Completed Let's play Tyranny, a classic old-school cRPG -- Blind LP -- Make Terratus Great Again!

[Tigranes]

I would tell him to actually read some proper history books, but he won't like history because they don't let you summarise vast civilisational changes in one sentence

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Tyranny is a bad game primarily because its gameplay (combat) is an inferior, dumbed down version of POE.

Unfortunately this. I liked Tyranny to the point I wanted to replay it recently but the combat is so mind-numbingly boring that I was stopped dead in my tracks again after just a few hours.

The original version I played also had the annoying downside that it railroaded you into revolt against Kyros. It is crazy that they had to add the loyalty ending per patch even tho the whole game was based on the premise of working for the evil overlord.

Still, the setting, atmosphere and your role as a judge in a lawless world was interesting enough to me that I wish there was a sequel.

Anyway, entertaining playthrough, Zanzoken!

 

[lightbane]

Wow, that was a dull read. The writing was SO EDGY AND TRYHARD! I dunno if they intentionally copied The Black Company, or took inspiration. Makes me wonder what Avellone actually did write for this thing.
Worse, if this is supposedly better than PoE and Numanuma, I can't even imagine how are these two meant to be. Probably filled with verbal diarrhea like a VN parody. For extra hilarity, if you ever played one of the translations of these games, you would notice they're REALLY bad, with non-translated text randomly shoved in, or poorly translated text which makes no sense.
A friend of mine confirmed that the Spanish translation of Numanuma is like that, and I doubt the other games are better, seeing the odd typo here and there in the lp text.
How the mighty have fallen...

It's ridiculous that Kyros would pair these two armies -- which obviously hate each other -- to conquer the Tiers when presumably the Empire has many others at its disposal.

That was really dumb indeed. I like to think that the writers knew that Chaos is self-destructive by nature, this is why the Chaos Gods always lose in WH40k and Fantasy, barring asspulls.
That's why the Disfavored are shown as so incompetent, and why the tryhard Blood Chorus are surprisingly competent (sometimes), so that it is not an one-sided choice.
These names by the way, are pure lol. I'm surprised no-one was named "Bloodedge" for real.
I liked how "*Glare silently*" is a default answer for several dialogues in the game.

It's ridiculous that the Fatebinder would be an active participant in either one of these factions' campaigns, when (a) we don't work for them and (b) we are supposed to be investigating them for treason.

Well, I can excuse gameplay mechanics here. Sadly, it seems there's too much trash filler combat.

It's ridiculous that Tunon would ultimately swear allegiance to us instead of Kyros when his entire characterization is that he literally doesn't care about anything except interpreting and enforcing the Overlord's law.

It's clearly player cocksucking, an ancient art practiced and perfected by Bioware a long time ago.

This game looks like it had potential, but ultimately it doesn't seem to make much of it. Mandalore tried to make Tyranny look better than it is. I remember reading the Codex review some time ago, but it was so long and dull I quickly forgot about it. I guess it worked as intended.

Also, as expected in a modern game, women in position of power everywhere, even in ancient times. Surprisingly though you can get away with killing lots of them, for what's worth. Either way, thank you for writing this LP and sparing me the hours it would take me to play this.

Lastly but not least, *makes the local hand gesture for penis*

 

[Poseidon00]

It's ridiculous that Kyros would pair these two armies -- which obviously hate each other -- to conquer the Tiers when presumably the Empire has many others at its disposal.

She wanted them to fail and to have an excuse to get rid of them. Once the Tiers are conquered and there is nothing left to go to war over, there will be too many warlike and powerful Archons around for there to ever really be peace. Infighting would be inevitable, so you might as well get rid of the two most problematic ones to start with: the one who can't be trusted under any circumstance (Nerat) and the one who may be honorable but whose loyalty is in great question (Ashe). Kyros does not want to kill her subjects directly and arbitrarily, however, because it makes the rest of them disloyal, wondering if they could be next. She at least needs a pretext, so the rest know that they have nothing to fear as long as they keep in line. That was the in-game reason that was given, and imo it was one of the better pieces of writing.

 

[lightbane]

^Really? If so, it wasn't shown in this LP. I doubted the game was smart enough to pull of that kind of reasoning, I thought they were going for the Law vs Chaos argument thing.

 

[Poseidon00]

^Really? If so, it wasn't shown in this LP. I doubted the game was smart enough to pull of that kind of reasoning, I thought they were going for the Law vs Chaos argument thing.

Yep i'm quite sure that was the reasoning. Most of it you learn from asking certain questions in missives iirc.

 

[Demo.Graph]

It's ridiculous that Kyros would pair these two armies -- which obviously hate each other -- to conquer the Tiers when presumably the Empire has many others at its disposal.

She wanted them to fail and to have an excuse to get rid of them. Once the Tiers are conquered and there is nothing left to go to war over, there will be too many warlike and powerful Archons around for there to ever really be peace. Infighting would be inevitable, so you might as well get rid of the two most problematic ones to start with: the one who can't be trusted under any circumstance (Nerat) and the one who may be honorable but whose loyalty is in great question (Ashe). Kyros does not want to kill her subjects directly and arbitrarily, however, because it makes the rest of them disloyal, wondering if they could be next. She at least needs a pretext, so the rest know that they have nothing to fear as long as they keep in line. That was the in-game reason that was given, and imo it was one of the better pieces of writing.

