Torment walks that line perfectly, giving each scenario believably different outcomes with effects that can ripple throughout your playthrough. That’s difficult for a scripted game, as it relies on blocking just enough from the audience that it inspires curiosity, while tilting the hand just often enough to show that what’s hidden is substantive. With such developed characters and dense worlds, you’ll often think you’ve missed something, but this actually works in Torment’s favor, as more often than not, you’ll be left thirsting for more.Įven when you’re done with one small segment of the game, Torment begs you to wonder how things could have played out. Exploring these lands is an active process: You ask questions, you piece the mysteries together, and you find your own, novel solutions. It drops the maps and simple, one-step quests of contemporary RPGs. It may not be as free-form as a true tabletop RPG, but Torment manages a believable illusion of endless possibilities. Torment captures the essence of huddling around a table with your friends playing a campaign. ![]() ![]() It’s easy to slip wholly into the game’s world, losing yourself amidst the strange, unknown features of Earth a billion years from now. Torment’s rich prose hits wonderful highs. Aside from the few parts where the sheer amount of text can be a little overwhelming, florid descriptions pour onto your screen describing everything from the subtle body language of alien creatures to finer details of your surroundings. That can cause the game to drag in places, as you might find yourself pushing through a thousand lines of text before you move on. Torment encourages you to indulge your curiosity and talk to everyone you see. While RPGs often tout that you can do just about anything to just about anyone, Torment tries to break down what your actions mean.Įach area introduces at least a dozen characters-each with their own stories and relationships. This approach to crafting role-playing games pays dividends-it leaves room for thought and reflection. Torment’s true strength, though, is its writing and the beautiful twists it brings to classic RPG concepts. Surreal, atonal music billows from these far-future locales, setting an uneasy tone. Its environments are rich and detailed, packed with strange creatures and wondrous animated effects. It’s a blessing, then, that Torment’s pieces are phenomenal. They’ve authored the text and crafted the structure, but from those pieces, you construct your own adventure. When you play an RPG, you’re shaping the experience as much as the game’s developers did. From the outset, Torment encourages you to internalize motivations for your character. Your backstory is set, but you can choose how to respond and explore the alien world into which you’ve just been born. your gender or class), but what kind of person you want to be. You begin your new life falling from space, with only a few broken memories ripped from the god who made you.Ĭharacter creation comes as a series of scenarios that encourage you to choose not just who you are (i.e. You’re thrust into the body of the Last Castoff, a husk of a person created by a god seeking a perfect vessel. It’s against that backdrop that your character pops into existence. ![]() ![]() While everything is ostensibly technological, it’s often so advanced that it might as well be magical. Set more than a billion years in the future, Torment blurs the line between science fiction and fantasy. Reductive as that might sound, the distinction underscores what modern RPGs have been missing for so long-actual role-playing. Instead, Torment is about you taking on the role of another. Gone, too, are cluttered inventory screens and complex crafting. Torment: Tides of Numenera seeks to take role-playing back to its roots. In truth, D&D’s many progeny have simply sidestepped what makes role-playing games one of the most powerful, affecting genres. If you’re only familiar with modern role-playing games, you could be forgiven for assuming that they’re all about crafting and loot, leveling and growing stronger. The classic pen and paper game has had several successful digital counterparts,and its approach to role playing has influenced and been repackaged as everything from Final Fantasy to Skyrim. Dungeons & Dragons has a long, storied history in gaming.
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