New Torment: Tides of Numenera Trailer Looks at The Game's Big Concepts
Sep. 1, 2016New Torment: Tides of Numenera Trailer Looks at The Game’s Big Concepts
The trailer takes a closer look at the story elements you will be exploring as you play through the game, presenting some deep musings about the nature of life. These are clearly timeless ponderings as the game takes place 1 billion years into the future of humanity. And they thought we wouldn’t last!
In addition to the story and handcraftedcombatencounters, the trailer gives us a look at the different options available to players other than violence when resolving these encounters, or Crises as the game calls them. The impressive amount of choices and dialogue options is also on display here, confirming ourinterview with inXileon the presence of a million words.
The trailer finishes by posing the question that has become the mantra of the game’s development and marketing, “What does one life matter?”. Call it a hunch, but this may not a go fetch this, go fix this Action/Errand RPG.
Looking for more background on this ambitious successor to Planescape: Torment? Check out ourGamescom previewand give theTorment: Tides of Numenera Wikia visit, and then come back here and leave your thoughts in the comments.
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Emergence
Editor at Fextralife. I look for the substantial in gaming and I try to connect video games to the emotions and stories they elicit. I love all things culture and history and have an odd fondness for the planet Jupiter. I think my dogs are pretty awesome too.
inXile’s last big RPG was Wasteland 2 which also got a console port (as part of the “Director’s Cut” release if I remember correctly). and so presumably would be where to look to see how they handled it before.
The original was arguably one of the best games of all time (I’d put it up there with Ultima VII pt 2, Baldur’s Gate 2, Planescape: Torment and KOTOR as the best ever RPGs) and I still remember significant parts (“URABUTLN” “URAQT2”) and a great way to cheat on old floppy disk games (I made a copy of a disk containing base that I had cleared of bad guys but with lots of loot, looted everything saving the changes to one disk, left, reloaded from the copy and switched disks back so when I looted again it just saved back over the empty base). Despite that I never picked it up, probably because the updated version seemed so much more complicated, both in the extreme amounts of text (no speaking in license plate speak in that game) and the tactical combat that replaced the far simpler menu-based combat that Wasteland borrowed from Bard’s Tale. Maybe I’ll pick it up come October when the next Steam sale happens.
I liked how divinity original sin worked on PS4. I think Torment: Tides of Numenara may follow a similar path and give us a similar experience.
The story choices sound very interesting, and for everyone who wants to know more about the game:Hereare the articles we have, including a developer interview that was a pleasure to make.
Ugh. I’ve tried, these types of RPGs tend to work horribly on controllers. That is my single biggest problem with Divinity OS, no matter what control scheme I use it is incredibly clunky outside combat because they need like 8 radial menus for everything specifically to make it work on controllers, and iirc there wasn’t an actually sensible control scheme for people playing with a mouse. It’s not a coincidence that games like KotOR and DAO on consoles mostly limit you to controlling 1 character at a time and balance the game so you don’t actually need to switch away from the main character.
So yeah, I can see that being a legitimate problem. It’s easily avoided by creating 2 different control/UI systems, but if they don’t I can see it destroying my ability to play the game. As far as I’m concerned, controls are the single most important aspect of a game, nothing else matters if I can’t interact with anything properly. I’m still waiting for a partner to play D:OS with because I just can’t hack the out of combat controls for all 4 characters you can have with you, if I had a partner I could just go lone wolf and only have my character to deal with.
And this is coming from someone who plays MMOs like SWTOR and WoW on a controller. I still managed to put everything I needed access to no more than 2 buttons away (left bumper+start to open my crafting menu, for example.)
(PS, you can get a wireless mouse and play on the big screen without a controller. That’s what I do, I don’t have a computer moniter.)
While I quite like the content of the trailer (including the indirect poke at procedurally generated games like Diablo) I didn’t notice anything new. Honestly that looks like exactly the same trailer I remember seeing on their Steam page weeks ago (since at least the last Steam sale in June).
Did they add a line somewhere about it coming out on consoles to the previous trailer? I did get a kick out of reading the butt-hurt reactions on their Steam page about how them designing the system so it will work on game pads and a big screen is going to destroy the game. Honestly as someone who would likely buy it on Steam and then play it on a big-screen TV the ability to use a gamepad makes the game much more interesting. I may be a touch-typist at a desk but with a keyboard in my lap I’m terrible with the lights out. The gamepad makes playing in low light conditions much easier.
That said this game is apparently made in the Destiny engine which has had framerate issues on consoles (Firewatch being a famous example). If anyone is thinking of getting this on console I would suggest waiting a week or two after release and seeing if it’s performing ok and if not then waiting for a patch.
