Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Drudkh]

Eh... so the writing has been re-edited since the early beta? It's as if what i'm reading has been beaten with a bland stick.... wtf.

I wish i would have never seen things as they initially were, i feel sick now

 

[Lacrymas]

I think the biggest crime regarding the protagonist is that they are bland, with nothing visually interesting or recognizable. Just a dude or dudette. Give me deformations, give me hooks/chains/tubes/whatever through my body, give me a missing leg/arm, protruding bones, something! Make them suffer! This is a Torment game after all.

 

[TT1]

A PS4 review : http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/02/28/torment-tides-of-numenera-ps4-review/#/slide/1

 

[Lurker King]

Wait, what? PST is very much an adventure game wherein you're piecing environmental and character-specific knowledge together, some of which are controlled by RPG-derived statistics, to advance a story. PST has, broadly, a more non-linear approach to how this information is collected, assembled and employed to advance the story as compared to TToN.

I agree with MRY on this one. Adventure games are completely linear. You have to do things in a certain order, there are no stats and skills, etc. In PS:T you can sell your companions as slaves to obtain power, use your wisdom, etc. They are completely different genres.

 

[Blaine]

I think the biggest crime regarding the protagonist is that they are bland, with nothing visually interesting or recognizable. Just a dude or dudette. Give me deformations, give me hooks/chains through my body, give me a missing leg/arm, protruding bones, something!

Nope. I'm afraid we only have androgynous polyethnic ciphers with Tumblr hair available, and how dare you assume xer gender?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

You're the one triggered here mate. You're so triggered that you immediately start projecting. I only pointed it out, you saw no outrage from me.
I think it's a meaningless question, it makes no difference whatsoever, has no impact, has no relevance, there's literally 0 point in asking it. It's completely forced. I already knew from the moment I saw the character portraits and researched into the Numenera setting what to expect, so this doesn't exactly surprise me. I didn't give InXile my money so I'm really not that upset.
You're just a fool if you actually think the question is completely innocent.

are you thick ?

 

[Lacrymas]

Nope. I'm afraid we only have androgynous polyethnic ciphers with Tumblr hair available, and how dare you assume xer gender?

The character creation screen assumed only two genders. A thought crime at best. This is an interesting thing to bring up though, they've made them so alike, almost a copy of each other, why give the option of gender at all? Make xir androgynous. See, this is what pisses me off, they are so moderate in their extremes when it comes to art, making everything bland and samey. If you want a genderless utopia, then create one, it might somehow become art if you try hard enough. Not sarcasm.

Even Romanticism has examples of this. There was a novel in which both main characters, a man and a woman (gasp! I assumed xeir genders!), fall in love with an androgynous being (I think it later turns out to be an angel, but don't quote me on that). I have to find which book it was.

 

[MRY]

I agree with MRY on this one. Adventure games are completely linear. You have to do things in a certain order

Not true of the best adventures. Even so-so ones have some non-linearity.

 

[Urthor]

Has anyone worked out if it's worth upgrading Edge when you level up? I'm finding the level up system slightly bizarre, and not in a particularly good way.

Edge is the best one by a long shot. Each point in edge makes every task take 1 less point of effort, so it saves your points. 2 point task becomes 1 point task etc. You generally want to take that one first.

 

[Excidium II]

The game is growing on me. The use of anamnesis, scam thoughts and other skills in dialogues is really immersive, even though you don’t have the same feeling of self-discovery you have with PS:T.

scam thoughts

eheheheh

 

[Projas]

I've clocked about 10 hours as of right now and the game is still fun. Haven't even left Sagus yet, so it doesn't seem to be so short. Yeah there are issues as mentioned earlier and PS:T it ain't, but if you judge it on its own and not on how it lives up to its PS:T legacy, it seems to be a really quite a good game. Just hoping it lasts.

