Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[valcik]

So you're saying that Numenera is intended to invoke a specific (yet at the same time fill in the blank ("you name it")) moral background, and TTON failed artistically because the authors forgot to include characters to reflect that background?

Nope, my point is that prostitution in vidya =/= muh boobs.
I don't care what Numanuma is intended to invoke, or what the authors forgot to include.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Ahem, which stretch goals did Double Fine fail to keep?

I ... can't recall.

All I remember is an ocean of butthurt. If they did manage to keep all of them, then more power to them (and it actually strengthens the point I was making ).

The drama was about DFA going overbudget, and ending up switching to episodic format and canibalizing Early Access sales to actually find the additional funds. Which certainly wasn't a very nice move, but at least they've spent their own money to finish the game, and didn't have to ask backers for as much as an extra dime.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

I really don't think a hockey stick is the best thing to use to clean out a septic tank...

 

[Neanderthal]

Honestly, Hive is a bit of a theme park, with everyone being either a prostitute or a thug. I don't care for developers just plopping in a hundred cloned prostitutes and thugs as background decoration. Would work better with just a few prostitutes, scarce thugs and mostly ordinary hive dwellers.

Once again, it's the setting. The Hive is described as a place full of scum.
Honestly, people should really read the Planescape source books at least, if they don't have the option to play it, they're a much closer experience to PST than TTON is.

Aye plus thugs don't come out til night in most Hive areas, vast majority o populace in day are normal Hive Dwellers, some on who know Nameless from past incarnations. Morric, Thlium etc. Red light district around Smoulderin Corpse is mostly thugs an pros as it should be, but also drunks, touts, thieves, gardeners, Xaositect muggers an prophets, Bariaur, Collectors, damsels in distress, an normal folk as usual. Even Alley o Dangerous Angles is not just thugs.

 

[Luckmann]

I really don't think a hockey stick is the best thing to use to clean out a septic tank...

To be fair, there's no whites left. You expect niggers to actually sort something out beyond beating on it with a stick? I'm surprised there's even a hockey stick to be had. Probably a remnant from the great Multicuck Republic of Canadica.

 

[an Administrator]

They're saying dumb things like "but realism!" and "but there were skanks in PST!" neither of which is a sensible argument because there are many other departures from realism and the Planescape setting that no one is complaining about.

Because no one cares about other degrees of realism?
BTW there is no doubt a few tits here and there could vastly improve the game's aesthetics.

 

[Prime Junta]

Because no one cares about other degrees of realism?
BTW there is no doubt a few tits here and there could vastly improve the game's aesthetics.

Not everything becomes better if you put tits on it.

Spoiler

 

[TT1]

Because no one cares about other degrees of realism?
BTW there is no doubt a few tits here and there could vastly improve the game's aesthetics.

Not everything becomes better if you put tits on it.

Spoiler

 

[Iznaliu]

Hey I managed to find your picture

Looking in the mirror is not the best way to find pictures

 

[Lord Andre]

No one wants tits for tits' sake in a shitty Inxile video game with their shitty engine, the shitty models and the sub amateur level portraits.

What people were saying in Zombra 's tit thread over yonder was that the game feels sanitized, scrubbed clean, castrated and that the world building could have used some sexual tension and references here and there to breath some life into it.

Zombra 's deflect to strawman tactic is predictable of course and boring as well. Honestly I don't know why he even bothered, it's not like it makes a difference at this point...

 

[Luckmann]

Because no one cares about other degrees of realism?
BTW there is no doubt a few tits here and there could vastly improve the game's aesthetics.

Not everything becomes better if you put tits on it.

Spoiler

[FAKE NEWS]

 

[Zombra]

What people were saying in Zombra 's tit thread over yonder was that the game feels sanitized, scrubbed clean, castrated and that the world building could have used some sexual tension and references here and there to breath some life into it.

If they'd said that, I would have cruised right on by, after once again mourning the absence of brofists.

Zombra 's deflect to strawman tactic is predictable of course and boring as well. Honestly I don't know why he even bothered, it's not like it makes a difference at this point...

