Games
We speak to the team behind the spiritual successor of 1999’s critical darling Planescape: Torment.
It's been well over two years since inXile Entertainment's ambitious RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera was successfully funded on Kickstarter, raising over $4.1million to help bring the game to life. While we've not heard too much from the team since the game was funded, inXile has been steadily plugging away to keep its vision alive.
Originally slated to land last December, the game's release has been moved back to this year, all so that the team can meet the ambitious stretch goals the community voted for with its wallets. The finish-line is definitely in sight though and ahead of the game's final release, we spoke with project lead Kevin Saunders and design lead Adam Heine on what to expect from the final game, updating gameplay for a new century, and the team's take on our world a billion years in the future.
Numenera is based in our world, but a billion years in the future. How is that different to it being a new world altogether and what are you preserving from the present that players will recognise in Numenera’s far future?
Adam Heine: The difference is that in knowing the Ninth World is (or once was) Earth, it forces one to imagine how and why. There is no magic, so if that man is capable of healing someone with just a touch and a few muttered words, how is he doing that? Is it some hereditary mutation, some change done to him by ancient technologies he stumbled upon in the wasteland, or is he drawing on unseen powers in the air? Do the words even matter (he certainly believes they do)? If there's a standing dome of water – held in by nothing but a few stone obelisks – then somebody in the past had the technology and desire to build it. Why? How does it work? And how powerful must that civilisation have been to have created such a thing?
These questions aren't raised in a typical fantasy setting. But for every weird thing in the Ninth World, one has to ask how it got there, why, and what it was originally for. The answers to these questions are rarely given in the Numenera setting, but that's not the point. The point is to ignite the imagination.
Nothing from the 21st Century will have survived a billion years from now, but what players will recognise in the Ninth World is humanity. Nobody knows why humanity emerged again on Earth some thousand years ago – barely changed from the way they are today – but they are obviously people, with all of our same flaws and struggles and loves and fears.
The Tides of the title are, according to a recent interview, ‘essentially a way to get around big fights’. We’re still a little unclear on how they work. Is their use in the game only to manipulate NPCs? Is it fair to characterise them a bit like karma, where characters or quests will only be open if you are a very just person? And if that’s all they are, why such prominence in the game’s title?
Heine: The Tides aren't a gate for fights, but rather an alignment system. They play two main parts in the story of TTON. First, they change based on the PC's choices, but unlike PS:T's alignment axes of good/evil and law/chaos, the Tides are focused on the type of legacy the PC is building. The player's Tides are determined by his words and actions – not by a set of morals or inscrutable motivations – and they have a subtle effect on many aspects of the game, including manipulating NPCs and conferring bonuses and item effects.
The Tides also are a natural force, akin to gravity or magnetism. This force has been harnessed by the PC's sire, allowing him to jump from body to body in his apparent quest for immortality, and it may be an unforeseen side effect of the Tides that creates the cast-offs. The Tides are an important, underlying facet of the game's story.
You’ve also said that Numenera is ‘not about killing people and taking their stuff.’ That’s a pretty big departure from the classic CRPG formula. What kinds of experiences will be open to the cads, then?
Heine: Although TTON doesn't allow the player to attack just anybody, you will certainly be able to murder a number of people just because they're in your way, or you want to see what happens.
That said, murder is a pretty limited interpretation of evil. If I'm being truly evil, I want to do more than just bully NPCs with my axe. I want to lie to them, manipulate them, and use them for my own ends, all while letting them think they're the one deciding to sacrifice themselves to the Bloom's gaping maw. TTON's opportunities for evil explore this more sophisticated variety.
We’ve seen Crises described as ‘major setpieces’. Setpiece has become quite a weighted term in the last few years, particularly in triple-A games – can you give us an idea of what a setpiece might look like in Numenera?
Heine: I think of Crises like boss battles, maybe because those were the 'setpieces' of the past. Although every Crisis shares the same underlying combat mechanics, each one has its own obstacles and opportunities. That's the biggest difference between Crises and regular encounters: each Crisis is handcrafted to make it unique and interesting.
In one, you might face a crime lord who is using archaic technology to keep herself out of phase and immune to your attacks. Maybe you try to time your attacks to hit her at the few times she's vulnerable, or you might try to access her technology through a control panel allowing you to control it. Or might just brute force it and kill all her minions so she's forced to deal with you herself.
In another Crisis, you might be running from an ancient horror that can't be stopped with force alone. You need to figure out how to use your environment to stop it, throw things in its way to slow it down, or just get the hell out of there.
These are just two examples, but they are both very different from each other. Although combat might play a part in each, your tactics and environment will need to change for each scenario. TTON will have about 12-15 of these 'boss battles' – as well as several (optional) encounters that involve straightforward combat, ensuring that fighting is always fresh and interesting.
