Elerond

Not really, I'm sure everyone wants their story to be deep, original, with a rich personal narrative and lots of player choice. No they don't (actually most of the games don't want to do such things) and your summary does too much generalization that it would do any justice to towards inXile's goals with Torment. Because their aim isn't "deep" story (what that ever means), but instead they want explore philosophical question "what one life matters", by giving player as much freedom as possible to go their own way and game works as soundboard that reacts to pc's actions. And they want to do this in universe (or multiverse) that is different than your typical game settings, as they want to be chained by players exceptions and they want to make players want to explore and learn how world works (similar plan as with Planescape setting). Typically in games story's focus is in event or conflict that moves story forward, but in Torment they want to make story about pc and what s/he does in world, so world/country/etc isn't in danger or something similar. Usually developers want to keep number of game paths slow for economic reason and because most players don't see more than one or two paths, which are reasons why games have usually only variations of same critical path, but in Torment they want every player to have unique path that is their own, which is reason why they have so many writers to do their story arcs. So they don't have some generic goals but very specific goals that they feel are the things that make game a Torment™ game.

So basically, Torment in name only? Snip The problem is that all of that can be summarized as "we're going to try and give it a good story." Hell, using their definition the Witcher series is a spiritual successor to Torment. That is quite simplifying and misleading statement. As they promise much more than good story, like philosophical approach to thematic topics, unique world with unseen wonders and places, character driven story arc, emphasis on different approaches to things. All things that made PS:T to be the game what it was. PS:T's combat system was least defining attribute in whole game.

So basically, Torment in name only? How Is Torment: Tides of Numenera Similar to Planescape: Torment? We’re crafting Torment with the goal of creating a gameplay experience like that evoked by Planescape: Torment (or PS:T). We want Torment to challenge, reward, surprise, and entertain you in ways that PS:T did. To do that, we examined PS:T carefully, and took these four pillars as our foundation: A Deep, Thematically Satisfying Story. The philosophical underpinnings of Torment drive the game, both mechanically and narratively. Your words, choices, and actions will be your primary weapons. A World Unlike Any Other. The game has a fantastic, original setting, with awe-inspiring painterly visuals, imaginative locations, truly offbeat items, and massive feats of magic. In Numenera, however, “magic” is actually something surprisingly different. A Rich, Personal Narrative. The story is thoughtful and character-driven—epic in feel but a deeply personal narrative, with nontraditional characters and companions who have their own motivations and desires that drive them throughout the game. Reactivity, Choice, and Real Consequences. The game emphasizes replayability and reactivity, and your choices will make a real difference. You can play the game with a different approach and discover entirely new pathways. Most important, we won’t tell you how to play. The best ending is the one you choose, flowing naturally from your actions throughout the game. These pillars reach through all aspects of the game design, including characters and dialogue, the overarching story, gameplay systems and combat, and aesthetics. Team. If you were looking for team continuity, you’ve got it. Many key members who played a role in the Planescape setting and Planescape: Torment are involved in Torment: Tides of Numenera. Colin McComb and Monte Cook were two of the three primary writers for TSR’s Planescape setting. Colin was also a key designer on PS:T, where he worked closely with lead designer Chris Avellone. For Torment: Tides of Numenera, Colin is leading the creative vision in the setting that Monte has crafted. The two are also joined by their long-time partner Ray Vallese, who edited and wrote for the Planescape setting and who’ll be editing Torment content. (That’s right – the quality of writing for Torment is so important that we have a professional editor on the team.) Our Project Director, Kevin Saunders, wasn’t on PS:T, but was the lead designer and producer for Mask of the Betrayer, regarded by many fans as the game closest to being a PS:T successor (until now!). We have the honor to work again with Mark Morgan, who composed PS:T’s music. You can hear his first piece in our Kickstarter launch video and in the concept art montage above. Other contributors to Torment in this preproduction period have included Adam Heine (a scripter on PS:T) and Aaron Meyers (an artist on PS:T). And, of course, it was Brian Fargo who originally saw the potential of Planescape: Torment at Interplay and who greenlit the project so that it could be made in the first place. And we’re going to bring on a lot more people-some of the Wasteland 2 team, or course, and other high-profile writers who can provide their own inimitable voice to the game. We’re excited to be working with them. Details. While we aren’t focusing on a direct story or setting connection between the PS:T story and Torment, we’ll include elements reminiscent of PS:T. That’s not to say thatTorment will be overflowing with inside jokes, but players familiar with PS:T will notice some nods to the original. But just as PS:T strove to defy RPG tropes, so too will Torment– including some tropes that were established by PS:T. So expect a lot of surprises. How Is Torment Different From Planescape: Torment? Torment is not a sequel to PS:T. It does not continue the stories of PS:T or its characters. Torment is set in Numenera’s Ninth World, a new tabletop RPG setting created by renowned designer Monte Cook (he and Colin wrote much of the material for the Planescape tabletop setting). Torment will use a new rules system that’s based on the Numenera system but adapted specifically for a computer RPG. We’ll strive to make Torment’s combat system and encounters an engaging and entertaining part of the gameplay. We’ll connect them narratively to the overall story. And, continuing the Torment tradition, we’ll make most if not all combat avoidable. http://tormentrpg.tumblr.com/story

