Torment: Tides of Numenera Previews
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inXile Entertainment's forthcoming RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera is the subject of two new and relatively detailed previews, the first of which comes to us in text form via the editors at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Here's a sampling from the hands-on piece:
The city you're in has an unusual way of making policemen levies. Think golems created from a vat of constantly recycled gunk. And yes, .unk' is a technical term here, with even the person responsible for the process freely admitting to having no idea how to make more of it. That's a recurring theme for Numenera, where having a device definitely doesn't imply mastery of it, or the existence of tools to repair, replicate or even necessarily use an artifact for its originally intended function.
Like most quests, the story kicks off while just chatting to someone and unlocking a bit of lore about the world. In this case, it's a former thug turned baker. Like everyone else, to become a citizen he gave a year of his life to create one of the levies. Soon after though, he starts seeing it following him and suspects that it's trying to kill him for some reason. The actual reason turns out to be much creepier. The year he donated, which saw him reform and put his criminal past behind him is one where he would have committed a crime that led to a devastating fire and the loss of many lives. Now the levy is saddled with the guilt and horror of that alternate future, and it's up to you to persuade his creator to give him a different year, free of second-hand trauma.
While the second is presented in video format across a total of nearly eight minutes of footage, courtesy of Polygon:
