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

[IHaveHugeNick]

Miss me yet?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Oh, also, another thing

The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around.

Do these people even make a MODICUM of research?

Or, perhaps more accurately, do they even have a modicum of common sense?

 

[Bohrain]

Oh, also, another thing

The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around.

Do these people even make a MODICUM of research?

Or, perhaps more accurately, do they even have a modicum of common sense?

Seems like design based on pop-history knowledge. Meaning these kind of people probably think that the moment gunpowder gets developed in a setting it totally makes sense for people to carry around Mosin Nagants.

 

[J_C]

Oh, also, another thing

The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around.

Do these people even make a MODICUM of research?

Or, perhaps more accurately, do they even have a modicum of common sense?

Since when was historical accuracy important in fantasy RPGs? What do you say to glass and gold armors?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Oh, also, another thing

The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around.

Do these people even make a MODICUM of research?

Or, perhaps more accurately, do they even have a modicum of common sense?

Since when was historical accuracy important in fantasy RPGs? What do you say to glass and gold armors?

Try carrying around a 1m x 0.5m slab of iron and use it defensively and then come back to me to talk about "historical accuracy".

As to what I say about gold armour,

 

[Fowyr]

Since when was historical accuracy important in fantasy RPGs? What do you say to glass and gold armors?

When developers talk about Ancient Greece in one paragraph making grave mistakes and then introduce pulled out from their ass "Bronze Age" units in another, people start to wonder...

Meaning these kind of people probably think that the moment gunpowder gets developed in a setting it totally makes sense for people to carry around Mosin Nagants.

If only...

 

[J_C]

Oh, also, another thing

The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around.

Do these people even make a MODICUM of research?

Or, perhaps more accurately, do they even have a modicum of common sense?

Since when was historical accuracy important in fantasy RPGs? What do you say to glass and gold armors?

Try carrying around a 1m x 0.5m slab of iron and use it defensively and then come back to me to talk about "historical accuracy".

As to what I say about gold armour,

I'm just saying that all kinds of shit is made up in fantasy RPGs.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The old it's fantasy/sci-fi therefore anything goes.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Since when was historical accuracy important in fantasy RPGs? What do you say to glass and gold armors?

Nobody is forcing the devs to keep talking about the "Bronze Age", or Greek city states... or dropping in terms like "Greek hoplites". If they choose to go down this route then expect people to respond accordingly.

 

[an Administrator]

Can VD legally sue Obsidian for this?

The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around.

 

[J_C]

Can VD legally sue Obsidian for this?

The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around.

In Kwanzania, you can sue for everything.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm just saying that all kinds of shit is made up in fantasy RPGs.

Except that 'glass and gold armour' is made up shit that I can shruggerino at and walk away. 'Iron tower shield', on the other hand, is a result of ignorance that deserves nothing but ridicule.

 

[MRY]

Since when was historical accuracy important in fantasy RPGs? What do you say to glass and gold armors?

When the project lead explains that he is setting the historical record straight about iron and bronze.

Look, I would have literally no problems at all if they just said, "We've learned that iron weapons aren't actually better than bronze, but we always thought it was a great idea that the Hittites could run roughshod over everyone with iron, especially because the Hittites supposedly took it all very secretively and magically. So in our game, iron is more powerful than bronze, that also fits with the theme of 'iron' being associated with evil, war, and dystopia."

But instead they're claiming that they, all along, knew that iron was inferior to bronze:

The secret of his vast war machine, Heins says, is a new and fearsome technology — iron.

Historically speaking, it’s not that iron was any better than bronze, though. It was just way cheaper.

"A lot of times to make bronze you had to trade," Heins says, sounding more like a college professor than a game developer. "You didn’t always have the minerals necessary to forge bronze weapons in your own territory. Then you had very skilled smiths who knew the proper ratios to actually create the alloy that was durable enough to make weapons and armor. There’s a lot of expense that came with that, so most places could only outfit either partially in bronze or a small number in bronze.

In so many role-playing games the materials that the weapons of war are made from are simply a pastiche. Imagine World of Warcraft or the Elder Scrolls games and how they treat the difference between stone and metal and glass as simply a set of stat buffs. But in Tyranny, Heins and his team went a step further to explore how new materials would have changed the face of warfare in an ancient land.

"One of the things I love about this period in history is that a lot of people have this idea that iron weapons are inherently better than bronze. That’s because they’re thinking of steel."

While steel is thin and light, iron is dark, heavy, black as night and crudely wrought. Imagine swinging around a cast iron pan on the battlefield. Now imagine wearing a half dozen pans woven into a jacket.

"The first iron weapons were crude, heavy, brittle and prone to shattering," Heins says. But the proliferation was a game changer.

"With iron you only need a single source of iron in order to make weapons and armor. It was much easier for people to outfit larger armies."

And it’s with those bigger armies, some 10 times larger than those that stood against them, that Tyranny’s villain Kyros has conquered the land.

This is why all the "it's just fantasy" is not only unpersuasive as a response to these shortcomings, they only serve to highlight the shortcomings. It's like when the project lead says, "They're the Greek hoplites" when describing something that is not remotely a Greek hoplite, one breath after he has described what actually is a Greek hoplite.

