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Game News Tyranny Dev Diary #8: Companion Overview - Lantry

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Tags: Matt MacLean; Nick Carver; Obsidian Entertainment; Tyranny

This week's Tyranny development update was supposed to be about the game's setting, but apparently they didn't have time to write that. Instead, Obsidian have delivered another companion overview, describing Lantry, the elderly spellslinger from June's gameplay preview. Although he's a bit more flexible than that. I quote:

Lantry is a Sage of the School of Ink and Quill. He’s a man of letters and numbers, a student of magic and nature, and an archivist obsessed with the accurate accounting of important people and events. His school is famous throughout the Tiers for amassing knowledge from all throughout the known world, but the Sages are even more famous for rarely sharing this treasure trove of learning with outsiders, despite their claims of preserving knowledge for the betterment of mankind. The Sages revel in knowing a little bit about everything, and Lantry is no exception – in his long years he’s learned the Sage’s traditional Preservation magic, as well as the arts of Healing and Concealment – styles of magic long ago pilfered from other Schools and Guilds that the Sages now boast as their own.

His life’s work has been contributing to the Chronicle, the running archive-of-all-things built over the ages through the long work of hundreds of Sages. Lantry uses his arcane training to witness history where it happens, as it happens – for him, magic is a tool to gain access to the battlefields, backroom dealings, and hidden ceremonies that most have to read about after the fact. For Lantry and other Sages driven on this pursuit often seem to live very long lives – a fact most Sages will laugh away as the byproduct of loving your work, but is in truth the mystic side effect of decades of use and practice of Preservation magic.

As a student of history, Lantry has a certain adoration for Kyros, for no one has the power to define the unfolding march of events quite like the Overlord – nobody in recorded history even comes close. So when Kyros’ armies came to the Tiers, Lantry was one of the Sages to argue for surrender – but his was the dissenting voice among the elders, and the Sages fortified their library stronghold of the Vellum Citadel in defiance of the Overlord. Old enough to know a suicidal plan when he hears one, Lantry fled the Vellum Citadel before the full force of Kyros’ wrath descended upon the Sages, in the form of an Edict of Fire that turned the mountainous archive into lava-soaked ruin.

Combat Role

Lantry was designed to be an efficient support character and a “jack-of-all-trades” of sorts. Being a well experienced Sage and learned traveler, he is the only companion to possess three unique talent trees. While these paths of specialization are not as deep as with other companions, they allow Lantry to be far more diverse in the development of his abilities.

Lantry is also an experienced spellcaster, which further adds to the flexibility of his kit. While capable of performing a number of roles in the party very well, we expect many users to find Lantry’s ability to heal, buff, and support the party to be extremely valuable.

In Combat, Lantry is skilled at wielding thrown weapons. He favors a set of iron throwing knives etched to resemble writing quills.

When designing Lantry’s talent trees, we wanted players to really feel like Lantry could fill nearly any gap in the party structure. Lantry’s Preservation tree focuses on supporting the party from the back line by buffing allies with renewing magic, healing them, and even bringing them back from the brink of unconsciousness. His Sage tree excels at emphasizing the use of spells and abilities that debilitate foes to aid the party. Finally, Lantry’s Quill tree shifts him into a deadly offensive thrown weapon specialist.

Below are some of the abilities available to Lantry:

Charged Throw: Lantry gains the ability to passively channel magical energies into his Quill as he throws it. Charged Throw makes Lantry’s thrown critical hits trigger explosions of arcane energy, damaging all nearby enemies.

Quillstorm: Raising his hands to the sky, Lantry forms a writhing cloud of arcane quills. With a wave of his hand, each quill is sent raining over his enemies, cutting deep and causing a lasting Bleed effect.

Stance: Mage Slayer: Lantry’s knowledge of workings of magic have also taught him how to quell it. While in this stance, each of Lantry’s attacks can silence enemy spellcasters and apply a lasting penalty to their magical abilities.

Watcher’s Judgment: The wrath of a Sage brings with it many levels of magical debilitation. With Watcher’s Judgment Lantry can charge his weapon and unleash a burst of energy on impact. This attack severely diminishes the enemy’s defenses against magical attacks. If Lantry can perform this action from stealth, the enemy is also Paralyzed.

Renewal: Lantry uses Sage magic to restore the party’s weapons and armor to pristine condition, increasing the protectiveness of armor and the ability for weapon’s to penetrate enemy defense.

Second Breath: Producing a small vial from his garbs, Lantry moves to a fallen comrade to revive them in battle.

Lantry has the answer to nearly any problem. Abilities like Renewal and Second Breath are largely helpful and can sway the tide of battle or even help to find victory in the face of defeat. With so many options available to him, one of the greater challenges when playing Lantry is simply deciding which area of the battle he is needed most and how to get him there. While a well-timed Silence attack might prevent a powerful spell from being cast, there may also be an ally nearing defeat who could use healing. Positioning Lantry on the battlefield where he is both safe from danger and can respond to as many opportunities as possible is key to playing him effectively.

Through flexibility, support, and high impact decisions, Lantry is an invaluable companion and a boon to any party.
With this update, we've now learned about all three companions from the preview. We do know that there are at least two more. If they're going to introduce them all before the game's release, it looks like it probably won't be out before October.
 

