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Game News Torment Kickstarter Update #46: Kevin on Sagus Cliffs and UI, Adam on Character Generation

Infinitron

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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
Tags: Adam Heine; InXile Entertainment; Kevin Saunders; Torment: Tides of Numenera

It's been quite some time since we had a substantial Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update. Today's update, featuring Torment Triumviri Kevin Saunders and Adam Heine, and isn't the largest we've had, but what it contains is quite interesting. From Kevin, we learn that development on the city of Sagus Cliffs (which George Zeits told us much about during the Bard's Tale IV wrap party) is in an advanced stage, with work on the environment art finishing up and writing halfway done. Kevin also offers an interesting report on the state of the game's UI, which has been overhauled with new Unity 5 technology, with development efforts now shifting towards polish and user-friendliness. Adam's portion of the update is all about Torment's character generation system. I'll quote that part in its entirety:

In the first Torment, character generation was unusual for a CRPG at the time, especially one in the Dungeons & Dragons lineage. When you hit New Game, you were given 9 points in each stat plus 21 additional points to distribute as you desired. That was it. You didn't do anything else before jumping into the game – no class, feats, talents, or alignment. Everything else was either predetermined (name, gender, appearance) or determined through gameplay (class, skills, and alignment).

In Tides of Numenera, we are taking that even further, handling as much character generation through gameplay as we reasonably can. The results so far are pretty cool, but it's a challenging for a couple of reasons.

First, TTON has a lot more to teach than PST. This is a challenge because it's hard to teach rules and systems through conversation, especially without breaking the fourth wall (which we are loathe to do). And while many players knew at least the basics of AD&D before playing Planescape: Torment, we have to assume that a larger portion of players won't know Numenera's rules.

Second, TTON has more starting choices to make than PST. Although both Torments have three classes, Tides of Numenera offers many additional choices in the form of your Descriptor and your Focus (more on these later).

Instead of walking you through a standard, step-by-step character generation process, we wanted to get you into the story as fast as possible. For TTON’s themes, we felt it was appropriate to have character creation occur in-game, but we didn’t want to compromise the narrative to do this.

At the start of the game, the only immediate choice you'll make is what gender you want to play. Like PST, your name and appearance are predetermined, and you’ll start with 9 in all three Stat Pools (Might, Speed, and Intellect).* With that, you'll be dropped immediately into the world.

Early in the narrative, you explore several memories and, in doing so, allocate 6 additional Stat Pool points while also showing a leaning toward what Descriptor best applies to you. The way you will do this is entirely in-world and part of the story. Your Descriptor gives you a few first Skills and some Stat adjustments, defining a flavor for everything you do. TTON has seventeen different Descriptors for the PC to choose from. That's too many to sift through in an RPG conversation. Instead, the opening of the game will pay attention to the choices you make and how you decide to handle the situations you come across. As you interact with the environment (through scripted interactions), you'll be given a subset of TTON’s 17 Descriptors based on those choices.

You'll have a chance to review your choice after the fact, and even choose a Descriptor outside the subset—so you can still face the full fury of 17 Descriptors if you want to. Our method of having gameplay decisions guide character creation does not mean you will be locked into the options the narrative provides for you. You can freely pick between all options if you wish.

Choosing your Type (i.e. class) and Focus will be similar, though simpler. Unlike PST, you can't change your Type whenever you want. Instead, all three are presented at once in a unique part of your mind created (presumably) by your sire. The Numenera Types—Jack, Nano, and Glaive—are pretty straightforward, so handling them in the narrative is relatively simple (before this choice, your Type is "Castoff"). As with the Descriptor you will have opportunity to review your choice and study the details of each Type if you want to do that.

Last is your Focus—the abilities that make your character unique. You will be able to change your Focus throughout the game (for a cost of course, though the first one's free), and you can discover and unlock additional Foci later. You'll unlock the first set in the opening quarter of the game and choose your initial Focus there. Learning about the Foci and choosing your first one will be wrapped in the narrative like Descriptor and Type.

The goal of all this is to combine learning the system with playing through the story. In the same way that your Tides (being your alignment, so to speak) are determined organically by your actions, your mechanical choices will also be a natural extension of how you choose to play the game.
The best news from this update, however, is that the first Alpha Systems Test is coming "very, very soon". It will consist of the game's first scene, including the beginnings of the aforementioned character generation process. Backers who pledged for alpha access will be contacted with information on how to participate. It's about time!
 
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I prefer to have a nice, elegant and prestigious character creation screen than some ingame monstrosity. In any subsequent playthrough it will become tiresome. And I doubt it is possible to seamlessly put it into the game. In order to not make a game feel gamey and to free the narrative, the game will be made gamey and narrative will be tied to systems. An opposite effect. Self fulfilling prophecy. It's the first time I read something about TToN that i didn't like.
 

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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
It's not like this is a game where you're going to want to hurry up and create a character so you can go killing monsters in the dungeon. If you find the character generation tedious, chances are the rest of the game won't be much different. It's all conversations, there is no "game" part that you'll want to skip to.
 
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Fry

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I doubt the in-game character creation "phase" is going to take up much more than a tiny chunk at the start of the game. Is that really going to ruin replayability for anyone?

They're trying something new. Don't be afraid.
 