The skills system seems like the biggest departure from what I think of as classic CRPG formula. Why the change now, when the old system of specialist lockpick/traps/sneak etcetera worked so well?
Heine: Numenera's skill system is broader and more flexible than that of most RPGs. Instead of saying, "you have no ranks in disabling traps, so you can't even try," Numenera let's any character try anything, for a cost. In Numenera, you have three types of 'hit points' – might, speed, and intellect. These stats are depleted when you're damaged, but are also resources you can draw upon to accomplish challenging tasks.
This puts more power into the player's hands. Want to pick a lock but aren't trained in it? You can spend speed points on effort to make that task easier. Or you might have an ability that lets you 'brute force' the lock, allowing you to spend might instead of speed on that particular task.
Or you might be low on speed – or trying to conserve it for other speed tasks nearby, or a Crisis you sense is coming – so you take the chance that your character might fail this task in exchange for making other tasks easier instead. It's up to you and your situation, making every task an interesting decision.
Additionally, this same system of skills and effort applies to every aspect of Numenera. Shooting an enemy from across the room? That's also a speed task, with the same choices as picking a lock (though obviously you'd need different skills to be already good at it). Dodge a sword? Also a speed task. Now, not only is the player empowered with deciding which tasks matter enough to spend his resources, but the player also intuitively understands how all tasks work after having accomplished one.
We have mixed memories of the companion system from the old Fallout games. That sounds a bit like the system you’re bringing to Numenera. Is that an accurate comparison? Are companions controllable, or entirely their own masters?
Heine: In combat, TTON companions are completely under the player's control. But just like in Planescape: Torment, they have minds and goals of their own in conversation. They're not going to want to sacrifice themselves for you, for example, without a good reason. If you ask them to risk themselves for you, you'll have to have a great relationship with them, convince them why it's a good idea or risk that they might walk away from you if you ask too much of them.
A lot of games make claims about reactivity, especially RPGs. How deep are we talking with Tides? You have at least one previous Alpha Protocol team member on-side in Chris Avellone – is that the standard of player agency you're aiming for?
Kevin Saunders: Some of our reactivity stems from our efforts to make the setting more believable and alive. Adam earlier referred to convincing someone to sacrifice themselves to a maw in the Bloom. If that experience doesn't actually kill them, what happens should you cross paths with them later? It's not the focus of TTON, but there are situations where you have the opportunity to alter events of the past, affecting places or people that you've met, or even before you've met them. At times this reactivity can be pretty subtle as you might not even realize the impact you had unless you play again and try something different. We're not so much trying to shove reactivity at you – we're trying to make the world as believable and real as we can.
In other ways, we are being quite explicit with the reactivity. The Tides are a reactivity tool for us, and it's no coincidence that they are central to the story. As one last example: like we did with Wasteland 2, we track many of your choices throughout the game, and will have an extended epilogue that outlines how you affected the world. TTON's primary theme is Legacy, and exploring one's effect on their world is central to that.
When we last spoke to Obsidian about Pillars of Eternity, and whether or not it could realistically hope to Kickstart a game that wasn't a fantasy CRPG, the response was that they were interested in trying, but while you can make something like Pillars with single-digits millions of dollars, something like Skyrim would be a lot more expensive. But Bard's Tale IV is a first-person game. Can you deliver a game from that viewpoint with the same amount of depth as Wasteland and Numenera, without needing a heftier budget?
Saunders: You are absolutely right, and we couldn't. But Bard's Tale IV is a different flavor of CRPG – it's a dungeon-crawler. It will have much more reactivity and story than the original Bard's Tale trilogy, for certain, but its not to the degree of Wasteland 2. It will have gorgeous environments and characters, but less variety in types of locations. A big part of what makes a game like Skyrim expensive to develop is the open world aspect and the variety of environments. Bard's Tale IV will provide some freedom of choice, but it won't be an open world in the sense that Skyrim is.
The scores for Wasteland 2 were good, but not quite perfect. What have you learned from that? What are you doing to make Numenera and even bigger success?
Saunders: It's not the scores that are most important to us, it is the reception from our backers. While of course we hope that others enjoy our games, we're making them for our backers. Through their responses to our updates and videos (and later through our Alpha Systems and Beta Tests) we can know that we're on track.
That said, and so as to not evade your question: we are proud of what we accomplished in Wasteland 2, but when that project began, much of the team was new to the technology, CRPG development, and each other. Through working together on Wasteland 2, the team gained valuable experience, which we bolstered by bringing in additional expertise in key areas. For example, George Ziets, who has worked on numerous CRPGs and has over 15 years of experience in narrative design, joined us in early 2014 as our lead area designer. Torment was also able to maintain a small team for a longer pre-production period, making the most of our development budget. By licensing Obsidian’s technology for Pillars of Eternity, we had both that code and Wasteland 2's to take from and build upon in constructing Torment. Combined, these factors gave us a strong foundation for when the full production team came onto the project.
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