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Codex is sending a representative to visit inXile

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,825
Citation that Brian Fargo leaving would be a cause for hope.
Oh, for all the shit i give him, i believe hes a decent guy. Hes just too old for this shit, he doesnt want to deal with political correctness and almost all of his employees are lefties, which must be a living hell tbh.
Could you imagine having Colin tweeting about trump all day and failing to do his job spectacularly?
 
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Excidium II

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Colin McCuck is a pathetic failure and the pivot behind TToN being a piece of shit, beginning with convicing everyone to use his friend's garbage setting. I hope he never finds a job developing CRPGs after InXile goes under.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Citation that Brian Fargo leaving would be a cause for hope.

The nature of inXile's fuckups is indicative of a big problem with management and company culture. Ultimately that flows down from the CEO. I'm highly skeptical about the possibility of that changing as long as the CEO doesn't change. Ergo, Fargo leaving is grounds for hope.
 
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Excidium II

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Citation that Brian Fargo leaving would be a cause for hope.

The nature of inXile's fuckups is indicative of a big problem with management and company culture. Ultimately that flows down from the CEO. I'm highly skeptical about the possibility of that changing as long as the CEO doesn't change. Ergo, Fargo leaving is grounds for hope.
Gotta kick the prima donnas out too.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
i believe hes a decent guy.

Fargo was a fucking legend back in the day; ofc he's still a decent guy. But it doesn't matter, ppl will remember him for Interplay and not InXile.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
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Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
So yeah, you people kinda suck at this interviewing business. Let me have a crack at this.

These are the important mysteries of Torment's development that need to be investigated:

1) Why were there so many cuts? Why was the game's scope not defined more realistically from the outset and who was responsible?
2) Why did the game take so long to make? To what degree did Wasteland 2 and its Director's Cut interfere with Torment's development? When did production of the game really begin and how much of its budget was spent on preproduction by then?
3) What about Torment's multiplatform console release? Could the game have been released in 2016 if not for it? Did you really need to make it? It definitely harmed the game's reputation with a certain crowd. Why couldn't it have been a post-release thing like Wasteland 2?
4) What about subsequent inXile projects like Bard's Tale IV and Wasteland 3, did they interfere?
5) Did having all of that preproduction time really help the game at all? Or did it just lead you to design lots of content that you ended up not being able to implement?
6) Why did Kevin Saunders leave?
7) Why did you decide to appoint a guy who lives in Thailand to be the lead designer of the successor to one of the most acclaimed RPGs? And a creative lead from another state? And neither of them had any recent CRPG development experience. Wasn't that kind of insanely frivolous in retrospect?
8) In general, what are the project management issues that Torment suffered from? You've already publicly admitted to them in your Wasteland 3 SEC filing, but what did you mean exactly?
9) During the beta period, it seemed like inXile was following community feedback by removing extensive "loredumps" from the game's introduction, but then you added them back in in the last beta version (along with all the shiny console UI features). What happened? Was it the result of some sort of publisher-mandated focus testing?
10) You were warned early on that revealing the entire premise of the Last Castoff's story from the beginning and making him a member of an entire race of castoffs that are a well-known faction in the game might not be a good idea and remove the game's sense of mystery. Why did you insist on this?
11) You were warned early on that the game's random number-based skill check mechanism would be easily exploitable, and it ended up sorely imbalanced anyway (possibly as a result having to make it acceptable to the aforementioned focus testers?). Why did you insist on this?
12) The whole healthbar business. What's the story behind the abandonment of stats-as-health and other more unique elements of the Numenera ruleset?
13) You had the advantage of having Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity engine to make your game with, but suffered from development issues despite this. Why? Was it hard to work with or what?
14) What really happened during the Codex's interview cancellation and why did nobody intervene?
 

Bumvelcrow

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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Strap Yourselves In
So yeah, you people kinda suck at this interviewing business. Let me have a crack at this.

Add those to Prime Junta's and I think we're done. Just encourage the interviewer to get there early so there's no chance of excessive filibustering or plying with alcohol*.

