[ENDING SPOILERS] This game is disappointing beyond belief

[Rink]

- Every game has several steps to develop the story of the game. With this steps things change. This is normal and happens to every game. I think the main story makes sense and is put together nicely if you find the "missing links" like merecasters etc. I understand that it could be confusing for people that didn't get all the pieces of the puzzle though.
- Cuts are normal, they also happen in every game. That some things have been "promised" because all plans were public and some of those got cut is unfortunate. But maybe people should try to see what they got instead of what they didn't get. I am sure the devs learnt from it as well and would just not tell us about details in future projects, just like we wouldn't see those details in any other game. Just don't forget: this is an indie-game. It has 10% of the budget of the average AAA RPG.
- It is easy to say that you would have liked a 3 sentence summary of plot better than the twists and turns we got presented in the game, but would they really have made for a better game? Go ahead, write it yourself and we will find out if it is any better in 30 hours of mainstory. Imho if you really want to compare, then compare the main story of ToN to the story of other RPGs (including P:T, if you can't remember, go to Wiki to read the main plot). Not so bad anymore? Good.

In general I think that people here in the forum seem overly critical (well maybe that was to be expected ) and seem to have a weird opinion about P:T. Go back and play it and then come here and we talk again on ToN in terms of graphics, pathfinding, combat, the quality of the writing, bugs etc. That's fine, you guys can go and play other games that suit your taste. Maybe my perception is not the one of the majority, but I do pity you guys that don't like ToN. For me it was the best experience in gaming in a very long time and I am hoping to see more of it.

[ljs]

There is nothing wrong with being an omniwore and getting satisfaction from a raw products, carrion and, well...other substances But TToN was announced as a fine cuisine, which, alas, it is not.

[Akagi]

This is the private msg on kickstarter i've received from inXile more than a year ago :

....
I do understand your concern about the release date. When we received 4x the funding that we initially requested on Kickstarter, that had some implications for the scope and size of the game, as well as the level of polish in terms of art and so on. We are delivering a much bigger and more fleshed out game than what we could have done with our minimum Kickstarter goal, but that has pushed the game's date back as a result.

Big words, but where did the money go in the end? Scam.

[kilobug]

Big words, but where did the money go in the end? Scam.

In all the research, writing, world building, design, art, coding, testing, translation, ... that were necessary to make such a deliciously weird and awesome game as TTON ?

[Manaleak]

And sometimes, it's not the amount of words that counts, but their quality.

I finished the game once in english and then started again and switched to my native language to check if there was anything i misunderstood... The french translation was messed up big time.
For instance sometimes they switched the white bold font of dialogue with the grey font of description. Sometimes the last sentence of the description ends up in The Last Castoff's answear options somehow... "Construct" doesn't mean shit in french and yet they kept it this way, and you cannot make puns with the tongue beeing called "the Truth" and yet they managed to translate it litteraly (and it does not make sense, at all.)

(though the "bloom" being called "biophage" in french is pretty cool in my opinion)

[anonymous6059]

Big words, but where did the money go in the end? Scam.

In all the research, writing, world building, design, art, coding, testing, translation, ... that were necessary to make such a deliciously weird and awesome game as TTON ?

I agree that all the money went into writing, world building, design, art, etc... The novellas were pretty good and the world building was amazing.
The actual game was not very good at all. When you go buy a pizza and it taste like shit, it taste like shit. It doesn't matter how nice the box is or how wonderful the ads are for it. So I'm on the fence with regard to whether or not this could be considered a scam. It certainly wasn't what they promised us and even then it still wasn't a decent game. I don't see how you could work on it for 4 years and release it in that state. I honestly think they were too busy working on other games to give TToN the time of day.

[kilobug]

The actual game was not very good at all.

Well, we disagree on that, perhaps because we were not looking for the same things in it. What I was looking in TTON is, like in Torment, a game with an awesome and weird (but yet self-consistent) world, full of little details, with original and thought-provoking story and quests, and interesting NPCs... and that's what we got. All the rest, the combat gameplay and choice of classes and ... is very secondary in a Torment game, and actually, apart from being too easy, it's quite well done in TTON, better than the boring repetitive combat of PST in my taste.

I don't see how you could work on it for 4 years and release it in that state. I honestly think they were too busy working on other games to give TToN the time of day.

That state ? The game works very smoothly with few bugs, which is rare for such a complex RPG, and while there was some cut content, if we didn't know about them from following the dev (which we couldn't for PST), we actually wouldn't feel them (unlike PST).

