that was still a very short game by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe they look at game statistics on games like Pillars of Eternity and just figure most people don't finish games anymore.

Sad for those of us who do.

Is the story any good? I just didn't find Pillars to be very gripping. I didn't finish it.

Hrm, it's hard to say and probably dependent on what you like and dislike about stories.

I'd say that the world in itself is extremely weird and abstract, including different dimensions, walking around in mind constructs and generally mixing science fiction and fantasy.

It is very well written and the world is kept interesting, especially because you have tons of choices in the dialogues. I have never seen a game with as much choices as you have in torment.

The main story itself…well…I found the initial story of Pillars very interesting where you had to play detective. But personally I didn't like it when it became more abstact and you had to deal with gods.

In Torment I don't feel like I am really following the main story. I don't really care a lot about this "thing" which apprently hunts me.

So…is the story good? I can't really tell. But I'd not say that it's very "gripping". But I'd neither say it's bad. It has lots of elements to it.