Torment: Tides of Numenera

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Update #60 Updated Our Journal (60): Rolling Towards Release, New Novellas & Trailers


tl;dr: Torment in the home stretch, new novellas released for backers, and new Type trailers to watch.

Hello Exiles,

Eric Daily here! I'm the producer on Torment, coordinating the team and managing day-to-day affairs. I've been around since the Wasteland 2 days, but they have now decided to let me out of my cage in time for Thanksgiving so I can bring you an update on where we're at!

But first, we have a new series of trailers rolling out from Techland, which show off our character types/classes (minor spoilers for locations and abilities). Here's the Nano:

And here's the Glaive:

[video=youtube;zbfKgC-8u8M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbfKgC-8u8M[/video]
The final video in the series will be coming soon. Keep your eyes on our YouTube channel or social feeds for that one.

Path to Gold

Phew! It's been a busy month. The Torment team has been hustling hard to get the game polished for release. The game is nearly ready, which means we're now doing all that "boring" stuff that gets Torment ready for you to play.
What does that include? Well, Jeremy, Evan and other members of the design team have been working away on balancing to make sure our Crisis encounters are as entertaining as can be, and that things like loot distribution, economy and character progression are playing well. A lot of number tweaking! Those on the writing and area design side have been playing through the game and fixing any remaining quest, story and content issues. Our engineers Steve, Jesse, Dan and more have been hammering hard on performance optimization and pesky bugs to make sure everything runs better, faster, stronger. Meanwhile, we've got our artists, scripters and more devoted to further polish and cleaning up animations, character rigs, and textures.

Fortunately, things are looking really good, so we’ve been able to divert more folk’s time toward playing the game, finding bugs, identifying balance and progression issues, and tying up any loose ends in quests. It might sound like a strange thing to say, but sometimes for developers, simply finding the time to sit back and enjoy our own games is a luxury, so we’ve been doing that too.

We also wouldn't be complete rounding up our recent progress without giving another shout-out to the QA teams at Testronic and Techland, plus our external localization partners. Those teams have all been putting in huge amounts of hours and Torment is very much improved thanks to them.

All of this work is bringing us closer and closer to a release-to-manufacturing build of the game. We've been directing our efforts towards that milestone, and when that happens, it will mean Torment is effectively a finished, complete game we can all be proud of. You can rest assured we'll be hammering away as long as we can to give you the best possible experience upon release early next year.

Last, in the previous update we hinted that we'll have a new beta update for Torment coming, and that's still the plan. This will have many of the refinements we've mentioned above, plus new features like the ability to switch between mouse/keyboard and controller versions of the interface. We'll keep you all posted!

Reward and Pledge Finalization Reminder


It's a point of some pride and a little surprise that our pledge claim rates for Torment are extremely high – according to our stats, nearly 95% of you have set up accounts with us on our backer web site and are ready to claim your rewards come release. Of course, we wish those numbers could be 100%, so we'd like to give a reminder on setting up your Torment backer account!

Those of you who backed the game here on Kickstarter at a physical pledge level, but never set up a Torment backer account – your time is running out! With Torment releasing early next year, we need to get your rewards as well as your up to date shipping addresses on file so that we have the right reward quantities for manufacturing, as well as the correct address to actually send those rewards to.

Techland has been taking point on our media and trailers (like the Nano video above), as well as backer goods, working to ensure a very high level of quality and respect for the Torment and Numenera source material and community. We've been impressed with it and are looking forward to letting you get your hands on those rewards.

So, if you backed at a level that includes a boxed copy, please make sure you create a backer account if you don't yet have one. And even if you do have a backer account with us, it would be a good idea for you to visit your rewards page just to make sure your shipping details are correct. A little diligence now means we'll be able to ensure things go more smoothly when rewards are ready to ship!

Novellas Galore!