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"Monstrous" character creation FTW.

Instead of walking you through a standard, step-by-step character generation process, we wanted to get you into the story as fast as possible. For TTON’s themes, we felt it was appropriate to have character creation occur in-game, but we didn’t want to compromise the narrative to do this.

What they're describing sounds like the only way to tie character creation in with the narrative premise of the game -- unless someone here has a better idea?

What they might want to take care of, imo, is that this early game character creation segment is not too repetitive across multiple playthroughs. Make the player do different things in order to gain those Stat Pool points etc., so that I wouldn't have to go through the exact same motions when replaying the game with a different character -- but would make different choices and feel their impact instead.
 

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I like how a few commenters are complaining about how they can't customize their toon even though the official (i.e. only) portraits for the castoff were released during the campaign.
 
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It's not like this is a game where you're going to want to hurry up and create a character so you can go killing monsters in the dungeon. If you find the character generation tedious, chances are the rest of the game won't be much different. It's all conversations, there is no "game" part that you'll want to skip to.

Conversations whose main point is what class or talent player chooses. It may be obviously hidden beneath the thick layer of words, but those words are only serving to draw attention away from what is really going on. In this sense those words can even make it worse.
 

twincast

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I prefer to have a nice, elegant and prestigious character creation screen than some ingame monstrosity. In any subsequent playthrough it will become tiresome. And I doubt it is possible to seamlessly put it into the game. In order to not make a game feel gamey and to free the narrative, the game will be made gamey and narrative will be tied to systems. An opposite effect. Self fulfilling prophecy. It's the first time I read something about TToN that i didn't like.
Because Numenera's chargen is oh so very complex that pondering all the options and how they relate to each other on a single screen is practically a necessity and covering it via game-play would take all but forever...
 

DeepOcean

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I think this is important to tie the player with the narrative, one of the biggest challenges on storyfag RPGs is how to bring the players on board in the narrative without the player feeling he is being forced on a direction. You choices detemining your character mean the game can keep track of those choices later for a bit of personalized storytelling.
 
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What they're describing sounds like the only way to tie character creation in with the narrative premise of the game -- unless someone here has a better idea?
Background trees are nice but I guess it doesn't work in this game since you're supposed to be a a complete blank slate at the start.
 

Shevek

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I doubt the in-game character creation "phase" is going to take up much more than a tiny chunk at the start of the game. Is that really going to ruin replayability for anyone?

They're trying something new. Don't be afraid.
Sounds like New Vegas
 

Crescent Hawk

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This is the game that will finally break me and force me to go to Bhutan to reach enlightenment.
 

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This will be very cool first time, interesting the second time, tedious for the third time and then a mod to fix it will show up. Same as with most extended tutorials/char creations really.
 

Trip

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I'm thinking the point would be to choose a different chargen path each time, so it won't be tedious. The PnP isn't big on minmaxing at all, and I suppose neither would T:TON be.
 

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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
If this is "tedious", it's only tedious in the same sense that the introductory/tutorial section of any game is tedious, regardless of whether it involves character generation. Irenicus' dungeon in BG2 didn't need to have "narrative character generation" to piss people off.

The only other argument here is that narrative character generation is noise that obscures min-maxing and delays getting to the "good stuff" (eg, dungeon hacking) as soon as possible, which isn't relevant in this game.

So direct your complaints towards RPG introductions and tutorials in general, not towards the concept of narrative character generation specifically.

P.S.

narrative will be tied to systems.

And just what is wrong with that? This is a Torment game - lampshading RPG tropes (including systems) is something that it's supposed to do. We're talking about a game where a major plot element is a magical artifact that references saving and loading.
 

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The holy words of the new millennium: instant gratification!
 

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It's fair to say, however, that trawling through memories to create a character isn't the freshest daisy in the field when it comes to tropes, either. I hope they tried something different than a straight-up background dump at the start, roughly in the style of "Hazy memories buzz around your head. Your creator has left you the vague impression that you're A) Strong and straightforward, B) Sneaky and opportunistic, C) Scholarly and esoteric". What I'd like to see is the idea of dialogue-like choices outside dialogue, like for example choices between different attitudes towards an examined object or an NPC, defining your mental and emotional focus (and/or your knowledge about this particular sort of objects/NPCs) and from there, your Descriptor, for instance.
 

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Why are people complaining about narrative being designed in tandem with gameplay mechanics, in a Torment thread no less, and in the Codex of all places?

That being said, I thought the last castoff was supposed to be a tabula rasa instead of an amnesiac? PS:T used the 'reliving memories from previous TNO's' shtick to explain why you were able to learn how to use magic and new weapon proficiences so quickly, and why you gained attribute points on level ups. What's T:ToN's explanation?
 

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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
Why are people complaining about narrative being designed in tandem with gameplay mechanics, in a Torment thread no less, and in the Codex of all places?

That being said, I thought the last castoff was supposed to be a tabula rasa instead of an amnesiac? PS:T used the 'reliving past lives' shtick to explain why you were able to learn how to use magic and new weapon proficiences so quickly, and why you gained attribute points on level ups. What's T:ToN's explanation?

Is an explanation required? We don't know how the advancement mechanics of T:ToN's main character will differ from those of his companions. Maybe it's the same for all of them.
 

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muh immershun
 

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