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPywn2cHcYM[/media]

Unity is universal game engine and it can supports realtime (with and without pause), turnbased, phase based and etc types of controlling game flow and player inputs. For example Obsidian uses it in PE and which uses RTwP based system. But if they go with TB based sytem they can use their AI algorithms from W2, which would ease their work with Torment's combat system.

I must confess that I am one of those tb supporters, because their description about their goals with combat sounds to me that their idea would work better with tb system than rtwp system.

EDIT: VG247 gave misleading information.

It's really not. Lara Croft looks way better in the most recent game than she did with her big pixelated triangles in the earlier versions. She's still wearing a tank top and short shorts, so I fail to see how it was some religious or feminist movement to cover her up. Both of the cartoony people look ridiculous. I'm sure there is a market for that type of art, but it shouldn't be surprising that it isn't mainstream. Considering that latest installment of Tomb Raider was fastest selling game in the whole franchise, so I would say that Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics did their market research quite well (although rumors say that SQ wanted even better sales for the game )

Is it acceptable to think all four look like ****? Isn't that picture misleading as all those pictures are acceptable in gaming journalism, as there has been written article after article if those are wanted or unwanted content in the games. And there isn't any opinion that is absolute dominant with gaming journalist or gaming media about subject. And nobody has lost their job because of any article that deal with any of them and even devs that made games with them have their jobs still and there is no demand of their resignation. So to me that picture looks like something from fox news, story with invented facts so that they can report "news" that support their world view.

Ok this actually boggles me. Monks are made to deal damage by taking damage, but there is no way to heal them after battles? So they have a 1 time use after each safe zone rest? Most of combat damage goes against characters stamina, which regenerates after each battle and which lose also gives monks wound resources (in my understanding). And monks can deal damage without taking any damage, but their souls powers are fueled by suffering of their body. Monks soul powers make them even deadlier in fight that what they are normally. So player has options with monk, one is to play save and try avoid taking damage, but with cost of some combat efficiency or second option is to risk monks life but make it more efficient in fight which will probably save resources of your other characters. This don't differentiate from wizard for example much as you have ability to rise havoc with your by rest spells but if you use all of them in one fight it will damper your wizards efficiency in rest fight before you rest. So you need to find right tactics and strategies to minimize use of your resources or otherwise you risk run out of them before next rest point which means that you probably need to back track to previous one to get more.

Witcher 2 and Dragon Age 2 both had very annoying camera that often hide things that you wanted to see and you needed to stupid gimmicks with camera angle that you get to see enemies that you wanted to see. And in dragon age 2 placing AoE effects was quite awful especially on long range and it was easy to make mistakes because of the camera angle.