 

[Night Goat]

Just recruited an NPC with maxed-out Persuasion and Deception. Does this mean that if I keep the character in the party, it's pointless for me to invest in those skills? Skill points are in such short supply that redundancy doesn't seem like a good thing.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Pointless abstraction would be breaking down games down to their very bones, then arranging them on the floor saying this pile of bones is that genre, and this pile of bones is that genre. You can separate every game into it's smallest elements all right, but whatever the guy in from of the monitor experiences will be lost in all that detail. Are GTA and Forza Horizon the same genre? Both are driving games, both are open world sandbox, both have missions, both have you gaining money, both have licensed soundtrack with popular bands. It's practically the same game, except it's actually not.

BG2 has you rearranging gear and talking to people, but no one with the right mind would argue that it's an adventure game, because those mechanics are not the core gameplay. Getting the living shit kicked out of you is the core gameplay. Meanwhile PS:T is a game of God how do I avoid this shitty combat, and that changes the entire paradigm. Both games are made of very similar elements mechanically, but that doesn't automatically mean those mechanics combined into the same thing.

 

[Excidium II]

Are you supposed to recruit lando calrissian in a fit of metagaming-based choice or does the PC get a reason to help him later on?

 

[Lurker King]

I think the biggest crime regarding the protagonist is that they are bland, with nothing visually interesting or recognizable. Just a dude or dudette. Give me deformations, give me hooks/chains/tubes/whatever through my body, give me a missing leg/arm, protruding bones, something! Make them suffer! This is a Torment game after all.

What made PS:T special was an interesting narrative premise tied to the gameplay. The exploration of the game world and your companions it’s a journey of self-discovery and suspicion. The premise is clever, but it can work just one time before the novelty wears off. So the idea that the narrative premise of ToN could be both similar and mysterious was destined to fail from day one. Your criticism is correct, but is also superficial. What made the nameless one interesting is his obscure past, but you can’t have the same past without the same narrative premise that you already know. In fact, the idea that you can make a new classic as a spiritual successor of another classic is idiotic. You are not using the same premise, the same setting, the same character, etc. Even if you could choose these things, it would feel flat, because the game is a classic due to the narrative concept and you already know the concept. A spiritual successor can’t be a classic because is not trying to do its own thing.

In order to make another inspiring story-focused cRPG, you can explore new narrative premises tied to gameplay. AoD does this to a certain extent with the multiple angles approach. But the idea that you can use an old premise again and expect the same results is preposterous.

 

[Sentinel]

You're the one triggered here mate. You're so triggered that you immediately start projecting. I only pointed it out, you saw no outrage from me.
I think it's a meaningless question, it makes no difference whatsoever, has no impact, has no relevance, there's literally 0 point in asking it. It's completely forced. I already knew from the moment I saw the character portraits and researched into the Numenera setting what to expect, so this doesn't exactly surprise me. I didn't give InXile my money so I'm really not that upset.
You're just a fool if you actually think the question is completely innocent.

are you thick ?

nah I'm pretty thin m8

 

[MRY]

Pointless abstraction would be breaking down games down to their very bones, then arranging them on the floor saying this pile of bones is that genre, and this pile of bones is that genre. You can separate every game into it's smallest elements all right, but whatever the guy in from of the monitor experiences will be lost in all that detail. Are GTA and Forza Horizon the same genre? Both are driving games, both are open world sandbox, both have missions, both have you gaining money, both have licensed soundtrack with popular bands. It's practically the same game, except it's actually not.

BG2 has you rearranging gear and talking to people, but no one with the right mind would argue that it's an adventure game, because those mechanics are not the core gameplay. Getting the living shit kicked out of you is the core gameplay. Meanwhile PS:T is a game of God how do I avoid this shitty combat, and that changes the entire paradigm. Both games are made of very similar elements mechanically, but that doesn't automatically mean those mechanics combined into the same thing.

This makes no sense to me.

No one -- including you and Agris -- ever played PS:T and came away thinking that managing the party's gear was a form of puzzle-solving, in part because the game was so easy and in part because the game had almost no barrier along the main quest where you'd need to up your stats to bypass barriers. In other words, the argument only has merit if you think that this "break down to bones and compare" approach makes sense.

