Rumours have been swirling for years about a possible sequel to Black Isle’s legendary and powerful roleplaying game Planescape: Torment, but the closure of the original studio and the jealous guarding of the Planescape rights by owners Wizards of the Coast seemed to have put paid to any comeback. But with original Interplay boss Brian Fargo very much back in the RPG business with current studio inXile’s wildly successful Wasteland 2 crowdfunding, everything changes. He and his team have come up with a way to make a new Torment game: this is really happening.
And there was much rejoicing.
Read on for details of its new setting, the people involved, whether it’ll link to the original game, which thematic aspects will recur, how the combat may work and how they’ll get it made.
First up, the new setting for this new Torment will be Numenera, an original roleplaying setting and system created (and recently Kickstarted by) Monte Cook, a contributing writer/designer on the original Planescape pen and paper RPG and assorted other Wizards of the Coast projects. A mix of fantasy and sci-fi with a strong focus on storytelling freedom, it may not be Planescape but hopefully it offers an appropriate blend of liberty and strangeness for a new Torment game. Have a look at its site for fulsome details of what’s planned for it. Here, meanwhile, inXile boss Brian Fargo sheds a whole lot of light on what the partnership means for his studio’s Torment sequel.
RPS- I know he revealed it back in August and seemed to have a ton of groundwork done already, but is Monte Cook’s Numenera setting being designed with a Torment game in mind to any extent? Will you guys have a chance to shape his plans for that as you’ll be working together?
Fargo: The wheels for the Torment game have been in motion for quite some time. The more we explored the Numenera setting, the clearer it became that it’s a natural fit for a Torment game. And it isn’t too surprising that Numenera’s aesthetics work well for Torment given that Monte was a key designer for the Planescape setting.
Numenera is very exotic and rich, but is a flexible universe that empowers and support GMs. As Torment desires certain locations or features, we’ll be able to do what we need to while fully respecting the setting. This goes beyond a typical licensing arrangement as Monte will be giving us direct input and even provide writing for some of the game areas. I’m really pleased to have Monte be part of the team.
RPS – What are the stand-out aspects of Numenera for you, in terms of suiting your dev plans? How much is about the setting and how much the roleplaying mechanics?
Fargo: A Torment game requires big ideas and a truly exotic setting in order to explore the underlying thematic elements. Colin described it best when he said “Torment’s themes are essentially metaphysical, getting to the heart of what it means to be alive and conscious, and it’s easier to ask those questions in a setting that is far removed from the familiar.” Numenera is such a setting, and it has tremendous potential to cultivate those ideas. We won’t have faeries or devils, but we’ll have diabolical creatures from far dimensions with schemes beyond human imagination. We won’t have gods, but we’ll have creatures who have lived for millennia with the powers of creation and destruction at their fingertips, with abilities honed over countless lifetimes. We won’t have other planes per se, but we’ll have pathways to hostile worlds and bizarre landscapes and ancient machines that catapult the players into places where the ordinary laws of nature no longer apply. In terms of role-playing mechanics, we won’t be attempting to literally translate the Numenera tabletop system into electronic form. However, its gameplay mechanics are very solid and include several components that will lend themselves to great (and innovative) cRPG gameplay. It’s great to have the Numenera rules as a starting point and to be working with Monte to adapt them for a cRPG.
RPS – Given no Planescape and presumably none of the PST characters, what makes a Torment game a Torment game to your mind?
Fargo: We know it hasn’t been done often in the game industry, but we’re envisioning Torment as a thematic franchise with certain themes that can expand over different settings and stories. We will focus on the same things that made people appreciate PST so much: overturning RPG tropes; a fantastic, unconventional setting; memorable companions; deep thematic exploration of the human condition; heavy reactivity (i.e., choice and consequences); an intensely personal (rather than epic) story.
RPS – How much are you thinking of working in overt links to/echoes of PST as opposed to broader thematic commonality? And what are the legal restrictions there – for instance, if you wanted to include a smartass talking skull with a dark secret, could you include a smartass talking skull with a dark secret?
Fargo: Rather than overt links, we are trying to recapture the feeling that players experienced through PST –both while playing it and after having completed a playthrough. We will remain true to the essence of PST, but we’ll also be looking for ways to improve the areas in which PST could have been even better. Fortunately, besides our personal experiences, we have years of feedback from other passionate PST fans to draw upon. We certainly would not infringe on any copyrights but with that said there are very few elements in RPGs that can be protected. There are several games with talking skull heads, for example, if we wanted to incorporate things of that nature.
