Torment is set in the Ninth World, a land riddled with incredible technological relics of a bygone age while modern society sits at a more traditional “medieval” level of cultural progress, even as the very landscape hints at impossibly powerful technology buried just beneath the worlds surface.
Skip to 2017 and we find ourselves with a spiritual successor that perhaps doesn’t hit the same highs as its predecessor, but still manages to be one of the most fantastic and thought provoking RPG’s I’ve played in a long time. Considered by many to be a cult classic, Planescape boasted an extremely unusual world filled with exotic places and even more exotic people, with the scarred and weathered immortal protagonist, “The Nameless One”, standing as one of the more unique protagonists to grace the genre. To those who are unfamiliar with the history behind this game, Torment: Tides of Numenera was successfully Kickstarted as the sequel to the fantastic 1999 RPG Planescape: Torment. The impact your character has on the world is just as powerful as so many other games, and yet this time that feels like it truly means something. Torment: Tides of Numenera doesn’t shirk these difficult choices. What answer passes through the mind of a thug as they count the coins in a bloodstained pouch? What about the leader of a village, asked to sacrifice one innocent life for the chance to save many more? How many times has an RPG asked you to shoulder the burden of making these choices, and how often have those choices felt like they changed the rest of the game? There are certainly a few games that work hard to ensure every choice you make has a consequence, no matter how small.
The longer you think about it the harder that question gets.