Interview Interview with the Tyranny Writing Team at Game Revolution

[Morality Games]

I don't really have an agenda ATM. Going after Dragon Age: Origins money is a pretty smart use of the assets they have right now, inasmuch as going after New Vegas money would be a pretty smart move for inXile.

Companies making smart moves to build their treasuries doesn't bother me as long as they don't contradict previous commitments. I am a force of Lawful Neutrality.

I would be disappointed if they decided to apply Tyanny's dumbed down design to PoE 2 (which I still hope will be a BG2 spiritual successor), but I wouldn't be angry because Obsidian never specifically committed to such a vision for PoE 2 during a crowdfunding campaign.

All of this stuff is the same "good for what it is" assembly line products we were getting fed post-Troika.

 

[Excidium II]

They should just be honest about it.

 

[Sannom]

That said, the game and the writing and all that could be good, I'm just criticizing their PR about "evil".

Oh yeah, that one ain't good. Especially when they say that "Good has lost" and you read a little bit about the Tier and it turns out that they could be just as bad as Kyros' Empire. Just check out Brian Heins' answer on how Kyros counts as "evil" from a Gamebanshee interview :

GB: The "evil has won" tagline that Tyranny carries means that Kyros the Overlord has conquered much of the known world and imposed his own brand of law and justice, some of which we've experienced in one of your developer diaries. But what exactly characterizes Kyros as "evil" compared to the moral and ethics standards of the setting? What kind of social order did Kyros upset?

Brian: By conquering the known world, Kyros’ Empire has imposed a single, very rigid, view of how society should operate on a large number of nations and cultures. Individuality is suppressed in favor of conforming to the Empire’s laws and traditions. Is that evil?

In Kyros’ view, it’s an absolute good. The various nations and peoples of Terratus were constantly at war with each other. Fighting over food, water, and resources would escalate into fights over pride and honor. Entire generations grew up without ever knowing what ‘peace’ was. By imposing a single law over the entire world, Kyros tries to eliminate the differences between people that lead to conflict and war. If everyone just does what they’re told, when they’re told, everyone will get along just fine.

It’s a perfect utopia, as long as you’re the one who gets to decide what everyone else should do, or are someone who agrees with what they’re being told. If you don’t – or can’t – agree, then you are brutally punished or forced to comply with the Overlord’s laws.

The title says it all, really. The evil here is the evil of tyranny, of imposing your will on others with disproportionate retribution for dissent, rebellion and disapproval. They're not misogynistic or homophobic or anti-business. They're probably a mix of House and Caesar's Legion from New Vegas.

And while some of the novels and lore were pure shit, even Dark Elves and Chaos often weren't as juvenile as Tyranny snippets.

Oh my god, are you insane? Nothing can be more juvenile than Warhammer's fucking Dark Elves.

Threads like this are an interesting study in Yin-Yang metaphysics. It's almost as though people are inexorably compelled to argue no matter how little there is to debate.

This is a news thread, what did you expect? The haters don't do as haters do here, they don't stay away!

This has the same level of sophistication as Dragon Age: Origins. No way it won't go to consoles.

You're being unfair here. Dragon Age's Gambit system (I can't remember what is was called so I'm going with the FF12 name) was a lot more interesting and complete than what Tyranny will have.

As for your general point, Tyranny has one major problem that will make the transition to console difficult : RTWP combat. Origins pulled it off thanks to the Gambit system and the possibility to go third person, but Tyranny doesn't have either of those. If it's coming to consoles, I think we will have to wait a while for it.

 

[Lurker King]

I don't really have an agenda ATM. Going after Dragon Age: Origins money is a pretty smart use of the assets they have right now, inasmuch as going after New Vegas money would be a pretty smart move for inXile

Here we go with this bussiness talk again. The problem is that all the smart moves for medium studios are shitty movies for players. If they are going after popamole players, their games will be afwul.

 

[mutonizer]

If Romans did it, it must mean it was good! I want to be a Roman!

