Obsidian's Brian Heins, project director on Tyranny, was interviewed in the latest episode of "Axe of the Blood God", USGamer's weekly RPG-centric podcast. At just over half an hour, the interview fleshes out some of the known details about Tyranny's story and premise, choice and consequence, companions, combat and character system. But it's most noteworthy for Brian's frank admission that the game aims to have more streamlined combat than Pillars of Eternity to attract a wider audience. Honesty is good, right? He does promise to make up for it with a more complex magic system, but still no details on that. A suitably Codexian summary of the interview is available here.


Coincidentally, Josh Sawyer was also a guest on this same podcast earlier this month for an hour-long Pillars of Eternity retrospective interview. He talks about the things he'd like to improve in a potential sequel (which increasingly seems like it's already in development), issues another mea culpa about the stronghold, and offers some general thoughts about the reception of oldschool RPGs such as Pillars among casual and hardcore audiences.


A summary of the interview with Josh is available here. I think it's interesting that there a few things there that, in retrospect, seem like they're intended to preempt accusations of any future streamlining similar to Tyranny's.