Tags: Brian Mitsoda; Colin McComb; InXile Entertainment; Torment: Tides of Numenera
Today's Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update begins with the second episode of Colin McComb's video series. This one has more details about the game's story and premise, and in particular its "body-hopping" mechanic. They're not quite spoilers, but the purists among you may want to avoid watching it. Here's the video and a summary:
Colin describes the Meres, which are the devices by which you’ll inhabit the bodies of other castoffs. You’ll learn about the Meres early in Torment and they will be one of the tools at your disposal to solve various situations – or simply to explore more of the world, your heritage, and the nature of the Tides. Many of the Meres will be optional content, and they are one of several ways in which the story is modular and reactive – which Meres are available to you at different points in the game will depend in part upon your choices.
The update goes on to describe in further detail the 2.5 million dollar stretch goals that were recently achieved. The description of the "Castoff's Labyrinth" dungeon is particularly interesting:
Death in Torment will not be the same as “game over,” and there’s more to it this time than waking up in a mortuary. Your body is mostly immortal. Your consciousness, on the other hand, is a twisted place. When you die, your consciousness travels somewhere else, to a labyrinth of the mind.
The Castoff’s Labyrinth is a strange realm, a dreamlike maze of jungles, stairways, tunnels, and ruined cities. It’s your mind, but you wouldn’t know it from all that’s in here (I mean, what the hell is that dead, tentacled thing the size of a mountain range?). When you die in the game, you could always just reload, or maybe find the easy way out of the maze and back to your body, but you’d be missing out – it’s our goal to make gameplay after death compelling enough that you won’t even think about reloading.
The Castoff’s Labyrinth is a bizarre and interesting gameplay area, one of haunting exploration and discovery. As it grows, its secrets become deeper and more complex. Its depths are called Fathoms, and each brings new secrets and -- for the determined -- new rewards. What types of secrets and rewards? One will be lost cyphers: Each time you die, a new cypher (a single-use numenera) appears in the Labyrinth that you can take back with you. As the Labyrinth gets bigger, more of these random cyphers will become available the deeper you go. More types of secrets are attached to upcoming Stretch Goals, some of which are described below.
For every 3000 backers beyond 45000, Castoff's Labyrinth will receive an additional level ("Fathom"). However, this dungeon won't exactly be about hack-and-slash, as you shall soon see.
The most exciting part of the update is the new 2.75 million dollar stretch goal. If that funding goal is reached, the veteran Black Isle, Troika and Obsidian designer Brian Mitsoda will be joining Torment's writing team, as requested by fans. I hope this doesn't interfere with Dead State too much, Brian!
Besides that, the new stretch goal will also add additional features to Castoff's Labyrinth. Here's the description:
At this Stretch Goal we will also add Reflections of Companions and NPCs to the Castoff’s Labyrinth. These Reflections have different dialog and information than their living counterparts, and you will learn secrets about them that would otherwise remain hidden. (But are these secrets really about them? Or are they about you?) The more Fathoms within the Labyrinth, the more Reflections there will be, and the deeper their dialogues become.
Finally, we are adding another Castoff Labyrinth feature to the $3m Stretch Goal: Secret Meres. These Meres (dependent upon the Fathoms) are hidden within the Labyrinth and are accessible only from your own mind.
Finally, the update also reports that a new Stretch Goals forum has been added to the Torment website, for suggesting additional stretch goals. Now that the pace of funding has slowed down, there are going to be a lot more of them.
