Torment: Tides of Numenera Burns Up Kickstarter - UPDATED

[Andy Chalk]

Torment: Tides of Numenera Burns Up Kickstarter - UPDATED

​

InXile's Torment Kickstarter has rung up more than $500,000 in its first morning of existence.

There are few games that are more famous and less played than Planescape: Torment. It was an amazing experience and a sales disaster, and thus a sequel has never been more than a pleasant dream. But the advent of Kickstarter has changed the landscape, and with work on Wasteland 2 [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/412225] well underway, inXile Entertainment has launched its next big Kickstarter - Torment: Tides of Numenera.

It's not a sequel, really, because it's not set in the Planescape universe, but it "continues the thematic legacy" of the original with a story-driven, single-player experience set in a strange and ancient world where choice has consequences. That, of course, is the promise of the Kickstarter, and it's a promise that people seem to like, because this thing is absolutely on fire. It launched this morning with a goal of $900,000 (the same as Wasteland 2) and is already way past the half-million mark at the time of writing and continuing to climb at a torrid pace.

As usual, there are plenty of digital and physical rewards for backers, and the Kickstarter itself is very thorough, as it should be, covering everything you could reasonably want to know about Torment at this stage. Brian Fargo's "angry at the industry" thing continues to be fun, too, and I have no idea where he found this Metric Driven Games CEO, but the kid is a genius.

The Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera?ref=live] runs until April 5, and is obviously going to make its goal; the way things are going, it might have hit it by the time you read this. Will it break Wasteland's final tally of $2.93 million? I think it just might.

UPDATE: And just like that, it was over. In roughly six hours, the Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter went from 0 to $900,000 and shows no sign of slowing. That Wasteland 2 mark is looking less and less secure with every passing hour. Bravo, inXile. Bravo indeed.

Stay tuned for stretch goals - I suspect there will be a few.

Permalink

 

[Genocidicles]

When I'm asked about how to make our games more accessible, I always give the same answer which is: "I don't care."

That sentence alone makes me want to pledge to this. Have to give it a week or two though.

I wonder how much this'll make. I just saw it make $100,000 in about twenty minutes, so god knows how much they'll end up with.

 

[BrotherRool]

--EDIT "we'll make most if not all combat avoidable."

I was being a fool, this is all I needed to hear. Backed----



This feels a lot more risky than Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity. I want this game but I don't know inXile as a studio, can they write? They've got a lot of good people, but Obsidian have the games to back them up. And if I back this I'm backing two inXile projects (Wasteland 2) instead of just one

 

[Jebusetti]

Just came here from backing this; I really need to stay off kickstarter, it's taking all my money... This makes 4 now that I have a stake in, and if even the worst of them turns out to be close to as good as FTL then I am most likely not going outside much in the next few years.

 

[Anachronism]

I haven't backed a Kickstarter project yet, but this may be where my resolve breaks. Even if the story does sound awfully similar to the original Torment, you can consider me very excited indeed to see how this game turns out. The fact that they have Chris Avellone's blessing is a big point in their favour.

Also, this Kickstarter is insane. In the time it took me to watch the project video and Avellone's endorsement, it's gained $20 000. This is definitely going to be a big thing.

 

[Tom Goldman]

We'll have every game we ever wanted muhuhHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[Therumancer]

Interesting, hopefully I'll be able to put together a donation before the timer expires. I already put in a donation to Wasteland 2 a while back.

I got somewhat irritated and wrote a long rant about my experiences with WoTC and this game in paticular. To make it a little shorter and more coherant (editing post) I'll simply say that I do not think "Planescape: Torment" sold as badly as was reported. At one time WoTC employees like Ryan Dancey made promises on the RPGA forums that a sequel to the game, as well as the continuation of the PnP "Planescape" setting in it's then-form as an independant property and setting would be dependant on the performance of "Torment". A lot of people had eyes on the game, and it went Gold before it was even released, and then went on to become something of a smash success (and remains a product that sells, albiet at a trickle) to this day. WoTC claimed it was a failure, and still probably maintains that, but as someone who was there the reality seems to be quite differant... which is doubtlessly why it remains so well known and a game pretty much every RPG fan has played, in difrect contrast to claims about it's performance.

Understand at this time WoTC was also doing things like cancelling their "Alternity" setting in order to transfer people to their new big liscence "D20 Star Wars" project, justifying it to fans by the lack of performance of the last few Alternity products, which were of abyssmal quality largely because the guys doing them were (natch) rushing right out to the new product line. A really good game, and set of IPs (Dark Matter, Star Drive, etc...) pretty much got axed right then and there with some less than honest answers being given to the fans as to why.

