History VideoGame / TormentTidesOfNumenera

* RuinsForRuinsSake: The premise of the ''Numenera'' setting is that the Ninth World is built on the detritus left behind by ''a million years'' of past civilizations on Earth. Every settlement is built on some kind of ancient ruin -- the entire world is a kind of neverending DungeonCrawl. That being said, the most obvious cases of this are the mini-dungeon of the Anechoic Lazaret, the Necropolis and surrounding Ruins of Ossiphagan, and the [[WombLevel deepest depths of the Bloom]].

** It's only possible to talk to the Nychthemeron at night. How do you reach it at night, you ask? By sleeping in the inn or the camp that allows you sleep all you want for free? Of course not! You can only access the city at night by intentionally breaking the time-manipulating clock in the center of town, which warps the fabric of ''time itself'' to allow you to reach the difficult-to-access state of "nighttime".

** The Order of Flagellants and Austerities, who were at one point scheduled to appear but go unmentioned in the released game. Once a hermetic and monkish offshoot of the Order of Truth, the so-called Scourges became a mendicant order and set out into the world with the appointment of a new leader a century ago. They are a missionary sect, devoted to cleansing the world of its many sins, among which are a reliance on the numenera and pollution of the flesh with extravagances and constructs. They feed on the rage of their kin, borrowing strength of will and thew, and run berserk if they are not stopped, laying bare the bones of those who oppose them. In the finished game, they seem to have been replaced with suicidal death cult of the Endless Gate.

** The Extremities of the Great Devourer, or, more informatively, Bloom Cultists, who live inside the city-sized living [[PortalCrossroadWorld living interdimensional nexus]] of [[EldritchAbomination the Bloom]], worshipping it and feeding its countless maws what they need to open their gates to other worlds.

** The Oasis of M'ra Jolios, which at one point was going to be the game's second major hub, before the Bloom ascended to the role instead. An enormous globe of water in exact center of the circular desert known as the Lost Sea, the Oasis is the home of the aquatic [[FishPeople Ghibra]] who appear as background characters in Sagus Cliffs. Currently the city only appears during one of the game's meres and briefly as a memory in [[spoiler:the Labyrinth, on the Last Castoff's way to confront the Specter for the final time.]]

-->'''Narve the Blessed:''' I'm an explorer and a villain. The worst villain you'll ever meet! ...And by that I mean that no matter what I try to pull, [[MinionWithAnFInEVil it somehow ends up]] ''[[MinionWithAnFInEVil helping]].''

->''"What does one life matter?"''

----

** The Order of Flagellants and Austerities, who were at one point scheduled to appear but go unmentioned in the released game. Once a hermetic and monkish offshoot of the Order of Truth, the so-called Scourges became a mendicant order and set out into the world with the appointment of a new leader a century ago. They are a missionary sect, devoted to cleansing the world of its many sins, among which are a reliance on the numenera and pollution of the flesh with extravagances and constructs. They feed on the rage of their kin, borrowing strength of will and thew, and run berserk if they are not stopped, laying bare the bones of those who oppose them.

** They view mortals with paternalism at best, and as tools to use and discard at worst. Even [[spoiler:Matkina]], who shuns her fellow Castoffs because of this, is callous to the suffering of most non-Castoffs. Even mere physical proximity to a castoff is dangerous for mortals. Indeed, the only way for the Last Castoff to [[spoiler:ensure that their people get to have a free future is to sacrifice thousands of mortal residents of Sagus Cliffs in order to kill the Sorrow]].

* AMillionIsAStatistic: The ForeverWar of [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the Endless War]] pretty much runs on this trope.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The Endless War]] pretty much runs on this trope.

* OhMyGods: "By the Black Three!" seems to be Garravia's oath of choice.

** Sundermun the Elder found love and had countless adventures after tumbling into one of the Bloom's interdimensional maws... and has since been sent back in time by a TemporalParadox, where he's taken on his younger self as an apprenctice, preparing Sundermun the Younger for the day when he falls through that maw, but never telling him exactly when it's going to happen, [[StableTimeLoop because that's how it happened to him]].

