Almost 4 years separate us from what was – until this Friday – the most successful crowdfunding campaign for an RPG, raising more than 4 million dollars. A lot has rained since then. What in 2013 were all promises and illusions to recover a more traditional style of role
playing that had been lost, today is the reality in which we live. InXile Entertainment, following in the footsteps of Tim Schafer, kicked off the RPGs with Wasteland 2, and decided to continue this “rebirth” of the genre by putting on the most ambitious goal they
could probably get, to the point of licensing the name. of the game that they wanted to emulate, making clear what were the expectations that were being put on top. They decided to make a spiritual successor to Planescape Torment.
Planescape Torment came out in 1999 published by Interplay and developed by Black Isle. Set in the world of the Plans of the Fugue (Planescape) of the 2nd edition
of Dragons and Dungeons and using the technology developed by Bioware for Baldur’s Gate, the Infnity Engine, tells the story of a man without memory, which can not dying, in his quest to know himself in a world where beliefs have material power over reality.
Became a cult classic almost immediately, Planescape Torment amazed everyone by the complexity of its history, the depth of its themes, the literary
quality of its dialogues, and its insistence to get out of the conventions of traditional fantasy through the use of Plans as a stage for your story.
Torment Tides of Numenera tries to recreate the elements that made Planescape Torment such a memorable game, but decides to separate in the most superficial aspects. The world of Dragons and Dungeons has been replaced by the more recent Numenera, another
tabletop role-playing game created by Monte Cook. The combat system in real time with pause has changed by one in turns, and the story of the amnesiac Sin
Nombre and his companions is replaced by a completely new story and with new themes to explore, but always trying to maintain the spirit of Torment.
Thus, we are faced with an isometric RPG with turn-based combats where the most common element is interaction through dialogue, exploring a strange and exotic world focused on studying metaphysical elements, with a strong narrative as a driving element.
“What does one life matter?”
Using the universe of Numenera, Torment places us in the 9th world -The Earth, a billion years in the future- where the current civilization lives on the remains of previous civilizations. The objects left by these previous civilizations are known as numenera, and their
properties and origin are as unknown to the inhabitants of the 9th world as to us. The result is a world of infinite possibilities. From a city inside a
giant monster to alien civilizations interacting with Earth through dimensional portals, Numenera is a world where science fiction and fantasy come together to leave the doors open to any possibility.
In this strange and colorful world is where the history of the game takes place. A man, after years of searching and studying, was able to discover a way to transmit his consciousness to other bodies created by him and to live eternally. Each body he created was better than the previous one, and as he changed his body over the years he ended up being known as the
Changing God. But soon he realized that the bodies that he left behind – called debris (castoffs) – gained their own consciousness. Not only that, but his eagerness to escape death caused the awakening of a supernatural creature known as the Agony (the Sorrow), who relentlessly seeks to destroy the Changing God and all his debris. The game puts us in the skin of the Last Scrap,
This is the premise of this Torment Tides of Numenera, which seeks to offer a profound history as did his predecessor, this time exploring issues about the meaning of life and the legacy we leave behind.
Torment Tides of Numenera, in spite of being the first game that tries to be a spiritual successor of Planescape Torment, is not the only one that has received comparisons with the aforementioned game. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith
Lords (written by the main scriptwriter of Planescape Torment) moved the themes of Torment to the universe Star Wars to dissect it as has rarely
been done before, and the first expansion of Neverwinter Nights II, Mask of the Betrayer, explores new themes in a way and style reminiscent of the Black Isle classic.
