I've finally gotten a chance to spend some time with the beta (started a new job a couple of months ago and have had zero gaming time, but things are settling down and am able to get get back to it now!)...and I am loving it! I've been playing for about 4 hours this evening, and almost all of that has been spent working through dialog trees. InXile have done a great job getting the game optimized...I'm playing on a fairly low-end laptop and it's running great. Only had one hiccup at the very beginning of a Crisis, but other than that, it plays nicely. The writing is really top top-notch. Definitely not a game that's going to appeal to those who want a lot of action and combat, though.
Gamasutra offers an interview with Brian Fargo. I've chosen several parts to quote below:
Q: I can't imagine trying to localize something like this game, an RPG with a huge script that encompasses so many esoteric concepts.
A: You have to understand the context of what you're doing in order to localize it. It's 1.2 million words, so it's incredibly expensive to localize. Incredibly expensive.
Q: I was talking to George [Zeits, lead area designer on Torment] and he mentioned that the game had been cut down a lot during development. As executive producer on this project, I imagine you had oversight of what was cut -- how do you decide what stays and what goes, in a game like this?
A: Well, ultimately I let the writers decide that. I'll extrapolate out and say well, at this rate, this thing is going to go too long by x amount, and we need to change something. I'd rather have more time in the iteration cycle, right.
I tell the guys all the time, we're either going to have more levels or more time to iterate. Which would you rather have
It's always more time to iterate, because you get to polish more, and make what you have better. So that always wins out. So I let them ultimately decide how they need to tell this really heavy, single-player narrative story, yet still remove things. And so yeah, they had to work themselves into pretzels a couple different times in order to do it. But it's fun, because at this point we're the only ones that know what's not there anymore. And at the end of the day, the game is still pretty massive -- it's probably a 40- to 60-hour game. But again, I let those guys make that decision, in terms of what makes sense.
Q: How big did the Torment team start, and how big was it at the largest point?
It was about 38 people at its biggest. Our whole company, its only a little over 50-odd people. We use contractors, too.
It was three and a half years, too, so we had a good amount of time. That's what I always want. Iteration time is the most important thing. If you told me I had 12 months to make a game, you can either plan for 9 and iterate for 3 or vice versa, I'll make a better game if you give me 3 months to plan and 9 months to tweak and play with it.
In a post on r/Games, Reddit user SnakesPaw has compiled a series of posts from both the InXile and RPG Codex forums which confirm that a number of stretch goals for Torment: Tides of Numenera have been cut from the final release. This includes two companions, the crafting system along with the game’s Italian localisation.
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The money raised from the Tides of Numenera Kickstarter was supposed to guarantee nine unique companions for the player to recruit, which included a companion called the Toy, a 'living ball of goo' who was added to the game at the $2 million mark, along with someone called Riastrad. When a trophy list for Tides of Numenera leaked online, players started to question whether these companions would feature in the full game, as they did not appear in the list unlike other announced companions. After multiple threads and questions via the Tides of Numenera forums, line producer at InXile Entertainment Eric Schwarz eventually released a statement confirming that “ the companion roster has been slightly reduced from [the] initial plans” of the Kickstarter.
Schwarz’ reasoning for the cut companions was to ensure that no companions were left “feeling shallow, with storylines that felt incomplete,” so they were scrapped in order to allow for more work on the pre-existing ones. The other main point of contention was the second city called Oasis, which had appeared in previous promotional material but seemed to absent from leaked beta files and the aforementioned trophy list. Associate producer Thomas Beekers replied that “the Oasis ended up taking on a smaller role, but you will still be able to visit it during the game,” acting more like a smaller settlement rather than the larger city as initially promised.
As a result of these announced pieces of cut content, users on the InXile forums naturally asked for a full list of the scrapped features, so backers can know exactly what will be missing from the full game. Schwarz responded again on January 28, hoping to quiet fan concerns by confirming that backers have “seen many of our stretch goals so far” and that promised goals like “the Ascension, the Labyrinth and its added elements, expanded epilogues, deeper companions” will feature in the final game.
