Torment: Tides of Numenera
Start a new life in the Ninth World.
The original Torment was highly regarded and its influence is felt throughout the RPG genre, from Pillars of Eternity’s soul-reading to the warped denizens of Fallen London. Yet it’s never, until now, had a proper follow-up.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is that successor. inXile has recaptured much of what made the original game special. This is a free-roaming, dialogueheavy isometric RPG that places thought resolutely before action. Although combat features, the entire campaign can be played without participating in violence yourself.
The Planescape setting is gone, swapped for the Ninth World — the far-future background to Monte Cook’s Numenera pen-and-paper roleplaying game. This is an unrecognisable take on Earth one billion years in the future, with the accreted technological detritus of innumerable vanished civilisations underpinning a mediaeval society bringing Clarke’s third law to life. There’s magic, but it’s really science, spanning time travel, the transference of consciousness, parallel universes and nanomachinery.
You enter this world as the Last Castoff, coming to terms with your new identity as you plummet to your death like the doomed whale in Hitchhiker’s Guide. You’re an immortal creation of The Changing God, a futuristic sorcerer who transfers his consciousness into new bodies to unnaturally prolong his life.
His discarded former selves — the castoffs — form their own consciousnesses when they’re abandoned. After death, you enter the Castoff’s Labyrinth where your character’s class and key traits are determined by a memory-probing personality test. After that, you awaken in the city of Sagus Cliffs. Other castoffs are being hunted and finding a way to escape your fate motivates your first steps into the Ninth World. But quickly, the game becomes more about discovering this new world and the people in it, with your own story intertwining closely with what would be considered sidequests in other games. The term fits less well here because Tides of Numenera is cleverly designed to thread a diverse array of different plotlines together.
Your decisions really do matter. If you pick a trait like mind-reading, you can trust that this’ll be incorporated throughout the campaign.
The pace of the game does struggle a little during its initial hours, particularly if the setting is new to you. By the time the plot really kicks into gear, you’ll have all the knowledge you need.
This isn’t your RPG if you want to spend lots of time thinking about item stats and party strategy. Instead, a relatively simple skill system dictates how you use might, speed and intellect points to achieve your character’s goals. Succeeding at a task works the same way whether you’re having a conversation in the open world or fighting a battle. During encounters, the game becomes turn-based and combat-specific abilities can be used: but your regular skillset is still there, and if you want to solve a ‘fight’ by talking or hiding or rewiring an ancient device then you have that option.
Torment is a game for readers, an adventure for people who don’t necessarily want to fight — but it’s great to have it back.