Today we are also thrilled to release not one, but two brand-new rewards. Our From the Depths series comes to a close today with the Blue Tide novella, "The Last Days of Archopalasia" by Tony Evans, as well as the Silver Tide novella, "The Four Lessons of the Great Chila (As Told To, and Chronicled by the Manipulative Speck)" by Mur Lafferty. Both are now available for applicable backers through our backer site.



Both are excellent reads. Here are the summaries of both of them to whet your appetites:

From the Depths: Blue by Tony Evans

Reen Gnoseus needs a miracle.

His wife Kyria is dying, and though Reen is a brilliant scientist, he knows of no cure for her disease. Then, a stranger tells Reen of a lost city of wonders, Archopalasia, where any illness can be cured.

Desperate, Reen and Kyria set off across a poisoned wasteland in a race against time - and win. The city is there, and Kyria is cured with the push of a button. Even better, she is now apparently immortal, and wants Reen to be immortal too.

But at what cost? Are the changes Reen sees in Kyria's personality just tricks of his mind, or is something more sinister going on? What is the secret of Archopalasia?

From the Depths: Silver by Mur Lafferty

No one knew her family. No one remembered their deaths. Chila vowed that someday, everyone would remember her.

Chila and her brother are homeless orphans in the vertical slums of Sagus Cliffs, stealing and scamming to survive, but Chila dreams of bigger things, and vows to turn those dream into reality, no matter what the cost. Using chutzpah and trickery to sell herself as a hero to her impoverished neighbors, she makes a play for the whole city, only to find out how savagely those in power will fight to keep it.

Soon she is in a far worse place than where she began, but her defeat has only made her stronger, and even more determined to climb to the top.

-----

To dive in, you can visit your Torment rewards page and click the "Downloads" button under your reward package containing them.



That brings the From the Depths series to a close, with all five of the different tidal novellas now available. But, you may remember we had a couple more novellas planned for release – one by Numenera creator Monte Cook, and another by Torment's creative lead Colin McComb. Those will be coming down the road, and we'll let you know when they are ready for you enjoy.

[...]

Eric Daily
Producer
kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1744425
 
Update #61

Hello Exiles,

Today's update is a little on the short side, but I think you'll forgive us this time…

We are extremely excited to announce that Torment: Tides of Numenera will be releasing February 28th, 2017! It has been a long journey, and without your help on Kickstarter it would never have happened. We could not be happier to be delivering a successor to the Torment name and legacy, and we look forward to you enjoying it early next year.

When the game releases, those of you who already have your Steam keys redeemed for the beta version of the game will auto-update to the final build, and those of you who are planning to enjoy the game DRM-free from GOG will be able to as soon as that version is ready. We will also make a key exchange option available around that time for those of you who want to deactivate your Steam key and switch to GOG. At that point, most of the remaining digital rewards will also be made available to you.

For those of you with physical goods, we'll be prompting you to confirm your final shipping information in the near future. We do not have an exact shipping timeline for those goods just yet, but Techland is hard at work getting them ready for you as soon as possible. Please be sure to keep us advised of any changes by updating your shipping details on the Torment backer web site!

Rest assured that while we have our release date, that doesn't mean our work is quite done yet. We'll be using our remaining time to polish the game for you up to the last possible moment. And of course, once we get closer to release we'll have more news to share with you as well.

Chris Keenan,
VP of Development
kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1763675
 
I've been looking forward to this game since I first backed it years ago. I've actually been trying not to play too much PoE and postponed Tyranny to avoid getting burnt out on cRPG's. Also this reminds me I should finish reading the TToN novellas... there are a total of 5! I read about half of the first one recently and it was not too bad at all! If this is a reflection of the game's writing, it will be phenomenal by videogame standards.
 
inXile admit that Torment stretch goal content has been cut, including companions

The Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter campaign in 2013 was a merry affair, with numerous stretch goals fulfilled. Now, nearly four years later and with indications that the game's development may have been troubled, some people have begun to wonder about the state of those stretch goals.