However, one element that has definitely been cut is the crafting system, as “a traditional crafting system wasn't meshing” with the design of the game. According to Schwarz, “everything ended up feeling like an MMO-style system, and that just didn't fit Torment's gameplay,” so the crafting assets have since been repurposed for “better Cyphers and Artifacts”, as well as companion armour upgrades and surgical procedures.
There is also bad news for Italian fans, as the Italian localisation of Tides of Numenera has been cancelled, despite the Kickstarter initially promising it alongside localisations in French, German, Spanish and Russian. In support tickets responding to Italian customers, InXile stated that “the costs for Italian localization would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and our stats and sales of prior RPGs showed the number of Italian backers and sales we could look forward to were too low to support those efforts. Rather than attempt a low-quality localization that would not do justice to the game or satisfy our fans, we ultimately made the difficult decision to not do an Italian version.” As such, Italian backers can now request a refund of their money by contacting the InXile support team.
There is also bad news for Italian fans, as the Italian localisation of Tides of Numenera has been cancelled, despite the Kickstarter initially promising it alongside localisations in French, German, Spanish and Russian. In support tickets responding to Italian customers, InXile stated that “the costs for Italian localization would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and our stats and sales of prior RPGs showed the number of Italian backers and sales we could look forward to were too low to support those efforts. Rather than attempt a low-quality localization that would not do justice to the game or satisfy our fans, we ultimately made the difficult decision to not do an Italian version.” As such, Italian backers can now request a refund of their money by contacting the InXile support team.
Yeah, I fully understand them, that must be a way to make this game live up to the tradition of the original PS:T, which was never officially translated into Italian.
On a side note, a team of fans translated it after some time, and their almost-2-years work has a mythical halo around it for the Italian RPG players, who keep thanking them still today. I doubt a similar thing will happen for this game though.
That's a bit shit but yes this is why I am quite reserved about crowd funding.
Indeed.
PST didn't have crafting, and wouldn't have been better with crafting. Ergo, there is no reason why ToN should have crafting. It looks like "Kickstarter needs us to provide some random thing we can promise if people keep giving us money - crafting is a thing so that will do".
Pretty much. Their lack of transparency is outright abyssmal, no other way to describe it. Even if InXile re-established the cut non-human companions, crafting and whatnot via updates or free expansions to backers... With this move they have lost not a small amount of trust. And lost trust is very hard to win back when their number of backers surpasses 95,000 unamused people.
I was especially looking towards The Toy, it being a living ball of goo.
The lack of transparency is my main issue with them as well. Though cutting third of the companions in a story heavy game is seriously going to limit our options. I would be amazed if they actually came back in free DLCs too since apparently almost 4 years of development time hasn't been enough.
I'm actually kinda happy they cut crafting because for me it has never been anything but annoying busywork, and never saw how it would fit in this game.
It looks like "Kickstarter needs us to provide some random thing we can promise if people keep giving us money - crafting is a thing so that will do".
This is the way I see it too and one of the big problems with stretch goals. They should be realistic like "full orchestra soundtrack to replace synths/VSTS" or "Mac version". Adding in things that weren't even part of your original plan always seemed forced to me.
As a backer, I don't mind if they decide to cut content for release. I like their business model and I want them to make the hard choices that allow them to keep making games without answering to a publisher.
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. https://youtu.be/6m0I2uVKuQc
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.
"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. What do you actually do in games? What do you do in Mario? What do you actually do in games?
"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."
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, one of the most revered computer role-playing games of all time. It plumbed philosophical depths other games did not, and was unusual in a way other games weren't. Torment: Tides of Numenera is exactly the same in that regard, but differs in that unlike Planescape it is not based in a Dungeons & Dragons setting but in the new setting of Numenera instead.
"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, 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.
I will unofficially voluntarily step in to note that inXile Entertainment are a small, focused and very passionate team of independent developers. Developers is the key word here. They don't communicate much. They develop games. That's what they do.
