![]() ![]() Virtually every conversation and interaction triggers a cascade of dialogue options with skill checks, usually with text that sometimes sprawls into a dozen richly styled sentences. It still delivers a fantastic story, though, the power of which largely rests on the wealth and variety of its dialogue choices. (Completing all the many side quests would push this number far higher.) Unfortunately, it suffers a bit from one of the main drawbacks affecting the similar recent RPG Tyranny – when the end comes, it comes quickly, along with a multitude of revelations that leave the uncomfortable impression that additional content was condensed into a few conversation. It's tough to pull off this kind of text-heavy design – even Pillars of Eternity sometimes slips into drudgery because of it – but the quality of the writing here manages to sustain the story for nearly the entirety of its roughly 35 hours. ![]() The voice acting, while excellent, shows up about as often as rain in the Sahara (unless, of course, you're around Erritis). Aside from a quick tutorial, whole hours went by before I had to draw my sword. Know that when you sit down to play Torment: Tides of Numenera, you might as well be reading a book. When you play Torment: Tides of Numenera, you might as well be reading a book.On that note, don't expect a bunch of pretty cutscenes to relay all this. Strangely, a disproportionately large amount of his lines are voiced, while the bulk of the rest of Torment's dialogue remains disappointingly relegated to text. Or consider Erritis, a warrior whose unstable personality channels Beauty and the Beast's Gaston. Take the wise Callistege, who walks around surrounded by flickering clones of herself glimpsed from alternate realities. Torment: Tides of Numenera features several companions who can tag along with The Last Castoff three at a time, and I sometimes found their stories as fascinating as my character’s. Through it all, a horrific entity known as The Sorrow mysteriously hunts down every castoff, and your main goal is never much more serious than keeping it at bay.įortunately, you're not such a nobody that no one wants to hang out with you. Others exist like you, and each assumes his or her own consciousness after being tossed aside. You’re the "Last Castoff," the empty shell of a being called The Changing God who creates new bodies for himself and then dumps them like used Coke bottles once he's ready to move on to another. I admire that you're not actually a hero, but effectively garbage – literally. I admire that you're not actually a hero, but effectively garbage â literally.Above all, though, it thrives on honoring Planescape's emphasis on a protagonist who's not on a quest to save the world. For all that, it's also a world where random goons with swords attempt to rough you up if they don't like your looks. It's a world where headless men arouse about as much curiosity as a 3D printer today, where neon-green monoliths zap the unprepared, and where pods packed with demigods sometimes plummet from the sky. It takes place in an era when the strange trash of thousands of dead civilizations – the titular numenera – rots scattered about the Earth, its purpose often long forgotten. Sometimes, admittedly, it clings too much to fantasy trappings despite its setting of a billion years in the future, and its mages and ax-wielding warriors leave it feeling like a take on Baldur's Gate with aliens in the place of elves. More importantly, it preserves Planescape: Torment's weird philosophical tone and aesthetic, filling the screen with everything from quasi-medieval markets to entire cities crafted out of meat. It's too bad that the combat falls short when it's actually necessary, but the surrounding world usually presents enough memorable wonders to make up for it.Īs a spiritual successor to 1999's Planescape: Torment, one of the finest (and strangest) RPGs ever made, Torment: Tides of Numenera embraces its predecessor's isometric design with its use of the capable Pillars of Eternity engine. It's a strange concept in the context of most roleplaying games, and Torment: Tides of Numenera delivers a satisfyingly strange world to complement it. "Reading," the Nigerian poet Ben Okri said once, "is an act of civilization." Torment: Tides of Numenera embraces this idea, pairing a whole fantasy novel’s worth of quality quest text with a design foundation that champions chatting with enemies rather than running them through with swords. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |