You awake, in a body that is not yours – not truly, not yet. You are falling from the sky, high enough to see an entire world stretched out before you. If you choose to focus on this world, in stead of say, your more pressing predicament, the world you see will be described to you in a way that is somehow both greatly detailed and cognizant of the fact that you’re falling to your death.
What you choose to do next, and how you choose to feel about it, is entirely up to you. The consequences of both these things, however, will be described beautifully.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is an RPG in the style of Baldur’s Gate, Pillars of Eternity, and of course, its spiritual predecessor, Planescape: Torment. The game was funded on Kickstarter within six hours of it being put up, and broke all Kickstarter records at the time – people really wanted this game to happen. The game is set in the sci-fi/fantasy world of Numenera, a tabletop roleplaying game by Monte Cook. The final result is something a class apart.
What sets Tides apart is not the art(which is strange, vivid, and immersively atmospheric) nor the music(which is quiet, understated, and just eerie enough to make you feel the alienness of the world) or even the gameplay(and that has a few unforgettable quirks of its own). What really sets Tides apart is that it’s less of a game and more a repository of experiences, philosophical debate and moral quandries. A myriad of stories, some of which you will be an active part of, some you will unearth just to be a silent spectator to, and some that are mere glimpses into something much, much greater than you will ever completely see.
Monte Cook’s Numenera setting is uniquely suited for this kind of storytelling – it is home to the imaginatively extreme. The game is set on Earth, in the distant future, now called The Ninth World, and it is littered with the debris of the worlds that came before it. It is a world that contains aliens, psychics, interdimensional travel, and technology advanced enough to be nigh indistinguishable from magic. It’s somehow also medieval enough to have people wander around with swords and shields, letting Tides have its cake and eat it, too.
The main campaign, for the most part, isn’t what you would necessarily call challenging – with a few notable exceptions, which I’ll get to later. Whether or not you will reach the end of the game with life, limb and party members all intact is never really a question. You will beat the game with ease(which is probably why there’s no difficulty setting you can change). Challenges will become easy enough for the risk involved with them to feel trivial. The game is built around encouraging you to take risks. To hold nothing back, and explore all options. As the loading screens will tell you constantly, somethings more interesting things happen when you fail. I don’t want to spoil anything, but my first major combat failure, early in the game, led to quite an intriguing surprise.
From time to time, your party will find itself in a ‘Crisis’ – actions and movements become a turn-based race to complete a certain objective, whether it be to defeat all enemies or to negotiate a more peaceful outcome, or something else entirely. You can solve a lot of these crises through outright violence, or choose to find a creative way around the problem. You may not ever choose to, but the fact that there’s an alternative to plain combat is rathe refreshing in a game – especially because it allows the game to present you with the occassional fight that you just can’t win. At least not yet.
So minimal combat, limited challenges…what’s left? Reading. A lot of reading.
The text boxes of Tides are dense with purple prose which may not be a great selling point, but it’s important to know how vital a part of the game it is to be spending a lot of time just reading. Not basic reading, either. The game will have you pay attention to details, sift out pertinent information and store it in your mind for later, draw connections, make your own conclusions, and always, always take the time to find out if there is more to the story. The game rewards this, quite directly; 0 experience points are awarded for discovering new secrets, or changings a person’s mind through conversation. It can be a great way to gain levels, these experience points really at up.
Tides of Numenera presents more dialogue options than I’ve seen in any other RPG I’ve ever played, and there’s often the option to just keep quiet and listen. Important information remains a part of the dialogue tree, so you can ask a character to repeat themselves as often as you like – although some will begin to worry if you’re having memory problems the more you do this.
My first real encounter, after the basic tutorial areas, was a public execution I could easily have just walked past, but no. I had to find out what was happening. I talked to everyone. I got three distinct perspectives on the same event. I spoke to two identical, nameless clone guards whose responses mirrored each other’s verbatim…until I looked closer and discovered they had unique tattoos on their faces. The story behind those tattoos broke my heart a little, and I could never look at that city’s guardsmen the same way. I even talked to a man who gave me the option of starting a riot to end the execution of this innocent man, or to pull off a con to free him.
Most of the game’s vast lore is fragmented – stories from worlds past, or far away, or ones in other dimensions, none of which have anything to do with each other. But every now and again, you’ll find connections, clues that fit together into a larger story that you would miss out on completely if you’re not paying close enough attention.
One of my favourite areas in the original Planescape: Torment was the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, which is either exactly what you’re thinking or exactly not, depending on how much attention you pay to the word “Brothel”. It was a place where you went to speak to intelligent women about history, debate philosophy, argue theology, and so on. All quests, minor or otherwise, were left forgotten as I went from person to person, doing nothing but delighting in the game’s fascinatingly written conversation. Tides has a similar place, a bar for psychics, filled with mind-readers, war veterans, ghosts, and even extra dimensional visitors from the future. There is a minor quest here to encourage you to get to know everyone here – one of the patrons is not what they seem” – but I hardly needed the encouragement.
The majority of challenges you face will be in the dialogue box, where you’re asked for a skill check when performing an action or choosing what to say. Persuade a merchant to give you a discount, or use your Quick Fingers skill to steal an item when he’s not looking, or even try intimidating him to just hand it over. You’re given a certain percentage for success based on your character attributes. If you feel this percentage is too low to risk it, you can increase your chances by spending effort points from your Might, Speed or Intellect pools, but be careful – those pools are limited. You can recharge them by sleeping, but be warned that some of your quests will move on without you while you’re snoozing away to a full recovery.
Certain quests necessitate you walking back and forth between areas, so it came as a huge relief that the loading screens speed through quickly. The game runs smoothly, graphics settings all dialed up to eleven, even on my Intel Core i3-5005U processor, which usually slows down the games I play to an annoying degree.
The game’s interface is intimidatingly strange at first(seriously, why call them “fettles” when “status effects” will do?) but once you get used to it, it’s all pretty easy to handle. One of the things you don’t have to spend too much time worrying about – mercifully – is statistics. Wear the armour that looks the coolest, or the rings that have the best stories behind them. The game’s many objects – collectively called numenera – are divided based on how you use time, or if you can use them at all. There are limited use items, called cyphers, and all you really know about them is whether they harm your enemy or aid you and your allies. Oh, and if you wear too many cyphers at a time, you get increasingly sick and maybe die.
Important, yes, but not hard to keep track of.
Cyphers, artifacts and oddities are found everywhere. Protected by puzzles, hidden in a pile of rubble, dropped by your enemies or handed to you at the end of a quest. Keep an eye out for areas of the environment you can interact with – the Tab key is invaluable here, highlighting all objects of interest in your area. Be sure to check and see if anything you pick up has a ‘Use Item’ option – there’s a surprising number of things the numenera can do.
The Tides themselves are another fun aspect to the game. The Tides are like an emotional, psychic force that exists on the Ninth World. They are a part of your character, and shift colours based on the choices you make. Gold if you’re all about self sacrifice, or blue if you’re a seeker of knowledge – I forget what the others represent. The effect of the Tides is subtle, but they affect how different people perceive you throughout the game. Plus, it’s fun to go to your character sheet and have a look at what kind of person you’re shaping up to be, at a glance.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is not a game you play to win. It is a game you play to explore, to learn from. It is a game that will challenge your intellect and present you with an extremely rewarding feeling when you find that you’re up to the task. It pays strong homage to its forebears but at the end of the day, it is an extremely unique game that is all its own – one that might just set the tone for the genre in the coming years.
Torment: Tides of Numenera was reviewed using codes provided by the publisher and is out now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
