A billion years from now, the people of Earth live in the era of the Ninth World, an age built upon the vestiges of eight great civilizations before them. The flickering remnants of each once-great society – ancient nanotechnology, the data-web threading between still orbiting satellites, bioengineered monstrosities, creatures transplanted from distant stars, and myriad strange and wondrous devices – make up what people call Numenera.

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Concept art from the table-top game, Numenera.

Guess we won't be seeing this guy again.

Imagine this future humanity with all of its complexities, and among them a powerful man who spent centuries occupying human bodies and “skipping” from one to the next at will. Now imagine what would happen if one of those inhabited bodies was cast aside in this strange and alien Ninth World and suddenly became conscious, having never lived a day of its own?It’s heady propositions like these that make up the foundation for the science fantasy world of Torment: Tides of Numenera The latest project from Wasteland 2 developer's inXile, Torment: Tides of Numenera is extremely early in pre-production (its Kickstarter campaign goes live Wednesday, March 6), which is to say that everything about the game is still very much a work-in-progress. But ask Torment: Tides of Numenera Creative Lead Colin McComb and Project Director Kevin Saunders, and they definitely know where they want to go. How well the Kickstarter campaign does will greatly determine how they get there, and what “there” will look like, feel and play like when players arrive.“Essentially you are waking up, not as somebody who has lived a full life already, but as somebody who has not lived a life at all,” McComb tells IGN. “You are the cast-off shell of somebody who has learned how to skip from body to body over the centuries. This person is escaping a dreadful hunter. He [realizes], “Oh, well, looks like this body’s doomed.” He skips out of it, you fall to earth, you wake up, and you’re not dead. You’re like, “Who the hell am I?”Based on the aforementioned science-fantasy world of recently Kickstarted table-top game Numenera (from Planescape: Torment co-creator Monte Cook), Torment: Tides of Numenera will offer up a wholly new adventure that’s not directly linked to the characters or world of Planescape but intended instead as an experience unto itself. Utilizing the Unity game engine and incorporating enhancements created throughout Wasteland 2’s development, Torment: Tides of Numenera should feature an isometric perspective and potentially offer multiple camera options.Intended for PC and Mac currently, McComb sites several guiding principles as pillars to the design from its inception, including the integration of narrative elements, meaningful player decisions before combat, meaningful player decisions during “real-time smart combat”, and quality encounters over quantity. “We don’t just want a bunch of trash monsters running up to you and smacking you.”

Check out the original Kickstarter video from Monte Cook's Numenera campaign.

The Story

“ We are going to be going into the darkness again on this game. We’re going to get really dark.

Where Planescape: Torment asked, “What can change the nature of a man?” Torment: Tides of Numenera centers on deconstructing the value of one life and considering how one life matters.McComb pauses and explains. “Our primary theme for this game is the legacy we leave… what does one life matter? How do we live our lives in a way that has meaning to us, or what sort of choices do we make that make our lives meaningful at all?