Don't Eat Tide

Well! I'm writing that follow-up post a lot sooner than I had thought I would. That's partly due to a three-day weekend, partly due to me suffering from a cold during much of that weekend and thus confined to indoor activities, and partly due to the game being shorter than I had expected. Torment: Tides of Numenara clocked in at around 30-ish hours for me by the end, on a fairly in-depth but not exhaustive playthrough. I was diligent about reading all available text and exhausting all dialogues I ran across, but deliberately turned down a couple of quests that I didn't feel up to pursuing.

"Shorter than I expected" is a good thing in my book! I'm increasingly wary of super-long RPGs; to this day I still haven't finished Divinity: Original Sin or Wasteland 2 despite putting in well over 50 hours on each of them. It's no coincidence that some of my favorite recent RPGs, the Shadowrun Returns series, clock in at a svelte dozen or so hours. I hunger for games that can efficiently establish a world and tell a compelling story without overstaying their welcome.

Torment: Tides does decently well on that front. I don't love this game, but I did enjoy it, and feel that I more than got my money's worth from my Kickstarter pledge way back in the dark ages of 2013. It delivers on what I was most excited about: untraditional gameplay, a game much more focused around talking than combat, and unusual mechanics and story elements that you can't find in most other games. The stuff that I was disappointed in is, for the most part, stuff that the game wasn't really trying to do or wasn't a focus.

MINI SPOILERS

I played as a Slick Nano who Brandishes a Silver Tongue. I almost always opted for non-combat skills and abilities, and usually avoided fighting. I've heard that it's possible to complete the game without killing anyone, or maybe just a couple of fights; I was pleased to see that this wasn't just a straightforward "peace good fighting bad" scenario. There were a handful of cases where I deliberately initiated combat because it seemed like the best course of action. It made me realize how much more compelling it is to give choices, even when fighting truly awful people: I think there's a temptation for game designers to make enemies that are so bad that they can safely assume people will want to fight them, but even in those cases, it's much more meaningful for players to actively choose confrontation rather than passively proceed through it.

Here's my build immediately before the end of the game:

The most annoying skill was Perception, which doesn't seem to have options to raise after character creation; I ended up using my Flex Skill amulet each day to bump it up to 2. I didn't mean to overcap the Lore skills, which I don't think are required for the automatic in-dialogue checks, but ended up surprisingly useful for a bunch of late-game effort checks.

My party composition was stable throughout: I stuck with Calistege after the opening (surrendering at the first fight), recruited Rhin a little later, and picked up Matkina near the end of my stay in Sagus Cliffs. There was a lot of overlap between my Castoff and Calistege, so I tried to give them distinct combat skills (though, again, my Castoff was light on combat in general). I built Rhin as a sort of stealth grenadier and healbot. She can't attack, but she can use cyphers, and later in the game she gets a useful (and fully unique) ability to reuse cyphers multiple times. Interestingly, she actually isn't very good at stealth to begin with; I improved that a bit, but honestly stealth doesn't seem all that useful to me except for characters who can directly use it. Speaking of which, Matkina was by far my heaviest hitter, with devastating single-target damage and very useful fettle infliction.

I was heavily Blue/Gold tides throughout the game (curiously enough, my high school's colors). I'm slightly skeptical of the Blue tide... you get that just by asking questions, which I suspect most players will do a lot of. Gold tends to be for stereotypically "good" actions. The tides represents qualities like empathy and compassion, and you pick it up when you act nicely to people, refuse rewards, or otherwise are "good". That said, I do really appreciate the complexity of the tide system, which provides a great deal of structure without being simplistic like Good/Evil or even Paragon/Renegade. You can be more focused on the bigger picture without being a "bad" person.

The main content things that I intentionally skipped included:

• All companion quests apart from Calistege, Rhin and Matkina.
• Giving research to the wannabe Aeon Priest.
• Resolving the situation with the imprisoned biomechanical monster in Circus Minor.
• Whatever was going on with that shepherd's crook in that grave place.
• Recruiting attractive people in the Bloom. (The one I felt comfortable tapping was the Murdens' translator, but after avoiding combat with them I didn't want to fight just for that.)
• Hooking up the memory addict in the Cirrugen's Swamp.
• Opening up the human maw in the Bloom.

There may be more that I accidentally missed, though I was pretty thorough (outside of the catacombs).

Okay, let's break down my reaction.

THE GOOD

Flavor text. I'm impressed at just how much thought and care went into the bespoke "vendor trash" items you pick up during the game, and always enjoyed reading through them. 