And, as it happens, they excel in that to a fault. In their striving to provide you, Torment's loyal fans and backers, with the exact game experience they think you deserve, and that is the very best of all possible game experiences by the way, they may or may not have considered it a waste of time to publicly disclose the project's ever-evolving details. Perhaps unknowingly following the ideals of the Changing God (not me), they neglected their own Castoffs too, or so it would seem. Quite possibly, this awkward situation could have been prevented by designating a community professional to stay in constant touch with Torment's fans and keep them up to date with all the news, good or bad or even downright useless and so silly one might wonder why they'd even be shared with anyone, without sacrificing the team's precious development time. But inXile Entertainment does not have such an outspoken jack who mediates. Mostly, they don't
Alas, what already happened quite likely did happen and can't really un-happen, although philosophers tend to disagree on that. In Torment, things are not very certain either: one might look into the past and accidentally change it, or maybe just explode due to numenera overload or something. Mistakes happen, and oftentimes one can learn from them... if still sufficiently alive
For now, here's a sure-fire procedure. Provided by yours industriously at no extra charge*
Here's what Colin McComb has said about cut content in the Kickstarter update:
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... [...] 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.
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.
I guess that's fair enough. Not the best way to handle it, but at least they didn't just let people find out on their own after release, like Bethesda seemed to do with FO4.
This really does not seem promising. Endless delays on a game they were handed the engine for from Obsidian, and they can't even meet their stretch goals?? I can't be the only person who wasn't really blown away by Wasteland 2, and Torment is starting to look like a serious contender for disappointment of the year. I'd steer well clear of Bard's Tale IV and Wasteland 3 at this point. Obsidian and Larian have proven themselves to be worthy of support. inXile has it's hand in far too many jars right now, and I'm willing to bet this game is mediocre at best.
Well, inXile *did* announce that the game was "content complete" over 1 and a half years ago. So one could think that they initially planned to say nothing until the game was released. Perhaps they wanted to announce these informations together with the revelation of DLC's or similar post-release plans, which will feature the missing stretch goals. Or they really did forget about it, despite it sounding rather irresponsible. Not that such "what ifs" really matter now tho. Seeing as even @God cannot make these things un-happen.
But at the same time, I think it's a bit too soon to give up on the title. First we should let TToN on the starting line, given that (small) things may change within the next 25 days. As for what the future holds after release? No idea. At the very least it's good to know that backers won't be charged for any coming content. Realistically speaking, that's a better bargain than what Pillar's of Eternity 1+2 backers ever got.
However, I think it would be really awesome if we'd see the return of The Toy in a timely fashion. Too many human NPC's for my taste in this spiritual successor of PST. Given that within the original Planescape: Torment cast, only the protagonist was clearly an (ex-)human. So having 6 out of TToN's 6 NPC's be human is honestly a letdown for me.
Looks like pre-orders of TToN are now open on GOG. What's more - people will even receive a free copy of Lords of Xulima as a bonus game! Now that's something interesting to get. Obsidian really should learn a thing or two from them in terms of pre-order items.
@jjstraka34 Are you really going to give up on the game where writing is everything, without even trying this writing? ...
Not sure yet. I do know that Wasteland 2 was a huge disappointment in my estimation. I usually would buy something like this sight unseen at launch. Not gonna take that plunge this time, and will wait to see how the reviews shape up.
Seeing as even @God cannot make these things un-happen.
I said these things don't typically un-happen, as in: they don't do it by themselves.
But I could unmake them. Mostly, I can
The way I see it, these recent troubles of inXile's make them look all the more human and awesome. Much like this forum here, they are just a bunch of erring and vulnerable people who gathered together to craft an amazing work of love. They don't have a gulag facility filled to the brim with underpaid testers and localization specialists chained to the wall like some of the largest corporations in the industry, nor do they heinously exploit slave labour have many interns.
Trust me, there are scary places Torment's legacy could have gone to - but, thanks to inXile Entertainment, it may yet live on.