DeepOcean

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So many words to decribe a healer/crowd control mage... I got it, he will heal the tank while it is agroing the mobs and the DPS ranged dealer shoot AoEs over the tank, this will be a pretty good support player to be on the raid, maybe we will get some nice purple legendaries.
 
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Seems like an attempt at the ranged fighter/mage 'swing-man' (as in the basketball concept of a player that drifts between off-guard and short-forward, looking for the most favourable height/speed mismatch against the opposing team's 'pure'/shorter off-guard and slower forward) character that was fun playing as PC in the Baldurs Gate series. Instead of a front line caster, you focus your spell/stat/gear and dump con/str in favour of dex, so you have the choice between ranged magic damage, ranged physical bow, while keeping mirror image+blur+elven chainmail so he can block a gap in the frontlines (though he won't have any damage capability in melee)...

....which is exactly the kind of fun shenanigans that you can have in a 6-man party, that are a total waste in a 4-man party. There's barely enough motivation to have builds outside the holy trinity in 4-man as it is, especially as games these days take the edge off 4-man style by giving them all cross-class functions anyway. The most enjoyable part of 6-man party design, for me, is playing with the different shades of cross-class - you've got your holy trinity classes, and then you can have room for there to be meaningful differences between a front-line tank-buffer, tank-healer, tank-with-offensive-magic, a magic/physical damage dealer (i.e. can't tank), etc etc. Including the aforementioned 'swing-man', who switches between roles instead of combining them, which is what they seem to be going for here.
 

J_C

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Jesus Fucking Christ, this is the worst update ever! How boring this shit can be? A healer? They are introducing a healer? I don't even... Decline of Obsidian! Obsidian is really the worst, I hope this game fails and they go bankrupt and all of them will get homeless. Because they haven't produced anything decent since MotB. This game is beyond redemption, oh who am I kidding, it was from the start. Obsidian cannot make RPGs, they are sucking the Bioware cuck and the Bethesda cuck and and and... They should really quit their job, we don't need any developer on the RPG scene, just a few small indies, so we only have an RPG coming out in every 3 years.
 

Sannom

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The more we learn, the more I believe that Kyros is being unusually trigger happy with the Edicts during this last stretch of his conquest, and that it may be a plot point. So far we know of three which were fired (the one to quell the uprising of slaves and workers in iron mines before the war, the one on Stalwart which lead to Barik's current predicament and the one on the Vellum Citadel) and another one which wasn't launched (the one in the demo to push the Scarlet Chorus and Disfavored into putting an end to the rebellion of the Ventrien's Guard).
 

DeepOcean

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Jesus Fucking Christ, this is the worst update ever! How boring this shit can be? A healer? They are introducing a healer? I don't even... Decline of Obsidian! Obsidian is really the worst, I hope this game fails and they go bankrupt and all of them will get homeless. Because they haven't produced anything decent since MotB. This game is beyond redemption, oh who am I kidding, it was from the start. Obsidian cannot make RPGs, they are sucking the Bioware cuck and the Bethesda cuck and and and... They should really quit their job, we don't need any developer on the RPG scene, just a few small indies, so we only have an RPG coming out in every 3 years.
Hey, not our fault, Obsidian could start hinting the amazing stuff that is supposed to be on this great RPG without AoE and four party members, instead of MMO quill faggit healer.
 

l3loodAngel

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They should really quit their job, we don't need any developer on the RPG scene, just a few small indies, so we only have an RPG coming out in every 3 years.

Its not that we got much from established RPG developers anyway. We got scammed on KS a few times in last few years and thats about it. Besides they always drool about Bethesda, popamole and COD audience. Let the coon have it.
 
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Jesus Fucking Christ, this is the worst update ever! How boring this shit can be? A healer? They are introducing a healer? I don't even... Decline of Obsidian! Obsidian is really the worst, I hope this game fails and they go bankrupt and all of them will get homeless. Because they haven't produced anything decent since MotB. This game is beyond redemption, oh who am I kidding, it was from the start. Obsidian cannot make RPGs, they are sucking the Bioware cuck and the Bethesda cuck and and and... They should really quit their job, we don't need any developer on the RPG scene, just a few small indies, so we only have an RPG coming out in every 3 years.

They may produced medicore games recently but they still make better RPGs than companies at their level. Obisidian are still bros :hug:
 

DeepOcean

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This game pre release pitch stinks to PoE before release where Sawyer shown off his history degree that made people impressed but resulted on shallow references on a game with a very stock fantasy framework and a really BAD stock fantasy framework.
Here, "We are doing LOLEvil! guys, see how we are original! Our LOLEvil! is totally different from Bioware's LOLEvil! Our evil guys are... ambitious psychos with shallow conflicts that like to kill things... We totally won't make a stock fantasy game with shallow LOLEvil! stuff over it, trust in us, when did we failed you? We have a tight budget and very little time to spend enough effort on a setting that would require more attention than an stock fantasy setting but everything will end fine.
If you guys are so happy with yet another stock fantasy with a few bells and whistles with crap RTwP combat, good luck to you, we live on the age where mediocrity is the new goal anyway. Keep happy and don't think much.
 

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