Torment:ToN - Interview @ RPGCodex

HiddenX

The Elder Spy
Staff Member
Original Sin Donor
Original Sin 2 Donor
Joined
October 18, 2006
Messages
19,710
Location
Germany
Our friends at the Codex (who can be real drama queens sometimes) are talking with inXile Entertainment again:

RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to inXile Entertainment

Ever since Techland canceled our interview with Brian Fargo last year, our relations with InXile have been strained, to say the least. And now that it has been a month and a half since the release of Torment: Tides of Numenera, it's quite clear that the game has not been a success. It may not be a coincidence that shortly after its release, we received an entreaty from inXile PR representative Jim Redner. Jim told us he was seeking to make peace with the Codex, and that he was willing to hear our demands. Our initial proposal was a humble one - a reveal-all AMA with George Ziets, probably the only person at inXile who still has our community's trust. To that Jim responded with a counter-proposal - an in-person visit to inXile, to be followed by an AMA with several of Torment's developers. That was an opportunity we couldn't pass up, and so a couple of weeks ago we dispatched our secret agent in Southern California to inXile's headquarters in Newport Beach. Today, we'rehappy to present the report of his visit to Brian Fargo's court.

[...]

Kevin Saunders left before the end of production. Can you talk about why he left and how his departure affected production?

Brian: I can’t talk about an employee’s specific performance, but what I can do is to provide you with a factual history of things. Kevin left the project in late 2015, right? At that point, we were roughly two years into production. At that point, we’ve gotten the first pass of combat. The story was not yet at first pass. No abilities or weapons were in outside of the alpha systems. And so, at that time, if we had gone along that route, the game would not be done until the year 2018. I could not afford to stay on that path. I had to change what we were doing.

And, to talk about scope, the product was wildly over scoped. Even today, after we made the “cuts,” the original specification for the game was 600,000 words. You know how many we are at now? It’s 1.6 million words, probably a world record for a single player game. I think the only games that have more word count is MMOs done over a long period of time.

[...]

Did the fact that InXile was taking on several different projects – Wasteland 2, Director’s Cut, Wasteland 3, Bard’s Tale 4 - at the same time affect Numenera's production? Why did you decide to take on so many projects at the same time, given this risk?

Brian: The majority of the entire company was on Torment, that was very much the case. Maybe we could’ve moved the start time up a couple of months while we were doing Director’s Cut things. Maybe. But overall, they had the lion’s share of the resources of this company.

I’ve been involved in a lot of products before as you know, and whenever we’re doing something different or innovative, they’re messy behind the scenes. Fallout 2, behind the scenes, was a mess. Planescape: Torment was a mess. The original producer for that project was replaced. So this drama is part and parcel of development. I’ve been involved in very few products in which it was straight forward. The only times it was straight forward was, for example, Icewind Dale, where all the systems were in place, we knew what it was, it wasn’t that deep as a product – and by the way, it was one of my favorite games – but it was very straight forward, you knew exactly what you were doing, all the systems were in place.

When everything’s place, it can become more like that, but whenever you’re trying to innovate in any way, it’s always very messy. I’ve never been on a product where it was run perfectly and you know everything. There’s a great book called Creative Inc. by the founders of Pixar, in which they talk about how every Pixar movie starts off as a piece of shit. Those were his words. It’s basically a mess and it’s a false goal to try and make production perfect, because when you do that, production will not be perfect and you’ll have a dry product. So I think there is messiness that comes with the territory.

They’re messy. We could go back thirty years to talk about how all the different products were messy. From Stone Keep to Battle Chess to Descent, they all had some drama behind the scenes. You know, in production you could have a lead programmer quit in the middle, and you could lose two months because you have to train a new person to take over their code. Think about the cost of losing two months and what that would do. That didn’t happen in this particular case but I’ve had it happen before. You can’t just swap people out easily.

[...]
More information.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
19,710
Location
Germany
A very long and interesting interview despite the "drama." Confirms that Torment is a commercial failure, and discusses the development problems. I still haven't gotten the game started, so I'm interested how much I'll like it.
 
Joined
Jan 29, 2014
Messages
2,716
Location
Vienna, Austria
I do appreciate this candid insight into the problems that occurred during development, it explains an awful lot. Not "excuses", but at least "explains".

I haven't started playing yet. I want to wait for the cut content they said they would restore. Despite it being (from what I hear) far below its potential, I still hope for a good gaming experience, even if it falls short of what was initially promised.
 
Joined
Nov 12, 2010
Messages
510
I wouldn't be so sure it's far below potential, as some of the people who played and reviewed it called it a masterpiece. Brian talks a bit about that in this interview even. The people who like the game *really* like it and it received some perfect 10 scores from reviewers.

I think one part in this interview is really telling, and that is the bit when the interviewer asks why certain mechanics weren't in the game, and the response is that they are, it's just that the game doesn't do a lot to inform you of that. In other words, this game seems devilishly complex, but there is no bright flashing sign telling you that, so I think some people assume it isn't complex and miss that bit of it. Brian mentions that the RPG choices and consequences Inxile is doing in these games is some of the deepest stuff in the industry right now, but because it isn't conveyed to the player, a lot of folks seem to miss it.

Interesting stuff. I have to get to this game sometime as I think it would be interesting, and certainly way different than any other RPG out right now.
 
I wouldn't be so sure it's far below potential, as some of the people who played and reviewed it called it a masterpiece. Brian talks a bit about that in this interview even. The people who like the game *really* like it and it received some perfect 10 scores from reviewers.

Yes, with artwork it can be difficult to tell sometimes. I remember Blade Runner receiving mixed reviews on release; now it's considered a classic.
 
