Torment: Tides of Numenera – Choices, Companions, and the Weight of Immortality
When Torment: Tides of Numenera was first announced, I was immediately drawn in. It was presented as a thematic successor to Planescape: Torment , promising philosophical storytelling, difficult choices and companions with lives and motives of their own. I backed the record-breaking Kickstarter campaign , joining 74,405 people who pledged more than $4.1 million. The scale of that enthusiasm also became part of the game’s burden. Expectations expanded with every stretch goal, while the project itself took almost four years to reach its full release in February 2017. The finished game did not contain everything imagined during that campaign. Some promised systems and companions were reduced or removed. Yet in the areas that matter most to me—story, dialogue, worldbuilding and moral consequence—it remains a remarkable role-playing game. Its most interesting achievement is not simply that choices matter. It is that every choice is made from inside someone else’s attempt to escape co...