Torment: Tides of Numenera Update #50: Beta Test, Order of Truth, Backer NPCs

The latest post-funding update for Torment: Tides of Numenera is notable for giving us a beginning of 2016 release window for the title’s Beta Test, which will be over 10 hours long and attempt to provide a true hands-on experience after the piecemeal Alpha Systems Tests. As for what we might see in the beta, we’re given an example in the form of Sagus Cliffs’ Order of the Truth:

The Order of Truth

We’ve given you a few glimpses of Sagus Cliffs before. Sagus Cliffs fills a similar role to the Hive in Planescape: Torment, serving as a central city hub in the eary stages and allowing for lots of exploration and deep world-building.

Now, we’d like to share a closer look at the Order of Truth, one of the factions in Sagus Cliffs. Below is a glimpse of their headquarters.

From George Ziets:

The Order of Truth is dedicated to the study of numenera artifacts of long-dead civilizations that inhabited Earth millions of years ago. Its adherents, known as Aeon Priests, have established enclaves throughout much of the known world. In the city of Sagus Cliffs, far from the lands where the Order arose, the Aeon Priests are few, and not all of them share the high principles of their distant brethren.

Fortunately for them, Sagus Cliffs sits atop a massive trove of numenera, layer upon layer of ancient cities and long-forgotten technologies, waiting to be unearthed. The local headquarters of the Order is inside an ancient starship, abandoned countless millennia in the past and locked in the accumulated sediments of the ages.

The update also includes a lengthy explanation of how backer NPCs will be implemented in the title and a number of assorted news updates about inXile and its developers, most of which have already been covered here on GameBanshee in the past.