Torment: Tides of Numenera - A Look Back

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Colin McComb looks back at the development of Torment: Tides of Numenera:

Updated Our Journal (63): A Look Back on Development
tl;dr: Colin talks about Torment's development and the future; Monte Cook's novella now available; new Torment media

Hello Exiles,

Colin here. It's crazy to think that it's just about a month from Torment's release date. To start, we wanted to give you a taste of some of the game's quests in this interactive trailer. Hosted by, well, me, there's some early game side-quest spoilers, but it'll give you a taste of what the game has to offer if you haven't already jumped into the early access version.

A Look Back on Development
As our release date nears, we decided to look back on the game's development, to talk about where we are, how far we've come, and how we move forward from here.

When we set out to make Torment: Tides of Numenera, our vision was to make a thematic successor to Planescape: Torment. We'd explore a new setting, and use a new core question to explore a similar vein of philosophical thought. I am proud to say that the response from you, our backers, has been incredibly positive. I've told this story before, but it bears repeating: when Brian asked me to be the creative lead for Torment, I had to take some time to think about it, and I almost turned down the opportunity. I knew what Planescape: Torment meant to people, after all. For people to say that we have succeeded in creating a tonal and thematic successor is... well, it's overwhelming, and I - WE - are grateful for the opportunity.

As with any creative work, game development is an iterative and uncertain process. When we over-funded at a higher level than we could ever have expected, that led to an increase in scope and size of the game accordingly. We went from one major city hub to two. We added new companions, more locations such as the Ascension, the Castoff's Labyrinth, new cults like the Dendra O'hur, and more. We added Meres to the game, whole text-based mini-stories that themselves have their own reactivity and many branching paths, and even more surprises to find. We have an expanded soundtrack that's longer than Planescape: Torment's by a decent margin, and a universe rich enough to fill multiple novellas.

During the Kickstarter, we had to move fast. We had to make decisions and add content on the fly. The problem is, as with any plan, some of those decisions looked great on paper but didn't survive contact with reality. Building a game is not a straight line from start to finish. It's not as simple as creating a design document, implementing it, and shipping it. It's an endlessly iterative process, one where ideas must be thought up, discussed, prototyped, iterated on again, and tested in game. The cycle repeats frequently. Sometimes, these ideas don't work out the way you intended or just don't feel like they fit properly in the theme of the game. A lesson we've taken away since the Kickstarter campaign is to avoid being too specific in detailing early designs, locations, and characters - it's fun and exciting at the time for us and you, but...

Well, what can change the nature of a game? This is one (non-canonical) answer: Creating it. For instance, the story we launched with, while still being true to the vision of the game, has undergone at least seven major revisions.

Some of our players and community members recently pointed out that they noticed that some features had changed from what we initially detailed. The one that has come up the most is the companion roster. The early access version doesn't feature the companion list we initially had our sights on. This is true: for the release version, there will be six. While we laid the groundwork for more, while building the game we realized that we had to make a tradeoff between companions with depth, or a larger amount. We chose to focus on the added richness and personality that you expect with a smaller group. The game's scope increased considerably over what we originally set out to build, and we underestimated the amount of time and iteration it would take to make our companions as reactive and branching as they needed to be.

We didn't want these characters to end up with storylines that felt incomplete. We didn't want to force them into the late game. Focusing on a smaller number gave us the opportunity to add more banter, more voice-over, and deeper storylines and outcomes for them.

Crafting is another stretch goal feature that we did some initial design on, but that work did not mesh well with the rest of the game's systems. Rather than adding an element that felt tacked-on (and worse, out of place for Torment), we repurposed those resources. We added more cyphers and artifacts to the game. We also added some other, more story-based elements to further flesh out equipment and items. That helped the items fit with the structure and style of the emerging game.

Some of you have been asking about the Oasis, an area we talked about during the campaign as our second major city. Though we fully intended that the Oasis would be our second city, story changes, plus our growing fascination with the Bloom, turned that location into our second major hub instead. In fact, the Bloom and surrounding areas are much larger than we originally discussed building for the Oasis. This didn't adversely affect the length of the game - we're still delivering a second major hub, and the Oasis will still appear in a smaller form. We feel this was the right move for the game creatively. It meant we could focus on a setting that felt darker and more distinctly Torment, and it improved the pacing immeasurably.

Changes like these happen in the development of any game. Speaking for inXile, I can tell you that we always undertake them to deliver you a better experience. To do anything else would be doing you a disservice.

But our focus on the game led to a different disservice. Namely, our lack of communication. We have always been major proponents of openness during development, but we did not communicate these changes earlier, and we should have done so sooner. For this, you have the entire team's sincerest apologies. Going forward both with Torment and our future games, we hope to increase our efforts in making sure that you know the status and future plans for inXile's projects.

So, you might be asking, what's up after Torment releases next month? Fortunately, we're in the era of internet connections and ongoing post-release support. We still have plenty of ideas for Torment! We'll be thinking about ways we can restore some of the remaining ideas that work in the game. Of course, as our backers who helped make the game happen, any of these updates - such as DLCs and expansions - will be yours free of charge. This goes for both Kickstarter backers and those who backed through our website.

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