Cyphers. The "cypher sickness" fettle and limited slots provide one of the best solutions I've seen yet to encouraging players to actually use items instead of letting them collect in your inventory. I was also impressed at just how varied and useful they were: a couple are just grenades, but a lot of them have very unique and interesting abilities. I do wish there had been more non-combat cyphers, things along the lines of Charmpaste were compelling and had their own tradeoffs.

Visual design. Some spots in Sagus Cliffs looked a little generic, but even those areas were really pretty. In contrast, the Bloom was nicely disgusting, making up for all the gross macabre stuff I'd remembered from PS:T and hadn't seen in T:ToN. The best, though, were the planar-type maps, with stunning starfields or other fantastically surreal backgrounds.

Enemy design. Well, this is really just for the Sorrow, but it is so well-done and awesome, with a much more impressive reveal than most AAA villains.

Leveling system. It took me a while to get used to it, but I ended up appreciating the level-versus-tier distinction, which provides a finer-grained upgrade path while still giving a nice sense of accomplishment at rarer intervals. It feels slightly annoying to need to pick through less-useful upgrades before you can get back to the good ones again - Edge is so much more powerful than almost anything else - but it ends up working out fine, and after following it through the game I think it works well.

Economy. Shins balloon a bit near the end, but for most of the game the economy feels nicely tuned, and I was able to buy all the stuff I most wanted without having much leftover cash. I think it was a good idea to limit many (but not all) equipment items to be for the Castoff only, which simplifies ordering and loadout.

Sleep system. I touched in this in my earlier post, but I really like the rhythm that this lends to the game. It would be hard to adapt to other games, since it requires so much specific writing for individual quests to implement the penalties for time passing, but I'm glad that they pulled it off for this game. I probably erred too far in avoiding sleep, especially near the end of the game, avoiding it out of habit even when it seems clear that the game wants you to take advantage of the refilled pools.

Plot. The story is set in a vast and far-ranging universe, but the core plot is nicely comprehensible. It unfolds well, with a good pace of revelations and some interesting wrinkles along the way.

Endings. It's a vintage Obsidian approach, with slideshows and text explaining the variety of outcomes your decisions throughout the game have made, which is one of my favorite ways to end a game. I ran through several of the "big choice" endings, and saw that most of the slides ended up the same, but there were some cool and nicely reactive changes based on the state of the world which impacted some of those smaller stories.

THE MEDIOCRE

Meres. I really liked the idea behind these, and the storybook-esque presentation was really nice.  The interface was a bit annoying: this is the one place where you can't hit the number keys to make a choice. It felt weird to be using your real-world stat pools while in someone else's memories, and it was annoying to not have access to your items and cyphers while doing it. I liked the flavor, but was ultimately confused by what, exactly, they did: early on it seems to imply that you can actually change the past (or maybe switch into another universe?) by the choices you make, but that seems to be totally dropped in the later meres, which makes me think I misunderstood the point.

Companions. They ended up feeling a lot like the ones from Pillars of Eternity: generally interesting and distinct, but shallow, with very limited personal interactions and basic banter. I did appreciate how involved they were in dialogue with third parties; Matkina, in particular, has a lot to say to other people in the Bloom and with other Castoffs. No romances, either, but I was expecting that. They were simultaneously one of my favorite parts of the game and an underwhelming part.

Combat. The system seems cool, with tons of strategic options and tactical positioning and special abilities and fettles and stuff. Honestly, though, it seemed over-designed considering how little I actually used it. The fights were all pretty easy, except for one that was intentionally impossible. The conflation of combat and non-combat skills and abilities was a little annoying, since I always felt compelled to take the non-combat ones; I found myself nostalgic for Inquisition's elegant separation of skills and perks.

Failure. One fascinating aspect of the Effort system is that even failing at a challenge can often yield an interesting result. In some cases, though, that failure is much better than a success: in one early example in Sagus Cliffs, succeeding in a Smashing test will yield a small amount of shins, while a failure will provide a permanent boost to your Might pool - which is vastly more useful! I kind of liked the idea behind this, but it ended up being frustrating to not know if I'd be better off succeeding or failing.

Music. It wasn't bad, but was pretty forgettable.

Voice acting. I liked what little of it there was, but there was very little.

Philosophy. The philosophical talk was pretty light: there are a few factions and cults with interesting beliefs, but they're very closely tied to specific Ninth World issues and not particularly resonant. You get a couple of "What do you believe?" questions along the way, but not much of a background for compelling choices. That isn't necessarily a problem, games don't need to be philosophical, but there was less than I remembered in Planescape: Torment and less than I was expecting.

Message. Along the same lines, the central question of "What does one life matter?" didn't resonate with me as much as "What can change the nature of a man?" did in PS:T. That's very likely due to differences in me and not in the games, but I also feel like PS:T did more work to set up and explore its question.

