Some goals that received pledges won’t be available on the release.
Crowdfunding is always a tricky thing. It’s always great to see a game being funded, but with stretch goals it’s all about expanding the title vs. keeping it feasible. As it happens, not everything from Torment: Tides of Numenera’s campaign will be available when the game releases on February 28th.
The initial funding goal for the game was 900k. When it was achieved, stretch goals went live and at 2 million dollars there were a few additional elements including a “New companion: The Toy.” As it was noticed on inXile entertainment’s forums, this character is missing from the final game. It was confirmed and explained by the developer going by the nick sear:
The companion roster has been slightly reduced from our initial plans. Throughout development on Torment, our philosophy has always emphasized depth and reactivity in our storyline and in our characters. We know you would not be satisfied with anything else. During development, we found that the more far reaching and reactive our companions were, the better they felt and the more justice it did to the original Planescape: Torment. This trade-off meant we were able to add more companion conversations, banter, voice-over, quests, and story endings. We did not want to leave some companions feeling shallow, with storylines that felt incomplete, or be forced to shove them into the late game.
That said, we certainly haven’t shut the door on Torment’s development. We still have a lot of early work done on other companions and are open to continuing to work on the game. We can say that any DLCs or expansions that we put out will always be free to our backers of that game, so there is no need to worry about paying for any additional content in Torment.
As far as we are okay with such an explanation, we have a simple message to the developers: if you promise something, take money for it and then realise you are unable to keep the promise, it’s good to inform people BEFORE someone else finds out. It’s a simple truth of life.
What’s also important, Oasis (another stretch goal) won’t become a second hub in the final game. This is how it will work in Torment: Tides of Numenera:
You may have noticed we’ve been showing off the Bloom a lot lately, and that’s no coincidence. Despite being one of the earliest locations we showed, the Bloom was originally intended to be smaller than it ended up being. Though we initially planned for the Oasis to be our second major story hub, over time our fascination with the Bloom’s darker, more Tormenty feel, led to it being recast as the game’s second major city hub instead. We felt creatively this was the right thing to do, and the change did not shorten the gameplay experience.
As a result, the Oasis ended up taking on a smaller role, but you will still be able to visit it during the game.