Game News Brian Heins introduces Tyranny's Disfavored faction at Polygon

[Infinitron]

Tags: Brian Heins; Obsidian Entertainment; Tyranny

Since the publication of PCGamesN's lone Tyranny Gamescom preview last week, other sites have gradually rolled out their own previews, such as Rock Paper Shotgun, Game Informer, GameSpot, Polygon, MMORPG.com, and GameGrin. Unfortunately, none of them really had anything new to add. More interesting is a new feature published by Polygon today introducing the game's Disfavored faction. GameSpot had a similar article about the Scarlet Chorus last month, but this one is much more in-depth, featuring commentary from game director Brian Heins. Here's an excerpt, describing the various units of the Disfavored and their leader, Graven Ashe:

Stoneshields - "Stoneshields they fight with spear and shield — large tower shields. They create the phalanx that everyone else revolves around. The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around. When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army."

Crescent Runners - "Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the Greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins and other thrown attacks trying to provoke the enemy into the charge, at which point the crescent runners run back behind the phalanx and allow the enemies to break themselves against the spears and shield wall itself. Then they’ll harass with more javelin attacks while they’re fighting."

Iron Walkers - "These are the guys who stand in the center of the phalanx waiting for either people to break through the phalanx and reach the interior, or to wait for a high value enemy target. At that point the phalanx will part and the iron walkers come charging out and will take out the enemy commander or mage or whoever it is that needs to be defeated before retreating back inside the phalanx.

"I called them the Iron Walkers because the idea is that, just being able to be encased in a suit of iron armor and move is incredibly impressive at this point. Iron is crude and thick and heavy so it’s not like steel where it can be fairly light and still protective. It’s a lot of weight to carry on the battlefield. These are men and women at peak physical condition, they need a lot of strength just to carry around the armor they’ve got."

Oath Bound - "The Oath Bound are the elite among an already elite group. Each squad – or Fist – of Oath Bound is magically linked to the rest. When one dies, their strength is shared with the survivors. In addition, each living Oath Bound knows where and how their Oathmate died, and can seek out their killer for vengeance. The Oath Bound are the Disfavored legion’s scouts and assassins, sent ahead of the army to clear any obstacles."

Earthshakers - "Earthshakers get their power from the Archon of Stone. They’ve been studying him and his powers and developed a new school of magic based around creating tremors in the earth and ripping boulders out of the ground and throwing them at the enemy. They’re the ones who if the phalanx is approaching will send out tremors to knock them to the ground so they are weakened and can’t stand against the Disfavored units. They’re a small group of mages but when they’re coordinated with the Disfavored they’re highly effective."

While players won’t encounter a solid phalanx of Stoneshields in battle, they will meet small groups of warriors before and after larger battles. Understanding how they fight in rank-and-file units, Heins says, will help contextualize their abilities in a CRPG setting.

"We tried to design the AI so the Stoneshields will hunker down and try to attack you with spears or swords if you get close enough," Heins says. "The Earthshakers and the Oath Bound will attack from a distance while the Iron Walkers take you out from close up. Depending on the encounter and which enemies are spawned, you’ll get different tactics from the units and have to adjust your strategy accordingly."

But in order to survive the harsh world of Tyranny, in order to bring judgement to a frontier at war, players will have to deal with the leader of the Disfavored — Graven Ashe himself.

The warrior, already several hundred years old, has been in the vanguard of Kyros’ armies for generations. And, just as some Greek city states who first fought against and later allied with Persia in antiquity, Graven Ashe is a freedom fighter who was forced to kneel long ago.

"Somehow through that interaction Kyros won Graven Ashe’s loyalty," Heins says. "He’s one of the overlord’s most loyal generals leading the Disfavored, trying to fulfill Kyros’ dream of conquering the entire world under the peace of his law. He’s one of my favorite characters we’ve created so far in the game.