It started when local inXile sceptic Fairfax claimed earlier this month that The Toy, a unique "living ball of goo" companion who was a $2M stretch goal, had probably been cut from the game, based on its near-total absence from decompiled beta files and promotional footage. Another companion named Riastrad had also probably been cut. These claims were strengthened by the absence of said companions from Torment's Playstation 4 trophy list (spoiler alert). Faced with this evidence and the subsequent unrest on their official forums, inXile's Eric Schwarz was finally compelled to respond a couple of days ago:

"Hi guys,

The companion roster has been slightly reduced from our initial plans. Throughout development on Torment, our philosophy has always emphasized depth and reactivity in our storyline and in our characters. We know you would not be satisfied with anything else. During development, we found that the more far reaching and reactive our companions were, the better they felt and the more justice it did to the original Planescape: Torment. This trade-off meant we were able to add more companion conversations, banter, voice-over, quests, and story endings. We did not want to leave some companions feeling shallow, with storylines that felt incomplete, or be forced to shove them into the late game.

That said, we certainly haven't shut the door on Torment’s development. We still have a lot of early work done on other companions and are open to continuing to work on the game. We can say that any DLCs or expansions that we put out will always be free to our backers of that game, so there is no need to worry about paying for any additional content in Torment."​

But before that happened, Fairfax raised the possibility that another piece of content, the Oasis of M'ra Jolios, had also been cut from the game. The Oasis was to be Torment's "second major city" and was a $4M stretch goal. Unlike The Toy, areas from the Oasis had appeared in recent promotional material from inXile, but it was still suspiciously absent from beta files and the PS4 trophy list. To this claim, Thomas Beekers responded on the inXile forums:

"Hey everyone. The Oasis is still represented in the game, and as some of you have pointed out, we've shown it several times before in screenshots and media.

You may have noticed we've been showing off the Bloom a lot lately, and that's no coincidence. Despite being one of the earliest locations we showed, the Bloom was originally intended to be smaller than it ended up being. Though we initially planned for the Oasis to be our second major story hub, over time our fascination with the Bloom's darker, more Tormenty feel, led to it being recast as the game's second major city hub instead. We felt creatively this was the right thing to do, and the change did not shorten the gameplay experience.

As a result, the Oasis ended up taking on a smaller role, but you will still be able to visit it during the game."​

Finally, realizing that something was up, a user on the inXile forums asked about the state of yet another piece of stretch goal content - the Voluminous Codex, a kind of fancy customizable in-game journal/lore compendium that was added to the game when the Kickstarter campaign reached $4.25M. Eric Schwarz replied briefly:

"We're still going to release the Voluminous Codex, but we're now planning to offer it as a separate lore compendium outside of the game."​

Regardless of how you feel about their responses, it's now clear that despite an extended development cycle, a ready-made engine from Obsidian, an existing ruleset and a simple, restricted combat model, inXile have had significant issues with the management of Torment's development. There's no telling which of the game's many other stretch goals they may have also backed out of. I would strongly recommend that they publish a Kickstarter update clarifying this matter. People paid money for these.
rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/inxile-admit-that-torment-stretch-goal-content-has-been-cut-including-companions.113311
 
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I know it's exciting to join the cool kids and either praise or bash something because everyone is doing it, but let's be reasonable for a moment. Most complaints made in that RPG Codex thread are based on assumptions and interpretations, not to mention expectations, from ambiguous "official" statements. Do people actually understand how financing works? Things/concepts/ideas change during the course of development as they mature and connect with multiple other things/concepts/ideas. The problem with having expectations (and with inXile promising complicated stuff) is that, more often than not, things are more complicated than they seem. This happens all the time in scientific research, and anyone who has ever awarded or received money knows this.

Gamers can be one of the most entitled communities out there. In the end, it's likely that someone who knows nothing about this game will actually enjoy it for what it is, while others will be too busy whining to be able to play it.

It happened with The Witcher 3 as well. To be honest I was disappointed that TW3 was mostly an action/adventure with RPG sections and not the "crowning achievement of the RPG genre" like CDPR promised, but it was still a fantastic game and I really enjoyed it.