Stakes. The Castoff's situation is unique and interesting, but partly because of that it felt bloodless and not particularly relatable. You're dealing with vast, metaphysical consequences unlike anything you will encounter in real life. On the one hand, that's cool: it's fiction, so we get to experience something we'll never experience otherwise. On the other hand, though, I didn't really feel especially invested in the outcome, apart from the impact on one or two characters. On the whole, the big decision here didn't feel nearly as compelling as the lower-stakes final choices of the games I've been playing lately. I think that it's hard to write for characters operating at near-god-like power levels, but it might have helped to have stronger analogues to "real life" scenarios instead of being so fantastic.

MEGA SPOILERS

Callistege's ascension was interesting. I'd supported her research throughout, and initially thought I'd messed up when she left my party after I aided her in merging with the datasphere. I thought it was really cool how she popped back up again in the various endings, and behaved differently in them depending on what was happening in the world.

As for the big ending choice: I'd initially mis-read "sever the tidal connections" option. I thought that it would remove the Castoffs' immortality and their tidal abilities, but hadn't realized that it would actually kill them, so I audibly "Whoops!"'d once the Sorrow asked me to justify my choice. After seeing that play out, I went with restoring Miika, which seems like the most "good" ending to the game. (Sidebar: I really liked the delayed revelation that the Changing God was the Ghostly Woman's father; that's especially good game design, as it had been presented as an optional side-quest that I'd closed the book on, so having it resurface so late in the game was really cool.) After that I tried collecting our consciousness in Matkina, which was one of the lower-key endings but still interesting.

My last action was to refuse the Sorrow and destroy it. I'd assumed that this would lead to an optional final battle, and had hoped that it would unlock some better endings. Miika had suggested earlier on that there might be another option for restoring her to life besides eliminating the castoffs, and I only had the Sorrow's word for the consequences its destruction would incur. Instead of a triumphant battle, though, everything plays out the way the Sorrow said, with what seems like a clear worst ending. I'm glad that they included this option, and in general I'm pleased that there's no one "best" / "perfect" outcome (at least as far as I know; I'll spoiler myself as soon as I post this). Trading off between flawed alternatives is a lot more interesting. That said, as noted above, I didn't feel especially invested in these endings, beyond a general desire for Matkina, Rhin and Calistege to be all right.

END SPOILERS

Well, it's been a long time coming! It doesn't sound like T:ToN has been a big success, so it seems unlikely that we'll see a sequel to it or other games set in this universe. Still, the original PS:T was also widely recognized as a failure, and it managed to inspire legions of devoted fans, so who knows what the future might hold for this legacy. I enjoyed this game: it won't be joining my ranks of favorite games, but it's a great palette cleanser that shows other possibilities in how we can make and play RPGs. Even if I'm not particularly eager to play this game again, I suspect I'll be citing aspects of it as examples of good game design for quite a while.

Baba O’Riley

Thanks to the largesse of Andrew, I’ve finally made my foray into Wasteland 2. Due to the magic of procrastination, my first experience is with the Director’s Cut, a significant overhaul that reworks many of the core mechanics of the game, and also tweaks a lot of the existing missions and characters. For some reason, Director’s Cuts seem to be an emerging trend among mid-sized studios with flagship Kickstarter properties: Harebrained Schemes with Dragonfall, inXile with Wasteland 2, and Larian Studios with Divinity: Original Sin have all made DC/Enhanced versions, and in every case have offered them for free to both backers and regular purchasers of the original versions. I’m a little curious about the calculus that makes this sort of re-work viable for studios at this scale… but that’s probably speculation for another post.

I’ve carefully avoided spoilers for Wasteland 2, but have taken a few specific tips in constructing my squad and orienting myself. I’ve been playing for a while, but am pretty sure that I’m still fairly early in the game, having recently reached Level 9 with most of my characters. I expect this will end up being a fairly massive game, so I wanted to do a little pre-post first to capture some of my initial reactions. No story spoilers in here, but some discussion of game mechanics and such.

WHAT’S AWESOME

SKILL / FAILURE SYSTEM. I’ve actually read about this previously in Kickstarter updates to Torment: Tides of Numenara, but now that I’m actually playing with it, I see what the big deal is. It’s an excellent system that rewards you for investing skill points in relevant skills (by giving you a greater chance to succeed at tasks), maintains tension (by keeping a chance-based approach to success), and minimizes the incentive to save-scum (most failures can be re-tried). My single favorite dynamic is probably safecracking. If you succeed, the safe opens. If you fail, it does not, and you can try again. If you critically fail, the dial falls off the safe, and you can no longer attempt to open it. BUT, if someone on your squad has Mechanical Repair, they can attempt to fix the safe, and if they succeed, you can try opening it again. Crucially, you gain XP for fixing the safe as well as for opening the safe, so the “critical failure” may actually lead to a net benefit. It’s a really dynamic system, and I love it.