Anyway, it's not a big deal. I think the game looks fun and, as I've said, I actually like the names, the campy dialogue, the colorful graphics, etc. But this rubs me more wrongly every time.

 

[J_C]

*shrugs* Sure. Usually I don't care about what are the saying, or what are they thinking. If the end game is fun and exciting, they can use sand weapons as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Darkzone]

While steel is thin and light, iron is dark, heavy, black as night and crudely wrought. Imagine swinging around a cast iron pan on the battlefield. Now imagine wearing a half dozen pans woven into a jacket.
"The first iron weapons were crude, heavy, brittle and prone to shattering," Heins says. But the proliferation was a game changer.

Now that displays no knowledge of metallurgy and history of iron weapons.
Iron and most of the common steels (0.2% -2% carbon content) have around the similar weight per cm^3. Iron alloys are mostly only brittle if they are not properly tempered to increase the toughness, by decreasing its hardness. Nearly all early early iron weapons have a high ductillity (comperable hardness to bronze), so that they would not shatter due to the high impurity.

 

[Bohrain]

they can use sand weapons as far as I'm concerned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLpUq__iQqw

Not done often enough.

 

[MRY]

*shrugs* Sure. Usually I don't care about what are the saying, or what are they thinking. If the end game is fun and exciting, they can use sand weapons as far as I'm concerned.

Marketing material is itself a creation that can be considered and evaluated. Also, when a game's story is said to be based on history but the project lead's history is dodgy, that may be a tell about the story's quality. More importantly, if you think (as I do) that they made a mistake about iron weapons and have constructed a giant system of rationalization rather than admit a mistake, that can reveal something about the developer's openness to learning from others. "Everyone else is wrong about iron, but not us, and that's why I love this game!" in a "professorial" lecture rife with errors is kind bleh.

Still, they seem like nice guys who love their project, and I'm glad to see them getting support from posters here and from game journalists as a bloc. A rising tide of RPG support raises all ships!

 

[Infinitron]

MRY Here's why I think it might be a mistake to completely disregard the sincerity of the game's (pseudo-)historicity. See this post: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/tyranny-gdc-2016-previews.107707/#post-4443623

That 1200 BC reference. Obscure to laymen, but widely known by history geeks. So it's not just the iron/bronze thing being artificially layered on a pulpy 300 Hollywood Greece foundation.

 

[Neanderthal]

Shame really that they cunt have bronze armour an weapons just as someat different, every fuckin RPG ends up wi your scrappers in plate armour, even a different colour'd be nice, plus some o that Ancient Greek harness looks cool as fuck.

 

[Mozg]

You know, I wonder why no low-budget/indie RPG has tried doing something like having like a hundred enemy units active at the same time to free-ride on the much higher power CPUs than the '90s had available. AAAs can't have sprite Doom levels of mobbing because they have to sell screenshots. It's the same principle as cheap-o shooters with crappy art assets that spam hypnotically beautiful visual and lighting effects that are 5% their art design and 95% your hardware.

 

[Infinitron]

You know, I wonder why no low-budget/indie RPG has tried doing something like having like a hundred enemy units active at the same time to free-ride on the much higher power CPUs than the '90s had available. AAAs can't have sprite Doom levels of mobbing because they have to sell screenshots. It's the same principle as cheap-o shooters with crappy art assets that spam hypnotically beautiful visual and lighting effects that are 5% their art design and 95% your hardware.

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear says hi (and bye)

But check this out: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gion-indie-rts-with-millions-of-units.101864/

 

[MRY]

I'm sure they're sincere and good guys and gals, Inf. But hoplites and phalanxes and Classical Greek culture postdate 1200 BC by centuries. Steel PREdates 1200 BC in the near east by centuries.

This is, again, the kind of thing that exacerbates my annoyance. I think it's great to hodgepodge history from a couple Google searches and a Wikipedia article or two, but don't trumpet it.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm sure they're sincere and good guys and gals, Inf. But hoplites and phalanxes and Classical Greek culture postdate 1200 BC by centuries. Steel PREdates 1200 BC in the near east by centuries.

This is, again, the kind of thing that exacerbates my annoyance. I think it's great to hodgepodge history from a couple Google searches and a Wikipedia article or two, but when that is presented as scholarship or historical correction, it is off putting.

I'm not saying what Brian said wasn't riddled with inaccuracies. I just think you might be going a step too far, by assuming that the entire pseudo-historical aspect is something that was retrofitted into the game at some late point as an obnoxiously geeky pseudo-intellectual exercise ("Ooh, I just read here that iron isn't actually +1 over bronze IRL! Let's put that in our Sauron-won-in-300 pulp fantasy game to make it SMARTERER!"). That assumption seems less likely when the iron-is-or-isn't-better-than-bronze thing isn't the only datapoint you have.

 

[Roguey]

It really does feel like I jumped back to 2007-8 into a Dragon Age: Origins thread.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

If setting is compelling enough, it can get away with almost any nonsense. But if you're touting historical references, get them right or don't use them at all.