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Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

Swampy_Merkin

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I'm sorry that I exaggerated the extent of the musings on the various plane alignments

I take that back. I'm not sorry...it really was a huge chunk of the lore in that game....and it was tedious and stupid.

In fact I genuinely preferred the themes in TTON to that in PS:T.

PS:T is still...slightly.... a better game.
 

Kyl Von Kull

The Night Tripper
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Jamrock District
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Higher than high school....quite honestly. The subject of free-will is something that most American (even state-funded) universities are not willing to touch. They think it makes their students evil. No...really.

There's a study....that purportedly demonstrates that college-level individuals are more likely to engage in cheating after reading texts by scientists and philosophers that question free will.

Hence they won't even broach the subject. To see a game tackle it is at least somewhat refreshing to a cynical academic like me.

I call bullshit. I don't know what kind of school you went to, but any half-baked intro to philosophy class at an American university will address free will. The problem with philosophy at American schools is not that they're worried about corrupting the youth (where the fuck are you even getting this, Liberty University?), it's that far too many of them worship at the feet of Quine and his disciples. So they're often very dismissive of anything outside the analytic tradition.

To the extent they refuse to address the kind of questions raised by TTON, it's because they regard these questions as nonsensical. If they don't discuss free will in higher level classes it's because free will is a poorly defined concept (WTF would unfree will even look like?) that's a relic of a time when serious people still believed in metaphysics (the free in free will originally meant free from divine interference; take god out of the equation and at most you're just asking if we live in a deterministic universe, which is a question for physicists). Only an ethicist would touch a question like, "what does one life matter," and in my experience ethicists are held in contempt by the rest of the discipline because they don't have anything useful to say. Neither anglo-analytic nor continental philosophy takes this stuff seriously.

I actually like TTON somewhat when viewed as its own thing, but not because it grappled with "serious philosophical issues" that were rendered irrelevant, one way or another, by either Nietzsche or Wittgenstein ages ago.
 

Kyl Von Kull

The Night Tripper
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm a musician 1st and foremost....the ellipsis is a kind of musical/language notation in my own stupid head space...I don't know why it's so offensive to some.

A musician should have some understanding of poetry. If you want to write a pause, do it with style. Like this:

"I'm a musician first and foremost
ellipses are like a musical notation
in my own stupid head space.
Why is it so offensive?"
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm a musician 1st and foremost....the ellipsis is a kind of musical/language notation in my own stupid head space...I don't know why it's so offensive to some.
It's bad form. Makes for terrible reading, akin to reading a senile geezer continually lose his thread of thought and then picking up it and there you are, just waiting for him to remember it's his turn on the queue but nope, he's still talking to you like it ain't no thing.
 

Swampy_Merkin

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I call bullshit. I don't know what kind of school you went to, but any half-baked intro to philosophy class at an American university will address free will. The problem with philosophy at American schools is not that they're worried about corrupting the youth (where the fuck are you even getting this, Liberty University?), it's that far too many of them worship at the feet of Quine and his disciples. So they're often very dismissive of anything outside the analytic tradition.

To the extent they refuse to address the kind of questions raised by TTON, it's because they regard these questions as nonsensical. If they don't discuss free will in higher level classes it's because free will is a poorly defined concept (WTF would unfree will even look like?) that's a relic of a time when serious people still believed in metaphysics (the free in free will originally meant free from divine interference; take god out of the equation and at most you're just asking if we live in a deterministic universe, which is a question for physicists). Only an ethicist would touch a question like, "what does one life matter," and in my experience ethicists are held in contempt by the rest of the discipline because they don't have anything useful to say. Neither anglo-analytic nor continental philosophy takes this stuff seriously.

I actually like TTON somewhat when viewed as its own thing, but not because it grappled with "serious philosophical issues" that were rendered irrelevant, one way or another, by either Nietzsche or Wittgenstein ages ago.

Wow....thank you. That was a serious response.

I assure you that at my Midwestern publicly funded state university the topic of free-will is strictly verboten. And it happened suddenly and it coincides directly with https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18181791.
Your characterization of the very concept of free-will aligns entirely with my own. It entirely subsumes any real discussion of Ethics. But American Conservatives have done their best to get on the controlling boards of every university they can, and when they see anything that challenges their ideal of "Individual Responsibility" (TM) they will quash it.

TTON does not rewrite any of the old masters in a better way. It does not raise questions that have not been raised before and better. It raises questions and introduces ideas that I think many might not come into contact with otherwise. If you want me to do a deep dive I would literally have to play the fucking thing again. I do smoke a lot of pot and tend to forget the particulars of games months after I've played them. I do know that I was engaged philosophically with TTON more than maybe any other game I've ever played.

If you know of a game that deals with deep issues of epistemology/metaphysics and/or ethics, I would love to know what it is.
 

