It cost me an action to do it–and at one point I had a character at the right panel but she kept getting blasted away from it, able only to struggle back to it before her turn ended–but once I’d figured out that such a thing was possible, things gradually swung back my way again. I was having a rough time of it until I realized something ToN lets you do that its predecessors (both P:T and Baldur’s Gate, for example) do not: I could interact with the environment to access some terminals during combat. I forgot to get a screenshot when I was there, so I pulled this from the Internets of the same area… I tried to talk and think my way through it, but those insane AI types are touchy folk, and I soon found myself in a running (though turn-based) fight through a technological labyrinth as I tried to reach three interface nodes that would let me turn off the drones that I hadn’t yet spell-blasted to pieces. An encounter with some corrupted artificial intelligence drones in a long-buried technological enclave (which reminded me delightfully of some elements from A Memory in the Black and A Dragon at the Gate) wound up going sideways on me. Tides of Numenera has allowed me to talk my way through numerous confrontations–or at least given me the chance to do so. That’s not to say that there haven’t been opportunities for combat, but I’m playing a cerebral, semi-persuasive type with only slightly more health than a wet paper bag, so my inclination is to find as many non-violent solutions as possible.
I’m perhaps eight hours into Torment: Tides of Numenera, and I’m pleased to say it’s still feeling very much like Planescape: Torment.