Cutting content, too, can be great if it works to make the game experience moar awesomer. Just think about it. Even the grand masterpiece that is Planescape: Torment would likely be all the more enjoyable if the 50+ another-identical-walkover-please-where-is-the-skip-button-already combat encounters were removed and replaced with just 5 that you could actually get through tactically, via peaceful dialogue or in any other engaging way. inXile is doing just that. As it happens, they are cutting any content that would work against immersion, painstakingly ensuring that whatever does make it into the game is a fascinating, memorable experience. Their approach is in opposition to that of EA some large companies, who might calculatingly cut elementary gameplay features in a grand scheme of monetizing their unsuspecting fanbase. Rather than doing away with gameplay (e.g. like EA did in their recent Sims4), they are doing away with anything that could distract you from gameplay. This includes the horrid prospect of crowdsourcing an Italian translation and getting it voiced by some shady guy over at Fiverr. Wouldn't such a shoddy excuse for a localization be more disappointing than honestly admitting: we're sorry, our estimates were imprecise and we cannot afford to provide a quality Italian localization? Now that they stand corrected by experience, I imagine inXile could look for ways to get the Italian localization financed separately and delivered later, if the Italian community suggested this vigorously and in great numbers (of euros, localization is expensive as hell). But that's just my way of looking at these things.
And what will happen to the cut unfinished content? Nothing's ever lost in nature. It may not be included in the game, but I'm thinking it still might be released to the community, in one way or another
Too many human NPC's for my taste in this spiritual successor of PST. Given that within the original Planescape: Torment cast, only the protagonist was clearly an (ex-)human. So having 6 out of TToN's 6 NPC's be human is honestly a letdown for me.
One thing: Numenera is neither Planescape nor D&D. My archaeological urges tell me I think it's far more awesome a setting. More on the Ninth World e.g. here. Planescape's Sigil is like a flowing vortex of all kinds of weird misfits, literally pulled from all over the universe. Numenera's Sagus Protectorate has slightly less ridiculous ethnic dynamics and seems to be predominantly inhabited by "humans", at least at the time of the Last Castoff's arrival. Though the term "humans" is just another irrelevant label, as you might discover while playing Torment. Also, while a non-human companion may not make it into the initial release of the game, there is still an extraordinary diversity of NPCs one can interact with. And did I mention
That's the thing though: the reappearance of "humans" is but a relatively recent occurence in the Numenera setting. Colin McComb and his crew could have just as well taken another canvas for the majority of companions. Be it aliens, interdimensional travelers, robots, insectoids, that luminous race, or even a adorable, overpowered tentacle monster toddler born from the Bloom itself. For what's worth, anyway. Yeah, yeah, I know. Misanthropists like me are just hard to please.
Colin McComb and his crew could have just as well taken another canvas for the majority of companions. Be it aliens, interdimensional travelers, robots, insectoids, that luminous race, or even a adorable, overpowered tentacle monster toddler born from the Bloom itself.
A "human" impregnated with a parasitic alien/AI controlling the biped from within is something they could've easily pulled off, and them not including one is a matter of their preference, I guess. Wait, no. They did. Aligern is a little like this ...but, as much as it would be nice to have more racial diversity in the companion roster, developing the other variants you mention would likely require substantial additional resources vs. a typical "human"-shaped companion with an atypical personality, which may or may not be the reasoning behind this design decision.
Well, humanoid and non-humanoid companions alike would require additional resources when developers are midway in the planning phase though. For example, both the Toy and Riastrad (an NPC somewhat resembling Vhailor) were lately added as stretch goals. So it would be only natural to assume that the previously done "human" companions had been more polished by the writers ove the years. Developer GavinJF over at the TToN forum posted an rather insightful comment within a thread asking whenever the Toy had been cut or not:
This is an interesting thread, and I wish I had time to respond more directly to some of the comments I see in here. I do want to make an additional clarification, though:
One extra element that caused Torment some additional difficulty that I'm not seeing here was polish time - our writers spent a great deal of time testing, fixing, and refining previous conversations. That word count isn't sequential, after all, but a glorious tangle of interconnected branching oddities that needed constant supervision and pruning. This required writers familiar with the setting, the dialogue standards (which was an impressive work of art in its own right), the design docs (200 page masterpieces of zone design by our own George Ziets), and the OEI development tool.