"Graven Ashe is a couple hundred years old. No one knows why but becoming an Archon extends peoples’ life. Mages can live maybe 150 years just by the fact of using magic. Archons seem to live until they’re killed. No one’s seen them die of natural causes. They only die when challenged by another Archon or someone of equal power."
​

Since Obsidian appear to have skipped their latest dev diary update, this article is probably the only Tyranny news we're going to get this week. They are at PAX West this weekend, though, so perhaps there'll be more soon.

 

[MRY]

"I called them the Iron Walkers because the idea is that, just being able to be encased in a suit of iron armor and move is incredibly impressive at this point. Iron is crude and thick and heavy so it’s not like steel where it can be fairly light and still protective. It’s a lot of weight to carry on the battlefield. These are men and women at peak physical condition, they need a lot of strength just to carry around the armor they’ve got."

Because bronze armor was famously light. :/ (Very early Assyrian iron armor apparently weighed around 60 pounds, so right in the middle of the 50-70 pound range for Greek bronze armor. So it goes.)

I really need them to start putting trigger warnings on the bronze/iron stuff! Can't we just call it adra and mithril and be done with it? Or just make it the Riddle of Steel?

 

[Excidium II]

People are paid to think up and write crap like this. P. amazing.

 

[BlackGoat]

TMI with this shit

 

[Caconym]

It's early morning here, and for a second I thought, blinking at the title, that Obsidian did to Polygon what inXile did to the Codex.

 

[MRY]

I couldn't help myself and clicked through the link.

"For Tyranny, the majority of nations in this world prior to Kyros’ conquest ... had armies that were numbered in the dozens of people, possibly over 100 for wealthy nations because outfitting warriors with bronze armor was very expensive. It took a lot of money to make ‘weapons-grade bronze’ as I like to say. It was a skill and a high art."

This is covered in Xenophon's famous Anabasis, which recounts the march of "The Dirty Dozen" back from Persia. One also recalls the famous passage from 1 Samuel: "Saul has slain his dozen, David has slain his two dozen." Or the famous comic book by Frank Miller, 3, about the trio of Spartans who faced down sixty Persians.

No Bronze-age nation fielded "armies that were numbered in the dozens of people." Even very small Greek city states could field Hoplite armies in hundreds, and as a whole the Greek "nation" could field tens of thousands. We know that not only from the sources and the archaeological record but from the simple fact that phalanx battles don't work with twelve on twelve. I mean, how would armies of a dozen people even work for any kind of strategy? Even chimpanzee attack groups are like 20 or so chimps.

Incidentally, what is even stranger about this is that outside of what I understand to be the fairly exceptional case of Greece -- and it's not like I'm some expert here -- very few armies in the Bronze Age were based on heavily armored soldiers. "Outfitting warriors with bronze armor" would be very uncommon; most soldiers would fight in lighter armor with lighter weaponry.

The only thing that makes this potentially utterly brilliant is if it means that the game's combat is a literal simulation of the battles going on. So, like, when you see that siege in the demo where it's like 10 vs. 10, that's not a symbolic sampling of the battle, it's literally two entire nations' armies fighting to the death. When you see a town of like twenty five NPCs, that's literally the entire population of the nation. No one else can do quests because there is no one else. When you summon up four skeletons, you have, at long last, enslaved an entire nation with necromancy.

 

[MRY]

Stoneshields - "When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army.

Crescent Runners - "Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the Greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins.

Oh god, make it stop.

[EDIT: Perhaps the term "hoplite" was a portmanteau of "hop" and "lite" referring to the spry way they jumped about the battlefield?]

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

Fuck it, I'm triggered.

Tags: Brian Heins; Obsidian Entertainment; Tyranny

Crescent Runners - "Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the Greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins and other thrown attacks trying to provoke the enemy into the charge, at which point the crescent runners run back behind the phalanx and allow the enemies to break themselves against the spears and shield wall itself. Then they’ll harass with more javelin attacks while they’re fighting."
​

I suppose strange unfamiliar words like peltast are too hard to process for the popamole crowd. Besides, only nerds care about that history stuff anyway, it's not like they're trying to sell a bronze-age inspired RPG to a niche audience.