RPS – Where are inXile up to in terms of designing this thing, given you’ve presumably incredibly busy with Wasteland? Will you be working on it concurrently with Wasteland or saving it for later?
Fargo: We’re very early in Torment’s preproduction right now. We have a basic story outline, design sketches of the major characters, and thematic concepts defined. Wasteland 2 is in full production and we don’t want to detract from that focus. But with that said, the writers on Wasteland are complete for the most part and the concept artists are not involved at this stage in the game. The guys working on Torment are no longer working on Wasteland 2 and I want to keep these talented guys busy for us. Typically we do begin design of the next game while the production team is working on the current one. This allows the team to take a nice break once they are complete on the current game and then come back to roll onto a design that is thorough and polished. The last thing we want to do is break up a winning team.
I find this model creates a better quality flow of product and doesn’t have the team jumping onto a sequel before there has been adequate time to absorb the feedback from the game that just shipped. It is a luxury that most mid size developers are not able to have and it allows the time required to create classics. I never like sequels to be rushed and working this way ensures the team works on fresh ideas.
RPS – While PST was a team effort Avellone’s become the poster boy for it since release – so, have you been thinking/talking about getting him involved? And if you can’t for any reason, do you have a plan on how to convince the PST faithful that is a true-blue Torment?
Fargo: Chris deserves all the credit that he receives and we are working with him on Wasteland 2 as you know. My role as executive producer is to assemble top notch teams and to make sure we stay on point for what we are creating. I’m really happy with the team we have assembled for this game. It was Chris who urged me to work with both Colin McComb and Kevin Saunders for this project and he has given us his blessing for another Torment. Colin McComb and Monte Cook were two of the primary developers of the Planescape campaign setting for TSR, and Colin was one of the main designers on the original Torment. Colin serves as creative lead for this Torment and will be driving the story vision for the game.
Kevin Saunders, the project director, worked with Chris at Obsidian for 5 years – including leading the Mask of the Betrayer (MotB) team. People might remember that MotB was very well received and there were more than a few comparisons to PST. Kevin was also the lead designer and producer for Shattered Galaxy, which swept the 2001 Independent Games Festival and was acknowledged by GameSpot as the Most Innovative Game of the year.
Additionally, we have one of the unsung heroes of PST on the design team: scripter Adam Heine, who really helped breathe life into the game. He was also one of the designers on Black Isle’s TORN, having moved to that position in large part because of his excellent work on PST.
Our talented artists include Dana Knutson, the concept artist from the original Planescape campaign setting, and he’s been helping bring our ideas to life.
And to really show we are serious about the writing aspects of this game we brought Ray Vallese in as the editor to ensure the detail and consistency of the story. Ray too was part of the Planescape team at TSR.
There will be some other surprise talent that I’ll announce later on but I thought it important to stress the heritage of the great team we have. I feel quite confident that the players of PST will feel comfortable and appreciate the experience being created.
RPS – Real/pause time or turn-based?
Fargo: I’ll let the producer Kevin Saunders answer that one: “The details of combat are still an open question, but our initial leaning is that real-time with pause will provide the better experience for the game. Whichever direction we ultimately take it, we’ll be giving combat considerable attention – we are aware that one of the criticisms of PST (including from Avellone) was its combat and we want to improve upon that aspect. The Numenera combat system provides a stronger starting place for a cRPG than AD&D 2nd Edition did and we’ll prototype early so that we have ample time to iterate over the course of the project. We are also working on ways to weave narrative elements into the combat system such that the gameplay and story complement each other. But I should mention that even while enhancing combat, we will stay true to PST by making it so players can almost completely avoid battles based upon their choices.”
RPS – Are you thinking Kickstarter again?
Fargo: Absolutely. There are obvious advantages to Kickstarter for both developers and backers. We get our games funded without dealing with a crazy publisher and the backer gets a game for much less than what the finished product would cost non-backers. But beyond that, the benefit of crowd funding is that it provides feedback and accountability to the people who are actually going to play the game. It validates the concept and helps us prioritize the sensibilities of the project. We are not forced to compromise for the thought of how the “mass market” might react. It’s a wonderfully pure process and one that hinges on trust.