What I meant by that was that in our reality, "good" and "evil" are mostly just opinions, words that don't actually mean shit because there are as many definitions as there are people. Good people calls other people evil, who themselves claim to be good. That's why anyone keeping to this simple good vs evil dichotomy is usually viewed by people with a brain as a childish moron. Reality is a wee bit more complicated...

In fantasy and heroic fantasy above it all, they are not opinions usually but actual realities, physical ones even. There is no discussion about it. Evil calls itself evil, good calls itself good. That's the lure of it in part, the actual physical representation of the duality, its pure simplicity. Of course there are settings trying to replicate the complexities of our reality, which can be very interesting, but they usually don't describe things as childishly as evil and good and "evil" in usually more actual random chaos than anything.

And then comes Tyranny, making a big fuss about "a world where evil won", then going on to describe their ultimate evil inspirations with some kind of random mundane real word comparisons. That dude version of evil for his upcoming game, as he describes it himself, is fucking Nestlé...

 

[Morality Games]

I don't really have an agenda ATM. Going after Dragon Age: Origins money is a pretty smart use of the assets they have right now, inasmuch as going after New Vegas money would be a pretty smart move for inXile

Here we go with this bussiness talk again. The problem is that all the smart moves for medium studios are shitty movies for players. If they are going after popamole players, their games will be afwul.

Doesn't really change anything, though.

The golden age of cRPGs is over. Too much effort to make too less profit has fundamentally altered design priorities forever. MMO-style teamwork-friendly sensibilities have also ruined all of the "mainstream" tabletop RPGs, so there are no sources of "grognard" experience outside video games to inspire new designers.

KickStarter led to a brief resurgence of hope that those times could come again, but dynamics of platforms in this market are just too different from the late 90s for crowdfunding money to provide a sustainable incentive *not* to design games in the nu-style.

"Good for what it is" RPGs in the Nu-style is the most the Codex can hope for.

Spoiler

With the possible exception of companies like Iron Tower and Whalenought

 

[Roguey]

This has the same level of sophistication as Dragon Age: Origins. No way it won't go to consoles.

Let's see what the inventory looks like first.

 

[DeepOcean]

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.

The politicaly correct guide to evil, now I see where Obsidian is taking their influences from.

 

[Tito Anic]

With the possible exception of companies like Iron Tower and Whalenought

... Stygian, Spiderweb, Adom, DCSS, Tome teams and etc.

 

[DeepOcean]

All of this stuff is the same "good for what it is" assembly line products we were getting fed post-Troika.

Nope, Kotor 2, New Vegas and MotB were Obsidian high points, they couldn't even keep the same quality of the is good for what it is..

 

[Morality Games]

They should just be honest about it.

They aren't being dishonest, which in the entertainment industry is fulfilling a pretty high competitive standard of virtue.

This has the same level of sophistication as Dragon Age: Origins. No way it won't go to consoles.

Let's see what the inventory looks like first.

Inventory is going to fall into place along with the 4-man squad and "Trinity" influenced combat scheme.

It was settled the moment they used the word "Tank" describing the fighter character.

 

[DeepOcean]

Obsidian is being dishonest with my view of they being good guys worthy of my money.

 

[Excidium II]

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.

The politicaly correct guide to evil, now I see where Obsidian is taking their influences from.

He should just have given israel as example.

 

[Morality Games]

Obsidian is being dishonest with my view of they being good guys worthy of my money.

I might be too much of a Spinozist.

As subjects of supply and demand, companies like Obsidian are basically reflections of human interests and priorities at a huge collective level, inasmuch as companies like Iron Tower are reflections of human interests and priorities at a niche level.

Understanding the inexorable results of such co-dependencies (and making peace with them) is part of living a contented life.

 

[Lurker King]

The golden age of cRPGs is over.