Swampy_Merkin

Learned
Possibly Retarded
Joined
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Messages
478
Location
Up Yours!
I'm a musician 1st and foremost....the ellipsis is a kind of musical/language notation in my own stupid head space...I don't know why it's so offensive to some.
It's bad form. Makes for terrible reading, akin to reading a senile geezer continually lose his thread of thought and then picking up it and there you are, just waiting for him to remember it's his turn on the queue but nope, he's still talking to you like it ain't no thing.

It's funny...it's never bothered me when other people use it.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
I'm a musician 1st and foremost....the ellipsis is a kind of musical/language notation in my own stupid head space...I don't know why it's so offensive to some.

Not just a philosopher, but also a musician? Gentlemen, we have an old-school Renaissance man in our midst.

Tell us about your merkin. Why is it swampy?
 

Trashos

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2015
Messages
3,413
I really didn't need much. I played the game not long (maybe a month) after I played PS:T.

I prefer PS:T overall but not because of the writing as brilliant as it is.

I've read Darth Roxor's diatribe on shitty RPG writing and I agree with the flaws he points out in TTON, but overall I believe that the philosophical themes of free-will in TTON are handled in a much more mature way than I've ever encountered in any "game" before. I believe there is a real depth of philosophical questioning that one must come to terms with in TTON like I've never seen in any other game.

I won't brag or bore you with my philosophy credentials, but it's my field of academic study....and accomplishment. (beyond a simple bachelor's program).

And I won't try to convince you that TTON has answers....it's the opposite that charms me. It doesn't pretend to have answers......it challenges the player to think ultimate types of questions through to their logical conclusions. Does it do it as well as a collegiate-level course on philosophy of mind & will? Of course not....but it asks the right kinds of intriquing questions that could lead a novice down that path.

Any game that can involve players' minds in such a way is laudable for its ambition and scope, if not it's execution.

Nonetheless....I also found the art and writing to be quite beautiful compared to most of the AAA copy-cutter, and amateurish dreck that abounds in the gaming word.

For all the time and money constraints, the developer managed to deliver something visually arresting (to my eyes....not on the same level as PS:T) especially within The Bloom which I thought was a mini-masterpiece.


And yes, quite often I am an over-bearing, drunken asshole....

Interesting, Bataille rated your post "TL DR".
 

agris

Arcane
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Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,761
[...]Nonetheless....I also found the art and writing to be quite beautiful compared to most of the AAA copy-cutter, and amateurish dreck that abounds in the gaming word.[...]
Ahhh yes, that beautiful numanuma art direction.

lgrWEXe.jpg
Honestly, the maps look like the buildings and non-traversable parts were made by people in different offices (maybe they were?), and then slapped together with no passes for visual cohesion. On top of that, I can't imagine an art director who, upon looking at the above screen, would think "nailed it".
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
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Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,105
[...]Nonetheless....I also found the art and writing to be quite beautiful compared to most of the AAA copy-cutter, and amateurish dreck that abounds in the gaming word.[...]
Ahhh yes, that beautiful numanuma art direction.

Honestly, the maps look like the buildings and non-traversable parts were made by people in a different offices (maybe they were?), and then slapped together with no passes for visual cohesion. On top of that, I can't imagine an art director who, upon looking at the above screen, would think "nailed it".

I actually believe that was entirely intentional in a misguided notion of visually conveying this idea of a billion years older Earth being a jumbled mess of ancient technology and forgotten epochs of history intersecting for outlandish effect. It just doesn't click together because the end result looks like someone dragged and dropped unrelated assets.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist Changing God Cultist

maxresdefault.jpg
 

Lujo

Augur
Joined
Mar 3, 2014
Messages
242
OMG guyz I'm being super-cereal.

No really.....I really love that game. Please disown me.

Well, I just played it through to the end and my impression improved. There's good stuff in it. I still don't like the writing, still don't like the opening, it still failed to grip me, there's way too much going on with the castoffs all over the place and it was too difficult to keep track of who's who and what's what. Didn't like the opening companions but some of the later ones mellowed me out. Felt like the "torment" label was kinda tacked onto things. Didn't like the valley, it looked kinda rushed (I did enjoy the explicit digs at RPG Codex though, they were worth a chuckle).

I liked the system, I liked some of the crises, I liked the bloom, I actually liked the mediterranean middle-eastern touches (they just don't make things gripping enough if you put them in as the opening chapter). Liked the king of the dragon pass story mechanic thingies.

The game sucks first and foremost because it's horribly optimized for no apparent reason. I don't get why it's so sluggish or why it had to be. That's the first big problem with it and it makes playing it irritating and less enjoyable than it would be. The second big thing is the price - that's kinda way too high for this. The third thing is that the writing and some of the writing related style choices are tiresome - and that kinda drowns out the good stuff.

Could've been a game I'd have liked a lot more.
 

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