RPS – Can you talk about why Wizards of the Coast were resistant to licensing Planescape again?
Fargo: We asked and were rebuffed. In reality we didn’t push very hard on licensing it as the team was excited to work with Monte on Numenera and they felt that there would be less creative restriction. And WotC has been pretty silent on this space for some time. Neither Feargus nor I was able to get a Baldur’s Gate 3 project going.
RPS – Did you meet any resistance when seeking the Torment name?
Fargo: I patiently waited for someone to do something with a Torment concept but nothing happened. After many years the rights expired and allowed me to step in and put together a great team to make another title of its kind. We will improve on the mechanics and deliver a deep narrative story that is deserving of the name Torment.
RPS – Thanks for your (pause-)time.
Brian Fargo... not sure if can like.
Brian Fargo... not sure if can like.
Yes, despite the thread title, I'm very :fryface about this.
Art and premise are good, but let's see how Wasteland 2 turns out before we pop the champagne, shall we?
Brian Fargo... not sure if can like.
Is it worth to try them still or has that moment gone?
Hmm wasn't this announced a bit earlier I thought? Interesting to see what will be done with the story mostly since I always thought Torment wrapped everything up pretty concisely.
it's gonna suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck(http://i.minus.com/ibgqXoBmH2WxvO.gif)
grimdark +5
I wish ineXile had more then just a pretty good update of Choplifter to refer to for their highlight reel for the last decade.
And thats a good thing to highlight??
First gaming KS to break $4M? Or $3M without Paypal?
Fastest game-related Kickstarter to reach $1 million. It took less than seven hours. Ouya took 8 hours.
Fastest game-related Kickstarter to reach $1 million. It took less than seven hours. Ouya took 8 hours.
Chances this will be better than Ouya- about a bajillion to one
I like WRPGs. Lots of player choice, multiple quest endings, etc. is cool. This looks like a game I'd enjoy. I also liked Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.
We can all admit that most of the well known WRPGs from the Planescape era are better than any JRPG ever, however.
JRPGs are the anal prolapse of video games, after all.
Aphex Twin?
So who is going to be the studio crafting this?
I like WRPGs. Lots of player choice, multiple quest endings, etc. is cool. This looks like a game I'd enjoy. I also liked Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.
Most of the western RPGs I've played, the "player choice" just affected mainly dialogue stuff. And the multiple endings - weren't anything too special to begin with.. maybe some slightly different 'talking heads' scenes in there. For all the hype of "you make the story", I haven't really played many that really took it to the extreme.
The sequel was never really supposed to fix anything. It was supposed to be shoveled out quickly to capitalize on the first game's success, and to dudebro it up. Mission accomplished on both points.
100% friendly fire damage, remember?
You hatin? ???100% friendly fire damage, remember?
No.
You hatin? ???100% friendly fire damage, remember?
No.
Yeah, I am. Dragon Age II is a terrible game, in just about every way possible.I thought the combat was better than DA: Origins. More balanced, more challenging, more team synergy. The plot and characters are pretty awful though. What realtime w/ pause team games did you like?
Yeah, I am. Dragon Age II is a terrible game, in just about every way possible.I thought the combat was better than DA: Origins. More balanced, more challenging, more team synergy.
What realtime w/ pause team games did you like?
Going to be 2 million in 2 days :win
Going to be 2 million in 2 days :win
At this rate, in 30 days we'll have (does quick math) $30 million dollars! Good jon everybody.
In strange and distant worlds, life flickers toward awareness even amid the most brutal landscapes. For instance: massive mountains of crystal heave from the land and pierce the sky under pale suns, their light refracting and bending around cunning spires never touched by human hands. The infants of this land are giants, vaguely humanoid crystalline monsters torn from the land itself and given shape and purpose by the elders, who share the light and heat from their ever-diminishing bodies, chipped and worn by age.
The erupting volcanoes and surging lava fill the air with acrid smoke and choking fumes. The bones of an enormous beast lie sprawled across the obsidian fields, its ribs splayed open as if it had been torn open by some unimaginable predator. The ossified bones have been hollowed out as homes by some intrepid or foolish citizens, and the wind howls through the openings in a mournful whistle like a giant flute. In the wastes beyond, creatures of flame and focused minds trawl the lava and skim its valuable nutrients.
