Last month, inXile’s Brian Fargo spilled several important beans about post-Black Isle, post-Planescape plans for a sequel to the legendary RPG Torment, in a brand new and rather tasty-sounding roleplaying setting from ex-Wizards of the Coast man Monte Cook. While there still isn’t too much firm’n’fixed to go on, the game’s gone live with its very own website and the first reveal of its new, full name.

Torment: Tides of Numenera lives.



Given inXile only showed us in-game footage of their next project, Wasteland 2, this month, don’t go hoping for similar from Torment: Tides of Numenera just yet. But there is some concept art, and the following summary:

Set in Monte Cook’s new tabletop role-playing world, Numenera, the newest Torment asks: What does one life matter? Numenera’s Ninth World is a fantastic vision of a world in which massive civilizations have risen and fallen – disappeared, transcended, overwhelmed, or destroyed – and left their cities, monuments, and artifacts behind. As each rose and fell, their achievements became part of the accumulated detritus of eons… but much of it did not decay. And now this assortment of ancient power is there for the taking, ever-present, underfoot. The humans of the Ninth World take and use what they can. They call these wonders (and horrors) the numenera. One of these humans discovers a way to use the numenera to grow strong, to cheat death, to skip across the face of centuries in a succession of bodies. But he discovers an unexpected side effect: You. Torment is a game of complex and nuanced morality, deep and reactive choice and consequence, and immersion into a new and strange vision. You will chart a course through bizarre dimensions, across the face of a vastly different world. You will earn companions along the way, and discover their value – perhaps through their strengths, perhaps more literally by selling them. Throughout it all, you will choose a path that will lead inexorably to an ending that stems naturally from your actions, facing adversaries who harness powers beyond your comprehension, and who will ultimately force you to face yourself and answer the question: What does one life matter?

The site also’s set up with the right bids and bobs for pledging they go live with crowdsourcing, and a look at the reward tiers they’re considering. For that stuff, they want the community’s votes on which they think are most appealing – for instance, Numenera rulebooks, or prioritising more game content over physical items, cloth maps, all that jazz.

I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of the PST sequel soon. Exciting times for fans of grim introspection.