Torment Kickstarter media blitz begins: Campaign to launch on March 6th, Chris Avellone endorses

While whispered rumors have hinted for the past several days that the Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter campaign would begin sometime this week, we now have an official date - March 6th. Rock Paper Shotgun has the details. There's also an endorsement video by Codex demigod Chris Avellone:

UPDATE: There's a long and detailed Torment feature at none other than IGN, in which Kevin Saunders and Colin McComb discuss the game's plot, theme and setting. Here's an excerpt:

A billion years from now, the people of Earth live in the era of the Ninth World, an age built upon the vestiges of eight great civilizations before them. The flickering remnants of each once-great society – ancient nanotechnology, the data-web threading between still orbiting satellites, bioengineered monstrosities, creatures transplanted from distant stars, and myriad strange and wondrous devices – make up what people call Numenera.

Imagine this future humanity with all of its complexities, and among them a powerful man who spent centuries occupying human bodies and “skipping” from one to the next at will. Now imagine what would happen if one of those inhabited bodies was cast aside in this strange and alien Ninth World and suddenly became conscious, having never lived a day of its own?

[...] “Essentially you are waking up, not as somebody who has lived a full life already, but as somebody who has not lived a life at all,” McComb tells IGN. “You are the cast-off shell of somebody who has learned how to skip from body to body over the centuries. This person is escaping a dreadful hunter. He [realizes], “Oh, well, looks like this body’s doomed.” He skips out of it, you fall to earth, you wake up, and you’re not dead. You’re like, “Who the hell am I?”

They also talk a bit about the game's roleplaying mechanics:

Players will build their own character using an adaptation of the Numenera tabletop rules, which include three different class types: the warrior-like Glaive, the wizard-esque Nanos, or hybrid types called Jacks (as in ‘of all trades’). According to the tabletop game, Glaives can come light or heavy depending on your preference between speed and strength. Nanos harness the Numenera to work miracles, which are called Esoteries. Jacks have a lot of tricks that make them good at many things, but masters of none.

There will also be two sets of modifiers: descriptors and focus, which will grant bonuses in a variety of categories. Some descriptors (again, from the tabletop game) are Clever, Tough, Strongwilled or Mystical. Focus varies from crafting illusions to becoming a master of a single weapon.

Saunders explains it like this: “You are this specific character, but we will give you flexibility in terms of what class and descriptors and focus that you have. That will evolve throughout the game.”

Some of you have expressed concern about this Kickstarter's degree of success. Kevin Saunders addresses this:

Judging the potential success of a Planescape: Torment successor in terms of already funded projects like Wasteland 2 and Cook’s Numenera, Torment: Tides of Numenera could see tremendous interest, but the team is ready to scale the final experience to the demand of the audience.

Saunders says, “Definitely, the scope of the game overall will depend on how we fund it. In terms of the overall content, we’ve developed the storyline to be very modular. It can scale well regardless of how much we have to work with. In terms of something like the combat system, I would say that the more funding we have, the more free we would be to venture away from the foundation that Wasteland 2 provides. We’d be more likely to consider adapting the Wasteland systems more closely if we had a lower level of funding than if we did exceptionally well.”

The article also mentions that the game will feature "real time smart combat". I've been informed that this is a misstatement.

UPDATE 2: VentureBeat's Torment newspost doesn't have much information about the game's content. It does, however, contain some hard data about the game's Kickstarter campaign and development plan, straight from the mouth of Brian Fargo himself:

Fargo acknowledges the complexities of the game-development process. He has 10 writers and four artists ready to start work on the new Torment. Once InXile receives funding, the team will go into preproduction for about nine months. Then, the full ensemble will roll off of Wasteland 2 and move to Torment. Kevin Saunders is the project manager on the new Torment.

Fargo said the company is hoping to raise $1 million. He will match every dollar raised above that, up to $2 million, by throwing in another 10 percent. So if the company raises $2 million, Fargo will throw in $100,000 of his own money.

A nine month preproduction phase. That's three months longer than Wasteland 2.

UPDATE 3: In Polygon's Torment post, Colin McComb reveals a bit about the game's "Tides" system:

"The Tides are our version of the alignment system in D&D, which is perhaps the closest parallel," he said. "There are five of them, but they don't oppose each other directly. It's not like good versus evil. There's much more complicated interactions between them."

The Tides system is the developer's way to track the results of player action, which are a de facto demonstration of what's important to them. There is no right or wrong, but rather a series of choices with consequences.

"There are forces you are manipulating here, but it's essentially an external manifestation of the choices you have made," McComb said. "If you've decided that your choice is to become a bloodthirsty butcher, people will react to you that way, and your powers within the game will change as well."

As an example, McComb offered the Passion Tide, which is color-coded red to give it meaning beyond its one-word description.

'When your Passion Tide is strong, it means you're more driven by the things that move you, as opposed to reason or empathy," he said.

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