Gamer rage don't look player's age :D

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1470493497/next-car-game-a-motorsport-with-attitude Bugbear tries to kickstart their next demolition derby game. I must say that their demo video looks quite good

It is Ubisoft who decides when this game will be released.

Most important reason why Project Eternity uses isometric perspective and prerendered backgrounds is because Obsidian wanted to make game that uses isometric perspective and prerendered backgrounds. And they also had inkling that their idea would be hard to sell for publisher which was reason why they crowd funded it, which should also tell you that they don't aim this game to compete with mass market games, but instead they try and already have succeeded to sell this game for much niche market segment.

http://www.rpgfan.com/features/Project_Eternity_Interview/ http://www.1up.com/features/interview-chris-avellone-project-eternity http://kotaku.com/5942307/the-people-behind-fallout-and-planescape-are-making-my-dream-rpg

Doesn't seem to work. All I can see is a small girl waving some books over her head. There should be a START button over her head. Have you tried reloading the page? Pressed that. Expands, then just sits there. Tried again now, same thing. You can scroll down with down button

In my understanding there is currently no plans for boxed version outside of kickstater rewards, due to Obsidian's slack of resources to do such release as they don't have publisher who would take care of that for them. But it isn't probably absolutely excluded option either.

Have you eaten hot dogs or fall off bed or chair? If you have, it may have cost you your Nobel USA falling off beds and chairs, getting killed by lawnmowers, nobel laureates and eating hot dogs http://thedoghousediaries.com/maplesyrup

Fair enough about the typical human. That simply makes the point about adventurers taking less time by virtue of being exceptional more relevant. How many of those skills would you reasonably expect to find as separate skills in a crpg? Design? Measuring? Balancing? Forging? Those can all be lumped under a general classification of metal working. You're correct that a master smith would have to have knowledge of all those, but they are also part and parcel of the fabrication process. Knowing how much steel you need to make a long sword, how to shape it, fold it, etc. can all be lumped under metal working. Hardening, tempering, sharpening are all metallurgical considerations. So I'll give you two skills total and possibly a third for leather working. The 10K model allowed for two skills to be mastered at 4 hours a day for a normal human. Make that human truly exceptional or use an exotic race with special learning talents and we could easily imagine a 5K requirement which lets our exceptional person learn 4 skills instead of 2. Now you've got metal working, metallurgy, leatherworking and room left for one more. Consider what it takes to master a second language. There are actually four separate macro-skills associated with learning a language: reading, writing, speaking and listening (comprehension). And those 4 skills require additional micro skills such as vocabulary, grammar, tenses, pronunciation and spelling. That's a total of 9 individual skills (and I probably missed some) yet we lump them all into one base skill and call it language knowledge. Unless you want to apply the same sort of detailed breakdown for all skills that you do for smithing, you need to be able to combine sub-skills and abstract them. Otherwise you are going to end up with a massively complex and unwieldly skill system. It is true that in rpgs you need abstract things behind skills that are quite all-round in their particular aspect, because otherwise most of the game play would consist going rough skill list that mostly don't effect character or game session (I look you Rolemaster). If I would choose crafting skills in fantasy rpg they probably would be design (to determine your ability to create new or improve old things), metal craft, leather craft, wood craft, alchemy/chemistry and depending on what kind product you try to make, skill needs for master class level item would vary, like for example master level sword could need max/near max metal craft skill, but only minor knowledge of other skills. And determine how long to it takes to pc to learn his/her skills to master level is of course complicate question, which I would leave for GM to determine, but of course in computer games you can't do that, where you need to beforehand decide all factors that can occur during the game. So I would drop idea to try determine how long things take in our world and decide what pcs should be able to do in the game. Personally I would avoid Leonardo syndrome (meaning that player can masters all skill in the game) and zero to hero syndrome (meaning that in the beginning of the game pc knows little or nothing about skill and end of game s/he is best in the world in that skill), especially if your story arc takes under a year to reach it conclusion.

