Obsidian Entertainment Tyranny AMA Q&A
To promote their latest title, Tyranny, the folks at Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive
engaged in an Ask Me Anything Q&A with the Reddit community yesterday. On Obsidian's part, the developers involved were CEO Feargus Urquhart, Tyranny game director Brian Heins, programmer and designer Tim Cain, and PR manager Mikey Dowling.
Predictably, many of the questions were not actually about Tyranny, with plenty of fans more interested in asking about the Fallout franchise, Alpha Protocol, Obsidian's future plans, and more.
I'm going to quote a few questions and answers, starting with the Tyranny-themed ones:
From what I understand Tyranny takes place in a era similar to the end of the Bronze Age and Pillars of Eternity was inspired by the Early Modern Period. And of course Tim worked on Arcanum back at Trokia which was inspired by the Industrial Revolution. So I'm wondering, what's it like to work on a fantasy RPG which isn't set in the Late Medieval Period like almost all fantasy RPGs tend to be? How does setting it in a different time period than RPGs typically are allow you to explore new things with stories, technology, culture, etc? Do any challenges arise from going outside familiar ground? Also is there any time period in history which is generally overlooked that you'd love to set a game in?
Brian Heins: I think the benefit of setting games in different eras is that it helps you think about stories and characters in different ways. When you think about medieval knights and maidens fair, there are certain stories that come to mind and certain ways that characters would relate to each other (nobles vs. peasants, etc.). There's also a lot of, for lack of a better term, baggage that comes from having read a ton of fantasy books, playing a ton of fantasy games that are set in that period. Taking a step back and choosing a different era lets you shake off some of the mental baggage, lets you look around and see what new ideas you can use for your stories.
There are ton of historical eras I'd love to make games in. I've mentioned in the past that I'd love to make a spy RPG in the Cold War period. I can also see interesting possibilities in the colonial American era.
Tim Cain: I loved working on a fantasy game that was not set in a medieval era. I like exploring events like the industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism, the introduction of wide spread travel, the melting pot of race and culture, and other things that are often not found in traditional fantasy.
I think a big hurdle is that most people EXPECT traditional fantasy, so you need to redirect their expectations so that they are not surprised by the new elements in your world. This can often be done with an opening cinematic to explain your world, or during character creation.
Hey guys, a question on story paths. I know there's been a large emphasis on reactivity in Tyranny. Without giving too much away, how much variance can we expect within the Disfavored/Scarlet Chorus/Rebels paths in the game? How much does siding with one or the other 'lock you in'?
Brian Heins: Each of the major quest paths through the game is a completely different set of quests. You'll travel to many of the same areas (with some unique locations), but the things you're doing there will be different based on the story path you're following. So - a lot of variance.
As for being 'locked in' - if you ultimately decide you don't want to work with the Disfavored, Chorus, or Rebels, you can always choose to betray your alliance and move forward as a truly independent agent. That's its own unique story path, as well.
In terms of game design, what were the biggest challenges when developing Tyranny?
Brian Heins: The biggest challenge has been our level of choice & reactivity in the game. We've mentioned before that there are 4 major quest paths through the game, which give you very different quests, NPCs you interact with, storylines, etc. Weaving all of those paths together through the various areas of the game has been a challenge.
It's taken a lot of dedicated work from our design, narrative, and QA teams to have this all come together in a way that we're proud of. It's been a lot of work, and I hope that everyone enjoys seeing the different stories as much as we've enjoyed creating them.
For Min/Max purpose, Can you Respec the Player Character & Companions ? If so, does it give us back the Points spent in Skill Trees only or Attribute Points are given back aswell ?
Brian Heins: We do not have a respec mechanic implemented for Tyranny. It's something we've discussed, but we had to focus on other features for release.
Coming from POE, what game mechanics have you decided to evolve with Tyranny to push the genre forwards? And what do you feel were POE`s biggest success?
Feargus Urquhart: The two areas that we are evolving, or just trying something different, is really with the conquest mode during character creation (you create the starting state of the world, not just your character), and Tyranny is not a class based system. That's not really an evolution for the RPG genre, but it is for Infinity Engine style games.
For PoE, I think our biggest success is that we did what we set out to do. Create a modern IE game with a great story, and whole new world. Having a model to create a game off of made this easier, but we still had to really sit down and think about what we needed to update, and what we needed to keep the same. I give Josh Sawyer, Bobby Null, Adam Brennecke, and the rest of the PoE team a huge amount of credit for walking that line really, really well.
Hi there! Tyranny's stylized artwork in its cutscenes (for instance, the map full of Kyros' banners at the start of the game) is really incredible. What decisions lead to this art style, and what aspects of the imagery did the artist(s) focus on to capture Tyranny's tone so well?
Brian Heins: Thank you so much! I just passed your comments along to the artists who worked on those. It will mean a lot to them.
This style evolved over the course of development. It started as we were working on implementing the Conquest (during character creation, you get to decide how your character was involved in Kyros conquest of the Tiers). We wanted some visual images that would represent the various conflicts that players could decide on.
Initially I was thinking this would be something like Pillars of Eternity's Scripted Interactions - line drawings. Brian Menze, our art lead, wanted to experiment with different styles. He had some of our concept artists work on ideas, and Lindsey Laney hit on this style that was phenomenal. We decided to create all of the Conquest imagery in that same style.
When we were looking at doing our 'story slides' - the slides you see before the game starts, at each of the Act breaks, and at the end of the game, we decided to use a very similar look to capture that same tone.
What aspect of Tyranny are you proudest of?
Feargus Urquhart: Personally, I really like the art style, and the concept that we talked about years ago with the conquest of character creation works great. That original concept was where we asked the question, "What if you didn't just create the starting point of your character, but the starting point of the world as well?"
Brian Heins: I agree with what Feargus said, and want to add the magic system. It's an idea I've had in my head for a while, and being able to see it come together in the game has been great. Watching the reactions of streamers and press as they've been exposed to the system has been fantastic.
Also, this may sound sappy, but I'm incredibly proud of all of the hard work that the developers have put into this game. The game has shaped up into something far more than I initially imagined it would be, and it's due to the team's effort and creativity.
I've heard some people being worried about the "timer" for the first act in Tyranny. Can you talk a bit about this? Is it a strict timer that will force you to quickly rush through content? Or will players still have enough time to take everything in?
Brian Heins: There is plenty of time to complete all of the content in Act 1 within the 8 day time limit of Kyros' Edict. We set the time after having our QA team members play through the game on the various difficulty modes and keeping track of how long it took them.
Whats up with that review embargo until tomorrow?
Paradox Interactive: Honestly? In this case we (Paradox) got review codes out late to journalists. This wasn't intentional, but sometimes stuff happens. And when you have an RPG, you really want people to be able to play it as much as possible before reviewing so they can gather their thought and impressions, rather than rushing it.
Save often and in multiple slots, I guess? 