Eh, no real reason. Right now inXile forums are glutted with threads about "Where do I find the Yellow Key?" so there's not much of interest to do. I saw a thread about sexual topics, which I find personally stimulating and are also a hotspot for trouble, so I checked it out. Then I saw a dumb guy making a stupid edgy argument, so I batted back at him like a ball of yarn. Basically it was about as urgent and important as this very post.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

I'm finding that the issue with Tides of Numenera is that it's hard to immerse yourself like in PST. Just when it starts to pull you in a bit, there's always some immersion-breaking experience to be had. For instance, the lines that are voiced are just so random, as in there is no rhyme or reason to it. While PST was a bit odd like that, it was at least consistent with it's delivery of the voiced lines. Which brings me into the companions. I find them all to have little personality. Even if the party banter wasn't bugged/broken, I don't imagine any of the party have much to talk about anyways. They are all more or less not very interesting and the game gives me little reason to care about them and it's not like they even have much dialogue beyond "Do you know anything about this place? response and almost all of them have no clue about their background with it either it being so terrible they don't wish to talk about it or just plain ". . . can't remember," which seems more like a way to not have to write more yet the entire game is full of text. The writing also seems to be cobbled together in the same strange way as the rest of the game. Sometimes it has great writing and other times it ranges from okay to hrm-durr. The combat mechanics are also terrible, so when the game forces you into fighting, chances are one of your party members has the mobility of a sloth or you get stuck in a position where a party member gets murdered right off the bat with no warning seeing as you can't preemptively start combat or your "friendlies" are a bunch of mindless idiots wanting to stand around to get slaughtered.

It's as if Tides of Numenera has glimpses of excellence here and there, but it's all so deep into the labyrinth that it can't find it's own self because it's scattered in every which direction much like the Numenera setting which I've concluded is actually terrible and they should have used weird like the Planescape setting but thematically consistent material.

 

[Lord Andre]

What people were saying in Zombra 's tit thread over yonder was that the game feels sanitized, scrubbed clean, castrated and that the world building could have used some sexual tension and references here and there to breath some life into it.

If they'd said that, I would have cruised right on by, after once again mourning the absence of brofists.

Zombra 's deflect to strawman tactic is predictable of course and boring as well. Honestly I don't know why he even bothered, it's not like it makes a difference at this point...

Eh, no real reason. Right now inXile forums are glutted with threads about "Where do I find the Yellow Key?" so there's not much of interest to do. I saw a thread about sexual topics, which I find personally stimulating and are also a hotspot for trouble, so I checked it out. Then I saw a dumb guy making a stupid edgy argument, so I batted back at him like a ball of yarn. Basically it was about as urgent and important as this very post.

'k I guess...

To be fair, I think there was some form of tension in Inifire's mere between him and his second in command. There are moments like that in the game but few. It's a shame because characters really come alive when they have actual human motivation instead of quirky numenera gimmick no34.

I wonder who wrote that mere though because it's really good as opposed to Inifere's actual in game dialogue which is an anti-climatic mess of word salad. I bet different people wrote those parts...

 

[Lhynn]

'k I guess...

To be fair, I think there was some form of tension in Inifire's mere between him and his second in command. There are moments like that in the game but few. It's a shame because characters really come alive when they have actual human motivation instead of quirky numenera gimmick no34.

I wonder who wrote that mere though because it's really good as opposed to Inifere's actual in game dialogue which is an anti-climatic mess of word salad. I bet different people wrote those parts...

MRY ?

 

[MRY]

Nope, I wrote them both. In the Mere, Inifere's mind is more intact. That said, it's really an apples-to-oranges comparison because Inifere doesn't talk much in the Mere, so it's totally reasonable to hate my dialogue writing but tolerate my prose writing, or whatever.

Incidentally, as an aside, Inifere's backstory was basically taken from the Piecemeal arc that ran in some of the tier-two X-Men comics when I was 11 or so. #itsallstolen That story deeply disturbed me -- I kind of wonder how lame it would seem now.

The Gold Tidal Mere has some sexual tension, too, if that's your thing, although it's a little less overt.