But it's a problem that you think that way, because you lose sight of the things that matter. Debating about Obsidian's strategies is like debating about the strategies of Bethesda, it has nothing to do with our interests as players. The fact is that we never had a Golden age to begin with. We tend to ignore this because we are always contrasting the worst recent games with the best games of all the past decades combined. That is an unfair and vitiated comparison. Even if we tend to have more bad games in the last decade, we always had a bunch of shit amongst a few great games in the other decades. In a bizarre way, this is a good thing. I don’t have the time it takes to play all these games that are being released. In fact, I wasted too much time playing and talking about Obsidian and InXile stuff, wasted a time that could have been better spent playing the new classics with the care they demand (Age of Decadence, Battle Brothers, Underrail, etc.) or the old classics (JA2, KoDP, etc.) and still learn something in the process.

 

[Bohrain]

Tyranny is almost spelled the same as tranny.
COINCIDENCE?! I don't think so, this is clearly a method indoctrination plotted by those pesky SJW's from the Bioware writer goon squads and various gender research faculties.
Their objective is to make everyone a bisexual furry and kill anime.

 

[a mod]

So this dude's vision of "a world where evil won" is actually "a world where some capitalist or a nationalist or maybe just about anyone I don't quite agree with, won"? His worst possible visions of evil in an heroic fantasy settings, worth of spending years to make a video game about, are shit like Mussolini, Kim Jon-il and fucking Allen Dulles.

"[..]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..the..fuck? I knew they had no idea of what evil could be beyond their retarded, pathetic, narrow, ideological views before but now, all I can say is:

Spoiler

So at least that's done. Any new bits about actual gameplay to redeem this disaster?

She is a tweenage hipster jew, what else could you have gotten. What is the definition of evil? My daddy, who tries to tell me what to do. Oh, and white people.

 

[Morality Games]

The golden age of cRPGs is over.

But it's a problem that you think that way, because you lose sight of the things that matter. Debating about Obsidian's strategies is like debating about the strategies of Bethesda, it has nothing to do with our interests as players. The fact is that we never had a Golden age to begin with.

Well, my first post in this thread was:

Threads like this are an interesting study in Yin-Yang metaphysics. It's almost as though people are inexorably compelled to argue no matter how little there is to debate.

But the fact is AA RPGs are Codex community "interests" whether we like them or not because "cranberries" and "other reasons."

 

[Sannom]

Tyranny is almost spelled the same as tranny.

Look who's finally arrived to the party, six months after the end.

 

[mutonizer]

This post gets funnier if you know how Matt MacLean looks like.

Awesome!

Spoiler

 

[Morality Games]

I admire unyielding his commitment to self expression.

 

[Bohrain]

Who not inspirations from 1984?

1984 was about 20th century institutionalized authoritarianism, which was more about media control and making people spy each other. It wouldn't really fit in Tyranny's setting since it's about the transitional period between bronze and iron age where largest societies were city states.

The game seems to revolve around the idea of "What if Alexander the Great was portrayed as cartoonish villain who won and you worked in his middle management?

 

[Bubbles]

Who not inspirations from 1984?

1984 was about 20th century institutionalized authoritarianism, which was more about media control and making people spy each other. It wouldn't really fit in Tyranny's setting since it's about the transitional period between bronze and iron age where largest societies were city states.

1984 would fit the setting no worse than Soylent Green and "prohibition-era gangsters".

 

[DeepOcean]

They mentioned drug cartels as evil, drug cartels actually do a good for society providing hallucinogenic substances on demand for individuals , that is more value than the whole democrat party brings. Maxican and colombian drug dealers created more jobs than Obama.

 

[Bohrain]

1984 would fit the setting no worse than Soylent Green and "prohibition-era gangsters".

True, though gangsters and LotR orcs were namedropped simultaneously, which I think implies that the inspiration meant henchman caricature interaction and not setting or themes.
Soylent Green really leaves me wondering though, I have no idea what she meant by it being an influence since the only thing I know about it is the "omg its acshuly peopel"-twist. Maybe they are going for a similar twist, something really predictable like the player being Revan Kyros with amnesia?