Iron Walkers -

"These are the guys who stand in the center of the phalanx waiting for either people to break through the phalanx and reach the interior, or to wait for a high value enemy target. At that point the phalanx will part and the iron walkers come charging out and will take out the enemy commander or mage or whoever it is that needs to be defeated before retreating back inside the phalanx.

"Let's break our heavy and barely maneuverable formation, widely known for lacking in mobility and adaptability, right down the center, so that the people waiting inside of the formation can attack from within the ranks."
But hey, it worked for Alexander's troops! They just let the attacking chariots pass through the ranks then closed behind them! It's totes the same!

 

[skyst]

The only thing that makes this potentially utterly brilliant is if it means that the game's combat is a literal simulation of the battles going on. So, like, when you see that siege in the demo where it's like 10 vs. 10, that's not a symbolic sampling of the battle, it's literally two entire nations' armies fighting to the death. When you see a town of like twenty five NPCs, that's literally the entire population of the nation. No one else can do quests because there is no one else. When you summon up four skeletons, you have, at long last, enslaved an entire nation with necromancy.

Yet by the end of the game, I'm sure the PC will have claimed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of trash mobs people.

 

[MRY]

Why, if Kyros controls 90% of the world's resources and has enslaved 90% of its skilled artisans, is Graven Ashe equipping his most elite soldiers with inferior low-cost iron rather than bronze?

I demand a new epicycle to explain this deviation from logic.

 

[Fowyr]

I think they hired high-school dropout as designer. COOLAWESOMESAUCE Iron Walkers!11!

 

[Irenaeus]

Has this guy even played R:TW?

It's not an obscure title...

 

[commie]

I couldn't help myself and clicked through the link.

"For Tyranny, the majority of nations in this world prior to Kyros’ conquest ... had armies that were numbered in the dozens of people, possibly over 100 for wealthy nations because outfitting warriors with bronze armor was very expensive. It took a lot of money to make ‘weapons-grade bronze’ as I like to say. It was a skill and a high art."

This is covered in Xenophon's famous Anabasis, which recounts the march of "The Dirty Dozen" back from Persia. One also recalls the famous passage from 1 Samuel: "Saul has slain his dozen, David has slain his two dozen." Or the famous comic book by Frank Miller, 3, about the trio of Spartans who faced down sixty Persians.

No Bronze-age nation fielded "armies that were numbered in the dozens of people." Even very small Greek city states could field Hoplite armies in hundreds, and as a whole the Greek "nation" could field tens of thousands. We know that not only from the sources and the archaeological record but from the simple fact that phalanx battles don't work with twelve on twelve. I mean, how would armies of a dozen people even work for any kind of strategy? Even chimpanzee attack groups are like 20 or so chimps.

Incidentally, what is even stranger about this is that outside of what I understand to be the fairly exceptional case of Greece -- and it's not like I'm some expert here -- very few armies in the Bronze Age were based on heavily armored soldiers. "Outfitting warriors with bronze armor" would be very uncommon; most soldiers would fight in lighter armor with lighter weaponry.

The only thing that makes this potentially utterly brilliant is if it means that the game's combat is a literal simulation of the battles going on. So, like, when you see that siege in the demo where it's like 10 vs. 10, that's not a symbolic sampling of the battle, it's literally two entire nations' armies fighting to the death. When you see a town of like twenty five NPCs, that's literally the entire population of the nation. No one else can do quests because there is no one else. When you summon up four skeletons, you have, at long last, enslaved an entire nation with necromancy.

Because Tyranny is set in the real world, right? Where does it say that exactly?

I'm very upset that a fantasy game doesn't conform to real history.

I'm upset that armies are smaller than in real life ancient times but I'm fine with magic and demons.


