Vance Macabre

TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA invites you to start a new life in the Ninth World.

- Chris Thursten

Planescape: Torment occupies a special place in the history of PC roleplaying games. It sticks in the memory: Baldur’s Gate’s stranger, sexier, smarter sibling, interested in headier stuff than swords and sorcery. The original Torment was highly regarded and its influence is felt throughout the RPG genre, from Pillars of Eternity’s soul-reading to the warped denizens of Fallen London. Yet it’s never, until now, had a proper follow-up.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is that successor. Following in the footsteps of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity as Planescape Torment once followed Baldur’s Gate – and based on the same engine – inXile has recaptured much of what made the original game special. This is a free-roaming, dialogue-heavy isometric RPG that places thought resolutely before action. Although combat features, the entire campaign can be played without participating in violence yourself.

The Planescape setting is gone, swapped for the Ninth World – the far-future background to Monte Cook’s Numenera pen-and-paper roleplaying game. This is an unrecognisable take on Earth one billion years in the future, with the accreted technological detritus of innumerable vanished civilisations underpinning a medieval society that brings Clarke’s third law to life.

There’s magic, but it’s really science – and the science is strange, spanning time travel, the transference of consciousness, parallel universes, and nanomachinery. Michael Moorcock and Jack Vance are other prominent influences, from Torment’s writing to its look: this is science fantasy done in the psychedelic pastel shades of a ’70s paperback.