Review RPG Codex Review: Tyranny - You'd Think An Overlord Could Keep It Up

[Sensuki]

I know debating with Roguey is pointless as most of the time it's an argument against a wall of quotes that the poster may or may not even agree with, or a paraphrasing of what the poster thinks might be a popular opinion.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Nice review.

Personally I think Tyranny is basically what happens when developers without old-school sensibilities attempt to make an oldschool game. It was obviously made by a B-team, people who likely never played the classics and just don't have a feel for this sort of game. They tried to check all the boxes without having any real understanding of why the boxes exist in the first place.

There's a good game in there somewhere, but it got buried underneath far too many poor decisions.

 

[Lurker King]

I know debating with Roguey is pointless as most of the time it's an argument against a wall of quotes that the poster may or may not even agree with, or a paraphrasing of what the poster thinks might be a popular opinion.

He is just trolling. He probably doesn't believe half of the things he says.

Personally I think Tyranny is basically what happens when developers without old-school sensibilities attempt to make an oldschool game. It was obviously made by a B-team.

You mean, it was obviously made by an Obsidian team. You should get used to it if you pretend to keep playing Obsidian. That is waiting for you in the near future. Popamole games with 2D art.

The only thing that I don't care for is the armchair theories about how nu-Obs is fucked because their new writers are English Lit grads who post about race relations on Twitter and want to shove their vaginapolitik into video games or whatever, because either I missed nu-Obs writers spewing about that in or out of their games, or there isn't any. Hence: the hypothesis remains more simple incompetence, until proven otherwise. (I don't see why 'they are incompetent and signs aren't good' is 'excuse-making' either...)

It is not an armchair theory. You just need to read the interviews of the writers they have been hiring, the stupid things Obsidian have being saying about being inclusive in order to realize that. The priorities of senior developers like Tim Cain and Josh Sawyer are not anywhere near cRPGs. It's all about activism, activism, activism. This is just a job they have to do in order to have money to do other things in life. I'm sure that they would drop cRPG if they could work in something else, like saving seals for green peace.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

Keep sucking that Vinney cock Lurker Queen.

 

[Lurker King]

Keep sucking that Vinney cock Lurker Queen.

Go to prison, faggot.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

I'm surprised you haven't passed out with your nose being up Vinney's coal mine for so long.

 

[Jarmaro]

 

[Gondolin]

My conclusion after reading RK47's let's play: Obsidian should lay off its writing and design teams and replace them with Jeff Vogel. Obsidian gets the story, factions and C&C, while Vogel gets those fancy graphics he can't afford.

Tyranny of Shaping: New Perikalia - GOTY 2019

 

[RK47]

u havent even seen their take on temple of elementranny evil in act 2
so amazing
blue disco light
red disco light
one weak against fire
one weak against lighting
one weak against ice..

my god. the depth.
i can't take it.

 

[Tigranes]

The Bane are fucking awful. Firstly, what is with the "blobby ethereal shit" design that is so common in 'spiritual' type monsters? It's fucking prosper. Secondly, at least humans use fucking proper abilities, these guys you can never tell what they're doing because they're blobby. Thirdly, the colour coded Simon Says.

Of course, we shouldn't even be traipsing arond in MYSTERIOUS ANCIENT RUINS to begin with - we should be doing the whole Conquest and evil empire intrigue.

 

[laclongquan]

I dont give a shit about anybody else's politic.

I am willing to suck it and slurp somebody's political agendaful writings, provided they are written well.

Tyranny, as shown in limited examples, are not written well, even in 1st arc whose quality seem to be highest.

 

[Invictus]

Whatever happens next with this game, if we get a DLC or proper sequel to wrap this story up or whatever,
I have to say that the magic system is the biggest evolution of the IE style games (and yeah that includes the outright MMO cooldowns from Dragon Age) but the ability to custom your spells to your liking and playstyle is by far my favorite part of the game
You can nickel and dime with the starting spells thought out the whole game if you want but the sigil system is simply amazing; you can pump the damage of a spell, give it doe abilities, speed up its cooldown, create new spells based on the elemental properties of the sigil, and decide which kind of magic user will you have.
Once you hace access to the higher up combinations (around 90 lore) the magic system really comes of its own.
I frankly cannot remeber another magic system that allows the level of customization depending on your playstyle.
Wanna have a buffer who focuses on healing and imbuing weapons?
A crowd control mage who specializes on stuns, illusions and aoe spells?
A straight up one on one magic user who has a lot of basic spells that hit harder and recharge faster than the regular versions?
The mages in IE games (most games too) usually get shoehorened into using the same "top" spells but honestly the combat itself might not be particulary "deep" but the customizing of that combat (because of the magic system) is damn good and it is ultimately better better than Pillars

 

[tuluse]

Yet that's always how it is.

Your pie in the sky dreams just can't be consistently replicated in reality. The first two chapters of Baldur's Gate are lousy. Torment past Sigil is a drag.