If it's the case then it seems to be a forced premise.
Firstly, very few generals IRL had ever been a threat when a war was over*. Usually it was enough to provide rank and file veterans with land and loot (or pensions, or slaves) and they began raising families and potatoes and stopped being a threat. No general is scary without an army. And if said general has a personal army, it's possible to send him to govern some prestigious colony and then begin slowly draining him with taxes while promoting his best followers to the capitol. And overlord has all the time in the universe to slowly corrupt the potential opposition. That is, before the opposition becomes aggressive.
And secondly, should one or several archons become a military threat, the overlord has WMDs. No army can be a serious threat against them. Overlord seems to have significantly more strategic weapons and the points to launch them from. She would've likely won a strategic war of attrition.

I.e. even a moderately intelligent tyrant wouldn't have required a civil war.

* Caesar and Napoleon usually come to mind, but they're false analogies. The first one was trolled into action by political competitors and had a majority of battle-ready forces at the time of his coup. The second was given power by other revolutionaries.

edit. Self-proclaimed fanboy of logorrhea rates my three paragraphs "tl;dr".

 

[Storyfag]

Usually it was enough to provide rank and file veterans with land and loot (or pensions, or slaves) and they began raising families and potatoes and stopped being a threat.

Oh boy. Pompey's veterans settled in Italy beg to disagree. Little good they did him.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Oh boy. Pompey's veterans settled in Italy beg to disagree. Little good they did him.

Exactly. They've stopped being a threat. Unlike unlanded hungry hordes of Caesar's rapists.

 

[Storyfag]

Oh boy. Pompey's veterans settled in Italy beg to disagree. Little good they did him.

Exactly. They've stopped being a threat. Unlike unlanded hungry hordes of Caesar's rapists.

But before the Civil War their mere presence made the Senate dance to Pompey's tune.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Oh boy. Pompey's veterans settled in Italy beg to disagree. Little good they did him.

Exactly. They've stopped being a threat. Unlike unlanded hungry hordes of Caesar's rapists.

But before the Civil War their mere presence made the Senate dance to Pompey's tune.

Mr. Magnus had nice PR skills, I guess. Though I don't remember the political details of the period.
My example is not ideal. You could also recall a diadochi system of veterans' settlement that helped subjugate local populations. Or cossack settlements. Those seem to refute my thesis as well.

The original point still stands. The intelligent tyrant doesn't necessarily need a civil war to get rid of his warlords. At the beginning of the game, one of those warlords is a grandpa that would probably die of old age soon. And another is a lunatic that leads an unwashed mob. And they both could've been nuked if they tried something fishy.
They only logical reason for "civil war" that I can see is a need for a industrial-scale manslaughter. Maybe the tyrant wants to get death/pain/blood mana for something.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

It's ridiculous that Kyros would pair these two armies -- which obviously hate each other -- to conquer the Tiers when presumably the Empire has many others at its disposal.

She wanted them to fail and to have an excuse to get rid of them. Once the Tiers are conquered and there is nothing left to go to war over, there will be too many warlike and powerful Archons around for there to ever really be peace. Infighting would be inevitable, so you might as well get rid of the two most problematic ones to start with: the one who can't be trusted under any circumstance (Nerat) and the one who may be honorable but whose loyalty is in great question (Ashe). Kyros does not want to kill her subjects directly and arbitrarily, however, because it makes the rest of them disloyal, wondering if they could be next. She at least needs a pretext, so the rest know that they have nothing to fear as long as they keep in line. That was the in-game reason that was given, and imo it was one of the better pieces of writing.

5 month necro!

I enjoyed this LP, probably much more than i would have enjoyed the game. The almost complete lack of talk about combat, strategy, builds, what have you, indicates that those things must not have been very interesting. Sounds like those team up attacks were just a pointless gimmick... So thanks for suffering through that stuff for us.

The story was interesting. Yeah the writing wasn't necessarily great, and the typos were ridiculous (Even in the ending slides. Did they do all the text in the game through voice to text on their cell phones?). But the overall gist was interesting, although of course a lot of it was wasted potential.

The entire thing made me think of Stalin's purges. A powerful dictator uses xer capable generals and politicians to conquer and solidify power. Then the dictator worries, now that I have conquered, what stops these capable generals and politicians from going against me? Well, turning them against each other goes a long way. So you purposely make all these people work together under odd restrictions, and play them off each other.

So that part made sense to me and I thought it was interesting. The transition from an empire at the height of its power and glory to the beginning of the collapse and balkanization is something that's happened a lot in history and not very well in RPGs.

Everything after act 2 seemed rushed. Of course, some of that could be fatigue from playing the game. Also pretty much every name in this game was incredibly stupid. I think playing as Trump was a brilliant idea and it helped keep the LP interesting and funny.