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Interview Interview with the Tyranny Writing Team at Game Revolution

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Tags: Matt MacLean; Megan Starks; Obsidian Entertainment; Paul Kirsch; Robert Land; Tyranny

With Gamescom coming up fast, Paradox have begin to promote Tyranny more heavily. Yesterday, Game Revolution posted an interview with the game's entire writing team - Matt MacLean, Megan Starks, Paul Kirsch and Robert Land. And then they took it down for some reason, but now it's back. It's a nice look at the game's inspirations and sensibilities, with a few story tidbits as well. Here's an excerpt:

Matt Maclean, Lead Narrative Designer: The dark setting was one of the original pillars of the game’s design. ‘What if evil won?’ was the question asked in the earliest pitch documents. So ‘evil setting’ was an owner mandate from day one and as far as design constraints go, that’s a fun burden to have around your neck.

Our inspirations included The Black Company, the Fallout series of games (Obsidian created Fallout: New Vegas), and the ‘What if evil won?’ question was unavoidably read as ‘What if Sauron won?’ so there’s always a little Lord of the Rings in any modern fantasy, though I’m proud to say we don’t have elves or dwarves or a lovable midget race of any kind.

For my own interpretation of the question ‘What if evil won?’, I’ve always assumed the answer would be ‘sounds like real life.’ Evil wins when people learn (or are shaped by ignorance) to accept it as required and normal. So most of my own inspiration for Tyranny has come from real life. I’ve never read a book or seen a movie with a fictional villain as fascinating as Alan Dulles, Qin Shi Huang, or Kim Jong-Il.

GR: Did you take any ideas from books, games, or movies for this environment of evil winning? Which and how?

MacLean: The Black Company was very influential, with is an excellent show of a world wherein the cast of characters know the stories and myths of the magical bigwigs but are only semi-aware of how it all actually works. Black Company also had a great sense of soldiers-as-people and it didn’t fall into the brash-hero/peasant-savior nonsense that most fantasy novels can’t help but repeat to death.

Myth: The Fallen Lords was also a big influence, with its grim take on the true cost of being a hero. Myth was also inspired by Black Company, and like Myth, Tyranny features magical sociopaths with personality-driven powers set alongside grim, desperate regular folk trying their best not to die.

A world wherein there’s one big evil dude on top really only works when it’s sold with great big lies that get the average person invested in the evil (or just dependent upon it), instead of willing to resist it. And for evil to win long term, it also needs to be immune to self-implosion (since we’ve all read enough fantasy literature to know that evil defectors are involved in 9 out of 10 evil regicides). So with that in mind, I’ve found most of my inspiration comes from non-fiction: fascism, American exceptionalism, drug cartels, capitalist corporations, and militaries through the ages have all provided a great deal of inspiration as to how evil wins.

GR: Do you have a favorite faction to write about/for?

MacLean: My favorite faction to write was the Scarlet Chorus, mostly because it’s a faction of grumpy jerks and I’m a grumpy jerk, so it’s a perfect fit. More a lawless mob than a ‘proper’ army, the Scarlet Chorus is made up of folks forced to join or die, with the masses kept in check by aggressive gang leaders who rule as despots until they are challenged and dethroned. The folks in this bloody motley have to be rough, jaded, and darkly optimistic to make it through the day, so they’re all tinged with sass and deceit, and that’s far more fun than writing honest villagers.

Kirsch: The Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus are fun for different reasons. As the most militaristic and viciously patriotic, it can be enjoyable to test the Disfavored’s limitations—what a soldier will do for their unit, how they balance their emotions and needs against the needs of the legion, and how their personality measures up to the expectations of the legion.

When it comes to the Scarlet Chorus, this is more fertile ground for creative exploration. No form of psychological manipulation, physical torture, or all-around weirdness is off the table when the Scarlet Chorus is concerned. We’re talking a Fury Road magnitude of diversity and strangeness. Since every gang has its own rules and twisted leadership structure, there isn’t what you’d call uniformity in any gang of Chorus rats.

GR: The short stories suggest there's more to these factions than just burning and pillaging. Will we learn their backstories in the game? And is this indicative of how the narrative and role-playing will run in Tyranny?

Kirsch: If you want to understand the armies of Kyros, there’s no better entry point than the soldiers and Archons. Talk to everyone, take the time to ask questions and figure out who these people are. Even the Chorus understand that their way of life is unsustainable, and that someday the survivors will have to pick up pitchforks and boat oars for their intended purposes. If you’ve explored every dialogue option, we’ll know that we’ve done our job.​

If you'd like to learn more about the Scarlet Chorus, a detailed description of that faction, including its various subgroups, was posted on GameSpot on Thursday. Interestingly, in the Game Revolution interview, Robert Land mentions an Archon character named Sirin (who apparently appears in a short story which hasn't been published yet), while the Scarlet Chorus description mentions a captive Archon of Song. I'm willing to bet that those two are the same person, probably the unknown female character who appears in the game's logo alongside the other Archons.
 

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Megan Starks, Narrative Designer: I really like the dark humor in many of the Orcs' lines in the Lord of the Rings movies. I also like to think a bit about some different bad guy groups like the Governor or the people running Terminus in The Walking Dead, the raiders in Fallout 3, the reavers in Firefly, US prohibition-era gangsters, or hired gun type characters (whether it be a spy like Brock Samson from the Venture Bros or a sellsword like Bronn from Game of Thrones)
Another of our big themes is power and how it gets wielded. We take a lot of inspiration from Soylent Green

I liked MacLean's reply, but fuck, those are some shitty inspirations to have for a game. It's all pop culture, too. The only writer who didn't mention a single book, despite naming 6 sources of inspiration.
And Fallout 3 raiders? Seriously? :lol:
 

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Judging by the interview, MacLean and Kirsch seem to be the more highbrow element in this team (don't knock Soylent Green!)
 