Joined
Mar 22, 2012
Messages
5,520
Location
Seattle
Yes, with artwork it can be difficult to tell sometimes. I remember Blade Runner receiving mixed reviews on release; now it's considered a classic.

Yep. And this has all the makings of being the same type of thing. That's also why I agree that this will be a "slow burn" for Inxile and make money in the long run.
 
"It’s 1.6 million words, probably a world record for a single player game." So what?? Is that something to be proud of? Does that mean that the game is entertaining? Or that it has a good story? Or it means that it is a good game? Why don't they just copy the Twilight saga books in the game and call it a day? If all that matters is the number of words.
 
Joined
Feb 25, 2017
Messages
441
Sure it's something to be proud of. It's something no game has ever done. No one is implying that is all that matters in the game, that would be ridiculous.
 
I wouldn't be so sure it's far below potential, as some of the people who played and reviewed it called it a masterpiece. Brian talks a bit about that in this interview even. The people who like the game *really* like it and it received some perfect 10 scores from reviewers.
Out of the 98 critic reviews on Metacritic (from all platforms), the highest score is 95/100. So who are all these 10 reviewers that you and Brian are referring to?
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
Messages
3,429
OK, so two 10 reviews from a couple of sites too obscure to even be listed on Metacritic, out of >100 reviews. Not sure that's worth bragging about in an interview really.

Dragon Age 2 even has a 10/10 review on Metacritic (from The Escapist :lol:). Even No Man's Sky has a 10/10 there.
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
Messages
3,429
"It’s 1.6 million words, probably a world record for a single player game." So what?? Is that something to be proud of? Does that mean that the game is entertaining? Or that it has a good story? Or it means that it is a good game? Why don't they just copy the Twilight saga books in the game and call it a day? If all that matters is the number of words.

Almost like that thread on codex about cancelled Fargo interview.
More interesting to read too. :p
 
Joined
Jun 5, 2015
Messages
3,898
Location
Croatia
OK, so two 10 reviews from a couple of sites too obscure to even be listed on Metacritic, out of >100 reviews. Not sure that's worth bragging about in an interview really.

He wasn't bragging about it, he was answering a question. The point he was making was that some people really liked the game, and he feels that certain "other" factors influenced a lot of the negative reviews on Steam and such. Can't say I disagree there as many reviews nowadays, especially of the user variety are heavily tinged by factors that don't even really relate to the game itself. That's just the internet today.
 
"It’s 1.6 million words, probably a world record for a single player game." So what?? Is that something to be proud of? Does that mean that the game is entertaining? Or that it has a good story? Or it means that it is a good game? Why don't they just copy the Twilight saga books in the game and call it a day? If all that matters is the number of words.

Strawman argument. He never said that all that matters is the number of words. It's as if you never read the rest of the interview beyond the word count, duh!
 
Joined
Dec 22, 2008
Messages
212
Ugh, the codex interviewer sounds like they are talking about a lover or something at the end, when they are going on and on about the relationship of rpg codex with Brian Fargo, and using words like "forgiveness" and "trust". Jesus Christ, how cringe-worthy can they get.

Lastly, to me its disappointing how Fargo seems to be going to the rpg codex on "bended knee", (like how he apologizes over and over in that interview, ugh). I say that in the context of having seen some of the crap that rpg codex wrote about him, and they even had creepy stalking of the dude going on, not kidding, I saw it in a thread in their forum…If it was me, I would never have given the time of day to that site ever again. But that's me, and I'm not a CEO, and I get this is probably really about a P.R. effort to appease the codex trolls to increase sales for future games.
 
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
2,236
Location
Pacific NorthWest, USA!
Lastly, to me its disappointing how Fargo seems to be going to the rpg codex on "bended knee", (like how he apologizes over and over in that interview, ugh). I say that in the context of having seen some of the crap that rpg codex wrote about him, and they even had creepy stalking of the dude going on, not kidding, I saw it in a thread in their forum…If it was me, I would never have given the time of day to that site ever again. But that's me, and I'm not a CEO, and I get this is probably really about a P.R. effort to appease the codex trolls to increase sales for future games.
Sounds like you are confusing some of their forum members with the site as a whole. Quite different. The Codex is essentially a free speech zone, so every person with an account there can say whatever they want, no one's going to delete their posts or tell them to shut up. If anything, the admins/newsposters, such as Infinitron, have been extremely nice to inXile, certainly far more than is deserved.
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
Messages
3,429
Sounds like you are confusing some of their forum members with the site as a whole. Quite different. The Codex is essentially a free speech zone, so every person with an account there can say whatever they want, no one's going to delete their posts or tell them to shut up. If anything, the admins/newsposters, such as Infinitron, have been extremely nice to inXile, certainly far more than is deserved.

Well, I don't have much of an opinion of the codex community, let's put it that way. And there are lines that most people with common sense understand, and what I saw in one of their threads was way beyond those lines, I'm talking straight up stalking material on Fargo. These idiots are probably lucky they didn't actually get in serious trouble for some of that crap. The mods and/or the site admins should have deleted that thread, if they had any common sense. That whole site maybe could have been sued into oblivion for some of that crap that was going on...(stalking is a legit crime in many states now, including cyber-stalking)

Anyway, not going to debate this, this is just my opinion. (except for the stalking stuff, which is based on fact - I actually know a lot about it because I studied it recently for a class I'm taking)
 
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
2,236
Location
Pacific NorthWest, USA!
Like it or not, the Codex is important for indie RPG developers right now, being it's one of the largest active RPG communities* on the web. I'm sure Brian realizes that, and nothing more really needs to be said about that.

*If you consider the Nine Hells of Baator a "community". :D
 
Back
Top Bottom