George Ziets on Gullet Stretch Goal for Torment

Now that the deadline for the Gullet stretch goal has been moved and the funding for the project has reached 98.6% of the amount needed to reintroduce the area, Torment: Tides of Numenera’s lead area designer George Ziets has taken the opportunity to write a few words about it on his Tumblr blog. Assuming the area makes it in, we apparently have to look forward to a dungeon-like environment:

One element that sometimes worked. and sometimes didn’t. were the dungeons. While PST was primarily a dialogue-driven experience, it included a few dungeons, strategically scattered throughout the game. Some were purely combat-focused, like the mausoleum in the Hive. Others were a mix of combat, exploration, and dialogues, like the catacombs beneath the Buried Village. I thought the latter worked best. Combat wasn’t one of PST’s strengths, but when it was balanced with exploration and a few dialogues, the whole experience was tense, interesting, and fun. It also contrasted nicely with the dialogue-driven gameplay that preceded and followed it.

So when I designed the Bloom, I decided to include something similar (though shorter in length) a (dungeon) environment that skewed more heavily toward exploration and discovery. And since players would pass through this area on their way into the Bloom’s depths, it would be set toward the end of the zone. a perfect time to pay off on some of the player’s earlier choices.

That’s how the Gullet was born. This was where old and forgotten things would be found, devoured by the Bloom in the distant past, sinking slowly into its guts, finally coming to rest here. Echoes of the Bloom’s victims would wander here too, including victims the player may have (nudged) to their demise. In the end, all things find their way to the Gullet. (Last week, somebody on the team likened it to the Bloom’s liver, which I thought was a particularly apt comparison.)