Tyranny Pre-Release Thread

[Prime Junta]

Tyranny: pillage, rape, and jumping elves.

 

[Excidium II]

their nerves were aflame with the many joys of the raid

Spoils, vittles, war wives

Rape confirmed. U happy Codex

Excidium II

Hopefully there is mechanical representation.

 

[Roguey]

Are we assuming that they are going to combine mature themes with extremely silly combat in the game? (I am talking about the silly combo they have advertised)

Who is the target group for such a combination? I don't get it.

Bioware audience.

 

[Sacred82]

Don't tell me you lapped up that pile of BS because it was gritty/ madshoor.

There are so many disparate elements in this, the primitive social and technological level, and yet there's an administration sophisticated enough to run a world-spanning empire dedicated to the rule of law. And then there's the unexplained role of magic in it all.

 

[Prime Junta]

Don't tell me you lapped up that pile of BS because it was gritty/ madshoor.
There are so many disparate elements in this, the primitive social and technological level, and yet there's an administration sophisticated enough to run a world-spanning empire dedicated to the rule of law. And then there's the unexplained role of magic in it all.

There are many historical examples of massive Bronze Age empires.

 

[Sacred82]

Don't tell me you lapped up that pile of BS because it was gritty/ madshoor.
There are so many disparate elements in this, the primitive social and technological level, and yet there's an administration sophisticated enough to run a world-spanning empire dedicated to the rule of law. And then there's the unexplained role of magic in it all.

There are many historical examples of massive Bronze Age empires.

I doubt that Mesopotamia or Egypt constituted "the known world" in the sense of Tyranny.

 

[Trashos]

Are we assuming that they are going to combine mature themes with extremely silly combat in the game? (I am talking about the silly combo they have advertised)

Who is the target group for such a combination? I don't get it.

Bioware audience.

I haven't played recent Bioware titles (last one was DAO for me). Is combat in later Bioware titles as silly as archers flying in the air and shooting arrows from there? Bad combat is one thing, and silly combat is another.

 

[Prime Junta]

I haven't played recent Bioware titles (last one was DAO for me). Is combat in later Bioware titles as silly as archers flying in the air and shooting arrows from there? Bad combat is one thing, and silly combat is another.

Yeah that's DA:I combat pretty much. It's silly and bad, not just bad.

Mass Effect combat is fine.

 

[Sannom]

^
That was... good.

Shades of the Bridgeburners, or perhaps Bonehunters there. First thing related to Tyranny that pushes my hype-o-meter past "mildly interested."

This is the same writer who wrote what is considered to be the best PoE short story, right?

Are we assuming that they are going to combine mature themes with extremely silly combat in the game?

That wasn't clear yet?

 

[HoboForEternity]

if he is the lead writer in the game, then i am content

 

[Trashos]

Yeah that's DA:I combat pretty much. It's silly and bad, not just bad.

Damn.

That wasn't clear yet?

It is clear that the combat is going to be silly. It is not clear (to me) that mature themes are going to be involved and treated in a serious manner.

 

[markec]

their nerves were aflame with the many joys of the raid

Spoils, vittles, war wives

Rape confirmed. U happy Codex

 

[Duraframe300]

badler is a systems designer on tyranny btw.

Congratulations for going back into design.

 

[Duraframe300]

Wait, didn't I already post that?

....

Not a goood sign.

 

[Infinitron]

Wait, didn't I already post that?

....

Not a goood sign.

No.

 

[Crooked Bee]

http://www.redbull.com/en/games/stories/1331793021713/tyranny-rpg-interview-with-brian-heins

Tyranny: In Obsidian’s new RPG it’s good to be bad
The Pillars of Eternity developers explain what happens to a fantasy world when the good guys lose.



The world of Tyranny: No place for heroes © Obsidian Entertainment
By Rich Wordsworth on 9 May 2016

Statistically, not everyone who plays video games is a good person. A lot of people will be: doctors, firefighters, people who crawl around deserts on their stomachs defusing landmines. Still more will be just OK: morally neutral people whose work has no net good or bad effect on the world. Games journalists, for example. But that still leaves the others. The people who don’t call their mothers. Who see kittens stuck in trees and reach for Snapchat before a ladder. Who put pineapple on pizzas. Villains. Monsters. Reprobates.

