TORMENT update: Rothfuss and Avellone in

The Kickstarter for Torment: Tides of Numenera is roughly halfway done, with 14 days to go before the end of the appeal. However, the game is already funded: having asked for $900,000, inXile Studios have actually received $2.9 million. The game is now deep into what Kickstarter calls, 'stretch goals', that is additional incentives for people to keep funding in the form of added content to the game.

First up, if the game hits $3.25 million then the writing team will be expanded to include bestselling fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear). Rothfuss will be adding about 10,000 words of content to the game in the form of dialogue and characters. He won't be doing any more because of his commitments to finishing off The Doors of Stone, the third and concluding volume of The Kingkiller Chronicle.

Much more enticing (to this blogger, anyway) is that at $3.5 million, inXile will add Chris Avellone to the writing time. Avellone was the primary writer and designer of the original Planescape: Torment (to which Numenera is the spiritual successor), as well as Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer and the forthcoming Project: Eternity. He also worked on Icewind Dale and its sequel; Fallout: New Vegas (including leading the design of several of its DLC episodes); and Alpha Protocol. He has also done some writing for inXile's previous Kickstarter game project, Wasteland 2. He is often cited as the finest writer of Western CRPGs. Exactly why Avellone still hasn't written a novel, I don't know, as I suspect it would be awesome. Avellone will be creating a new NPC character for the game and writing their dialogue, but will also be serving as an editor and a fresh pair of eyes on the work of the rest of the team as well.

With still two weeks to go, I suspect this Kickstarter will breeze past both targets and probably end up somewhere on the other side of $4 million when all is said and done. It's shaping up to be a very interesting game.

Torment: Tides of Numenera now on Kickstarter

InXile Entertainment have launched their Kickstarter campaign for their roleplaying game, Torment: Tides of Numenera.

This game is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, the 1999 PC game which is widely regarded as the best (and certainly the best-written) computer RPG ever made. Eschewing traditional fantasy conventions (no elves, no dwarves, precious few action sequences), the game delved deeply into themes of identity, responsibility, consequence and if people can every truly change themselves. It sold modestly but has attracted critical acclaim like no other RPG in history.

Since inXile do not have the rights to the Planescape setting, they are instead setting this game in a different universe altogether. The setting is Numenera, a pen-and-paper setting conceived by Monte Cook, one of the chief designers on the 3rd Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game. The setting is Earth, approximately one billion years in the future. Our world has been rendered almost unrecognisable over that time, having gone through technology-driven utopian periods and multiple catastrophes. The planet is littered with the remnants of ultra-advanced technology that no-one understands any more (the 'numenera' of the title), not to mention alien and genetically-engineered lifeforms. There are echoes of Jack Vance's Dying Earth and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun in the descriptions of the setting. This isn't Generic Medieval Landscape #35.

The plot of the game involves a being who is capable of skipping between different bodies, which are lifeless husks before and after he uses them. Somehow, one of the husks comes to life after he has vacated it. This creature - you - then has to search for identity and the answers to several mysteries (like, presumably, the identity of the body-jumper) along the way.

The game will be an isometric role-playing game, created using the Unity Engine. It will feature combat, but as with Planescape: Torment it will almost all be avoidable, with your character able to use dialogue or skills to resolve confrontations rather than violence.

InXile are asking for $900,000. They are certainly going to hit this, given that the total right now (just a couple of hours after launch and with a month to go) is $150,000. Amounts raised beyond that will allow for more elements to be added to the game. InXile have also guaranteed that they will pass on 5% of any excess to fund additional Kickstarter projects.

Torment: Tides of Numenera will be released in late 2014. InXile will ship Wasteland 2 at the end of this year. As they mention in the pitch video, with Wasteland 2 now in full development on the 3D and content side of things, their concept artists and writers are now free to fully commit to Torment (otherwise they'd presumably be left with nothing to do for six months or would have to be let go), explaining the timing of the appeal.