Torment: Tides of Numenera - Interview @ IGN

IGN had the chance to interview Project Lead Kevin Saunders, and Colin McComb to ask a few questions about Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Why did you choose an isometric perspective? Are the scenarios reactive to the player actions or are they pregenerated?

Adam Heine, design lead: The primary reason to go with an isometric perspective, of course, is because our thematic predecessor used the same perspective. It's what most of our backers expect, and we found no strong argument to do otherwise. Additionally, the isometric perspective allows us to create our environments as 2D backgrounds—a thing most of our backers wanted—which lends the more painterly style that fans of Planescape: Torment enjoyed. A third (unplanned) benefit to this is that Pillars of Eternity is using the same perspective and environment creation methods, so their technology gives us a natural advantage.

Like any story-focused RPG, our scenarios will be a mixture of reactive and prescripted, but we are leaning heavily towards the reactive side. As much as resources allow, we want every scenario to react to the player's choices, to include true, branching reactivity wherever possible.

From “What can change the nature of a man?” to “What does one life matter?”. What kind of adventure is Tides of Numenéra?

Colin McComb, creative lead: It’s a philosophical journey through life, a search to find meaning in a world that is immeasurably ancient, where a human life passes in the blink of an eye. It’s a personal story, and we hope that it’s also one that will make an indelible impression on our players.

That’s the high-level, thematic concept. Beyond all that, we’re putting you in the place of the Last Castoff. You’ll be playing the game as someone who was born inside a body that has already been used. Your sire is the Changing God, a man who has cheated death by growing bodies and transferring his mind into them, casting those bodies aside when he has achieved his goals. You’re the latest – and the last – in the string of bodies he’s created to house himself. Your consciousness born when his fled your body, you awaken in a world that is immeasurably strange, where technology is so advanced that it seems like magic, where you might learn to control some of the fundamental forces of the universe. You might take a sentient, shape-shifting ball of goo as a companion, or a knave who can change her face with the touch of a button, or a warrior whose weapons change form to match his personality. You’ll travel through forests that devour cities, explore inside the guts of vast predators, traverse impossible deserts, and confront enemies inside a caldera once used to refine ores for spacecraft. It’s fantasy crossed with science-fiction crossed with the far reaches of the mind.