Doesn't this hurt your point since Baldur's Gate sold double (or maybe triple) what Torment did?


To your other point, Torment also had the Fortress of Regrets which people love. You need a strong opening and ending (or climax) so the player gets sucked in and gets a satisfying conclusion. You could also just make the whole game good enough so people don't find huge portions of it a boring slog to play through. Given how short Tyranny is this doesn't seem like asking too much. Other games like Fallout, Deus Ex, and even Shadowrun Dragonfall have managed it.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Invictus have you played morrowind or even Two Worlds? Arguably better spell creation they had.

 

[Invictus]

Invictus have you played morrowind or even Two Worlds? Arguably better spell creation they had.

Morrowind yeah... I think that would be the closest to a custom spell system like this but the one from Tyranny is not tied to mana but to cooldowns so the strength vs reduced cookdown vs extra effect or range really make it fun, plus I was mostly refering to party based games like this

 

[Roguey]

Doesn't this hurt your point since Baldur's Gate sold double (or maybe triple) what Torment did?

Bad beginnings don't hurt RPGs as far as sales go, it's a quality of life thing.

To your other point, Torment also had the Fortress of Regrets which people love.

I hated running from shadows into cannons.

 

[ilitarist]

Invictus have you played morrowind or even Two Worlds? Arguably better spell creation they had.

Morrowind had sliders changing couple of numbers in spells. And every offensive spell was a projectile flying in a straight line at enemy, I can get more variety from Call of Duty arsenal. Even Skyrim system of having spells being different in terms of gameplay (not using fire bullet on fire atronach doesn't count) is better than that, and Tyranny actually combining effects is miles ahead.

Morrowind is close to Tyranny in terms of spell creation being completely not needed once your character is past toddler stage.

 

[Fenix]

On the note of not even having the motivation to 'borrow' Tyranny, just recently got a call from a friend,
if I ever heard of the game Fallout, and what a great rpg it is. This ended in scraping the essential mods
together, explaining how to install them, to someone who doesn't how the find folders on his hd.
I'd never put up with this, if it were for anything else. Following was an introduction to Planescape
Torment, which he didn't know also. Now I'm getting constant messages of excitement.
Imagining experiencing Fallout and Planescape for the first time again... And then, after all
will be done, there will come messages of excitement, about Pillars and Tyranny, from which
he already heard, from 'the original folks behind the classics'. I will be there, when the tears come.

You are hilariously cruel.

 

[Q]

The problem with spell-creation in Tyranny for me that it depends on one skill alone - lore.
You need to train lore for any character, and that's it.
It can be a good system if they'd diverse skills for it.

 

[Invictus]

The problem with spell-creation in Tyranny for me that it depends on one skill alone - lore.
You need to train lore for any character, and that's it.
It can be a good system if they'd diverse skills for it.

Spell creation yes, but having higher skills in particular magic schools do make a difference in the success rate of a spell too

 

[Ventessel]

I watched Tyranny with interest during the dev cycle, and had some free time last weekend so I tried out the game on my brother's Steam account. I only played maybe a half hour, enough to experiment with character creation and fight through the first few encounters before I became bored with the combat (and also ran out of time that I could justify to myself being spent on generic RPG fights).

When I saw this review, I was partially relieved that I wouldn't have to wonder if the game lived up to it's admittedly intriguing premise (I just finished running a FFG Star Wars RPG game where the players were dutiful servants of the Empire hunting down Rebel scum in the aftermath of the horrific tragedy at Endor, so Tyranny sounded right up my alley!), but at the same time I was also just deeply disappointed in Obsidian. I had my concerns last year when Chris Avellone departed from Obsidian, and when I couldn't force myself to finish Act 3 of Pillars, nor get past the first few encounters of the White March DLC. Now it seems that the flawed but lovable studio that gave us Alpha Protocol has grown up, gotten its finances in order, and become a respectable game developer. Which is to say, their games are formulaic productions with the window dressings swapped out and a few small sparks left over from the creative heyday (the initial premise of the game, and the spell crafting system from what I hear).

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. This is a well-worn path, blazed by BioWare years ago. On the bright side, perhaps Tides of Numenara will turn out to worthwhile.

 

[MicoSelva]

The end result is that you will cycle through each character, click the shiny buttons, wait until the cooldown ends, then click them again. And again. There is no thought, there is no reason.

Looks like Dragon Age: Origins all over again.

Thanks for the review, Tigranes!

 

[Abu Antar]

The end result is that you will cycle through each character, click the shiny buttons, wait until the cooldown ends, then click them again. And again. There is no thought, there is no reason.

Looks like Dragon Age: Origins all over again.

Thanks for the review, Tigranes!

The repetition is more reminiscent of Dragon Age 2, to be honest. And I don't hate Tyranny, even if it is one of my least favorite Obsidian games.