We wanted TTON to be a game about concepts, about reactive narrative, about depth. We can't really complain about things like, eg. sporadic combat, if this is precisely what we backed. I really think there is something wrong with us as a society if we pour SO much of ourselves, our emotions, our attention and our passion into consuming video games, a thing designed for recreation and entertainment, and to be experienced and enjoyed. Maybe RPG Codexers should start their own company and make flawless, transcendental video games.

On the other hand I do think some goals were silly and unnecessary, like having so many languages. I know they want to reach a wide audience but with these budgets, I think an extra companion or location is a better use of money than voice acting in multiple languages.
 
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Torment: Tides of Numenera dev issues apology for missed stretch goals

"We should have communicated the cuts earlier."

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. The most notable omissions include missing companions - I'll discuss those in detail further down, underneath a statement inXile has sent me, so I can keep any potential spoilers out of the way - and no Italian language support. If you are an Italian backer and this is a deal-breaker you can now claim a refund.

But the most glaring issue is not the missing content - which some inXile staff members have tried to explain on the company's forum and on Reddit - but that backers, people who funded the game, are only now finding out, off the back of their own detective work no less. Why didn't inXile say something before?

Torment: Tides of Numenera creative lead Colin McComb replied.

"We did have to cut some content, and had to make some difficult decisions based on lengthy internal prototyping, budgeting, and scheduling considerations," he told me. "Some of our initial ideas didn't pan out as we had hoped, and some of them would have cost us content that we felt was more important for the overall experience of the game. Game development is never a straight line, and it's extraordinarily rare for a project to go unchanged from vision to completion.

"We should have communicated the cuts earlier," he added, "when they happened. Unfortunately, because we were busy finishing and polishing the game, we neglected to reach out to our community and explain the changes that were necessary. Please know that we absolutely and sincerely apologise to our backers for that lack of communication.

"We're extraordinarily grateful to all our backers who made it possible for us to get this far. We are currently considering ways to integrate ideas that didn't make it into the initial launch, and we promise that any potential future expansions or content will be made available for free to all backers."

The emphasis above is mine - I didn't want you to miss that point. Potential spoilers follow.

Specifically, Achievements note six companions, but the Kickstarter campaign still clearly shows stretch goals promising at least eight, maybe nine. There were new companions promised at the $2m, $2.5m, $3m and $3.5m markers, and the $3m milestone noted there were seven total companions at that point. But in the final game there only appear to be six.

It's hard to know which companions were cut, as two of them were a secret, but it looks like Toy, a living ball of goo that changes appearance based on its master's desires, won't make it either, which is a shame.

"The companion roster has been slightly reduced from our initial plans," wrote inXile staffer "sear" on Reddit.

"During development, we found that the more far reaching and reactive our companions were, the better they felt and the more justice it did to the original Planescape: Torment. This trade-off meant we were able to add more companion conversations, banter, voice-over, quests, and story endings. We did not want to leave some companions feeling shallow, with storylines that felt incomplete, or be forced to shove them into the late game.

"That said," sear added, "we certainly haven't shut the door on Torment's development. We still have a lot of early work done on other companions and are open to continuing to work on the game. We can say that any DLCs or expansions that we put out will always be free to our backers of that game, so there is no need to worry about paying for any additional content in Torment."

The stretch goal announcing the Oasis as a second city hub also appears to have been missed, although Colin McComb (and sear, separately) explained that was because the Bloom, the living city that straddles dimensions, had grown to become that second city hub instead.

"During the game's development, there were some unexpected elements of the game that, for the sake of the storyline and gameplay, grew in size and scope," McComb said. "The game has over 1.2m words, and features many of the stretch goals we detailed earlier on - the Ascension, the expanded Bloom that turned into our second city hub, cults like the Dendra O'hur and Children of the Endless Gate."

