First of all I want to thank inXile for making this game. I don’t regret supporting it on kickstarter and I love the fact that you can solve most of the game without fighting! THANK YOU!
Nonetheless I think that Torment has some major problems and I’d like to talk about some of them. Since many of the game’s problems have already been discussed (e.g. combat, graphics and cut content) I want to focus on the writing. SPOILERS ahead. Here we go:
The world
- - There are no rules and no explanations. The Ninth World is mysterious, the Tides are mysterious, everything is mysterious. In the beginning this sense of mystery made me curious, but after about six hours it just felt random and boring. Now that I’ve finished the game I still don’t know what the tides really are, nor what “abusing the tides” really means.
- The inhabitants of the Ninth World are supposed to be strange, right? So, why are there so many cliché madmen? It felt to me like 50% of the games NPCs are either talking to people who aren’t really there or constantly chuckling/laughing. They sure look odd, though…
- - There are tons of filler text. It’s very interesting to compare the way Rhin is written with the rest of the game. Rothfuss uses almost no description, and when he does, it’s short. Instead he uses dialogue and some facial expressions to show Rhin’s personality.
- The style is okay. There are some flaws (e.g. too many adjectives) and some bad passages but generally speaking it’s okay. After all Torment’s just a game, not literature.
- Btw: I couldn’t bear the german translation. It’s a complete mess (typos, wrong words, stupid sentence structure). But that’s not inXile’s fault, of course.
- - Some of them are well-written (e.g. Erritis and Rhin), some are not. But why are there only human characters? And why do they comment on your actions so rarely? And why can you summon them like they’re nothing but interchangeable ghosts?
- A technical issue that’s also a narrative one: Most companions are actually three companions. Because the picture, the model and the voice don’t fit together at all! What am I supposed to identify with?
- Strange party interaction: You can ask companion A about his opinion on B, while B is standing next to you?! And B is (most of the time) totally cool with that? Sorry, but that’s ridiculous.
- - The Sorrow. In the end the giant thing that tries to stop you is… well… a giant thing that tries to stop you? Wow. What a revelation! It feels like the sorrow was just added to provide urgency or tension. But that doesn’t work. Because you have to be able to beat the game without fighting and that leads to various anticlimactic situations. For example: When the Sorrow attacks the Memoriva, I simply didn’t do anything. I just walked around the resonance chamber and ended my turns afterwards. In the meantime, the First Castoff and his allies fought the Sorrow. So dramatic!
- The Changing God. Is the bad guy. But wait! There are no simple categories like good and bad in Torment, right? So… let’s see… He’s a grieving father! That’s it! Now he’s a complex character.
- The First Castoff. Has a nice little revelation. Does nothing interesting afterwards.
- Not a single villain-like character works. But what about the main character? Well, he’s a castoff. And Castoffs are… like every other character in the game! Yes, they can use the tides (whatever that means) and that’s evil (somehow). But in the end “using the tides” is just another word for some kind of psychological magic. And in the Ninth World magic is just another word for science we don’t understand. And since every NPC in the game uses psycho-science-magic Castoffs are super special! *sigh*
That said, thank you again for making an unusual, experimental game. That’s awesome and brave and I’m glad you took that risk!
Cheers!
P.S.: Sorry for any grammatical mistakes. I’m from Germany and I haven’t written an english text for years.