"Death is the end. That's what they say. But that's not entirely true, is it? When Death crashes over you like a looming wave, you don't die. Your body knits up fast and your eyes stare off. You move and twitch. So what is it you're seeing? Where do you go when you die?"
When you open your eyes, you're in a chamber with four... no, six... make it five walls. Call it five. It's almost definitely five walls. Each of them has a door of different material, each of them wavers before you, but they become more distinct the closer you approach. The chamber is dark and dripping, a faint tremor like a slow pulse shaking the floor on a long timeline. You put your hand to the door and it opens for you, and before you lies a crumbling stone walkway over fathomless mists. You can see no roof above you, nor stars nor moon. The mists curl and lap at your feet, broken occasionally by stray eddies of wind.
There is a feeling of recognition deep inside you. You know this place. And ahead, across the span, you see a familiar face.
"What are you doing here?" you ask
"You're dead," she says. "What I mean is that you're not dead. You're coming back to life. And now you've got fragments of us in your head. Every time you take our suffering, we get stronger. In here, I mean. But if you want to come back to the world, you need to find your way out of here."
Going to be 2 million in 2 days :win
At this rate, in 30 days we'll have (does quick math) $30 million dollars! Good jon everybody.
Colin describes the Meres, which are the devices by which you’ll inhabit the bodies of other castoffs. You’ll learn about these 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 (or even hidden), 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 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 45,000 (roughly when the $2.5m Stretch Goal was reached), we will extend the Castoff’s Labyrinth by one Fathom. So at 48,000 Backers, we’ll be at Fathom 2, at 51,000 Fathom 3, etc. (As of this writing, we are well on the way to Fathom 2!) Each Fathom adds deeper playable content and reactivity, and more of the features reached through the Stretch Goals (e.g., like increased quantity and complexity of the Reflections discussed below).
We’ll soon have a graphical representation up to better show the Castoff's Labyrinth's twisted progression to deeper Fathoms. (Backers through both Kickstarter and PayPal will count toward determining the labyrinth's Fathoms.)
Over a decade ago, an enthusiastic writer and designer broke into the games industry through a job in QA at Interplay. One of the games he worked on as QA was Planescape: Torment. It didn’t take long for Brian Mitsoda to prove his creative capabilities and move into design, eventually leaving Interplay and Black Isle Studios and becoming a key writer for the acclaimed Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. I met Brian in 2005, when he joined me as the creative lead for Dwarfs, a grim prequel to Snow White that I was the lead designer on at Obsidian. Brian has since founded his own company, DoubleBear Productions, whose game Dead State, met with great success on Kickstarter last year. Brian will contribute his creative talent to Torment, bringing him back full circle in terms of his career. And what could be more fitting for a game that explores one’s legacy? (Fortunately, the schedules for Torment and Dead State make this possible.)
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.
So when are we having a planescape replay thread
My name is Koy vanOteghem, Lead Environment Artist here at inXile. I would like to take this opportunity to discuss a few items as we release our first image for Torment that is pre-production and game art oriented (as opposed to concept art). Ordinarily, we would expect to R&D these types of early-prototype scenes during the standard preproduction phase of the project development cycle. And certainly during our actual preproduction, this pipeline will see many changes and iterations based on evolving needs. But technicalities aside, because of our growing comfort level with the Unity Engine, along with our growing connection to our community of backers and fans, we thought it might be fun and informative to give a sneak peek of some of the ideas we have bouncing around the Art Dept. What we are presenting here, for the sake of conversation, is an example of a 2D pre-rendered environment within The Bloom.
The Ninth World of Numenera has a rich tapestry of aesthetics. You can see this in the variety demonstrated in both our Torment concept art as well as the Numenera artwork. While we search out the look and feel for this evolving title, we find ourselves developing a much more organic approach to our asset production pipeline, both in process and in created content. Perhaps it was starting with the Bloom that helped steer us down this road, though we see how it will apply to more architectural environments as well. Our approach involves a heavier focus on sculpting and modeling, and a lesser focus on the engineering side of the art, which will suit our (relatively) small team structure well. We get back to working on the art, and think less of engine settings and geometry management.