AMBIENT WRITING. There’s terrific flavor text when you enter new areas or approach interesting landmarks. This isn’t presented modally, and you don’t need to read it or click through anything, but people who are interested can easily read it on-screen. It’s very well-written, but also recognizes that not everyone will want to spend time with it.

XP GAINS. You get XP from defeating enemies and completing quests, of course, but you also get ridiculous amounts by completing myriad tasks. Disabling booby-traps. Healing teammates’ wounds. Picking locks. Bashing down doors. Fixing robots. All sorts of common tasks grant significant amounts of XP, often more than you would get from defeating a foe, which nicely rewards you for exploration and other non-combat activities.

WHAT’S GOOD

4-PERSON SQUAD. I haven’t historically been a fan of Icewind Dale or other RPGs with multiple PCs, but it works pretty well here. There’s a lot that you do give up: no backgrounds for any characters (other that what you write yourself in their Biographies), not much personality, no opportunity for banter between PCs (I miss Divinity’s innovation here). But it fits really well with this game’s setting, with its post-apocalyptic, dangerous world with perma-death and disposable characters. I’ve coped with the limited dialogue by switching between characters during conversations, letting each PC deliver the lines that seem most appropriate to them. (Hailey when offering to help or discussing technology, Dorbi when seeking to manipulate or discussing explosions, etc.). This has zero in-game impact, but leads to a more engaging narrative in my head.

MAP SYSTEM. It’s simple but effective. Major landmarks can be placed on your map by others, but the terrain is unknown until you travel there yourself. Along the way you can uncover oases and other points of interest. It keeps things interesting while not being needlessly complex.

INVENTORY / LOOT. There’s a weight limit, but it isn’t too onerous, even at lower levels of Strength (at least in the early part of the game). Items that can be safely sold are helpfully marked as “junk” and can all be sold with a single click. Other seemingly-useless items can be sold at will if you need ready cash, but if you wait until you find people who need them in particular, you can earn much more. It's too early to pass my verdict on the economy, but so far it seems decent... I spend money on precious .30-06 ammo for my sniper rifles, and once or twice a gun or piece or armor that looks worthwhile.

WRITING. It’s pretty bleak, with a side order of goofy. Plenty of dark nihilism for people who enjoy that thing, along with occasional opportunities to feel like you’re doing good in the world.

STILL DEBATING

COMBAT. I’m mostly comparing this to Shadowrun, since that’s the system I’ve been using most lately, and there are a lot of similarities (turn-based, AP-based, etc.). The system in Wasteland is much more granular: individual people get initiative, rather than entire teams, and usually have around 8-10 AP to spend, rather than 2-3; in Shadowrun, a single attack is generally 1 AP, while in Wasteland it can range from 3AP for a pistol shot to 7AP for a sniper rifle. The initiative system can lead to some annoyances, such as when you can’t move a PC out of the way before a friendly fires a shotgun, or when your pistol-user gets to shoot before the sniper and you’re forced to overkill. Still, I think this has more to do with my own limitations than those of the system, and hopefully I’ll adapt to it.

NOT SO GREAT

VOICE ACTING. It isn’t bad, but can sometimes be annoying, particularly when someone’s doing a fake accent or speaking very slowly. Fortunately you can click through to advance, but that sounds a little weird as well. I’m decreasingly enamored of the portrait-and-text-plus-speech approach; I love fully-voiced games like Dragon Age, but that requires a fundamentally different writing style than what’s used in old-school CRPGs. The former is like a movie script, the latter is novelistic, and mashing them up tends to end poorly.

WALLS OF TEXT. This has been fine for most of the game, but entering the Citadel was a bit overwhelming: a dozen Rangers and dozens of books, with tons of text to get through and virtually no gameplay. Of course, I could have approached this differently - not talked to everyone on my first visit, or saved the books to read through later, or just quickly clicked through everything - but I’m OCD enough that I felt compelled to absorb everything, and felt overwhelmed and bored by the end. It’s a tough design problem to solve; ideally you would parcel out this sort of lore and character-introduction in morsels so they feel more like rewards and less like drinking from a fire hose, but narratively there isn’t a good way to split this up (other than the step they already took of denying access until you’ve played the game for a bit).

SO, ANYWAYS…

That’s it! My screenshot finger has been itchy, which isn’t great… I’m mostly taking shots based on humorous dialogue or writing, leading to lots of identical-looking screens with unreadable text. Still, I’ve annotated them and tossed them up on an album, here for your reading pleasure.