* YoureNotMyFather: At the end of the game, [[spoiler:the Changing God's daughter Miika]] confronts the being who claims to be her father, [[spoiler:the Specter]]... and doesn't recognize him at all. [[spoiler:This is because he's an ArtificialIntelligence based on a backup copy of The Changing God's memories. You can point out to the Specter that he can't possibly be the real Changing God since if even his own daughter doesn't recognize him, but if your persusasive skills aren't up to the task, this can also [[ThatThingIsNotMyChild backfire]].]]

* PressStartToGameOver: If you choose to dive for the ground during the initial fall, the damage will be too much for your HealingFactor. You do leave a nice crater behind...

* TooDumbToLive: During the prologue, if you choose to [[PressXToDie go into a straight dive]]. The achievement is called "Terminal Velocity".
-->''"Slow" is a relative term. You knife through the air, piercing its veils and... you have no time for the poetry of falling. [...] As your skin explodes and your organs liquefy on impact, a brief thought flashes through your mind: your life was utterly and completely meaningless.''

* NoHeroDiscount: An actual subversion for once -- in TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, reluctant IntrepidMerchant Lady Anshe gives you multiple healing items and weapons at no charge, and even provides a full TraumaInn. Granted, she doesn't have access to her full stock, but it's something. [[spoiler:It's possible because, you, she, and all the other castoffs have been drawn into the Labyrinth by the resonance chamber.]]

-->''"Slow" is a relative term. You knife through the air, piercing its veils and... you have no time for the poetry of falling. [...] As your skin explodes and your organs liquefy on impact, a brief thought flashes through your mind: your life was utterly and completely meaningless.

* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: 7 available companions, but only 3 can join the Last Cast-off at a time.
* ArbitrarySkepticism: Rhin's ability to speak to gods is treated as an obvious childish delusion by absolutely everyone, even though this is a setting completely full of strange inexplicable things and even though ''their powers are demonstrably real''.
* ArcWords: The story of the game revolves around the question, "What does one life matter?" It is up to the player to decide what the answer might be -- if there is one at all.

* ArcWords: An ArmorPiercingQuestion, and one to which you'll eventually need to find your own answer.
-->''"What does one life matter?"''
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: The aforementioned ArcWords, as well as a great many others, often the [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath deadliest weapon]] in your arsenal. It's that kind of game.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: While in the Bloom, you can help a slave -- Coty -- find a job. If you have him get hired by the Bloom cultists, their leader has this to say about his performance.
-->'''The Observant Speck''': The whispers like him. A faint aroma of murder, suffused with a decade's worth of shame and a dash of innocence. They find him a pleasant melange, a perfume too precious to devour. (''Her mischievous smile returns'') He's also good with the laundry.

* MentalTimeTravel: The merecasters allow you to go back in time by possessing the bodies of people in the past, ala QuantumLeap.

* ShoutOut: Quijano del Toboso is a very obvious {{Expy}} of ''Literature/DonQuixote''
** Early in the game you can recruit a gang of [[BlueOysterCult psychic war veterans.]]
** One of those veterans is named Leto, wears what is implied to be a stillsuit, and has the power of seeing possible realities and pasts; a clear reference to Dune.
** The effect when you teleport into Miel Avest (where you're temporarily elongated) is the same one used in the ending of Planescape:Torment when the Nameless One is sent to the Blood War.

* BizarreAlienReproduction: Sn'erf is an alien studying these. He goes on to describe several cases to you. That includes human reproduction, although he strongly suspects the people who described that were {{troll}}ing him -- which, judging from [[CrowningMomentOfFunny his description]], was most certainly the case. His own race reproduces by [[spoiler:detaching their limbs -- and even heads -- and growing them into complete beings. He, himself, is an exile from his planet after stumbling across a machine that replaced his limbs -- a great disgrace among his people, which he couldn't prove was accidental.]]

* DysfunctionJunction: From the moment you wake up in the Reef of Fallen Worlds, Callistege and Aligern will be sniping at each other. [[spoiler:Justified, in that the burst of Tidal energies released by your rebirth has brought the latent frustrations of their relationship to the surface.]] Downplayed compared to the original ''Torment'' and its {{Spiritual Successor}}s, however, in that while Aligern and Callistege refuse to be in the party at the same time, and Matkina's DarkAndTroubledPast has her keeping everyone at arm's length, most of the other companions are fully capable of getting along with each other, even being quite friendly, even sympathetic when it comes to, for example, Rhin, Erritis, Tybir, and Oom. That doesn't mean they don't have their own problems for the Last Castoff to solve, but never gets to ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'' levels of having the whole crew hate each other.
* EvilLuddite: The Order of Flagellants and Austerities, who believe that use of Numenera is a sin.