This is a bit shorter, more coherant, and less inflammatory, and I wanted to make what I was saying clear so nobody would think I was accusing the wrong people.

I'm pretty happy to see another game similar to Torment *finally* appearing, and truthfully I suspect it will do quite well. I honestly think it was far less of a niche product than the well known "Wasteland" was, despite perceptions to the contrary.

Now all we need is to see if someone will pick up the ashes of "Arcanum".

 

[Quellist]

~snip~

Well said, I was also around and playing at the time and i was pretty sure the game was not a flop. Personally ive put more into this Kickstarter than all the others ive funded combined, i so want this to succeed and be massive!

 

[RyQ_TMC]

I don't know inXile as a studio, can they write?

The only game I played from them (that I recall) was The Bard's Tale, and I think it was well-written (although the humour felt forced at times). But the rest of the game was crap. Not buggy - don't think I've encountered a single bug - but they made it a hack'n'slash with very little depth and the gameplay got tiring 2-3 hours in.

Hey, a well-written game with shitty combat? Maybe they are the right people to develop a sequel to Torment!!

 

[dakkster]

Got me the $20 level at this point. Did the same with Eternity but upped my pledge later on. In an update on the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page they explained why the Kickstarter is coming now and I really like the reasoning there.

 

[MrBoBo]

Not surprising, one of the best CRPG's ever (if not the best).

 

[N_of_the_dead]

OK, I can only assume it will do well. I clicked the link to the page before reading the article and watching the movie and it was at 500k when i was done i clicked it again and it is now at 700k. I really hope I can get my paycheck in time to put down on one of the physical copy editions

 

[LordMonty]

Go now and support only good things can come from this damn the risks what is $20 for so much amazing!!!!

 

[tautologico]

Backed this already. Seems very promising and I think I'm going to replay Planescape: Torment now.

 

[Therumancer]

I don't know inXile as a studio, can they write?

The only game I played from them (that I recall) was The Bard's Tale, and I think it was well-written (although the humour felt forced at times). But the rest of the game was crap. Not buggy - don't think I've encountered a single bug - but they made it a hack'n'slash with very little depth and the gameplay got tiring 2-3 hours in.

Hey, a well-written game with shitty combat? Maybe they are the right people to develop a sequel to Torment!!

I think InExile is largely a bunch of old school game developers that did a lot of the classic games. Brian Fargo for example was one of the original members of the "Wasteland" team and even had characters named after himself "Mad Dog" Fargo, Faran Brygo, etc... in Wasteland as a sort of joke.

To be honest I was never a big fan of the remake of "Bard's Tale" which seemed to defeat the purpose of the entire thing, and given their current projects it seems they have realized that what people want are old style games with newer tecnology and higher quality, not old games "reimagined" with modern, more casual sensibilities.

While a lot of people will talk about how funny "Bard's Tale" was, it's interesting to note that the original was largely a six man party "dungeon crawler" in the same basic spirit of things like the original "Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord" and competing with that series at around the same time period. It's selling points was things like having color graphics, a town you could walk around in (a dungeon itself basically) and the like as opposed to just a maze of "wire frame" graphics, though it played very similarly on a lot of levels (wander around, solve puzzles, fight tons of turn based combat).

Bard's tale as a series also included a now-forgotten feature where you could transfer your party between the games and keep playing the same party through the entire trilogy. It's plot also progressed where you started out with your basic "kill Foozle" quest (destroy the evil wizard Mangar who has enspelled the town of Skara Brae), followed by killing Foozle's mentor (the mage Logoth Zanta, who is invincible unless you can have a hero ascend to become the Destiny Knight capable of striking him down first), and then finally an epic finale where an evil god you freed in the first game as part of a quest winds up returning to power, killing all the other deities, and requiring you to travel through differant dimensions and even through time to take him out, which was actually pretty clever at times (for it's day and age) including mistakes like someone called Hawkslayer being destinied to kill him and trying to help that guy at differant time frames, when really it's all up to you, and more specifically your party's backstab machine, to save the day.

Turning the series into a comedic Action-RPG might have charmed some people, but really didn't do it justice. From the way thing see right now, it doesn't appear they are going in that kind of direction with their current projects.

 

[Irridium]

This. I was afraid they were going to make it a direct sequel, but it's not. It's a spiritual successor which is what I've been wanting for a long, long time. So happy right now.

EDIT

Also, the lead writer from Mask of The Betrayer is on this, and while I never played it myself, I've regularly heard that it's the best Torment-style narrative since the original Torment, and one of the high points of WRPGs.

Yep, I'm sold.

As someone who has play Mask of the Betrayer, I can confirm this. It's absolutely fantastic.