News of a major Torment Tides of Numenera update on day-one has scuppered plans for some critics who have already begun writing up their reviews for inXile Entertainment’s role-playing game in anticipation of the review embargo date of February 28, 2017.
Our own reviewer has already put many hours into Torment, but the patch notes provided by the developer only today could signal a game changer in terms of the final review score as the changes are said to “greatly improve the game’s quality”. The big issue is: do reviewers know about this update, and will they still publish review scores at embargo? If so, there’s potentially a big issue.
“First, we’ve put so much love and effort into this game that we want all of you to enjoy it at its best, and the update introduces a number of changes that greatly improve the game’s quality, including gameplay improvements, balance tweaks, additional sound and visual effects, adjustments in conversations, revised user interface and more,” reads the official post regarding the day-one update on the Facebook page.
That’s a lot of significant changes to make on day-one, and though it’s great to see that the developer is ensuring that early adopters get the best possible experience, it’s a real concern. The update doesn’t bode well for early Torment Tides of Numenera reviews. The killer part of the day-one patch is this: “prior game saves won’t be compatible with the day one update.” So, our reviewer now has to go back and play 30+ hours of content to ensure he can provide a fair review?
The thing is, we haven’t received an email about the update and there’s nothing about a major update in the review guide we were sent, so we presume other reviewers haven’t either. We were lucky to spot the update notes on the official Facebook page, but others may not. So, when the review embargo lifts next week any outlet that posts their review online will not be taking into account all of the new potentially game-changing updates.
It could be a disaster for developer and publisher alike if that happens, because post-patch review scores may be higher if reviewers take into account any pre-patch issues they might have found. And then, you’ve got to look at it from a reviewer perspective too. The right thing to do would be for gaming sites to play the game again from scratch, so fans will get a true picture, but then who in their right mind wants to play 30+ hours of content that they’ve already played? What a mess!