* {{Expy}}: Despite not being an [[Creator/ObsidianEntertainment Obsidian]] game, as the spiritual successor to ''Planescape Torment'' and a roundup of many of the same people who worked on that game, the game runs on this, with many of the earmarks of Black Isle and Obsidian's games -- including a noticeable tendency to riff on ideas which have appeared in their previous games.

** The Fifth Eye is a dead ringer for ''Planescape: Torment''[='=]s Smoldering Corpse Bar, with its factory-like interior, unusual clientèle (including war veterans and ExpositionDump [=NPCs=]), and another cameo by the [[AnthropomorphicPersonification enigmatic vowel]] O.
** Sagus Cliffs even ''sounds'' like Sigil. Its guards dress in purple instead of red and there's only one man in bladed armor who came to the city as an invader, but there are bite-sized versions of the Foundry and the Mortuary, even an alien race whose language the Last Castoff can either learn or [[RepressedMemories remember]].

* FantasyGunControl: Sort of. While slugthrowers can be ''found'' and used, they're numenera in of themselves, or cobbled together from numenera fit to lob small bullets at high velocities. It's explicitly mentioned the Ninth World's humans do not have the technological capabilities to build even primitive firearms from scratch.

* ForeverWar: The Endless Battle, fought between castoffs: those who support the Changing God, and those who despise him. In theory, anyway -- in practice, it's a breeding ground for old grudges between immortals, and a cottage industry paying an endless tide of mercenaries across the centuries. It's also spread across multiple dimensions and scattered across time, multiplying the horror exponentially.

** The duo in Circus Minor who have an EldritchAbomination trapped in a cage on display will recount their lengthy adventures together if you ask them. It turns out that they intend to eventually leave the city, return home, and use the technology they're showing off to [[spoiler:trap a god]].

* KarmaMeter: Rather than a typical binary good/evil meter, the game uses a "Tides" system. A Tide represents your character's path in life, with all its motivations, desires and actions, and waxing (or waning) into a Tide will affect the gameplay and story. There are five Tides in all, and none of them are in strict opposition with another. They are as follows:

* LethalLavaLand: The Ruins of Ossiphagan.

* LovingAShadow: In Sagus Cliffs, you meet a man named Omahdon who's pursuing Perseia, claiming that her madness causes her to not recognize him. The truth is that [[spoiler: he came upon her in a ''tomb'' and fell in love with her beauty, using a device he held to resurrect her so she could love him back.]]

-->'''Thalana''': [[NothingPersonal But it's not personal]]. It's not someone who wants ''your'' destruction in particular. You're just... inconvenient to them. Your death is another number, a way to measure their success. [[WarIsHell It's... hell]]. A business-like hell. And ''you'' did it. Castoffs. You could stop if you wanted. But you don't. Or maybe you don't care. I mean, when you've made statistics of your enemies, [[FacelessMooks faceless foes whose existence you can erase without a qualm]]... you're not just hurting them. You're hurting yourself, the way you see the world. Soon everything is conflict and pain. [[TheSocialDarwinist All that matters is your success]]. And you've killed yourself, and you don't even know it. (''She wipes a tear away'') It ruins everything -- everyone it touches.

* SomeCallMeTim: Sn'erf. His real name is very long and largely unpronounceable (or beyond human hearing range). He prefers the name humans gave him. His true one is way too common.

** Taking Rhin, a ''child'' with no combat ablities and no magic beyond being quite stealthy, along on an adventure through the worst insanity the Ninth World has to offer. Oh, sure, it makes sense to keep her around in Sagus Cliffs, but when you're [[spoiler:literally dragging her ToHellAndBack]], your companion's [[EveryoneHasStandards incredulous comments]] make sense. [[spoiler:But keeping her in the party is the only way to eventually get her back home, solve all her problems, and help her become awe-inspiring.]]

* CameFromTheSky: The player. The Last Castoff enters the game by waking to life and consciousness... in complete freefall, hurtling towards the Earth. You have just enough time before impact to remember being attacked and falling out of something in orbit, and to realize that wasn't you in that memory. [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere Appears to be standard procedure for the Changing God.]]

