Torment: Tides of Numenera kickstarter started yesterday, funded in 6 hours, now $2m

[A Black Falcon]

$2 million, that is. Yeah, it's off to an astounding start. It's the fastest to $1 million ever for a Kickstarter, and it's the fastest first few days for any game on Kickstarter, too. Very impressive stuff. I wasn't too surprised that it started well, but the sheer speed of funding has been amazing. Most of the tiers with limits have already sold out; I missed out on the $95 collectors' edition tier, because those thousand had sold out already by the afternoon, but I did reserve one at the higher $110 tier... though those have sold out now too. It's a pretty nice collectors' edition offer, though, with a physical artbook, soundtrack CD, and more included. They also have a basic box (no limit on sales) at $65.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxi...f-numenera

As for the game, it is, as the name suggests, a spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment, that inXile is just starting work on. So yeah, it won't have Chris Avellone, but it will have other good people, including the guy who originally created the Planescape setting, several of the top designers on PS:T, and more. The setting is unique -- it's a far-future Earth (I think it's Earth anyway, at least theoretically) where there have been many previous civilizations which have all fallen, transcended, or what have you. The resulting world is medieval, but it's a science fantasy world, which is different. I probably like high fantasy more overall myself, but some variety is nice, and the setting certainly is different.

The story sounds like it'll have some ideas similar to the original, in that it focuses on one person's (your characters') life and worth, but it'll be a new story with new themes. You will be able to choose your gender this time though, though otherwise the character is preset, as in the original game. (Of course The Nameless One's story is complete, so this story is new, but that much should be obvious for anyone who played the original.) Oh yeah, and the concept art is absolutely outstanding... go to the Kickstarter page and look at it! Project Eternity's concept art (from the original kickstarter stuff) is juvenile scribbles in comparison, pretty much...

The astoundingly fast start is pretty awesome, though. Of course PS:T is well known as one of the best games ever, and it's my and many other peoples' choice for best RPG ever, but still, this was not guaranteed, considering that inXile hasn't published any traditional RPGs yet, some people questioned why they needed a new kickstarter before Wasteland 2 even released (the reason: because designers finish their work on a game first, and the designers are done with Wasteland 2, so either they have to start on a new project, or be fired), and such, but the start proved the doubters wrong, that's for sure. Now all they have to do is make a game that lives up to the hype, and funding level. I hope it happens. (Current projected completion date, December 2014... if it doesn't slip.)

Oh yeah, the very well thought through reward tiers probably helped push up the numbers at first, too. Now they're running into the problem that lots of tiers have sales limits and those limits are all running out, which might hurt the total as more people have to settle for smaller numbers (unless they add more higher-value options too, which they haven't done so far), but even so, it was well thought through and reasonable. No $100+ for the first boxed copy here, unlike stuff like Dreamfall Chapters or Double Fine Adventure, it's a much more reasonable $65. Sure, that's more than Wasteland 2's $50, but it's a decent number, and it's the same as Project Eternity's first boxed tier.

[Great Rumbler]

I made this thread:

http://tcforums.com/forums/showthread.ph...r-Greatest

So, obviously this news is very exciting to me.

[A Black Falcon]

I see this isn't in that recent kickstarter-games thread you made... did it launch just after you made the thread or something? It seems like a big one to miss.

On another note, looking through that thread you linked again, did you ever listen to the Netstorm soundtrack? The way in that thread is still the only way to get all the music, but a few of them are on Youtube too. It's fantastic stuff, and you can hear how some parts inspired some things in the Torment soundtrack...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD393Toe0M0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWfvYYQaN7o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJT2heO4sss

[A Black Falcon]

https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com/media
Wallpapers of some of the concept art. Looks pretty awesome, I think I'll use one. :)

[Dark Jaguar]

Well I went and did it. The basic concept of the game just sounds too amazing to pass up.

What I don't see is any indication I can design the appearance of my main character. I'd love to see that, but I can go on even if there's only one default look. Still, it was a bit odd being the kind and scholarly barbarian in the original Torment.

[Great Rumbler]

Well I went and did it. The basic concept of the game just sounds too amazing to pass up.