Sear added: "Despite being one of the earliest locations we showed, the Bloom was originally intended to be smaller than it ended up being. Though we initially planned for the Oasis to be our second major story hub, over time our fascination with the Bloom's darker, more Tormenty feel, led to it being recast as the game's second major city hub instead. We felt creatively this was the right thing to do, and the change did not shorten the gameplay experience."

The other major omission is the crafting of numenera, the game's magical, mysterious, equippable, objects.

Sear tackled this on the inXile forum: "The main one that I haven't seen mentioned, but should address, is crafting. During development, it became very clear that a traditional crafting system wasn't meshing. We had some early design done, but everything ended up feeling like an MMO-style system, and that just didn't fit Torment's gameplay.

"Instead," sear said, "we repurposed those resources, adding significantly more and better Cyphers and Artifacts to the game. We also added some elements that are thematically in line with crafting, like surgical procedures, companion armor upgrades, and essences."
eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-31-torment-tides-of-numenera-apology-stretch-goals

So in short, for the definitive and complete (or as complete as possible) version of the game we might have to wait for the inevitable(?) Director's Cut.
 
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Update #63 Updated Our Journal (63): A Look Back on Development

[...]

A Look Back on Development

As our release date nears, we decided to look back on the game's development, to talk about where we are, how far we've come, and how we move forward from here.

When we set out to make Torment: Tides of Numenera, our vision was to make a thematic successor to Planescape: Torment. We’d explore a new setting, and use a new core question to explore a similar vein of philosophical thought. I am proud to say that the response from you, our backers, has been incredibly positive. I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating: when Brian asked me to be the creative lead for Torment, I had to take some time to think about it, and I almost turned down the opportunity. I knew what Planescape: Torment meant to people, after all. For people to say that we have succeeded in creating a tonal and thematic successor is… well, it’s overwhelming, and I – WE – are grateful for the opportunity.

As with any creative work, game development is an iterative and uncertain process. When we over-funded at a higher level than we could ever have expected, that led to an increase in scope and size of the game accordingly. We went from one major city hub to two. We added new companions, more locations such as the Ascension, the Castoff's Labyrinth, new cults like the Dendra O'hur, and more. We added Meres to the game, whole text-based mini-stories that themselves have their own reactivity and many branching paths, and even more surprises to find. We have an expanded soundtrack that's longer than Planescape: Torment's by a decent margin, and a universe rich enough to fill multiple novellas.

During the Kickstarter, we had to move fast. We had to make decisions and add content on the fly. The problem is, as with any plan, some of those decisions looked great on paper but didn’t survive contact with reality. Building a game is not a straight line from start to finish. It’s not as simple as creating a design document, implementing it, and shipping it. It’s an endlessly iterative process, one where ideas must be thought up, discussed, prototyped, iterated on again, and tested in game. The cycle repeats frequently. Sometimes, these ideas don’t work out the way you intended or just don’t feel like they fit properly in the theme of the game. A lesson we've taken away since the Kickstarter campaign is to avoid being too specific in detailing early designs, locations, and characters – it's fun and exciting at the time for us and you, but...

Well, what can change the nature of a game? This is one (non-canonical) answer: Creating it. For instance, the story we launched with, while still being true to the vision of the game, has undergone at least seven major revisions.

Some of our players and community members recently pointed out that they noticed that some features had changed from what we initially detailed. The one that has come up the most is the companion roster. The early access version doesn't feature the companion list we initially had our sights on. This is true: for the release version, there will be six. While we laid the groundwork for more, while building the game we realized that we had to make a tradeoff between companions with depth, or a larger amount. We chose to focus on the added richness and personality that you expect with a smaller group. The game’s scope increased considerably over what we originally set out to build, and we underestimated the amount of time and iteration it would take to make our companions as reactive and branching as they needed to be.

We didn't want these characters to end up with storylines that felt incomplete. We didn’t want to force them into the late game. Focusing on a smaller number gave us the opportunity to add more banter, more voice-over, and deeper storylines and outcomes for them.