Torment will certainly present some special challenges, but more so I think, unique opportunities to realize our vision in a new old way. We’re looking back to a 2D approach, with a fresh eye rooted in contemporary modeling, texturing, and engineering techniques. Much like Project Eternity, our goal is to craft an experience that diverges from the common path of world building. We hope to strike a distinct style while achieving levels of detail often difficult to present in 3D game space with a small team, through a process of pre-rendering major portions of in-game assets. As you have seen in the published concept pieces, geometry varies greatly from location to location. We look to incorporate the organic nature of many of those structures into our asset creation pipeline while avoiding the often processor taxing in-game meshes.
The big debate: playing games in 2D vs. 3D – I know many of you are interested about our decisions regarding the art direction. There has been much talk about the costs associated with "2D development," the quality and scope that can be produced by a small team, and the impact that this might have (for funding) of other departments. And trust you me, I understand from where these expectation emerge. But to be clear, what we are really talking about here is not a 2D game, but what you might call a 2.5D game, with just a portion of art production that is 2D in nature. Bear in mind, any extra time we spend noodling in 2D will be made up 10-fold when we get to our beta build and we are not ripping our eyes out trying to figure out how to get all that geometry to render efficiently on screen. Our early tests are showing very promising frame rates for our 2D assets, freeing up additional processing power for characters, FX, lighting, post-processes, etc.
After all, characters are not 2D, rather 3D seen through an isometric camera. And particles, well, they’ve actually always been 2D, but you know that. I’ll admit, lighting in 2.5D was a concern of mine early on, but after some initial experiments, I feel confident that 3D lighting can and will be used to considerable effect, grounding the characters in the scene through dynamic lighting and some shadow casting. These issues, among others, simply require a mind shift in the creation process, and it’s quite liberating.
In the end, it’s really not that great a departure from what we already know and produce. It’s just a different way of presenting to you the player, our "3D geometry," in an old awesome way. With our new pipeline strategy, we’ll be able to include detail, complexity, and styles that I would typically shy away from given our team size. It’s a win-win from where we are standing.
I would also like to extend a big thank you to two team members, Gavin Glenn-McDowell and James Morford, for their dedication to this KS campaign and eventual production of Torment. As part of an effort to develop a "rapid pipeline" proposal, they produced what would turn out to be a rather motivating gameplay space from The Bloom concept in a weekend charette. After an explanation of their strategy, the potential time savings and cost reductions, and the quality bar that could be reached, we launched into another round of afterhours development with the help of a couple more team members willing to dedicate some oh-so-precious personal time. Their efforts made this post possible.
Thank you for your backing and support. I am in awe.
Chris Avellone now contributing! 'tis a beautiful thing
Dreams do come true. ;_;
Please don't suck, please don't suck, please don't suck.
pics
pics
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
(http://i.imgur.com/fcp536c.gif)
HOLY SHIT I CANT WAIT TO PLAY THAT
pics
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
(http://i.imgur.com/fcp536c.gif)
HOLY SHIT I CANT WAIT TO PLAY THAT
Passed $4 million on Kickstarter with a few hours to spare.
How do levels of KS work in terms of new people joining the team if the funding reaches x amount? Pat Rothfuss is a pretty big name for instance, but I'm guessing a lot of the story is already written. So if he joins, what exactly does he do?
::) I respect developer vision. They haven't even decided what kind of battle system it'll have yet, much less have go ask their fans? :neogaf Fucking kick starter.
They’re basically shorter, non-handcrafted combats that are always entered into by player choice or occasionally by player failure, but usually the player will be aware that he’s trying something that could start a fight. In this way, we can give the player freedom to attack people that are reasonable to attack, while still maintaining control over which NPCs can die and when. It also gives players who want to focus on combat more opportunities to do what they’re good at.
Combat is the obvious one. Many felt that PST’s combat was tedious and uninteresting, and we have set out to improve that from the start. PST also many times had to wrestle with or completely break its own RPG system. While we didn’t choose Numenera because of its flexibility, it has turned out to be a huge boon on that front, giving us the freedom to do many things we could not have done otherwise.
And although PST’s endings were pretty nuanced, there was one that is generally considered “best”. In TTON, we hope that each player will feel that they got the best playthrough, because it was the playthrough that was best for them. This is a high bar, and I don’t know if we can reach it, but we’re sure as heck going to try.
In general, we’re trying to think of our companions as family members, and fitting them into the party in that relation to the PC. We’ll give the player a choice of two companions at the start of the game. Due to a side effect of certain of the player’s abilities, which can be honed throughout the game, the player can pick only one of these two to adventure with – or can pick neither.
