Special effects can be impressive , but the visuals are definitely more functional than flashy .
Torment : Tides of Numenera
Torment is a game about legacies . There ’ s the most straightforward , surface level - the game sees you in the role of the Last Castoff , the discarded body of the Changing God , imparted with a soul and a patchy memory of your previous life as a deity . Much of the game will see you investigating the legacy of your creator and his other castoffs , and the effect they have had on the world .
But there ’ s also the legacy that the game ’ s title hints at . Torment : Tides of Numenera is the spiritual successor to perhaps the most highly-regarded CRPG of the 1990s - Black Isle ’ s Planescape : Torment . Tides of Numenera changes some elements- swapping out the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset and Planescape setting in favour of Monte Cook ’ s Cypher system and sci-fantasy Numenera world - but crucially it retains the rich , powerful storyline and wild imagination of its forebear . in the game - more than twice as many as Trotsky ’ s War and Peace - and its in these text descriptions and dialogue sequences that the game , and its world , truly comes to life .
Numenera as a setting is permeated by things both weird and wonderful , scattered with the leftover artifacts of previous civilisations , most of which serve some unknown function , but others are powerful items capable of incredible feats . The essence of Clarke ’ s Third Law - that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - is borne out here , and again this harks back to the theme of legacies that runs throughout the game ; everything you see is the remnant of some forgotten world .
It ’ s also far from a modern game . There are no glossy animated sequences , no sweeping camera movements , no bleeding-edge visuals to convey the world to the player . At a cursory first glance , Torment could be a game from the 90s . That ’ s not to say that the 2.5D visuals don ’ t have their charm , or that the game lacks polish , but the vast majority of Torment ’ s drama comes through its exceptional writing , not through carefully directed cutscenes . Developer InXile boasts that there are over 1,200,000 words
Technology or magic ? They are one and the same in the Numenera world .
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