Crafting is another stretch goal feature that we did some initial design on, but that work did not mesh well with the rest of the game's systems. Rather than adding an element that felt tacked-on (and worse, out of place for Torment), we repurposed those resources. We added more cyphers and artifacts to the game. We also added some other, more story-based elements to further flesh out equipment and items. That helped the items fit with the structure and style of the emerging game.

Some of you have been asking about the Oasis, an area we talked about during the campaign as our second major city. Though we fully intended that the Oasis would be our second city, story changes, plus our growing fascination with the Bloom, turned that location into our second major hub instead. In fact, the Bloom and surrounding areas are much larger than we originally discussed building for the Oasis. This didn't adversely affect the length of the game – we’re still delivering a second major hub, and the Oasis will still appear in a smaller form. We feel this was the right move for the game creatively. It meant we could focus on a setting that felt darker and more distinctly Torment, and it improved the pacing immeasurably.

Changes like these happen in the development of any game. Speaking for inXile, I can tell you that we always undertake them to deliver you a better experience. To do anything else would be doing you a disservice.

But our focus on the game led to a different disservice. Namely, our lack of communication. We have always been major proponents of openness during development, but we did not communicate these changes earlier, and we should have done so sooner. For this, you have the entire team’s sincerest apologies. Going forward both with Torment and our future games, we hope to increase our efforts in making sure that you know the status and future plans for inXile’s projects.

So, you might be asking, what’s up after Torment releases next month? Fortunately, we're in the era of internet connections and ongoing post-release support. We still have plenty of ideas for Torment! We'll be thinking about ways we can restore some of the remaining ideas that work in the game. Of course, as our backers who helped make the game happen, any of these updates – such as DLCs and expansions – will be yours free of charge. This goes for both Kickstarter backers and those who backed through our website.

Italian Localization

One other topic: the Italian localization. When we set out to create Torment, our planned size was significantly smaller. Torment in its final form grew to a much bigger, deeper RPG, and has over 1.2 million words. When we chose our planned localizations for the game, that word count and expanded scope for the game didn't exist yet. Unfortunately, it turns out that localization a game script of such a magnitude to a good standard of quality is extremely costly.

With Wasteland 2, we could turn to many of our backers, who volunteered their time and talent to help build the game's localization. With Torment, we wanted to pursue professional localization efforts. Unfortunately, during this process, we made the difficult decision to drop support for Italian - both our backer numbers and the sales of our prior RPGs in Italy meant it was unlikely we'd be able to field the very high costs.

We’re looking into ways to bring you Italian in a post-release capacity, such as community translations. The producers will keep you informed on that if we have any news on that. Regardless, we understand that some of our Italian fans backed the game hoping to play that version. If you are an Italian backer and unable to play the game in English, and you would like a pledge refund, please contact us at our customer support page.

Monte Cook's Novella



As we mentioned above, we have seven novellas being created for Torment, many of them stretch goals. With the game so close to release, it's only fitting that Monte Cook's novella is now ready for you to enjoy. Titled Palimpsest, this one does not fall in the initial "From the Depths" series, but still ties into the game lore and themes. Here's the summary from Monte himself:

Varden works with the numenera, the strange relics left over from the world's prior civilizations. Always seeking new finds, Varden has recently found something quite extraordinary that he calls the Arthenac. This discovery is the source of incredible energies, enough to power a whole city. Even though he can't stay at the discovery site, he knows that he can't just leave the Arthenac unprotected. So he quickly assembles an automaton from some parts that he's gathered to watch over it.

It doesn't take long for the automaton to show that she's far more than he suspected, however-she's intelligent, and has free will. Varden names her Palimpsest. Over the years, Varden visits his "daughter" Palim from time to time, each time discovering that she's grown in personality and understanding. Meanwhile, Palim gains a far greater awareness of the Arthenac and its true nature.

Varden's early efforts to learn more about the Arthenac and what he can do with it trigger events that impact both he and Palim later in their lives. The story that unfolds over decades leads to a confrontation with a power-hungry castoff of the Changing God and the ties that bind parent and child-creator and creation-together no matter how much time has passed.