The list of writers who had all these qualifications was not long, either, and a lot of this work had to be done BEFORE localization began and text changes became incredibly expensive. So yes, it was a time-related issue, but it wasn't just a question of the Torment team having enough time to develop a set number of conversations. A conversation might take two days to write, but be tweaked, modified, and rewritten to match changing content for weeks to come.
Which made me think that it was also easier for the writers to relate to the mindsets of human NPC's, and thus fleshing them out more desirable. The Toy being more like an object than a lifeform, on the other hand, had radically different "dialogues"... for the lack of a better word. It wouldn't surprise me that its unpredictable nature gave them a headache or two. Non-humans don't think like humans after all.
Comments
They could've just made a 2-second video saying only this, and it would've been enough to sell the class.
Q: I can't imagine trying to localize something like this game, an RPG with a huge script that encompasses so many esoteric concepts.
A: You have to understand the context of what you're doing in order to localize it. It's 1.2 million words, so it's incredibly expensive to localize. Incredibly expensive.
Q: I was talking to George [Zeits, lead area designer on Torment] and he mentioned that the game had been cut down a lot during development. As executive producer on this project, I imagine you had oversight of what was cut -- how do you decide what stays and what goes, in a game like this?
A: Well, ultimately I let the writers decide that. I'll extrapolate out and say well, at this rate, this thing is going to go too long by x amount, and we need to change something. I'd rather have more time in the iteration cycle, right.
I tell the guys all the time, we're either going to have more levels or more time to iterate. Which would you rather have
It's always more time to iterate, because you get to polish more, and make what you have better. So that always wins out. So I let them ultimately decide how they need to tell this really heavy, single-player narrative story, yet still remove things. And so yeah, they had to work themselves into pretzels a couple different times in order to do it. But it's fun, because at this point we're the only ones that know what's not there anymore. And at the end of the day, the game is still pretty massive -- it's probably a 40- to 60-hour game. But again, I let those guys make that decision, in terms of what makes sense.
Q: How big did the Torment team start, and how big was it at the largest point?
It was about 38 people at its biggest. Our whole company, its only a little over 50-odd people. We use contractors, too.
It was three and a half years, too, so we had a good amount of time. That's what I always want. Iteration time is the most important thing. If you told me I had 12 months to make a game, you can either plan for 9 and iterate for 3 or vice versa, I'll make a better game if you give me 3 months to plan and 9 months to tweak and play with it.
If you're hankering for an RPG to play, take a look at these top PC RPGs.
The money raised from the Tides of Numenera Kickstarter was supposed to guarantee nine unique companions for the player to recruit, which included a companion called the Toy, a 'living ball of goo' who was added to the game at the $2 million mark, along with someone called Riastrad. When a trophy list for Tides of Numenera leaked online, players started to question whether these companions would feature in the full game, as they did not appear in the list unlike other announced companions. After multiple threads and questions via the Tides of Numenera forums, line producer at InXile Entertainment Eric Schwarz eventually released a statement confirming that “ the companion roster has been slightly reduced from [the] initial plans” of the Kickstarter.
Schwarz’ reasoning for the cut companions was to ensure that no companions were left “feeling shallow, with storylines that felt incomplete,” so they were scrapped in order to allow for more work on the pre-existing ones. The other main point of contention was the second city called Oasis, which had appeared in previous promotional material but seemed to absent from leaked beta files and the aforementioned trophy list. Associate producer Thomas Beekers replied that “the Oasis ended up taking on a smaller role, but you will still be able to visit it during the game,” acting more like a smaller settlement rather than the larger city as initially promised.