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Tim Cain's husband is obviously the most monocled of them all.
 

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GR: What kind of tyrant would you be?

MacLean: I would tax/imprison/kill people for having children, using fossil fuels, and wasting resources. And I won’t force people to eat other humans, but it will be subsidized until we learn to live within the limits of the planet. And I'd establish a court wherein you can prove your innocence by fighting a polar bear.

:D
 

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Just read the first black company book... this is probably the first Tyranny news that actually makes me want to play the game.
 

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Are we treating fantasy novels as unapproachable high literature now? Of course they read it.

tdphys They've been namedropping The Black Company since the very beginning, but I think this is the first time I've seen a direct mention of Myth (which is what's more exciting to me)
 

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So with that in mind, I’ve found most of my inspiration comes from non-fiction: fascism, American exceptionalism, drug cartels, capitalist corporations, and militaries through the ages have all provided a great deal of inspiration as to how evil wins.
What sanctions might been applied to him for that?
 

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I liked MacLean's reply, but fuck, those are some shitty inspirations to have for a game. It's all pop culture, too. The only writer who didn't mention a single book, despite naming 6 sources of inspiration.
And Fallout 3 raiders? Seriously? :lol:
Yeah, that's the big problem modern devs have.
Where devs of past days got inspiration? - They fucking read decent books, like classic of US sci-fi of golden age.
Where modern tards got inspiration? - yeah, comix "books", popcorne movie and such - so their sources of "inspiration" had material that was already recycled 2-3 times, and even more.

Like Fallout had basis on Miller, Wyndham, Bradbury - Fallout 3 had basis on Fallout 1/2 TES lol.
Recycled stuff doesn't work, read books motherfuckers.
 
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I liked MacLean's reply, but fuck, those are some shitty inspirations to have for a game. It's all pop culture, too. The only writer who didn't mention a single book, despite naming 6 sources of inspiration.
And Fallout 3 raiders? Seriously? :lol:

Noticed this too, but I don't really know for sure how it would affect her writing. If those influences come into play when writing tongue-in-cheek henchman caricature interaction it could end up being good, but if Stark's job is to write a major questline that tackles philosophical themes this kind of namedropping worries me. Or it might not matter at all, since if PoE was any indication it's entirely possible they have writers with interesting ideas on paper, but who suck at excecution and end up doing wikipage-esque exposition dumps.

Also Maclean seems to think autocracy is synonymous to evil. At least I wouldn't mind living in a place where it's likely to get jailed by criticizing something if it that came along with some amount of security and added material prosperity.
 

Roguey

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Like Fallout had basis on Miller, Wyndham, Bradbery, Bradbury - Fallout 3 had basis on Fallout 1/2 TES lol.

You're making Fallout come across as more highbrow than it is, particularly when it too drew inspiration from pop culture like Mad Max. It also had a line of dialogue directly lifted from Soylent Green. :M
 

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You're making Fallout come across as more highbrow than it is
Nope, it's just F3 made on ideas of Fallout/TES (not ideas that were a cause for Fallout) was utter shit.

particularly when it too drew inspiration from pop culture like Mad Max
You forgot Miller and other.

It also had a line of dialogue directly lifted from Soylent Green.
Didn't watched it.

To hit the bird in the skyes you need to aim at stars.
 

Tigranes

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We are now fully in the age where game writers spend most of their free time playing other games, and not necessarily good games at that. Mock Sawyer's history degree all you like, but his personal preference for going into actual history is something that would benefit almost every RPG writer. Avellone also used to talk about going to movies, history, and other diverse media.
 
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So is this like that time that Obsidian cited Syriana as one of the main inspirations for Alpha Protocol, as well as Bond/Bauer/Bourne and the game turned out to be a shitty console corridor shooter with anime/manga tripe?

You are putting too much stock into the game and what the devs say. It will be a console action RPG on about the same level as Dungeon Siege 3. Unsophisticated pretentious tripe with CYOA-lite segments.
 

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We are now fully in the age where game writers spend most of their free time playing other games, and not necessarily good games at that. Mock Sawyer's history degree all you like, but his personal preference for going into actual history is something that would benefit almost every RPG writer. Avellone also used to talk about going to movies, history, and other diverse media.

To me it sounds like a history degree would make you better at writing more unique lore, but if we have learned anything from Bethesda it is that you can have the most insane acid trip influenced stuff on the background, but bad excecution can still easily mould it to a set of common tropes.
What I'd really want from RPG writers is good grasp of the genre conventions so you can consciously avoid or play around with them, enough outside influence that you can come up with something outlandish and the kind of screenwriting experience that enables writing dialogue that isn't either infodump or melodramatic spewl.
 

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You think it will stay a PC exclusive? The game has consoles written all over it.
Not Paradox's thing, though who knows with them going public.
With the game being RtwP, it'd take a lot more work than porting a TB game.
 

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There have been little hints that they're looking at multiplatform when Brian Heins was asked about it in interviews. If there's anything substantial to that, we might find out soon, at Gamescom.
 

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