Seriously though,it's just some guy talking.I bet the actual lore is more nuanced and the '100 soldiers' actually refers to some elite body guards. Hell, there are more types of troop listed here than would make up any kind of force if the actual number of a dozen or so would be true. Doesn't even make any fucking sense since any bunch of stick armed peasants would defeat such an 'invasion' of a few people, especially if they also had to garrison villages and towns, not to mention protect their own frontiers.

I seriously hope the guy is misquoted as it is pretty retarded and doesn't help to sell the game.

 

[Irenaeus]

I couldn't help myself and clicked through the link.

"For Tyranny, the majority of nations in this world prior to Kyros’ conquest ... had armies that were numbered in the dozens of people, possibly over 100 for wealthy nations because outfitting warriors with bronze armor was very expensive. It took a lot of money to make ‘weapons-grade bronze’ as I like to say. It was a skill and a high art."

This is covered in Xenophon's famous Anabasis, which recounts the march of "The Dirty Dozen" back from Persia. One also recalls the famous passage from 1 Samuel: "Saul has slain his dozen, David has slain his two dozen." Or the famous comic book by Frank Miller, 3, about the trio of Spartans who faced down sixty Persians.

No Bronze-age nation fielded "armies that were numbered in the dozens of people." Even very small Greek city states could field Hoplite armies in hundreds, and as a whole the Greek "nation" could field tens of thousands. We know that not only from the sources and the archaeological record but from the simple fact that phalanx battles don't work with twelve on twelve. I mean, how would armies of a dozen people even work for any kind of strategy? Even chimpanzee attack groups are like 20 or so chimps.

Incidentally, what is even stranger about this is that outside of what I understand to be the fairly exceptional case of Greece -- and it's not like I'm some expert here -- very few armies in the Bronze Age were based on heavily armored soldiers. "Outfitting warriors with bronze armor" would be very uncommon; most soldiers would fight in lighter armor with lighter weaponry.

The only thing that makes this potentially utterly brilliant is if it means that the game's combat is a literal simulation of the battles going on. So, like, when you see that siege in the demo where it's like 10 vs. 10, that's not a symbolic sampling of the battle, it's literally two entire nations' armies fighting to the death. When you see a town of like twenty five NPCs, that's literally the entire population of the nation. No one else can do quests because there is no one else. When you summon up four skeletons, you have, at long last, enslaved an entire nation with necromancy.

888

Here, retard:

 

[Sannom]

Looking at the news post on the Tyranny twitter, I guess I never realized how much Polygon was hated in that part of the woods .

 

[Darkzone]

Because bronze armor was famously light. :/ (Very early Assyrian iron armor apparently weighed around 60 pounds, so right in the middle of the 50-70 pound range for Greek bronze armor. So it goes.)

Depending on the composition of bronze it can weight 0.5g - 0.9g more than iron per cm^3. The thing is that in the bronze age (~ 2KBC - 1KBC) the people did not figure it out how to make a good bronze armor, this has happend only later in the early iron age (~ 1KBC - 600BC).
Dendra Panoply

No Bronze-age nation fielded "armies that were numbered in the dozens of people." Even very small Greek city states could field Hoplite armies in hundreds, and as a whole the Greek "nation" could field tens of thousands. We know that not only from the sources and the archaeological record but from the simple fact that phalanx battles don't work with twelve on twelve. I mean, how would armies of a dozen people even work for any kind of strategy? Even chimpanzee attack groups are like 20 or so chimps.

Sparta alone could dependend on the time periode muster up to 6K - 10K Spartiatioi / Homoioi and over 30K Periokoi. But despite this numbers most battles were smaller, because the troups were often spread to protect different objectives and due to logistic. In the peloponnesian war (Delian League vs Peloponnesian League) the battles were smaller with up to 20k participants (Battle of Mantinea). The Armies in the bronze age were most probably in the same numbers for the city states and states, because they had the around the same agricultural yields, hence similar population numbers (There were no major agricultural breakthrough in the early iron age).