As for "too busy working on other games" that's a ridiculous assertion, TTON definitely received lots and lots of work, perhaps not priorized as you wished (you might have preferred more in the gameplay and less on worldbuilding, I'm glad they did it that way), but all the tons of little details in the game, as well as the relatively bug-free state really feel that lots of love and care and work has been put into it.

[Sashka loves Evan]

I liked it, am on 4th play through, getting different endings, etc, I only wish we could go to whats on map, I paid for the edition w/the armor so I'm kinda bummed I can't check out the oasis and other places mentioned in game and on the map

Sure beats cruddy $75 mass effect andromeda, which had the worst ending of any game I ever played, seriously, Torment is 2000 times better, if you tried andromeda, you'd be praising Torment O_o

[Valrog]

I don't agree with most of the criticism. The game's pretty good. it doesn't seem short to me and there's a lot of replayability. I really enjoyed the meres and exploring and figuring out the alien technology.

The only serious gripe I have is that the companions are really very awful, to the point of being irritating. I can't remember a game in which the companions were so bad. I wish they'd improved the existing characters instead of wasting time and effort to add one more character which can be expected to be just as bad as the existing ones. What's the point?

If they could redo and retouch some characters to make them less irritating, that'd make me very happy. Oh, and fixing some of the bugs would help too.

[jsaving]

I think inXile did a pretty good job maintaining the spirit of PS:T, from the weird atmosphere to the unexpectedness that sometimes follows failure to the general idea that who you are as a person matters. But I would agree that TToN's companions aren't remotely on a par with those from PS:T, either in their narrative depth or in the devs' willingness to subvert common RPG tropes (a gith who takes orders, a succubus who interacts via dialogue, a modron who breaks away from the collective, etc). They looked bland as well compared to PS:T's companions and the almost complete lack of VO from the companions contrasted very unfavorably with the still-memorable VO from Mitch Pileggi, Sheena Easton, etc in PS:T.

I understand the desire to check more Kickstarter-commitment boxes, like releasing a new companion, but agree with you that it's a mistake to go that route. What's done is done and the haters aren't going to change their minds just because a few pieces of the omitted content eventually see the light of day. There's also a real risk of this kind of thing backfiring if the new companion isn't vastly deeper than the existing ones. (There's even risk if the new companion *is* vastly deeper, as people would then want the old companions to be brought up to that standard.)

[TTO]

Sadly, have to agree with much of what was described in the first post. Not everything but much, and most of all - the ending. Reposting from Steam some thoughts on it.

The Tides are some force of nature, they are everywhere and everyone necessarily interacts with them in some way (given that they are sort of a universe's moral compass), but using them consciously in any way whatsoever is "abuse" already. That's just not how nature works.
Well, ok, suppose that there just was some powerful yet superstitious civilization which believed that Using Tides Is Bad and decided to enforce this belief onto everyone forever after, creating the Sorrow. It's sentient, capable of communication, and does not enjoy destruction - it just wants everyone to not use the Tides. But why it's remembered through all the history only as an all-destroying monster? Why LC is the first one in several millenia whom it has spoken to? All this time, was there no one else who could possibly be reasoned with?
Well, then, what choices are presented to us. There are basically 3: 1) merge all castoffs into someone; 2) kill all castoffs; and 3) destroy the Sorrow. And also the option to leave everything as is, which I regard not so much as a choice rather than a refusal to make one, in an attempt to avoid responsibility for anything bad (and invalidating the point of your whole quest). Of these choices, only 3) is presented in-game as unambiguously bad one. Really? In 1) and 2), thousands of castoffs die. And no doubt the Tides will be discovered by someone again and again, and the Sorrow will bring destruction again, stalling civilizations in their progress (and possibly even destroying them, as it has done before. is destruction of a whole civilization really better than whatever consequences it might face when "abusing" the Tides?). In 3), thousands of people go mad, and future civilizations are safe. But nooo...
And also, why did the Sorrow try to stop Changing God from activating the chamber? He wanted to do exactly the same thing the LC can do at the end, without opposition from the Sorrow. What's the problem then? Anything remotely close to a reason was that it just didn't trust him not to create further castoffs. And exactly why does it trust LC not to do the same? And even without "trust" to CG it would be far easier to kill off him alone after he merges with everyone else than hunt thousands of castoffs one by one.