As a result of these announced pieces of cut content, users on the InXile forums naturally asked for a full list of the scrapped features, so backers can know exactly what will be missing from the full game. Schwarz responded again on January 28, hoping to quiet fan concerns by confirming that backers have “seen many of our stretch goals so far” and that promised goals like “the Ascension, the Labyrinth and its added elements, expanded epilogues, deeper companions” will feature in the final game.
However, one element that has definitely been cut is the crafting system, as “a traditional crafting system wasn't meshing” with the design of the game. According to Schwarz, “everything ended up feeling like an MMO-style system, and that just didn't fit Torment's gameplay,” so the crafting assets have since been repurposed for “better Cyphers and Artifacts”, as well as companion armour upgrades and surgical procedures.
There is also bad news for Italian fans, as the Italian localisation of Tides of Numenera has been cancelled, despite the Kickstarter initially promising it alongside localisations in French, German, Spanish and Russian. In support tickets responding to Italian customers, InXile stated that “the costs for Italian localization would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and our stats and sales of prior RPGs showed the number of Italian backers and sales we could look forward to were too low to support those efforts. Rather than attempt a low-quality localization that would not do justice to the game or satisfy our fans, we ultimately made the difficult decision to not do an Italian version.” As such, Italian backers can now request a refund of their money by contacting the InXile support team.
Source
That's just wow... in a very bad sense...
On a side note, a team of fans translated it after some time, and their almost-2-years work has a mythical halo around it for the Italian RPG players, who keep thanking them still today. I doubt a similar thing will happen for this game though.
PST didn't have crafting, and wouldn't have been better with crafting. Ergo, there is no reason why ToN should have crafting. It looks like "Kickstarter needs us to provide some random thing we can promise if people keep giving us money - crafting is a thing so that will do".
I was especially looking towards The Toy, it being a living ball of goo.
I'm actually kinda happy they cut crafting because for me it has never been anything but annoying busywork, and never saw how it would fit in this game.
Torment: Tides of Numenera dev issues apology for missed stretch goals
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.
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.
What do you actually do in games? What do you do in Mario? What do you actually do in games?
"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."
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, one of the most revered computer role-playing games of all time. It plumbed philosophical depths other games did not, and was unusual in a way other games weren't. Torment: Tides of Numenera is exactly the same in that regard, but differs in that unlike Planescape it is not based in a Dungeons & Dragons setting but in the new setting of Numenera instead.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a text-heavy, turn-based role-playing game. If that floats your boat you may be in for a very enjoyable voyage indeed.
I will
unofficiallyvoluntarily step in to note that inXile Entertainment are a small, focused and very passionate team of independent developers. Developers is the key word here. They don't communicate much. They develop games. That's what they do.And, as it happens, they excel in that to a fault. In their striving to provide you, Torment's loyal fans and backers, with the exact game experience they think you deserve, and that is the very best of all possible game experiences by the way, they may or may not have considered it a waste of time to publicly disclose the project's ever-evolving details. Perhaps unknowingly following the ideals of the Changing God
(not me), they neglected their own Castoffs too, or so it would seem.Quite possibly, this awkward situation could have been prevented by designating a community professional to stay in constant touch with Torment's fans and keep them up to date with all the news, good or bad or even downright useless and so silly one might wonder why they'd even be shared with anyone, without sacrificing the team's precious development time.
But inXile Entertainment does not have such an outspoken jack who mediates. Mostly, they don't
Alas, what already happened quite likely did happen and can't really un-happen, although philosophers tend to disagree on that. In Torment, things are not very certain either: one might look into the past and accidentally change it, or maybe just explode due to numenera overload or something. Mistakes happen, and oftentimes one can learn from them... if still sufficiently alive
For now, here's a sure-fire procedure. Provided by yours industriously at no extra charge*
Apply sprayflesh to the burnt area
*indirect fees may apply
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...
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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.
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.