Only if you believe Malcolm Gladwell, or more accurately Ander Ericsson (now at Florida State) on whose work the 10K rule in Gladwell's Outliers was based. For starters, Ericsson's work stated that 10K was an average time required which meant that exceptionally gifted people could achieve master status in far less time. Ericsson himself has said that "there is nothing magical about the 10K figure". So 10K hours isn't a rigid measure. It could just as easily take half that time for a truly exceptional individual. 10K hours works out to 3.4 years of extended practice or study at 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Cut the practice time per day to 4 hours that's slightly less than 7 years total and you can still achieve master status before you've exited your teens if you start at ages 10 to 12, which by the way is not that different from the time required to achieve master status for apprentices in the middle ages. That's achievable prior to the start of an adventuring career. You can't claim multiple skills are necessary without delineating what those skills are. I claim Smithing is a single skill, but if you want to argue that becoming a master smith involves mastering both metal working and metallurgy, you could still achieve that in 7 years by spending 4 hours a day working a forge and 4 hours a day studying metallurgical tomes. Again that's doable before you start adventuring. Remember that the 10K rule isn't rigid. It's not a huge stretch to argue that my adventurers, being the exceptional people that they are, could have achieved master status in half that time. My rogue was one of Fagin's kids when he started out: learned his pickpocket, open locks etc skills starting at a very early age. We don't have any trouble accepting that premise do we? Or a young mage with a proclivity for magic? Again that doesn't cause us a moments pause. We are talking about abstracted skill progressions in a fantasy rpg and you're trying to impose a rigid standard which actually isn't that rigid in the first place. How pray tell would you justify becoming a master of persuasion then? Do you practice your glibness in front of a mirror 4 hours a day? Talk to your dog? Or how about bartering. Did you spend 4 hours a day running thru the bazaars chating up merchants in order to practice negotiating lower prices? Of course not. If you are willing to set aside a certain amount of realism (for lack of a better word) in those instances, why can't we do it for everything? I put there typical human, as there is exceptions and in fantasy game there is races and species that we don't have in earth and one can't say any thing about them. Skill that I though that master smith needs are forging, etching, drilling, metal lore (knowing how different metal react, melt, bend, oxidize, harden, etc.), hardening, leather works (cutting, stitching, etc.), designing, measuring and balancing products for use (because hammer, sword, etc. is quite useless if it is balanced wrongly). And there is probably much more skills that master smith needs to learn. Many of this skills have common elements, which is why I estimated that it would probably take 20k-40k hours to master them all, but that is only uneducated guess.

Typical human needs to practice skill about 10k hours to master it. And as become a master smith person needs master several skills, so it would probably take 20k-40k hours work to become a master smith. So 5-10 years work if you do about 12 hours days around year and keep some holidays once in a while.

There is two major ways how multicultural environments are build. first is segregated way, where different cultures live in same area, but they try keep themselves segregated from other cultures and live as other cultures don't exist, which usually causes conformations between different culture groups and usually this also cause different groups to create their own set of rules how people should live. second is blending way, where people from different culture backgrounds live together and they start to take things from others cultures as part of their culture, this way usually cause much less conformations and people usually live with one set of rules. This is usually the way that pro multicultural people want as it helps society to advance, where segregation usually causes rise of protectionism, where different cultures try protect their ways from influences from other cultures. Usually multiculturalism show in both ways in every country, and areas that live by first way are usually those areas that cause most of typical problems that are associated with multiculturalism (own set of rules, no mutual language, protectionism, etc.). Many people that say that multiculturalism is bad still enjoy many benefits of multiculturalism like different foods, new stories, increased knowledge, etc., because they associate most of those things to be part of their own culture because of cultural blending.