[Anamnesis] Try to recall Torment: Tides of Numenera by InExile Entertainment: FAILURE.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i think some people think of me as a bit of a hater at times, which makes me feel bad because I generally like most games I play and talk about, and even ones I don't think too highly of, like Elden Ring, have things about them that I appreciate. tedious negative formalism is, for me, the retreat of the disappointed romantic, and if i do end up there, it's only because I have tried and failed to love something. so please, know that when I say that I do, in fact, hate Tides of Numenera, it is because it is a genuinely rare occurrence for me: a game that repulses above and beyond anything it might have to offer.

i finished this fairly comprehensively when it first released and while I liked it quite a bit back in 2017, my fondness for it fades to an proportional degree to my strengthening fondness for the original Torment.

in a sense the problem is that I resent having to refer to Planscape: Torment as "the original Torment". there is a naked cynicism to the title that is hard to ignore, an almost desperate call to arms for fans of the original to treat this with the weight that something evoking a beloved work warrants. and yet, it rings so hollow. part of this is because by any reasonable metric, planescape: torment has plenty of sequels, there being a clear throughline of thematic exploration and continuity of staff from that game into the likes of Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Mask of the Betrayer, so this game tattooing "TORMENT" onto it's skin feels unnecessary at best and deeply insecure at worst. but the larger problem of the name is that this hollowness and insecurity seeps into the game itself.

a game like this really shouldn't be reminding me so strongly of Dark Souls 3 or - god forbid, The Rise of Skywalker - but those comparisons struggle to leave me when I weigh Tides of Numenera in my mind, this game that so desperately needs to be seen as a true successor to Planescape: Torment that it strains at every opportunity to deliver surface-level reference after vacuous call-back.

tattoos were part of Planescape, and so they are part of Tides of Numenera! except here the tattoos are given a weight and significance by the writing that is afforded only by the fact that they are a reference to the original. tattoos were important in Planescape because they represented the permanency of your past actions and effects on the world. tattoos do not leave us - and neither do our actions and the scars they leave on the world. there is no similar thematic resonance to the choice to use tattoos in numenera. the symbols are, as abstract symbols, important to it, but grafting them onto the flesh of the protagonist says nothing, other than "remember planescape?"

these kinds of embarrassing references are everywhere, but the one that got me to switch the game off in disgust was when you find a Bronze Sphere. The Bronze Sphere in Planescape was deeply important in that game, but its importance was something you had to discover. You can - and many do - simply ignore and forget about it once it first leaves your possession, to treat it like the insignificant bauble it seems. It's only by choosing to keep it - a choice that says a lot about your Nameless One, because the only reason you'd keep it is that you know it was important to a past version of yourself that you increasingly learn to be almost unimaginably cruel - all the way to the end of the game, do you finally learn what it is. in numenera, you find a bronze sphere - proudly labelled as such - in one of the first areas you have access to, a bronze sphere that, essentially, acts as little more than a place for your companions to hang out when you aren't with them. it is a rote mechanical feature that clads itself in one of the most resonant and evocative images of the game it's so desperately trying to summon within itself in order to afford it a weight derived entirely from the audience's recognition of that image in a completely one-dimensional way. it is planescape: torment reduced to brand recognition, a funko pop of the nameless one, dak'kon in fortnite, a disney+ limited series about fall-from-grace. it is the mcu-ification of a singular work that is very, very close to my heart. it fucking blows ass so much oh my god.

part of me wants to resist labelling this a truly terrible game. the writing is, in a vacuum, thought of entirely as a book of disconnected sci-fi short stories you can wander through, engaging, in the moment. there are some characters that work: I think most of the stuff surrounding the character of Rhin is genuinely fantastic and represents a genuinely thoughtful exploration of parenthood, the kind that the medium is historically lacking in. there are moments where the various mechanical concerns of the game - the crisis events, the resource management game you play through wandering the world - do come alive. the soundtrack is actually kind of fantastic. but what's it all in service too? this story, that has no ideas of its own, and is just stripping the scar tissue from one of my favourite games and selling it back to me on Kickstarter? this game that is torn in a dozen different directions by a dozen different writers with no cohesive ideas other than Being Like Planescape? i could begrudgingly admit that there are things Of Interest to be found in this game. but I don't want to, and nor do I think I should. i think i should reject this embarrassing, ambitionless, written-by-committee sludge as the failed attempt to colonize the affections of those who were earnestly affected by the travels of The Nameless One.

so much of the modern media landscape is built entirely on selling you back hollow tokens of your memories in the shape of lightsabers and web-shooters and synths and kids on bicycles. but what we remembered wasn't ever as important as why we remembered them. and because Torment: Tides of Numenera is so singularly focused on the what and not the why, it isn't much of a surprise that it's been so comprehensively forgotten: there's nothing about it to remember.

Reviewed on Jun 15, 2022


1 Comment


1 year ago

My gf occasionally tells me she worries about me talking about movies or whatever to her coworkers at social gatherings because I’m an extremely harsh critic of media and she thinks I’ll scare them off and I always think that’s funny because I see myself as a really joyful lover of media. I simply love things that are good lol