Since they appear almost at the start of the game, I think it’s probably safe to reveal that one of them is a fallen Aeon Priest whose arms are covered with intricate, living tattoos. He can pull these tattoos from his body and siphon their energies to create a blazing wall of force or a spray of acid. The other companion is a brash nano, a mad-scientist type whose recklessness has turned her into a series of quantum shadows echoed through multiple realities. Either of these can act as a mentor, a replacement for the father-figure of the Changing God.
More bluntly, while our companions might contain echoes of archetypal companions, we intend that they’ll prove themselves different in the execution.
The Numenera skill system is atypical in that any character can attempt any task, and for moderately difficult tasks, even an untrained character can succeed for a cost. This is extremely versatile. We can worry less about whether certain character builds can pass obstacles or not—they all can; it’s just a matter of how much it will cost them.
Say the ancient ruins you’re exploring are trapped by a complicated prior world detonator. To disable this thing would be a difficulty 6 task, which on the Numenera scale is very hard – an untrained character could only succeed about 15% of the time. Training in any skills that apply will lower this difficulty up to two steps per applicable skill. So someone specialized in, say, Lore: Machinery would attempt the task as a difficult 4, with a 45% change of succeeding.
Additionally, there’s the concept of Effort, where you can spend points from the appropriate Stat Pool (in this case, Speed) to lower the difficulty even further. An untrained character of a high enough level could spend points to use 4 levels of Effort, reducing the difficulty to 2 and giving themselves an 85% chance of success. And if our specialized character did the same thing, they’d reduce the difficulty to 0. When this happens, the task automatically succeeds—no roll is made and there is no chance for critical failure.
It is tempting, especially given the worldview of typical skill-use in RPGs, to think that skills aren’t very important – anybody can succeed at anything if they’re willing to spend the points to do so. While it’s true that skills aren’t as important in Numenera as in typical RPGs, they are still very important. First, they save the PC’s Stat Pool points: easy and moderate tasks cost the trained character nothing while succeeding more consistently than for the untrained character. Second, Numenera difficulties range from 1 to 10, and everything above difficulty 7 is impossible without training or Effort. A high-level character, purchasing the maximum amount of Effort, can reduce a difficulty 10 task to 4. For the high cost of all that Effort, they will still fail more than half the time. But the cost and risk for a trained character are greatly reduced.
Well yeah, reviving all your friends and merging back with Transcendent, getting god-like powers and saying goodbye before deliberately going to hell (as you well deserve) is way better than just taking an axe to Transcendent's face and dying automatically when he dies.
But that ending is kind of a reward for being a completionist and investing in Wisdom in a 2nd Ed D&D game where you can't play a Cleric.
NEW AWESOME TEASER:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd43NYBzHuk
2014
Wasteland 2 was in development for approximately 29 months, a similar time frame for Torment would put its release at September 2015. And they're using technology that was already developed by Obsidian for Pillars of Eternity, so that should make content creation go a bit more smoothly than it would if they were developing all the tech themselves.
Brian Fargo...
We're probably still at least 8 months away from the full release. :tocry
I think the only major crpg that's come out in the last year or two that hasn't had a much better version released within 12 months is Pillars of Eternity, but there's still at least 6 months to go for them to announce that Director's Cut!
Torment: Tides of Numenera Beta will be coming to all eligible backers during the week of January 17th and to Steam Early Access on the 26th of January. The team is incredibly passionate about this game and it shows in every aspect of their work. Having the opportunity to create a wholly original experience and intricate world is exactly why we got in the games business to begin with.
The beta will start you right in the beginning of the game and is quite lengthy for an early beta. It covers the game's introductory sequence (some of which you may have already seen a portion of in the alpha) as well as most of the first major location of the game, Sagus Cliffs. Sagus is a very old city that was built on top of ancient structures that predate the return of humanity to the Ninth World. It's split into five main districts: Circus Minor, Cliff's Edge, Caravanserai, Government Square and the Underbelly. As you might expect from a city location, it is rich in lore to discover, characters to talk with and obviously quests to complete!
Torment: Tides of Numenera developer inXile has issued an apology, following the discovery that certain stretch goals promised in the game's then-record-breaking 2013 crowdfunding campaign have not materialised.
The discovery was made using leaked Achievements from the final game, due 28th February on PC, PS4 and Xbox One