What I don't see is any indication I can design the appearance of my main character. I'd love to see that, but I can go on even if there's only one default look. Still, it was a bit odd being the kind and scholarly barbarian in the original Torment.

You will at least be able to play as a male or female character, but I'm not sure what the level of customization will be within that.

[Dark Jaguar]

That's certainly a major leg up right there. Alright, here we go game.

[A Black Falcon]

They've said that like PS:T you will have a precreated character background, but yeah, you will be able to choose gender this time. Apart from that though, I'd expect few options, except maybe for class or skills or something. The idea is that you are playing as this character, whose background you can read about in the Kickstarter.

Also, 2.5 million reached! George Zeits is on the project now, among other stuff. Colin McComb's 2nd Edition AD&D Official Book of Elves "apology" video was also entertaining stuff... :)

[Dark Jaguar]

They're nearly at the 2.75 level, and at two "fathoms" of the main character's mind there. I'm not a big fan of how they're "unlocking" those fathoms. That one isn't based on money gained but rather on donaters that have donated. It sort of separates the cash we're donating from the effect it is supposed to have on development. Veronica Mars apparently stole their thunder pretty hard. What the heck is Veronica Mars?

The only thing I have to say at this moment in time is this. I don't care if they delay this game a few times. I'm willing to tack on a year to their expected development time to get the game they want to make.

[Great Rumbler]

Veronica Mars apparently stole their thunder pretty hard.

Not really:



First week and last week are always the best, everything in the middle is always painfully slow. And Torment had a much bigger start than any of the other major videogame Kickstarters recently, so it reached peak awareness far earlier.

[A Black Falcon]

It is true that the middle part is always slow, but this one seems to be slowing down more than those other ones... it probably is that it was so front-loaded, but it's too bad; this game deserves enough money to make it really, really good.

[Great Rumbler]

P:E kept its daily take higher because its backers started at a lower level and then went up during the slower weeks, while Torment started at a higher backer average and has stayed there. And it's basically in the Wasteland 2 track right now, so expect it to not do very much for the next two weeks and then suddenly hit a major uptick. It's just the nature of thing.

[Dark Jaguar]

Interesting. I was basing my "Veronica Mars" thing on an e-mail I received directly from this project's founders on the matter, but it is interesting to see a context.

Anyway, they've announced even higher tiers at this point. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

And now they've passed their newly added 2.85 tier. Mass Effect was a fun series of games, but just about everyone was pretty disappointed by the ending. Now, there were a lot of things to be annoyed by, but one of the bigger mentions was the total lack of any closure for all of the decisions your character made through the game, with the sole exception of the very last one. They expanded the ending to close up some more beyond those, but it still didn't really cover as much as you might hope. It certainly didn't provide the cast closure that a game like Final Fantasy 6 did. Now, the Torment people will be free to write a fully expanded ending as they choose.

So with all these promises, the doubts start closing in. Yes, I believe this will be a great game considering the talent, but can they really deliver on ALL of these promises by their December 2014 deadline? I don't think it'll end up another Fable, but I do suspect it could end up having previously promised content cut to make it in time.

This is why the biggest thing for me is that they don't adhere to the deadline. I'm not saying they reach Duke Nukem Forever levels of delay, but if they need to delay the game a full 1 or 2 years to get it just the way they want it, I fully support that. I'd rather a good game delayed to 2016 than a merely acceptable game released in 2014.

[Great Rumbler]

Chris Avellone will join at $3.5 million to oversee the writing and create an eighth companion character.

[Dark Jaguar]

Very good stuff. I've upped my ante to $50 tier. I'm trying to stay all digital to cut down their costs in fulfilling tier rewards.

This should be a very fun game. So many games are trying to tack on multiplayer where none is really needed lately. Resident Evil 5 just didn't stack up to Resident Evil 4. Sure the coop was fun, but the game lacked the "horror" aspect. If I want to kill zombies with friends, there are plenty of games I can do that with that aren't intended to be true horror. In the same way Dead Space 3 seemed to have cooperative play mandated by higher ups. Bless them, Visceral tried very hard to get it to work. They even introduced some interesting asynchronous hallucinations to really mix things up a bit between both sides of a coop game. The game is overall well done, but it lacks a lot of the tense horror in favor of raw run and gun action. Further, a single player game is "locked away" from a lot of content that was designed exclusively for the coop mode.