** The Bronze Sphere and Black Frame return here, though their importance isn't the same as in the previous game.

** [[spoiler:Apparently, while the Changing God wore your body, it was known as [[VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment Adahn]].]]

** Minor character O reappears, as does the RunningGag of Adahn.

* YoureNotMyFather: At the end of the game, [[spoiler:Miika The Changing God's daughter]] confronts the being who claims to be her father [[spoiler:the Specter]]... and doesn't recognize him at all. [[spoiler:This is because he's just an ArtificialIntelligence based on a backup copy of The Changing God's memories. You can point out to the Specter that he can't possibly be the real Changing God since if even his own daughter doesn't recognize him.]]

* PlayerParty: There are a total of six companions who can join the Last Castoff on their travels.

* AdaptationExpansion: While the underpinnings of the game are faithful to the tabletop game, Sagus Cliffs, the Changing God, castoffs, the Endless Battle, the Bloom, Ghibra, the Oasis of M'ra Jolios, the Denda O'hur, the Children of the Endless Gate, the Valley of Dead Heroes, and more were all created for this game, enough to earn the game a tabletop sourcebook unto itself.

** Not one but three (not unrelated) death cults in the form of the Sagus Cliffs' [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalistic undertakers]] the [[CannibalismSuperpower Denda]] [[EatBrainForMemories O'hur]], their [[BloodKnight murderous]] [[RenegadeSplinterFaction offshoot]] the [[ReligionOfEvil Children of]] [[DeathSeeker the Endless Gate]], and the comparatively benign Memorialists, caretakers of the great Necropolis in the Valley of Dead Heroes who believe this life is a false one [[{{Reincarnation}} along the road to]] [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence the true afterlife]]. All three make up a [[DecompositeCharacter Decomposite]] {{Expy}} of the Dustmen and Collectors from ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}''.

** While at one point more were planned, here are only three foci in the finished game: Brandishes A Silver Tongue, Breathes Shadow, and Masters Defense. All three are unlocked and must be chosen at the same time, early in the game. Unlike in ''Planescape: Torment'', the Last Castoff's class (a combination of type and focus) is set and cannot be altered once chosen.
** The Oasis of M'ra Jolios, which at one point was going to be the game's second major hub, before the Bloom ascended to the role instead. An enormous globe of water in exact center of the circular desert known as the Lost Sea, the Oasis the home of the aquatic [[FishPeople Ghibra]]. Currently it only appears in one of the game's meres and briefly as a memory in [[spoiler:the Labyrinth on your way to confront the Specter for the final time.]]

** Not one but three (not unrelated) death cults in the form of the [[ImAHumanitarian cannibal]] undertakers of the [[CannibalismSuperpower Denda]] [[EatBrainForMemories O'hur]], their [[BloodKnight murderous]] [[RenegadeSplinterFaction offshoot]] the [[ReligionOfEvil Children of]] [[DeathSeeker the Endless Gate]], and the comparatively benign Memorialists, caretakers of the great Necropolis in the Valley of Dead Heroes who believe this life is a false one [[{{Reincarnation}}on the road to]] [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence the true afterlife]]. All three make up a [[DecompositeCharacter Decomposite]] {{Expy}} of the Dustmen and Collectors from ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}''.

** The Oasis of M'ra Jolios, which at one point was going to be the game's second major hub, before the Bloom ascended to that role instead. An enormous globe of water in exact center of the circular desert known as the Lost Sea, the Oasis the home of the aquatic [[FishPeople Ghibra]]. Currently it only appears in one of the game's meres and briefly as a memory in [[spoiler:the Labyrinth on your way to confront the Specter for the final time.]]

* Sagus Cliffs even ''sounds'' like Sigil. Its guards dress in purple instead of red and there's only one man in bladed armor who came to the city as an invader, but there are bite-sized versions of the Foundry and the Mortuary, even an alien race whose language the Last Castoff can either learn or [[RepressedMemories remember]].

* MeaningfulName: The Sorrow is awakened from the suffering The Changing God has caused.

* YoureNotMyFather: At the end of the game, [[spoiler:Miika The Changing God's daughter]] confronts the being who claims to be her father [[spoiler:the Specter]]... and doesn't recognize him at all. [[spoiler:This is because he's just an ArtificialIntelligence based on a backup copy of The Changing God's memories. You can point out to the Specter that he can't possibly be the real Changing God since even Miika doesn't recognize him.]]

