When Torment: Tides of Numenera, inXile's spiritual continuation of Planescape: Torment, crushed its initial $900,000 goal and became the fastest Kickstarter campaign to hit the $1 million mark in just under six hours , you could practically hear the collective "welp" from the floored studio. Eager backers are still tossing money through their monitors and into the game's coffers, and earlier today, funding reached $2 million . With two lore-centric stretch goals already ensured, inXile now adds a third milestone that bestows more backstory, characters, and areas.
If total donations reach $2.5 million—it's currently sitting at nearly $2.2 million, so that's a pretty certain "if"—inXile will cast a summoning spell upon George Ziets, the former Creative Lead for Neverwinter Nights 2's Mask of the Betrayer expansion. Ziets spearheaded Betrayer's character and story design, and he'd join Numenera's already capable writing team.
Monte Cook , tabletop RPG legend and creator of the Numenera universe, will pen another novella setting up the game's events after he was brought aboard from a previous stretch goal. At this point, it seems like the only thing missing from the project's super-powered writing group is matching uniforms and a Headquarters of Justice.
Another companion will accompany your tormentings, bringing the total available party members to six. InXile is keeping the lid on who or what it is after the last companion's descriptive bio of "a changing ball of goo"—though if a literal slimeball factors into the studio's character design, the sky is the limit on what we'll see next.
We'll also get a new area, the Castoff's Labyrinth, a mysterious "labyrinth of the mind" centered around Numenera's yet-unknown death mechanics. I have a hunch it won't be something as simple as a reload after keeling over into the dirt.
Lastly, we'll finally get Planescape: Torment writer Colin McComb's apology over his Complete Book of Elves for the 2nd Edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Why? As inXile explains it: "You AD&D players may remember how dreadful this work was, making elves so incredibly powerful and unbalanced that all of our AD&D games were henceforth ruined until 3rd Edition D&D came to save us." Hitting the stretch goal will cause McComb to record a +2 Video of Forgiveness.
Head over to Numenera's Kickstarter page for more info on the stretch goals and funding tiers, or if you just want to boggle at the giant funding number steadily increasing in size.
