I was rather annoyed that the only ending that left all my people alive, totally drives everyone else insane.

Also the big bad enemy is a total hypocrite, being a murderous shitstorm that'll kill anything and anyone in it's path(and has).... then accuses you and your siblings of being the same thing, no matter what you try to do.
Total bullshit!

Up until then, it was an awsome game!

I don't really think the Sorrow is a hypocrite. It's primary task is to protect the Tides for the good of the people, not safe guard every person, and it's actions seem fairly consistent - It only kills people who are abusing the Tides (In this era, that's pretty exclusively the Castoffs) or people who are allied with those who are abusing the Tides. You can even find someone in game who cruises the Tides, but is left alone by the Sorrow because he's not actually using them.

The Sorrow doesn't kill indiscriminately, unlike the Castoffs and the Changing God.

Wrong.
If you read through all the stuff in-game about the sorrow, specifically from the ghost you meet in the mutant sector of the bloom, he tells you that the sorrow has wiped out entire civilizations because they were 'abusing the tides'.
I guarantee you that not every man, woman and child in that civilization was 'abusing the tides'... whatever that vague excuse means; they are all gone though and it's because the sorrow killed them.

Btw I was playing the nicest person I could possibly play in that game; I was basically a saint.
So don't try to tell me that the sorrow, a mass murdering psychopath that kills entire cities is supposed to be morally justified in murdering my character and all his brothers/sisters just because my guy EXISTS!

I think you're really misreading this.

The Sorrow isn't some mass murderer shanking babies in the cradle out of spite, it's just a fancy anti-malware program that's sole purpose is to keep people from abusing the Tides. It may be terrible, and it may result in deaths, but it's not a hypocrite, and it quite obviously tries to minimize death when it can. It's been hunting people throughout the ninth world for ages, but no cities have been ravaged - It comes for Castoffs and then leaves.

And ultimately, your entire argument hinges on hearsay that lacks specifics. We never see the Sorrow do anything to anyone who hasn't directly opposed it or messed with the Tides. It even keeps clear of the largest concentration of Castoffs, The Endless War, presumably because it's still 99% mortals. The civilizations that are mentioned, if they were wrecked by the Sorrow as people say, likely used the Tides like we use oil, making their survival impossible, considering how the Sorrows programmed.

And consider that the only Tidal users we can directly observe are actively destroying the Ninth world - The Endless Battle is said to be ever expanding multiple times, slowly consuming everyone and everything. And the Sorrow, the only being that's actually lived through all these ages, claims that it's the Tides themselves tearing the place apart, an inherit result of Tide usage by anyone. I find it more likely that the previous worlds set up their own destruction using the Tides, and that the Sorrow gets the blame simply because it shows during these shitty times because that's it's job.

As a side note, I'd advise against starting any argument or post with the word 'Wrong.' Unless you are intentionally invoking Trump.

Since you obviously didn't ready everything in game about it, read this:
http://numenera.gamepedia.com/The_Sorrow

That is also blatantly told to you in game several times.
The sorrow is a destroyer; it doesn't give a rats ass about casualties; it starts off every battle by unleashing a mindless hoard of lesser killing machines which spread magic fire!
That's not something that's careful and precise about killing!

You argue that the endless wars is continually expanding so the sorrow is justified in killing castoffs.
While the endless war is stupid and the leader of at least the First's side has lost all worth as a human being, I must call bullshit!
One person doing something violent, doesn't justify another person/creature doing the same.

" The Sorrow isn't some mass murderer shanking babies in the cradle out of spite "
You are correct that it is not out of spite, however, It is a massively powerful murder machine that cares not at all for collateral damage.
The sorrow doesn't CARE about all the people you, your siblings or it has killed; it's just a creature designed to kill... period.

It destroyed entire WORLDS of people; it is not possible that every man, woman and child in those worlds was abusing the tides.

Wait, this was an ending? Damn, I thought that this was a result of my fuckup and the game lasts longer than the ~10 h I spent in it. :sad_frog:

Just because the sorrow doesn't care about collateral damage doesn't make it a hypocrite. It's primary function appears to stop Tidal Abuse. If it has to kill things on the way to stop those abusing the tides, then so be it - whether they're people directly abusing the tides, fighting alongside people abusing the tides, or in the general vicinity at the time.

This is supposedly to safeguard other life, so as long as it doesn't kill more people than it saves across the multiverse, that's not hypocritical - it's just a tad messy.

Well, for starters, your own link doesn't support you. It says the Sorrow MAY have destroyed the civilization, and even if it did, it's probably because the entire civilization was based on Tidal Abuse, and so saving any of them was impossible. Actually, people claim it's what happened, even though they didn't see it and have no proof. And most of the people claiming the Sorrow are evil... are the people abusing the Tides. Which the game shows almost certainly is a very, very bad thing. Except the Sorrow never attacks mortals that aren't protecting Castoffs, and thus TIdal abuse. Ever. It doesn't kill any bystanders, in the game, ever. It IS very precise and careful. It's not 'one person,' it's the vast majority of castoffs. Both sides of the Endless Battle are being run by dozens, if not hundreds, of castoffs. And that's just who's currently doing it - Many of the castoffs you see outside of the battle are just on break and are heading back there eventually. Except that's not true. The Sorrow spends most fo the game carefully tiptoeing around, limiting it's colateral damage, and while it wont directly oppose you if you choose some of the dick endings, it quite obviously wants you to choose the route that destroys the castoffs and leaves the world alone. No, it's a program designed to stop Tidal Abuse. Unfortinately, because of how the Castoffs are built, the only possible solution is to kill them all. At no point in the game is it concretely proved the Sorrow killed people without reason, and it has certainly not destroyed entire worlds, as in a planet - It's destroyed entire civilizations, of which every single person involved was reliant on Tidal Abuse, but like our current civilization relies on fossil fuels.