** Not one but three (not unrelated) death cults in the form of the [[ImAHumanitarian cannibal]] undertakers of the [[CannibalismSuperpower Denda]] [[EatBrainForMemories O'hur]], their [[BloodKnight murderous]] [[RenegadeSplinterFaction offshoot]] the [[ReligionOfEvil Children of]] [[DeathSeeker the Endless Gate]], and the comparatively benign Memorialists, caretakers of the great Necropolis in the Valley of Dead Heroes who believe this life is a false one [[{{Reincarnation}}on the road to]] [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence the true afterlife]]. All three make up a [[DecompositeCharacter Decomposite]] {{Expy}} of the Dustmen from ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}''.
** The Extremities of the Great Devourer, or, more descriptively, Bloom Cultists, who live inside the city-sized living [[PortalCrossroadWorld living interdimensional nexus]] of the Maw, worshipping it and feeding its countless maws what they need to open their gates to other worlds.

** There are only three foci in the finished game: Brandishes A Silver Tongue, Breathes Shadow, and Masters Defense. All three are unlocked and must be chosen at the same time, early in the game. Unlike in ''Planescape: Torment'', the Last Castoff's class (a combination of type and focus) is set and cannot be altered once chosen.

** The Fifth Gate is a dead ringer for ''Planescape: Torment''[='=]s Smoldering Corpse Bar, with its factory-like interior, unusual clientèle (including war veterans and ExpositionDump [=NPCs=]), and another cameo by the [[AnthropomorphicPersonification enigmatic vowel]] O.

** There are only three foci in the finished game: Brandishes A Silver Tongue, Breathes Shadow, and Masters Defense. All three are unlocked and must be chosen early in the game. Unlike in ''Planescape: Torment'', the Last Castoff's class (a combination of type and focus) is set and cannot be altered once chosen.
** The Oasis of M'ra Jolios, which at one point was going to be the city's second major hub, before the Bloom ultimately used in that role instead. An enormous globe of water in exact center of the circular desert known as the Lost Sea, it's the home of the aquatic [[FishPeople Ghibra]]. Currently it only appears in one of the game's meres and briefly as a memory in [[spoiler:the Labyrinth on your way to confront the Specter for the final time.]]

** The three not-unrelated death cults of the [[ImAHumanitarian cannibal]] undertakers of the [[CannibalismSuperpower Denda]] [[EatBrainForMemories O'Hur]], their [[BloodKnight murderous]] offshoot the [[DeathSeeker Children]] of the [[ReligionOfEvil Endless Gate]], and the comparatively benign Memorialists who believe this life is a false one. All three make up a [[DecompositeCharacter Decomposite]] {{Expy}} of the Dustmen from TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}.

** There are only three foci in the finished game: Brandishes A Silver Tongue, Breathes Shadow, and Masters Defense. All three are unlocked and must be chosen early in the game. Unlike in ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'', the Last Castoff's class (a combination of type and focus), once chosen, is set and cannot be altered.

* {{Cult}}: The game features three cults that act as special factions which will attempt to use the player character as a pawn, and cast them aside when finished. They are:
** '''The Children of the Endless Gate''': Death worshipers, some call them. They think of themselves as spirits trapped in flesh, and the horror of their cage pushes them to atrocity. They call themselves liberators and agents of freedom, and they leave no evidence of their passing but a tracery in blood.
** '''The Order of Flagellants and Austerities''': Once a hermetic and monkish offshoot of the Order of Truth, the so-called Scourges became a mendicant order and set out into the world with the appointment of a new leader a century ago. They are a missionary sect, devoted to cleansing the world of its many sins, among which are a reliance on the numenera and pollution of the flesh with extravagances and constructs. They feed on the rage of their kin, borrowing strength of will and thew, and run berserk if they are not stopped, laying bare the bones of those who oppose them.
** '''The Dendra O'hur''': A [[ImAHumanitarian cannibal cult]], they believe that the strength and knowledge of those they devour will pass on to them. Worshipping their Great Queen Sar'Lavun, the Lady of Maggots, they roam the land in search of new prey, cloaked in rags and tatters and leaving only gnawed bones in their wake.