Watch us play Torment: Tides of Numenera on PS4
Not long now!
Funny to think a brand new Torment game is nearly here. Four and a half years ago it was a dream, an exciting idea, but on 28th February, Torment: Tides of Numenera lands.
I went to London last week to play the finished game but on PlayStation 4 rather than PC. I wanted to see how the simultaneously released console versions (PS4 and Xbox One) held up. They weren't always part of the plan you see; they're a happy consequence of Techland signing as publisher last summer.
The good news is, the PS4 version works perfectly well, a bespoke radial menu mapping controls comfortably to the controller. It can feel odd directly controlling characters in what is a click-to-move game on PC though, especially when you snag on bits of environment or struggle to interact with things because you're standing in the wrong place. Pathfinding would normally sort that out for you.
Torment isn't quite as responsive on console as on PC, either. Areas load slower and menus are more sluggish to navigate. Minor niggles, albeit ones that could mount over the course of a long game. But otherwise there's no missing content and it's nice to see Torment: Tides of Numenera offered on console.
The footage in the video comes from the Bloom part of the game roughly two-thirds in. It's an area not currently in the Steam Early Access build of the game.
The Bloom is a living creature serving as a gateway hub between dimensions and places, and gruesomely, it eats its occupants. It's very much typical of the weird world of Torment, which plumbs philosophical depths and goes via text, a lot of text, places other games do not.
Once Torment is released, what happens next depends on how well the game does. "We have plenty of ideas for expansions or standalone content or new games or follow-ups to this game," creative lead Colin McComb told me at the event.
"We've got plenty of ideas for expansions or ways that we could improve on it, or if we just want to patch it and add more content in, we've got ideas for that. If Brian [Fargo - inXile boss] wants to do a different Torment game - still use the Torment franchise but in a different world - we've got ideas for that. It could keep jumping between licensed properties; it could jump into a wholly original world that we create."
It's all speculative talk at the moment, and a decision is obviously pending. Until then, Colin McComb and others will go onto work on Wasteland 3.