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toblix

Torment: Tides of Numenera

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Yeah, but he still has one of the powerful Fey studying under him. He can't be all smoke and mirrors, which makes it feel like having his trope and subverting it too.

 

Anyway, Avellone is onboard at $3.5 million, so if that happens, I'll shut up about the writing team.

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As excited as I am that Avellone will be onboard at $3.5 million, the fine print makes it less exciting: He'll simply be giving his feedback, not actively creating anything.

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As excited as I am that Avellone will be onboard at $3.5 million, the fine print makes it less exciting: He'll simply be giving his feedback, not actively creating anything.

 

From the update: 

 

Second, he’ll be designing and writing an eighth companion for the game

 

It may not be *much* writing, but it sounds like he will have some direct involvement with at least this one companion.

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I'm not sure what a "companion" is, to be honest. Is it an external story?

 

Here's the full update, for people who haven't read it and who may be interested:

 

First, he will be reviewing and providing feedback on all creative elements of the game, including the story, characters, and areas. His input will be invaluable as a resource to Colin in further detailing the creative vision for the game. Second, he’ll be designing and writing an eighth companion for the game, working with Colin and Monte to craft a companion ideal for both Torment and the Ninth World of Numenera.

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Personally, I think it's fine if he isn't super involved.  Sure, ideally, I'd like him to lead the game, but since he isn't, why muddy the waters?  It seems weird to me that they just keep on piling on more "big names".  I fear it may become an unfocused mess.

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I'm not sure what a "companion" is, to be honest. Is it an external story?

 

Here's the full update, for people who haven't read it and who may be interested:

 

One of the characters in your party.  Meaning: Avellone will write much of the dialogue for a single major character that he will also design.  (Obsidian and Bioware both often break up writing duties by character this way, to keep the voices consistent.)

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I guess companions often have personal quests you help them with? I mean, Morte is a rather big part of the original Torment. 

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One of the characters in your party.  Meaning: Avellone will write much of the dialogue for a single major character that he will also design.  (Obsidian and Bioware both often break up writing duties by character this way, to keep the voices consistent.)

 

Cool! I did not realise they did that. That's actually pretty exciting then.

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Hey heyyy.

 

So this moved into early access. I backed it pretty hard, and I'm totally looking forward to playing it.

 

Has anybody tried it? As somebody with a regular human's monster backlog, and a high degree of anticipation, should I play this? I usually don't do much beta/early access with non-system driven games because I don't want to spoil it. 

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Yeah, I ain't touching it until it's out (I'm not sure if I even backed it at the level to get beta access, or if that's open to all backers, or what).  I want my intro into the game when it is finished to be as clean as possible. 

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Would be a awesome to hear that this is good. Wasteland was a huge disappointment though.

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Wasteland 2 was a mixed bag for me, I liked a lot of things about it, even though the negatives to it were enough to keep me from finishing it.  Ultimately I think it just needed to be shorter and more focused.  Cut out LA, release it as an expansion later maybe, but get the first half of the game perfect and I'd have loved it.  At a 20-25 hour experience, it's deeper flaws don't become as apparent or as big of an issue.  And I think that's a really reasonable length for a game of that type. 

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Latest release date is Q1 2017, they're supposedly only translating and polishing now.

 

I found two interviews of Brian Fargo at Gamescom, the first one starts with some german but it's in english, the second one I didn't like as much as the first one. There doesn't seem to be much new info in the 1st one but it's a recap of stuff.

 

 

The 2nd one is garbage, don't bother unless you aren't phased by someone translating every question and answer into german right after they're said.

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This game is going to take me about 4 years to finish at the rate I'm moving through it.  So far, post character creation, I've managed to make it through 2 screens in 2 evenings.  I did have quite a bit of fun poking at the first real encounter though.  I often find that RPGs break for me once I realize that most "choice" is just flavor.  But the first combat encounter in Torment seems to have a pretty robust series of choices.  I resolved it in three separate ways, that all seemed to have consequential outcomes.

 

If I'm actually going to make any progress in it though, I'm going to have to make myself quit poking and reloading to see what happens and actually just start playing through though. 

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Really? I struggled to find an interesting way to resolve that encounter. The objectives even said to talk to the enemy with multiple party members, but he ignored me after the first person.

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21 minutes ago, Gwardinen said:

Really? I struggled to find an interesting way to resolve that encounter. The objectives even said to talk to the enemy with multiple party members, but he ignored me after the first person.

 

Yeah, talking to him just seemed to be a combat debuff, which I still think is a neat ability and something that makes total sense in overly dramatic fights.  But the things I saw were:

 



 

Lie your way out of it.  Everyone lives, guy goes away, fairly straightforward.

 

Tell the truth and surrender - You get hauled off to his boss and have a long conversation with her, leaps you past some exploring and straight into town. 

 

Fight - Kill him, obvs.  Now, this one has an interesting outcome, as if he's alive, he actually has a continuing role to play when you meet his boss (apparently regardless of whether you surrender or not).  It's not necessarily a long term role, but he can come back and affect the next quest.  But if he's dead, then he plays no role in the next quest.

 

Versus a lot of other RPGs, that's a more varied outcome than you'd often see.

 

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There's actually another outcome.

 



Kill his three henchmen first, and he'll surrender. At which point, you can kill him or let him go.

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Huh, fair enough. It's just unfortunate that I happened to accidentally stumble into the most boring outcome. Hopefully things will work out better in the rest of the game!

 

That said, I'm also moving incredibly slowly through the game. I don't know what it is about it but I really struggle to play long stretches. It may have something to do with the tension I feel between wanting to experience the writing and world and absolutely not wanting to experience another isometric CRPG in any systemic way. I honestly think I'd enjoy this game more if it was a choose your own adventure book.

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It pretty much is a choose your own adventure kinda thing. Combat is super rare, and they made a system that actually makes it so non-combat interactions aren't a resource-management free activity.

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I'm 9 hours in, and still haven't gone to the Underbelly or Order of Truth. I'm loving so much of this game.

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I'm really enjoying what I've played so far :)!  This might have been the last game I Kickstarted, so I have a whole bunch of novellas and things to download... handy, because I am completely new to the World  and its strange systems. I'm absolutely not min maxing, just going for what I felt like throughout the first couple of missions, so I am a

Graceful Nano Who Brandishes a Silver Tongue

.

 

I bought Planescape Torment a few years ago, and got a couple of hours into that before being distracted by something else; I'm a good 4.5 hours into this one though, and aim to make it my only story game for the next while.

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I'm feeling pretty on the fence about it, I keep vacillating between being enamored and bored.  I don't think it's bad, but I'm having a hard time getting really excited about it.  I'm just not all that sure that this style of game (super text heavy RPG) works for me anymore. 

 

But then there are some elements of it that I'm pretty intrigued by, and it seems to be a relatively novel system in some ways.  I'm sure I'll give it a few more hours and see if it can hook me. 

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