14 DAY TRIAL // The development team working on Torment: Tales of Numenera at InXile says that it is currently working on shaping the core story and universe of the game, which will likely be closer to that of a classic horror story rather than to the traditional fantasy space.
Brian Fargo, the leader of the developers, tells Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, “It’s not straight fantasy in any way. It’s almost horror, in a way. Almost. Not quite, but it could be. It’s not a World of Warcraft type of fantasy, or a Baldur’s Gate.”
Kevin Saunders, a leading developer, believes that the multitude of ideas that the writers are currently testing for Torment: Tales of Numenera means that the world will be more varied than in any other universe set in the same genre.
He adds, “With the Ninth World, the Numenera setting, you don’t even need to go to other dimensions. There’s enough crazy stuff here. We do have some dimensional things, but we realized that a lot of the things we wanted to do elsewhere would be possible just in the main world.”
At the moment, the writing team is mainly fleshing out concepts and a programmer will start to work with them in the coming weeks to see which of them can actually be part of the game.
Torment is focused on a protagonist called the Castoff, who needs to explore the world, find artifacts called Numenera and deal with a wider threat to the universe he inhabits.
The game will focus on dialogue and exploration and will draw inspiration from the classic Planescape.
Torment: Tales of Numenera is at the moment in the initial stages of development and launch is expected to take place at some point during next year.
Later in the fall, InXile should launch a beta stage for its Wasteland 2 alongside a release date for the project.