Incidentally, what is even stranger about this is that outside of what I understand to be the fairly exceptional case of Greece -- and it's not like I'm some expert here -- very few armies in the Bronze Age were based on heavily armored soldiers. "Outfitting warriors with bronze armor" would be very uncommon; most soldiers would fight in lighter armor with lighter weaponry.

Yes and no.
A) Bronze was expensive, due to the need of tin and copper at the same place or transport costs, and it was used for all different needs like cups, cooking pots and etc. That is why iron has also risen as the main material of our civilisation, because you need only a single ore of iron to produce iron. And while the production was more elaborate, the iron price was lower.
B) Most of the bronze age armies had a different composition, than the later iron age armies. Most of the armies were cheaper fast poorly armored infantry troops and spear thrower (mostly to finnish off the charioteers). While the spear point of the armies were composed of chariots with noble worriors that were good armed and armored, but they had to remain maneuverable on their chariots so they could not employ to heavy armor. And this was even the main coposition of the early armies in the persian region, before the cavalery took over (even up to Alexander's conquest of the persian empire).
Ancient Greece is in that an exception, because they had good sources of cooper and tin, also they had no use for chariots due to their terrain and so they focused on the heavy infantry, but this also depended on the times and sometimes the spartan armies here more armored and sometimes they were less armored.

 

[Sannom]

That's one thing I've been wondering about the setting so far : where are the horse? Are there horses? Or any sort of pack animal?

 

[made]

Stoneshields - "When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army.

Crescent Runners - "Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the Greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins.

Oh god, make it stop.

[EDIT: Perhaps the term "hoplite" was a portmanteau of "hop" and "lite" referring to the spry way they jumped about the battlefield?]

You need to watch more historical movies. Hoplites were quite agile on the battlefield as this clip demonstrates:

 

[DeepOcean]

Sure, we heard alot of inane shit about this game every time a developer open his mouth, but the end product will be amazing and totally not a trash mob murdering simulator, with alot of fetch quests and with token reactivity made by ignoramus, sure everything will be fine.

By the way, it is the developers claiming they are taking inspiration from the bronze age and based on the very own logic of this shit world they are making, a) a guy that owns 90% of the world doesn't have a problem with money and b) it is beyond retard to think even on a fantasy context that a commander would only bring 5 guys to battle because he couldn't afford to cut some trees and give some spears to other 500 guys. Fantasy can't be a blank check where every retard writes any imbecile thing devoid of sense he comes up with, there is a thing called the intelligence of the audience and I don't like to be treated as a retard and I don't like people that writes retarded things otherwise I should like awful shit like Transformers because that is fantasy too, those comments about the bronze age are worrying because these guys are fucking ignorant, how I will trust on people that say so much ignorant bullshit and are this careless with details?

Hey, what is important is that this game will pay Feargus retirement bill and be a nice cash grab for Paradox.

 

[DeepOcean]

That's one thing I've been wondering about the setting so far : where are the horse? Are there horses? Or any sort of pack animal?

Don't wonder too much, it is fantasy and all horses were killed because they farted too much and Kyros worries about global warming.

 

[Fowyr]

Kyros

Very original name, by the way. More original would be only Kyros Skotos or something.

 

[Darth Roxor]

these updates are just an everflowing stream of lulz

 

[Sannom]

Very original name, by the way. More original would be only Kyros Skotos or something.

I found "Skotos" (darkness) but what does Kyros mean besides being the greek spelling of Cyrus (a.i the conqueror)?

a gal that owns 90% of the world doesn't have a problem with money

Her mastery of iron smelting is what enabled her to start her conquest of the continent in the first place, centuries ago. Back then, she was concerned with money and outfitting as many troops as possible with armor.

 

[Fowyr]

I found "Skotos" (darkness) but what does Kyros mean besides being the greek spelling of Cyrus (a.i the conqueror)?

It sounds similar to Kyrios, i.e. Lord.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/κύριος

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

Very original name, by the way. More original would be only Kyros Skotos or something.

Or, say, Graven Ashe.