*Not that a Codexer could ever be bribed.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,825
So yeah, you people kinda suck at this interviewing business. Let me have a crack at this.
Well, to be perfectly honest i couldnt muster an iota of a shit for TToN during development, so i really had a hard time thinking of questions for it.
 

almondblight

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
2,549
Eh. These questions are just going to be met with PR speak. I mean, we could pretty much write the interview now:

Q: Why were the stretch goals cut, and why did you keep them hidden?
A: We were focusing on making the best RPG we could and in implementing all of the goals. In the end, though, we realized that some of the content wasn't up to the quality we demand for our customers, and we decided we'd rather make sure that everything in the game was top quality stuff. Some of the things we held off on because they deserved more time, which is why you're going to see the toy implemented post launch.

We didn't formally announce the cut because we were still holding out hope that we really wanted to include these things in the initial release and didn't want to close the door on them until we were absolutely sure we couldn't find some way to get them in. Of course we should have announced this earlier than we did, but we were in a crazy crunch time pushing for the release and days can fly by when that happens.

Etc. etc. If you really want information you'd probably have to go full Columbo and ask them seemingly innocuous questions about small details, which can then be strung together to get a better narrative of what happened. Of course, announcing those kinds of questions here would be counterproductive, since it doesn't work if they're expecting it.
 
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Irenaeus

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Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual The Real Fanboy
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera
Citation that Brian Fargo leaving would be a cause for hope.
Oh, for all the shit i give him, i believe hes a decent guy. Hes just too old for this shit, he doesnt want to deal with political correctness and almost all of his employees are lefties, which must be a living hell tbh.
Could you imagine having Colin tweeting about trump all day and failing to do his job spectacularly?

He probably knows Colin has gone crazy by now:



 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Eh. These questions are just going to be met with PR speak. I mean, we could pretty much write the interview now:

Q: Why were the stretch goals cut, and why did you keep them hidden?
A: We were focusing on making the best RPG we could and in implementing all of the goals. In the end, though, we realized that some of the content wasn't up to the quality we demand for our customers, and we decided we'd rather make sure that everything in the game was top quality stuff. Some of the things we held off on because they deserved more time, which is why you're going to see the toy implemented post launch.

We didn't formally announce the cut because we were still holding out hope that we really wanted to include these things in the initial release and didn't want to close the door on them until we were absolutely sure we couldn't find some way to get them in. Of course we should have announced this earlier than we did, but we were in a crazy crunch time pushing for the release and days can fly by when that happens.

Etc. etc. If you really want information you'd probably have to go full Columbo and ask them seemingly innocuous questions about small details, which can then be strung together to get a better narrative of what happened. Of course, announcing those kinds of questions here would be counterproductive, since it doesn't work if they're expecting it.

What do you expect them to say, though? The most they can possibly say is "we fucked up." I doubt there was any intention to take the money and run, or else the company would be closed & Brian Fargo a fugitive in the Carribean by now. You can ask them these "hard" questions, but you already know the answers - they fucked up and wanted to minimize negative publicity, so they tried to not talk about it until people started asking questions. A more specific question about the difficulties they actually ran into during production would be more valuable, I think, for trying to understand what went wrong as opposed to getting a confirmation that it did.

But yeah, I doubt they'd assign blame. That's just not what you do while still in a company.
 

ShadowSpectre

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
333
Location
Limbo
Dear Brian Fargo, Colin McCuck & InXile Team,

What do you think of the following modifications to the Torment: Tides of Numenera story to make it deserve the title of Torment?

In my nu-story line for T:TON, you play as the Changing God. However, through the Moon Incident, you forget you are in fact, the Changing God. You then spend your time trying to figure out what is going on around you while gathering small bits of memory throughout the story (a la PST as you like to compare the game to). Once you have gotten to a certain point in the story, such as the game reaching a climax point (a.k.a Ravel moment in Torment, or whatever the hell was going on with Inifere in Tides) all is revealed through the First Castoff that you are the Changing God and your destructive children have been left wreaking havoc on the world (including the Endless Battle which you seem to have forgotten and now remember that you perpetuated). You are not without your redeeming qualities however, as you started swapping bodies because you wished to transfer the consciousness of your daughter which continued to result in failure. Now, you as the Changing God is tormented in my re-write, because he/she has not only failed to save their child, they have also failed to create a net positive with their castoff children. The remainder of the story consists of the Changing God either with the player continuing with however they acted in the world previously when they had little/no memory or actively trying to right wrongs or at least improve things. This all may include such things as redemption, destruction, further chaos, etc., in your handling of the world. This works because if you regret your past decisions you will try to improve the world. If you do not regret at least some of your past and keep on your selfish path, the Sorrow increases in strength to continue tormenting you anyways. In the end you actually get to prove "What does one life matter?" as your options are your own and not a conversation with The Sorrow where you pick some verbal colours. Instead, you can make decisions leading up to the end and then also an ultimatum such as the following at certain points: 1) Sacrifice your life for your daughters (the answer right under your nose), 2) Unite the castoffs and give them a new path (different possible paths to take depending on your tidal influence, your new children) 3) Destroy the castoffs, 4) Remove consciousness transferring from the Ninth World or keep it intact (affects your relationship with the Sorrow, like surviving the decision or not depending on how much abuse of the tides you did in the game, 5) Have one of the important castoffs unite the other castoffs and you go live quietly, 6) Make the whole era one of great improvement and prosperity or destroy the era in grief and vengeance.