 

[an Administrator]

dumb guy

H-hey

 

[valcik]

.. (yet at the same time fill in the blank ("you name it")) moral background

That's right, you can add so many nuances and flavor with this tool to your virtual society. Do you remember Herbert's Dune and Honored Matres enslaving men by means of sexual pleasures provided by specialized prostitutes? Masterful way how to describe power of matriarchy, where the men are used only for manual labour and as a sex toys.

The devil is in the detail, and skillful writer can create very rich worlds with details like that.

 

[hexer]

Not much of a reaction from Gaider.
Guess that analysis won't be so positive

 

[Lurker King]

I'm finding that the issue with Tides of Numenera is that it's hard to immerse yourself like in PST. Just when it starts to pull you in a bit, there's always some immersion-breaking experience to be had.

The fact alone that T:ToN starts with a weird intro followed by a tutorial tells everything you need to know about the different design sensibilities behind both games.

 

[Lord Andre]

Nope, I wrote them both. In the Mere, Inifere's mind is more intact. That said, it's really an apples-to-oranges comparison because Inifere doesn't talk much in the Mere, so it's totally reasonable to hate my dialogue writing but tolerate my prose writing, or whatever.

Incidentally, as an aside, Inifere's backstory was basically taken from the Piecemeal arc that ran in some of the tier-two X-Men comics when I was 11 or so. #itsallstolen That story deeply disturbed me -- I kind of wonder how lame it would seem now.

The Gold Tidal Mere has some sexual tension, too, if that's your thing, although it's a little less overt.

Interesting. Well, the writing in Inifere's mere is solid so big thumbs up for that.

The dialogue with him rubs me the wrong way, but maybe it's more of a design issue than writing per se. I'll explain.

1. The dialogue with him in the present should serve as a denouement to his arc but I can't seem to get through his madman babble and ravings to reach any sort of conclusion. Sure I can get him to close the gate or kill him but while that resolves the situation with the cultists, it doesn't really close his character because you still haven't understood him...you know as much about him after talking with him then before. There's no reveal there, it's missing the prestige part of the act.

2. And this ties in to my first point, it seems Inifere has Xmen fake problems:

Cyclops: "Oh no there are people who don't like us because we're mutants, they're being meany heads to us, my life is so hard, no one can understand my torment... I would do anything to be normal !"

Me: "No you wouldn't dick head. You can shoot lazor beams from your eyes, you're handsome and smart, you have a hot girlfriend and you live in a mansion. And on top of that, you go on cool adventures all the time. You have it as good as it gets and you're telling me you're life is such a pain because a few faggots are racist against mutants ? Get the fuck out of here..."

Fake drama. And Inifere seems to have similar fake problems. The dialogue should have been:

Inifere: "Ah, little brother, you've finally arriv..."

Me: "'Sup Bro!"

Inifere: "Bro...?"

Me: "Yeah... I know you're not evil so let's go. Let's get out of here, you can close the door once we're out. I know this strip joint where we can get some drinks..."

Inifere: "NO, I'm tormented! Our father left me to be raped by Cthulu while he bolted for safety. I'm emo now. Or goth. Or maybe both..."

Me: "Bro. Bro! Snap out of it, that happened way back then, I'm sure it sucked but now you're good. It's fine, let's just leave. I know a place. We'll get some Jack and Coke, you'll get your dick sucked in the champagne room... I'm talking about top sluts, premium skans, "work the shaft, swallow the gravy" freaks - that's like kriptonite to childhood abuse - it punks out Freud, Jung and anybody else like they're little bitches... So come on, let's go."

Inifere: "I... can't. The children... the cultists - they won't let me leave."

Me: "Kill'em. Kill'em all. That's what I did, I killed them all. Literally. I've literally killed them all. I'm surprised you haven't thought of it yourself. It's so obvious."

Inifere: "BUT THE SORROW !"