______________________________________________________________________

Also, no challenge at all, everything is extremely easy (that's one of the points where I have to disagree with initial post. combat abilities don't feel powerful? well, you can defeat the final boss with as much as moving a finger once. and that's in combat, not in the dialogue). Also the Meres... If only they were like they were described in the linked interview.

This could be a really epic game. As it is now, I rather liked it (apart from the ending), but its story is nowhere near PS:T. There are still signs of great work done laying out multiple different possibilities which make me want to replay, but the ending really makes me doubtful about it.

[jsaving]

The original PS:T had a strong endgame because the player was able to decide for himself what can change the nature of a man and then use that knowledge to destroy, merge with, or talk down his foe. In TToN you never really decide why one life matters and that knowledge doesn't inform the much-smaller subset of endgame choices at your disposal, which basically boil down to killing all castoffs but one, killing all castoffs, or letting them all be hunted and killed over time by the Sorrow. It would have been great if you could sway the Sorrow toward your answer for why one life matters and then get it to change its mind based on the answer you provided. For example, if your answer was that everyone has a right to reach their potential, you could perhaps persuade the Sorrow that hunting the castoffs is wrong even if the castoffs *do* cause problems by using the Tides (perhaps accompanied by an endgame slide of an evil force emerging from a rip in the universe that was inadvertently created by your convincing the Sorrow to back off). Other alternatives might be to merge with the Sorrow and fight it for control (Red), enlist the Sorrow as an ally in researching how to peacefully break the link between the castoffs and the Tides (Blue), or even to voluntarily enlist in the Sorrow's eternal fight to protect the universe from Tidal abuse if it agrees to let the remaining castoffs live (Gold).

[Valrog]

I don't care if the companions defied tropes. That's not at all required in order to have good companions. I want heroic, funny, realistic and memorable companions with a lot of deep interaction. Voice acting would help too.

[Raiseth]

I think that was way too harsh of criticism over what is essentially a game made in attempt to recreate the magnificent hunk of a literary beast Planescape: Torment was.
I can even say they mostly succeeded in that regard. Despite ( sometimes tasteful, sometimes not ) inclusions of the previous game's elements and setting, TToN draws mostly from Science Fantasy setting of the Ninth World, which holds well even against Planescape. What I want to say is the writing was gorgeous. Quests were fantastic and nearly as non-linear as humanly possible. The Bloom was disgustingly beatiful. The Changing God was an asshole you loved to hate. All in all, a good job. I guess endings can be disappointing as heck, but that's mostly narrative preferences of the authors. I think none of them can say: "And then everyone lived happily until they quietly died in sleep in their old age." and leave well enough alone.
Most people who for one reason or another feel the gameplay was dissapointing ( really slow crisis progression when in combat with more than five opponents, for example ) don't remember P:T. By the way, Beamdog made an EE of it just a few days ago, go play it. Combat is by far the least satisfying part in both games, and at least in Numenera you can actually convince a majority of your enemy's coterie to switch to your side for you mid-fight or instead of fighting reenact your classic Ocean's Eleven heist IN SPACE!
Another criticism people like to provide is about shallowness of the game's companions. True, a talking skull is hard to find and hard to beat ( unless you read Harry Dresden, Bob is pretty funny ), and all of them are vanilla human in this game... or not? Callistege is a multidimensional contraption layered against herself who can over the game transcend mortality and become as close to a goddess you can ( if that's your kind of thing ). Erristis is injected with nano-infused supersoldier mind-controlling, self aware serum who call themselves the Audience. Rhin, for God's sake is a child, who you can drag underground, through a war zone, the Bloom or your own mind, which, all things considered, is a crappy thing to do to anyone, much less to a child. All for a good cause, of course.
The game was interesting, the game was entertaining, and, dare I say, the game was enjoyable in spite of its inherent flaws.
I really don't understand this whole shtick, especially after Siege of Dragonspear. As I recall, a really good game, Throne of Bhaal to the first Baldur's Gate, got dragged through mud because, you see, it had transgender characters. What about Inquisition? Or is it only okay if Bioware does it?
Sorry, I'm rambling.

[acm]

All I can say is that I remember absolutely *zero* of what happened in the game after a few weeks, I don't even remember why I didn't like it. I was a complete "meh" experience.

[Deserter20]

Frankly,the only thing that disappointed me was the ending.
Could this game have been a lot better?Hell yes.But it doesn't change the fact that it was a jewel of a game that any fan of old school rpgs would love.
Criticize it all you want,it's healthy.But if we had a game like this released every year I would be one happy person.