Some other things include:
- The Changing God is still the parent of the sick daughter (IE: you can still play a male or female)
- There is no "Last Castoff" as you find out later, you are the true Changing God
- Castoffs also don't get tattoos in this this nu-story, rather all castoffs emit their primary tidal colour or whichever combination thereof to make them all unique
- Only other castoffs can see said colour and certain special individuals in the world, thus they are not unidentifiable, but also not easily identified
- Further clarification on the exact process used to transfer consciousness and how that works
- The Endless Battle can be resolved, such as you can make one side or the other win with your newfound sense of self or stop it all together
- Meres of former "castoffs" are actually just you in that body, when you were them so you can't really change the past, but you may in fact change your own memory of the event to fit your own narrative
- The Sorrow is way too horrific to be a righter or wrongs and is basically a monstrous grim reaper, so it should only be after you and only just so happens to eliminate some castoffs as a matter of collateral damage
- The Sorrow's power should increase or decrease depending upon your personal actions with the tides
- Labyrinth re-rewrite: helps you get your memories back
- Make the tides actually matter in a real way (refer to above statements)


I believe these changes would make the game title make more sense and give more coherence to the overall story. Blank slate Last Castoff is not truly under any sort of torment but the Changing God can be.
 
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Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
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Messages
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Location
USSR
In my nu-story line for T:TON, you play as the Changing God. However, through the Moon Incident, you forget you are in fact, the Changing God.
This is the shittiest spoiler I've seen in fucking years. Thank you, you cunt.
 

imweasel

Guest
Kwestshuns:
  1. In my opinion the Interplay Fallouts captured the post-apocalyptic vibe, atmosphere, world freedom and sense of exploration of Wasteland substantially better than Wasteland 2 did. Are you planning on following the design direction of Wasteland as well as the Interplay Fallouts much more closely or will you continue to embark in the direction you took with Wasteland 2 for Wasteland 3?
  2. Do you regret having much of the (low level) design of Torment not being done at Inxile offices in California, which might have hindered solid communication between game designers and directors? Do you propose to change this for future Inxile games?
Fargo was a fucking legend back in the day; ofc he's still a decent guy. But it doesn't matter, ppl will remember him for Interplay and not InXile.
Torment is a disappointment, but I could also never feel contempt for the man that gave me Fallout and Baldur's Gate.

The nature of inXile's fuckups is indicative of a big problem with management and company culture. Ultimately that flows down from the CEO. I'm highly skeptical about the possibility of that changing as long as the CEO doesn't change. Ergo, Fargo leaving is grounds for hope.
Fargo is indeed guilty of having hired the wrong people and some complete fuckups like Colin McCuck. It also wasn't very smart to have much of the design of Torment done outside of Inxile offices IMO.... But Fargo has already made George Zeits project leader on WL3 and hired some other very talented people to work on the game, so my hopes are still high.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
Fargo was a fucking legend back in the day; ofc he's still a decent guy. But it doesn't matter, ppl will remember him for Interplay and not InXile.
Torment is a disappointment, but I could also never feel contempt for the man that gave me Fallout and Baldur's Gate.

Which is what I was getting at. Lhynn's comment was just weak: "I believe he's a decent guy." Fuck me, you "believe"? Is he decent or not. Just say it. :lol:

And then some guy drops the mic and leaves in a huff; what a faggot.
 

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