EDIT: And of course, it destroying those civilizations is still hearsay. It's still quite possible that those civilizations destroyed themselves and the Sorrow just cleaned up, like how the Castoffs are in the process of putting the Ninth world to the torch and the Sorrow's showed up to get rid of them.

I was petty disappointed that i couldn't beat the crap out of the sorrow in good old fashion way of sword and magic.I manage to take half of his health during the real world battle before i got teleported to the labyrinth.For me the game was about 30-35 hours and i did a lot of running around seeing if the npc have some new dialogue or a new quests.I did all the side quests and all the meres.There were a lot of cut content and the worst part is that it is obvious.The game is a good game yet unfinished mess.I didn't try to compare it to any other game let alone PT,in the end it just made me want to play PT.Now that i am a few hours in replaying PT i found that there is huge difference in the quality of the dialogue.In PT the dialogue is a lot more short and to the point with big variety to the dialogue options,while in Numenera it is wall of text that says nothing there is a lot of pointless and far too long descriptions.It is interesting that Tyranny had the same "problem" it feels more liketwilight fanfiction that dialogue between too beings.

Some oddly legalistic posts in this thread! Stories do not rely on sworn testimony, evidence, proof, or hearsay laws. Stories are just told. When the narrator tells you something, you can believe that that is the story (pretty much... But if it is that kind of story, then it is not hidden from you that you should judge the honesty of the story-teller. Thinking of 'Drood' by Dan Simmons), or Kurosawa's 'Rashomon'.)

Actually, stories (One's with depth anyway) do rely on internal proof, which is what the argument here is.

Unless it's Star Wars, in which case you need to get Lucas's special dictionary. Or did, anyway.

I finished the game finally, after +30 hours. I enjoyed it a little more than the original Planescape. At least, the final-final bad guy had more sense than the Transcendent One.

To be honest, from the beginning my money about whom was to be the final guy was: the changing God or the Sorrow or a third entity that would appear in the last chapter a la Transcendent One. At mid game, I was expecting a climatic battle with the minor "Sorrow" and then the final confrontation with the Changing God ... I was so innocent.

The Sorrow is a nice concept, slightly similar to the concept behind of the Lady of Pain. The sorrow is well explored in the narrative of the game. At least one civilization previous to those who created the Thabat made even more abuse of the tide than the Changing God and its castoffs. And they were wiped by the Sorrow (exactly, what was the abuse and what is the Sorrow is left open to debate).

Also, enough evidence is given in the game, that castoffs access to the tide is inherently bad for other people (maybe the Changing God never understand that he screwed the formula) and this have a big impact for the endings. Those endings are also 3 main occurrences (similar number to Planescape torment) with variants according to the quests done and the current party.

This game has unreliable narrators all over the place.


Re: the Sorrow, there's a ton of text in the game, but I don't recall there ever beginning a definitive statement that the Sorrow destroyed the Dalad(sp?) civilisation. Rather I came away with the impression they destroyed themselves, and maybe even created the Sorrow to prevent something like that from happening again. And most of our information on the Sorrow comes from the Changing God, who is extremely biased against her.

I don't feel the ending was bad. Underwhelming-yes, but not bad and definitelly not nearly as dissapointing as ME3 ending.

As for walls of text issue-I don't really see the issue here. I gotta be honest, I don't usually read all those descriptions. Id didn't read much of them in BG series, neither in NWN games and not even in Planescape:Torment . Because it was all, more or less within the safe zone of comphrehention-we all knew what we were getting into, when we were playing those, more or less.

However, with Numenera, all of that flies out of the window, because it's a free fall of fantasy and imagination and reading all those walls of text describing me what I was looking at and what my character was doing with it, was what made me fall in love with the world and the setting.

I liked Monte Cook's Numenera setting, but I never was crazy about it and, for me, having Torment game made in the same setting was just an icing on the cake. However, reading all those walls of text made me really fall in love with the world, the setting and the characters. It really made me care.

If somebody doesn't likes reading all those walls of text, well, to each their own, but to me-it was that writing that made the game amazing.

My only regret is that the game didn't offered much in terms of freedom and that it was quite a short ride...The Labyrinth was also quite underwhelming, I was expecting much more out of it, much more interaction, at least.

As for ending-I have no real complains about it. If you want to defeat The Sorrow-you can, but the price makes you wonder if it's worth it, and personally, I don't think it is... Heck, I've ended up with status quo option, because other options were just... Let's just say I don't like the idea of picking my poison.