Torment is having every last bit of attention payed entirely to a solo experience, and that solo experience will be better for it.

[Dark Jaguar]

They are nearing the end, and they keep upping the ante. Puzzle based "crafting" sounds really neat (I prefer the word "artificing"), and a "home base" of sorts is always fun (double points if it is a flying airship, or space whale, or interdimensional riding cricket, or THE END OF ALL TIME).

Also, one of them joked about Squeenix's "terrible sales numbers" recently, so yeah.

Also, I think I want to buy Mask of the Betrayer. As it stands, the best way to do that is buying all of Neverwinter 2 from GOG.com. Never did get that game.

[A Black Falcon]

They released two screenshots, but the other one was just good... this one, though, looks fantastic. I want to play this game, but it's 2015 now... ah well.

I know they're in the final hours now, but I'm still considering adding on a poster and/or t-shirt. They're $25 each, so I'm not sure... but maybe.

[Dark Jaguar]

I added on Wasteland 2. Wasteland 2 comes with Wasteland 1, so yeah, that's a nice bargain.

[Dark Jaguar]

That screenshot doesn't do their alpha work justice.

<iframe width="612" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5Is2T5ue5d8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

<iframe width="612" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y4DJSEcjMsE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

That's the stuff. It really does look like a Playstation era RPG, only with modern graphical capabilities. I love that look! They're using pre-drawn 2D backgrounds with a real time rendered main character and graphical effects all over the scenes to enhance them. Yeah, Playstation era RPG pretty much, and they know their stuff.

Now keep in mind, this is pre-alpha "just learning how to get the game working" stuff, so it is sure to look better later on. I elected NOT to get into the beta. At this point, I trust the developers to make a great game without my input.

[A Black Falcon]

So I ended up adding on $25, probably for a poster, but not $50 for both that and the shirt. The posters look cool, but the shirts seem a bit bland...

As for the screenshots, the animations are nice, but I don't know, I think it looks pretty good in screenshot form too, or that one does at least...

That's the stuff. It really does look like a Playstation era RPG, only with modern graphical capabilities. I love that look! They're using pre-drawn 2D backgrounds with a real time rendered main character and graphical effects all over the scenes to enhance them. Yeah, Playstation era RPG pretty much, and they know their stuff.

Late '90s PC RPG but with modern tech, I presume you mean? Because that of course is what they're going for here, not anything on consoles.

But anyway, I think that it is 3d at the moment, but they're going to use some form of 2.5d to make the backgrounds look better than they would if they were regular rendered polygons, like I believe Wasteland is. I think that it might be along the lines of what Project Eternity is also doing. But anyway, yeah, those clips are looking good, the upper one particularly.

[Dark Jaguar]

No, I stand by my Playstation comparison. Namely, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy IX, Parasite Eve, that sort of thing (in terms of look on the "main world", not combat engine or anything of course). Infinity Engine games were a lot more limited in the perspective they could show, and it was all 2D graphics all the way down.

They did explain exactly what method they were using for those screenshots. It's not like Wasteland 2 at all. Wasteland 2 is completely 3D rendering with an overhead isometric perspective. Due to popular demand, and internal desire, the Torment team is going with 3D characters and effects on top of purely 2D backgrounds. If you look at those shots, you can see that's what they did. Those backgrounds are essentially concept art. They added in 3D water, moving real time parts like that bridge and that gear, and real time rendered characters, and lighting effects across the scene. Yeah, it's identical to the art style that a lot of Playstation 1 RPGs used, only with far better graphical power behind it than those games had back then for the 3D components and special effects.

Yes, the gameplay is going to be like Planescape, but it should look a lot nicer. I always really liked the look of those Playstation era RPGs. I'm expecting some gorgeous cinematics too. The art direction on the original Planescape's cinematics was great, but the tech behind them was... lacking compared to contemporary powerhouses like Square.