What you're really saying is, "PS:T felt like an adventure game to me, feelings can't really be articulated, but they are real." Sure. If, in fact, PS:T felt like adventure games to you, then you're 100% correct in describing your feelings. That said, overwhelmingly the people who say PS:T is an adventure game say that not because it actually felt anything like an adventure game to them but because they are aggressively patrolling the boundaries of their preferred genre (a particular subset of RPG) and are using "adventure game" as a pejorative shorthand. I am extraordinarily skeptical that anyone (including you and Agris) when finishing PS:T thought to himself, "Wow, this really reminded me of Monkey Island and King's Quest."

I do think that PS:T is similar to Japanese RPGs. I think it's dumb to call it a jRPG, but it's less dumb to call it a jRPG than it is to call it an adventure game because some of PS:T's defining features (a well-defined player character, an eclectic cast of well-defined and long-winded companions, a huge word count, easy combat) and smaller features (e.g., flamboyant high-level spell effects) are closer to jRPGs than most Western RPGs and because Avellone admits that jRPGs were a heavy influence on PS:T. But jRPGs aren't at all like adventure games either -- they essentially never feature inventory puzzles, very rarely have environmental puzzles (e.g., Lufia II), and including large amounts of combat and grinding. The Codexian meme that jRPGs are "adventure games" rather than RPGs is just another example of this pejorative usage.

If you wanted an apt pejorative for PS:T, I would say that "visual novel" would be the one you're looking for. You'd be wrong, but that's the least wrong pejorative of the three (adventure game, jRPG, visual novel).

---EDIT---

Ultimately, if you're going to use labels, those labels have to rest on something other than idiosyncratic feelings or they aren't useful for communication. Common usage, key features, ancestry, and creators' intent all make PS:T an RPG. What is on the other side of the ledger?

 

[MRY]

In other news: "Developer inXile Entertainment, whose founder Brian Fargo used to work at Black Isle parent company Interplay..."

 

[Lurker King]

Pointless abstraction would be breaking down games down to their very bones, then arranging them on the floor saying this pile of bones is that genre, and this pile of bones is that genre.

No one -- including you and Agris -- ever played PS:T and came away thinking that managing the party's gear was a form of puzzle-solving, in part because the game was so easy and in part because the game had almost no barrier along the main quest where you'd need to up your stats to bypass barriers. In other words, the argument only has merit if you think that this "break down to bones and compare" approach makes sense.

This! Saying that managing gear is puzzling solving is like saying that jumping on a platform is choice and consequence. If you follow this gratuitous use of basic design concepts, you soon will be immersed in bullshit relativism and no criteria.

 

[hpstg]

game has config for ps4, xbone and steam controller.

Correct. Not for the Xbox360 controller. It doesn't work with literally the most popular controller in the PC market, and there aren't even any kind of Xbox One emulators to make it work either. It's retarded.

 

[YES!]

game has config for ps4, xbone and steam controller.

Correct. Not for the Xbox360 controller. It doesn't work with literally the most popular controller in the PC market, and there aren't even any kind of Xbox One emulators to make it work either. It's retarded.

Wait a second, are you guys using a controller on a PC for an rpg? What the fuck is going on here?



My first impressions are the game is decent. Nothing really blows my mind or impresses me a lot, but nothing is bad. It is keeping my attention, and that's all I can ask. My experience exploring town so far has been very combat light so I hope that picks up as I am only get little trickles of xp instead of big chunks like after the fight I had with some dick trying to stop me from leaving the first map when you awaken.

 

[Lurker King]

I also noticed this. You earn like 100 XPs for a fight, but meager 3XPs for the use of other skills.

 

[Excidium II]

game has config for ps4, xbone and steam controller.

Correct. Not for the Xbox360 controller. It doesn't work with literally the most popular controller in the PC market, and there aren't even any kind of Xbox One emulators to make it work either. It's retarded.

nigga isn't it all xinput? Should just be plug and play.

 

[Excidium II]

I also noticed this. You earn like 100 XPs for a fight, but meager 3XPs for the use of other skills.

U get big chunks of xp for completing quests, the small stuff adds up anyway

 

[Lurker King]

My point is that a peaceful answer to the first fight doesn't give you half of what you earn fighting. It's unbalanced.