Me: "Bish, what ABOUT the sorrow ? So you ran into it once, big deal. Think of it like lightning - never strikes twice in the same place. Besides, Sorrow don't care about you, it cares about the Changin God, it doesn't have time for you. What ? .... How do I know ? I'll tell you how I know. I know because there's a motherfucking endless war going on, being fought by castoffs, in the open, in the middle of the damn continent, for years, and the Sarrow hasn't showed up to eat them yet. If it wanted to eat castoffs wouldn't it have gone to the endless war first. Yeah, I know it makes sense, that's what I'm saying dog. If the Sarrow wanted castoffs there would be no endless war. Look, it was probably following the Changing God's trail and you were in its way, that's all there is to it."

Inifere: "That does make sense... But what would I do in the real world ?"

Me: "Uh, hellooo! You have a castoff body, that's like having original Levi... genes. Regeneration, prolonged life, all the good shit. And you seem fairly intelligent. And you survived living with a cosmic horror for decades, how cool is that ? There's adventure, shins, all kinds of wacky numenera to discover and tons of blue haired hoes with daddy issues. You could even join me on my quest..."

Inifere: "O-ok..."

Me: "Updated my journal. "

 

[MRY]

Fair points. I think part of it is that the structure of the scenario doesn't lend itself to a "prestige"-like character development. For example, if instead the scenario were that you had to get to Miel Avest via the Endless Gate, then the way you'd open it would be pushing Inifere's misery back above the necessary threshold -- that, to me, would be "prestigious" in a way that closing it via persuasion cannot possibly be. But ultimately I didn't view his character primarily as a mystery to be solved, or at least not a "hard" mystery ("Who is inside the Phantom suit, Scooby?") so much as a "soft" mystery that is mostly triggered in the conversation itself (namely, how could the Endless Gate form around someone who seems basically like a weird loner rather than a charismatic mass-murderer?), which isn't a mystery that yields a prestige so much as a slightly greater understanding. I thought the dream interpretation was kind of neat if you went through his talk tree first and thus had some idea what was really going on in his subconscious, but, yeah, it's no big twist.

Probably the biggest weakness is that there's so little to do in his dialogue after the Mere, but that was based on an assumption that players wouldn't be able to bear a third long text segment at that point and things needed to be brought to a close.

The second criticism is less persuasive to me. Maybe it's just years of dealing with people with mental disorders, but eventually I got disabused with the notion that a depressed person should just snap out of it. And Inifere isn't handsome or even particularly powerful (his strength in the fight is coming via the beings beyond the Endless Gate). But more importantly, his unhappiness isn't based on some present prejudice he's suffering, it's based on having been horrifically abused as a "child" and be surrounded by misery ever since. His "hot girlfriend" was a hideous and (he believed) dishonest sub-cult-leader who died in front of him.

That doesn't mean it's fun or interesting to watch someone mope around, though. :D

 

[an Administrator]

Inifere was a boring character

 

[Haba]

Inifere was a character?

Oh, you mean that douche who interrupted me when I was about to murderkill the cunt who got away from me in the underbelly.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

Inifere was a character?

Oh, you mean that douche who interrupted me when I was about to murderkill the cunt who got away from me in the underbelly.

That quest was very anti-climatic for me. I was intent on killing her, and thought I'd get the chance, but after dealing with Inifere the gate closed and I never was able to. I was convinced Inifere was an innocent victim of some cosmic horror that I'd get to fight, but I never was able to do so. There was a lot of build up to that point and you have to fight your way through all those damned cultists. I wanted to put an end to this evil cult once and for all, but instead I just got them to close the portal - probably temporarily. I'm sure there were other paths and maybe killing Inifere would have been the logical thing to do, and then I could bring Kiyatawa to justice. But I feel like I've completely failed to achieve anything, or at least anything meaningful or decisive.

I made a promise to Fulsome that I would bring justice to the killer of all those innocents in the Underbelly, but I ended up breaking that promise because of being side-tracked and then having the portal close. If only I'd known this would happen, I'd have went about things differently. What I didn't know was that when the portal closed I'd be permanently expelled from it. I thought there was going to be some boss battle with some dark entity, and then all would be made right... but it just never happened. So as I said, very anti-climatic.