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pT5xt92SFHg" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fRBNbnhwOEs" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>

Chrono Cross is an amazing game anyway. I love tackling the notion that even though you changed the past to prevent a horrible future, that whole timeline, everyone's lives as they were in that timeline, is now dead. "Murderer of time", that's Chrono and the gang, in a way. A horrible accident happened in the future that dragged that whole alternate reality into a small sea in an island chain, the "time crash". Also, the music is incredible, and the combat system is amazingly innovative for turn based combat.

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/P4uvyGvIViE" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>

Final Fantasy IX is a game that people disliked a bit when it first came out, but it really has taken off in popularity these days. Again, those prerendered backgrounds are amazing, as in Chrono Cross.

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DrnuLoNyrF0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>

Parasite Eve also demonstrates this art style very well.

All in all, there is one thing that doing the game this way will allow for. Since the characters are now rendered in real time, there is no need to "force" a certain angle for all locations. Before, with sprites, everything had to take into account the one angle the sprites were rendered from. Since they can be rendered in real time in any angle the scene requires, they can switch camera angles from one fixed scene to the next, to allow for some stunning viewpoints here and there. They can do some trippy things if you move your characters across some weird "crazy stairs" in that dream world too.

[Great Rumbler]

Torment is doing the backgrounds the same way as Project Eternity, as seen here:

[Dark Jaguar]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxi...sts/442434

This is an official post explaining that, yes, they are using 2D background art, not real time rendering. Is that how Eternity is doing it?

[Great Rumbler]

It's a 3D image rendered with the game engine, then painted over with 2D elements to provide detail that the engine could not accomplish in real-time.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, the backgrounds in Torment and Project Eternity are not entirely 2d. They are 3d environments that are painted over with a 2d layer, so they're more a version of 2.5d.

[Dark Jaguar]

What that post I linked is describing though is a 2D background with 3D elements painted on, a bit different than what you describe. Obviously not ALL of the scene is hand drawn, but the general layout is.

I mean, looking at those videos, you can see that the background itself is mostly hand drawn, with real time water in the "pond" area, a real time gear turning there, a real time bridge it appears, and real time lighting and particle effects. (And of course the characters.)

[Great Rumbler]

They're still building the scene with 3D polygons and texture first and then taking a "snapshot" of it in order to paint over later, whether that's with real-time 3D elements [like the waterwheel or the water itself] or 2D elements [like extra detail and weathering that wouldn't be possible in real-time].

[A Black Falcon]

So including PayPal, it's about $4.3 million for the final number.

[Dark Jaguar]

Prerendered or full hand drawn, I'm just saying they're doing it with 2D backdrops. Those Playstation RPGs also did prerendered CG for their backgrounds most of the time.

So they'll be adding that weird crafting system? Cool. As I said, the stronghold (without any additional description) wasn't all that compelling on its own, so no biggie.

[A Black Falcon]

I'm pretty sure that some of Baldur's Gate's stuff used a prerendered style too... I mean, it wasn't all entirely hand-drawn backdrops. And stuff like those trees obviously involved a lot of cut and paste. :p

[Dark Jaguar]

Yeah, the original Planescape had CG prerendered backgrounds in a lot of places too. And Donkey Kong Country...

[Dark Jaguar]

Check this out:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.uservoi...vk79gxk%3D

Airships!

They seem to be continuing to ask for funding outside the starter of kick. It is possible they will use something like this as the "stronghold". Looks neat.

[Great Rumbler]

That's not from Torment, by the way, rather a separate piece of art from one of the people who's working on Torment.

[Dark Jaguar]

Ah, I see. Just a rumor then. The art style does fit the whole "lost technology of the ancients" thing though.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, that airship picture looks like it could fit in this game, but I guess it isn't for it (as far as we know).

[Dark Jaguar]

I love a good airship.

<img src="http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070309101254/finalfantasy/images/3/3b/Ff9_theatre_ship.jpg">

[Great Rumbler]

inXile released a in-game teaser today and, yep, it looks like Torment:

[A Black Falcon]

In other InXile news, Wasteland 2 is done, and ships any day now! I kickstarted it at the boxed tier, so I'm definitely looking forward to it.

And yes, that video looks like Torment indeed. The game is probably quite a ways off, but with Wasteland 2 only now finishing, that's okay. I like that text description boxes still appear on the screen. :)