But at the same time, I think it's a bit too soon to give up on the title. First we should let TToN on the starting line, given that (small) things may change within the next 25 days. As for what the future holds after release? No idea. At the very least it's good to know that backers won't be charged for any coming content. Realistically speaking, that's a better bargain than what Pillar's of Eternity 1+2 backers ever got.
However, I think it would be really awesome if we'd see the return of The Toy in a timely fashion. Too many human NPC's for my taste in this spiritual successor of PST. Given that within the original Planescape: Torment cast, only the protagonist was clearly an (ex-)human. So having 6 out of TToN's 6 NPC's be human is honestly a letdown for me.
But I could unmake them. Mostly, I can
The way I see it, these recent troubles of inXile's make them look all the more human and awesome.
Much like this forum here, they are just a bunch of erring and vulnerable people who gathered together to craft an amazing work of love. They don't have a
gulagfacility filled to the brim withunderpaidtesters and localization specialistschained to the walllike some of the largest corporations in the industry, nor do theyheinously exploit slave labourhave many interns.Trust me, there are scary places Torment's legacy could have gone to - but, thanks to inXile Entertainment, it may yet live on.
Cutting content, too, can be great if it works to make the game experience moar awesomer. Just think about it. Even the grand masterpiece that is Planescape: Torment would likely be all the more enjoyable if the 50+ another-identical-walkover-please-where-is-the-skip-button-already combat encounters were removed and replaced with just 5 that you could actually get through tactically, via peaceful dialogue or in any other engaging way. inXile is doing just that.
As it happens, they are cutting any content that would work against immersion, painstakingly ensuring that whatever does make it into the game is a fascinating, memorable experience.
Their approach is in opposition to that of
EAsome large companies, who might calculatingly cut elementary gameplay features in a grand scheme of monetizing their unsuspecting fanbase. Rather than doing away with gameplay(e.g. like EA did in their recent Sims4), they are doing away with anything that could distract you from gameplay. This includes the horrid prospect of crowdsourcing an Italian translation and getting it voiced by some shady guy over at Fiverr. Wouldn't such a shoddy excuse for a localization be more disappointing than honestly admitting: we're sorry, our estimates were imprecise and we cannot afford to provide a quality Italian localization? Now that they stand corrected by experience, I imagine inXile could look for ways to get the Italian localization financed separately and delivered later, if the Italian community suggested this vigorously and in great numbers(of euros, localization is expensive as hell). But that's just my way of looking at these things.And what will happen to the cut unfinished content? Nothing's ever lost in nature. It may not be included in the game, but I'm thinking it still might be released to the community, in one way or another
Planescape's Sigil is like a flowing vortex of all kinds of weird misfits, literally pulled from all over the universe. Numenera's Sagus Protectorate has slightly less ridiculous ethnic dynamics and seems to be predominantly inhabited by "humans", at least at the time of the Last Castoff's arrival. Though the term "humans" is just another irrelevant label, as you might discover while playing Torment.
Also, while a non-human companion may not make it into the initial release of the game, there is still an extraordinary diversity of NPCs one can interact with. And did I mention
Wait, no. They did. Aligern is a little like this...but, as much as it would be nice to have more racial diversity in the companion roster, developing the other variants you mention would likely require substantial additional resources vs. a typical "human"-shaped companion with an atypical personality, which may or may not be the reasoning behind this design decision.
One extra element that caused Torment some additional difficulty that I'm not seeing here was polish time - our writers spent a great deal of time testing, fixing, and refining previous conversations. That word count isn't sequential, after all, but a glorious tangle of interconnected branching oddities that needed constant supervision and pruning. This required writers familiar with the setting, the dialogue standards (which was an impressive work of art in its own right), the design docs (200 page masterpieces of zone design by our own George Ziets), and the OEI development tool.
The list of writers who had all these qualifications was not long, either, and a lot of this work had to be done BEFORE localization began and text changes became incredibly expensive. So yes, it was a time-related issue, but it wasn't just a question of the Torment team having enough time to develop a set number of conversations. A conversation might take two days to write, but be tweaked, modified, and rewritten to match changing content for weeks to come.