If your reward level included Monte's novella, you can find it on your Rewards page – just click your "Downloads" button.

[...]

Shout-Outs

Brought to you by Monte Cook Games and Valdes/Eriksdotter, Numenera: Strand is a captivating introduction to the Numenera universe, so we highly recommend you take a look if you haven't yet seen it.

[...]
kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1770943
 
Same guy/studio that did the graphic novel-like opening cutscene & the loading screen slides for Wild Hunt, methinks.

Not that much hyped about the game itself anymore, to be honest, especially with the recent revelation of promised stretch goal content that got axed (for the release version) and all.

Also caught some bits and pieces of footage from said release version the other day and it looked like the concerns regarding the 'consolification' of the PC build were justified.
In particular some things about the UI/HUD practically screamed 'optimized for TV displays' with the screen (at times) covered in an abundance of over- and excessively emphasized name tags, health bars, button prompts, etc. And it didn't look like anything could be done about that by ways of a HUD scale slider (like the one in Wasteland 2) or On/Off toggles.
 
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Consolization issues do sound irritating. I hope all that is heavily configurable, and can be adjusted for PC centered interface. I wouldn't expect inXile do do any less than that and upset their core audience.

Axing stretch goals is less of an issue I think, as long as those aren't critical. For instance, some design decisions could make previous ideas not well compatible, so trying to fit something that's out of place just because it was a stretch goal is actually a bad idea.
 
Gilrond-i-Virdan;n7746710 said:
Consolization issues do sound irritating. I hope all that is heavily configurable, and can be adjusted for PC centered interface. I wouldn't expect inXile do do any less than that and upset their core audience.
Wouldn't be the first time that inXile did just that and went for the lazy one-size-fits-all approach in terms of UI and HUD optimization - Wasteland 2's Director's Cut update and its so called 'UI improvements' (which were not customizable in terms of scale and size at all) comes to mind.
Really makes you wonder if inXile's QA intentionally ignores the standard desktop monitor setup or optimizes and tests on the assumption that, all of a sudden everybody's switched to PC couch-gaming.

Gilrond-i-Virdan;n7746710 said:
Axing stretch goals is less of an issue I think, as long as those aren't critical. For instance, some design decisions could make previous ideas not well compatible, so trying to fit something that's out of place just because it was a stretch goal is actually a bad idea.
It's different in this case though, because people actually paid for those content stretch goals to be put into and be included in the finished product. People gave inXile money on the promise that TToN would have Italian localization on release. Others threw even more money at inXile at the prospect of being able to add 'The Toy' companion (presumably TToN's version of Morte) to their party. And so on.
Fargo and McComb said that they would try their darndest to shove most or all of the cut content back in somehow some time later, but this doesn't change the fact that the current release version of TToN is essentially an incomplete one. Still packed with hours and hours of content but not all that was promised and/or paid for in advance.
 
Game is great fun. My most excited-about-for-release game since Witcher 3, I say with honesty.

When I back a game, I'm aware that things will change during development. I put my $30-$120 in aiming for the base promises and hoping the stretch goals are durable. I'm not a kid - I'm aware reality demands compromise.

When you back a game, you absolutely do not get a guarantee of, well, anything. There are hopes, but no promises. You might end up just throwing your money away. If you thought differently, "Kickstarter does not guarantee projects or investigate a creator's ability to complete their project. On Kickstarter, backers (you!) ultimately decide the validity and worthiness of a project by whether they decide to fund it. "

So it's a risk and always will be a risk. If you back a project, you get to help out on something you want, but it may very well not be what the developers or the backers hoped for. It may, in fact, just die.

They've done so much of what I hoped for, at least in the beta, I'm well satisfied with the money I spent. There are refunds for people who aren't. A terrible choice in my opinion.

I talked a being into leaving this dimension. Also could have fought him but talking was cooler. Oh and I screwed up on a check, got hurt and gained some permanent stat increases.

