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Tags: Adam Heine; Colin McComb; InXile Entertainment; Kevin Saunders; Torment: Tides of Numenera
This month's Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update features progress reports from each member of the game's reigning triumvirate of designers. Kevin Saunders writes about the selection of the game's combat system, Colin McComb writes about the process of developing the game's story and companions, and Adam Heine discusses some of the technical details of the game's area design methodology. Since Torment's combat system is a topic of particular interest to the Codex, I'll quote that part:
The update also recaps a bunch of other events that have happened over the past month. Among other things, there's an update on the status of the game's many tie-in novellas, a belated introduction to writer Natalie Whipple, links to various interviews inXile has given recently (including our own prestigious Codex interviews) and this awesome piece of concept art by Andrée Wallin.
This month's Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update features progress reports from each member of the game's reigning triumvirate of designers. Kevin Saunders writes about the selection of the game's combat system, Colin McComb writes about the process of developing the game's story and companions, and Adam Heine discusses some of the technical details of the game's area design methodology. Since Torment's combat system is a topic of particular interest to the Codex, I'll quote that part:
Since we announced the project back in January, Torment fans have been wondering what combat system we'd use. Would Torment be real-time with pause (RTwP) like Planescape: Torment, turn-based like Wasteland 2, or something else? We've explained our high level goals for combat, and how we felt multiple types of combat system could achieve them. (If you missed it during the Kickstarter, check out Tony Evans’s Tales of Torment video about combat.) We've explained that we plan to have the decision about the type of combat system through a discussion with you, our backers.
This combat discussion is something we’re curious and excited about, but it’s still months in our future. Combat design will be very important, but our current focus is on the aspects that contribute the most to conversation design and reactivity because figuring these aspects out is necessary for all of the writers to get to work. Combat is an important topic, just not an urgent one, and we’ll talk more about it soon as we’re ready.
We've thought a bit about how we’ll approach the combat discussion when the time comes. We are planning a staged approach over a period of a few weeks. First, we’ll present the high level designs for the systems we think would work best for Torment based upon all of the other design work we’ll have done by then. We’ll then create a separate, backer-only Combat forum on User Voice for the topic to be discussed. A bit later, we’ll open up “voting” on this forum – thereby giving everyone who is interested some time to read and think about the approaches, as well as the ideas and comments of other backers, before weighing in numerically. We’ll leave the forum open until any debate has stabilized - we don’t expect there to be complete consensus, but after some time the major points will have been made and we’ll have enough information to make our decision.
Some of you have expressed concern that a popular vote could override our judgment and lead to an inferior game. This is a valid concern, but we’re not going to let this happen. First, we’re not going to present any option that we feel would be tragic for Torment. Second, we won’t blindly look at the numbers and decide based on those. Ultimately, we’ll take everyone’s comments and ideas into account and make the decision that we feel will be best for the game. But, again, this will be some time in the future – after we have fleshed out enough of the more pressing design topics to give combat the thorough attention it deserves.
The update also recaps a bunch of other events that have happened over the past month. Among other things, there's an update on the status of the game's many tie-in novellas, a belated introduction to writer Natalie Whipple, links to various interviews inXile has given recently (including our own prestigious Codex interviews) and this awesome piece of concept art by Andrée Wallin.
