First Impressions - Torment: Tides of NumenƩra
First thingās first: I helped to kickstart this game at around $150 (gotta get dat collectorās edition) which is about the softestĀ āconflict of interestā possible I think. You see, Iām a huge fan of all the Infinity Engine games, with Planescape: Torment holding a very special place in my heart. Furthermore, Iām a big fan of pretty much anything being worked on by the legends over at Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment, and while this particular game may not be made by Obsidian directly, it does use their excellent Pillars of Eternity engine. I say this because Obsidian is easily my favorite game dev studio.
Long story short, the bias is strong with this one.
Now, Iāve played the new Torment for a few hours, so this isnāt going to be anywhere close to comprehensive, but I can share a few of my feelings and thoughts thus far.
1. 90-95% of my time has been spent reading. And Iām not even counting the reading of skills and such, which would bump things up closer to 99%. So far, the amount of written material in this game is mind-blowing. Iām only in the firstĀ āmajorā map and I feel like Iāve spent more time there getting to know the characters and world than I have in any other game Iāve played before! Considering that PS:Tās greatest strength was the writing, I feel like itās safe to say that theyāve managed to capture at least some of what made that game so special.
Now, that being said, I donāt know how reactive the dialogue is going to be throughout the course of the game, but I have been experiencing little snippets of consequence for my decisions, even if those decisions are as simple as my lore-hound ways of dragging out every conversation branch getting on some NPCās nerves. I honestly feel like Iām going to have to carefully consider what I should or should not ask (either that or do a ton of save scumming).
All of these little reactions that Iāve witnessed so far, including their occasional tie-ins to the Crisis system, are giving me a great deal of hope for how things will be by the end of all this.
2. This might be a small thing, but this has the best control scheme for a conversation system Iāve seen. Really, itās as simple as being just like the IE conversation system I know and love combined with responsive selections, and the ability to progress using the spacebar and select my decisions using both the primary number keys AND the numpad (something that I have seen ignored by so many similar games)! Considering how text-heavy this game is, fucking this up would have had brutal consequences for my user experience.
3. The UI is just pretty slick in general and very responsive. I love how all items have lore behind them, and am so happy to be able to examine the environment all over the place. If I had one big complaint, it would be that while pressingĀ āTABā to highlight interactive areas in the world was executed extremely well, the highlighted NPC names are just too large, flashy, and easily jumbled together. If there was an option to minimize NPC names during TAB highlighting, I would enable it in a heartbeat.
4. I havenāt done much in the way of combat at all, but ho boy am I glad itās turn-based. I donāt know how enjoyable itās going to be in the long run, but at least it canāt be any worse than the sloppy combat in Planescape: Torment. Honestly, just the fact that there appear to be so many varied options available to you during the resolution of Crises will probably make it infinitely more bearable.
5. Which brings me to my final impression, which is that I have almost no idea what Iām doing... and that is GREAT! A big problem with PS:T is that itās shackled to the AD&D ruleset, which automatically puts me into a min/max mindset. Now, that game turned things on their head a great deal what with making Wisdom the most important stat in the game, along with all the other tweaks emphasizing thoughtful exploration over tactical combat, but everything was all still fairly obvious and it wasnāt tooooo hard to min/max everything in that realm either.
Conversely, Torment: Tides of NumenĆ©ra has so manyĀ āskillsā andĀ ādescriptorsā and you canāt even see a big list of them all at once, and itās not immediately obvious what they all do outside of providing assistance in context-sensitive situations. What this means is that I didnāt feel bogged down in trying to make the perfect all-rounder character. I went through the tutorial bits, was told I was a Graceful Nano, looked through some of the other stuff, but by no means all of it, and just said,Ā āFuck it, I amĀ a Graceful Nano! Letās get this show on the road!ā
This might all be a grand illusion, but it feels like even if I tried min/maxing, I simply wouldnāt be able to cover all of the bases out there, so thereās no perfection to be had, just a unique experience. The stat pool system also seems like it could throttle being able to pull off every single situation you encounter. The only thing that worries me is the fact that conflict resolution seems to center around pushing up percentage chances through skill, stat, and circumstance, potentially leading to judicious save scumming bursting that illusion.
So yeah, like I said before, I donāt know exactly how this whole experience is going to pan out, but I am hopeful as hell. Worst comes to worst, at least Iāll have one hell of a read on my hands...