So good. So good this game.

Simple truth - we rarely get everything we think we deserve. If that's a problem for you, probably don't back Kickstarters.

 
Notice any options, toggles, sliders, checkboxes, etc in the Beta for customizing the HUD and/or UI?

The game may be great fun but having seen a bit of footage from the alleged release version and a few screenshots from the latest Beta it may stop being great fun really fast if you're stuck with a HUD like this:



 
schinderhannes.999;n7746490 said:
Not that much hyped ... especially with the recent revelation of promised stretch goal content that got axed (for the release version) and all.

Were you originally hyped for the stretchgoals or the game itself? That's an honest question since I've seen a lot of this mentality that it's now "game over, man" due to the problems with the cut content (and lack of communication -- which is a valid criticism of InXIle), and I've been wondering what exactly was that special that was there, unfortunate as the loss is.

I threw my money for the base idea of the game (and increased when it was decided that it was going to have turnbased crises), the stretches were always "just a bonus".
 
kofeiiniturpa;n7879450 said:
I threw my money for the base idea of the game (and increased when it was decided that it was going to have turnbased crises), the stretches were always "just a bonus".

Yep! Although at first I preferred RTwP because Torment, but TB has been just fine.

Never, ever back a game for it's stretch goals and never, ever assume the game won't change during development. Buy in based on the vision and the visionaries.

 
I think the game maintains its original vision and goals and I'm looking forward to playing it. Games like many other projects are bound to change and expecting otherwise is naive. Consider the team behind this game, I'm willing to trust in their design decisions. Otherwise I should be making my own games.

If we had funded Planescape: Torment based on content/ideas that were ultimately cut out, we might have considered it a disappointment. But we got what we got and we think it's great.

Our generation is so entitled...

-- "you said navy blue, and this is only slightly dark blue, you ruined it!" *sobs*
 
schinderhannes.999;n7746490 said:
Not that much hyped about the game itself anymore, to be honest, especially with the recent revelation of promised stretch goal content that got axed (for the release version) and all.
kofeiiniturpa;n7879450 said:
Were you originally hyped for the stretchgoals or the game itself? That's an honest question since I've seen a lot of this mentality that it's now "game over, man" due to the problems with the cut content (and lack of communication -- which is a valid criticism of InXIle), and I've been wondering what exactly was that special that was there, unfortunate as the loss is.

I threw my money for the base idea of the game (and increased when it was decided that it was going to have turnbased crises), the stretches were always "just a bonus".
Like I said earlier... for one, I was really looking forward to 'The Toy' companion. The description alone had (sort of) 'TToN's equivalent to PS:T's Morte' written all over it and actually made me upgrade to one of the higher pledge tiers. Did another upgrade when they announced the 2nd major city hub (if you don't count The Bloom) which now has been revealed to be not that 'major' anymore at all.

So yeah, hype has been dampened quite a bit in my case. Not quite to the level of 'game over man' mind you. I'm still set for the usual thorough completionist, kind of neutral, talking the shit out of everything playthrough and maybe a 2nd 'evil', more aggressive one for the 'gloves off' punching the shit out of everything approach that would also include choices and consequences I missed out on the first time.

Beyond that I don't really see the point in playing an essentially incomplete version of the game. Even more so when Fargo and McComb said that they're already looking at how to get the cut (stretch goal) content back in at a later point, e.g. via the (inevitable?) 'Torment: Tides of Numenera - Director's Cut' in about one year from now.

And then there's still the matter of the PC version's HUD/UI.
Which doesn't seem to be much different from the console one, like, at all. And doesn't seem to support proper scalibility/customizability - to get rid of unneeded or completely unnecessary HUD elements for instance - too.
If a multiplatform title's HUD/UI doesn't seem to have seen much or no effort to be properly adapted to and utilize the respective platform's full range of capabilities then that's quite a large chunk of the overall enjoyment gone in my case.
 
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