Tyranny might be the first RPG for these kinds of people. Unlike almost any other RPG you’d care to name, you are not a good person in Obsidian’s next top-down, party-based fantasy. In fact, you’re pretty awful ‒ at least at the start. You’re part of the empire of Kyros, a centuries-old dictator that long ago took his armies and conquered the world, squashing all the two-a-penny fantasy heroes like uppity self-righteous cockroaches. The forces of truth and goodness were crushed, the light of justice and reason snuffed. From the cinders of the old world, a new and brutal regime raised itself up and brought harsh justice to all that survived. Well done you.

So, the question that Tyranny wants to ask you is this: now that the world is an overtly evil place, what are you going to do about it?

“Saving the world is not really an option,” says game director Brian Heins, frankly. “This isn’t a hero’s journey about saving the world: this is a much more personal story about your character and the world they’re in and the consequences of your actions. So it’s not about saving the world or destroying it; it’s more about your own personal journey and growth in this world.”

In essence, Tyranny is like one of those alternate history dramas where the goodies didn’t win, but now what’s done is done. The people who lived in the old world ‒ particularly the peasants ‒ were under constant threat of violence and exploitation by the corrupt and the ruthless elite. For all the bloodshed, Kyros’ ascension put a stop to that. The world of Tyranny is an end born of terrible means, but whatever else it may be, it is at least stable. Your choice is whether to go along with Kyros’ rule, or try to subvert it, surreptitiously fighting for freedom.



The people value the world’s peace and stability © Obsidian Entertainment

“What we were trying to do with Tyranny was to give players a different experience than what they see in most games and RPGs,” says Heins of this imposing edifice of moral grey. “Other games give you some evil choices or evil options ‒ we really wanted to tell our stories in a world where the easy path is the one of being the bad guy.”

“If you want to play that good character, there are definitely options and choices you can make… [But] ultimately you are surrounded by some bad people, who want you to work with them do things the way they want them done. So, if you do decide to work against them, there are going to be consequences to that.”

Working with or against Tyranny’s factions will be at the game’s political and moral core. As with Obsidian’s previous RPG, Pillars of Eternity, the game is about more than stabbing people with swords or setting them on fire with magic. In Tyranny’s hierarchy, the ruling class below Kyros ‒ the Archons ‒ are the biggest source of the game’s friction. Essentially a cabal of demonic cabinet ministers, the Archons are constantly struggling to one-up each other, ever conscious that their prosperity ‒ and their lives ‒ depend on how useful they are to Kyros.

A few notches down the pecking order, your advancement in the game will be similarly tied to how useful you can make yourself to them. Siding with one faction will change how others in the world perceive your party, giving with one hand and taking away with the other as you are rewarded with faction-linked abilities while somewhere else in the world another Archon’s minions will be tossing darts at paintings of your head for target practice. With all the factions somehow tied into or dependent upon the rule of Kyros, who you choose to side with will depend on how, shall we say, flexible you can be with your view of right and wrong.

“Each of the factions has its own viewpoint on Kyros’ empire and what needs to happen,” says Heins. “So, one of those groups you may ally with, for example, they may have a village that has been conquered during a war, and perhaps there are people who are resisting Kyros’ rule in the village. Ultimately the force you ally with may want you to wipe out the village entirely, the idea being that if this rebellion isn’t put down it’s going to inspire others and create greater chaos throughout the world.”

“So from their perspective, the greater good is going to be to slaughter everyone to prevent more death and violence occurring throughout the land. You can choose to go along with that, or you can choose to say, ‘No, we’re going to punish the guilty, but keep the people in the town alive and try to bring them into Kyros’ empire, and [make them] understand why law and order and the rules of Kyros’ empire are good for them in the long run.”



Tyranny will be familiar to Pillars’ stalwarts © Obsidian Entertainment

In a welcome nod to the dialogue system from 2010’s Alpha Protocol, however, the ramifications of the decisions you make about with whom to side and what to say will not always be obvious. Sometimes, saying the wrong thing to the right person will bring the greatest reward.

“In some cases in dialogues, pissing somebody off and making a character angry or react to you in a [negative] way will give you options for the dialogue or in other conversations that you wouldn’t have otherwise,” says Heins. “Provoking someone to attack you, for example, you could use that to say [to someone else], ‘Look at what a hothead this person is - he’s attacked me for no reason.’ You can use those moments to achieve other goals and generate sympathy. So, you can use characters in interesting ways.”

Moral and faction choices aren’t anything new in RPGs, but the other interesting part of Tyranny’s pitch is that, for a modern RPG, it’s going to be short: just 20-25 hours long for a playthrough. The rationale is twofold. Firstly, if you’ve tried to juggle Fallout 4, Dark Souls 3 and The Witcher 3 at the same time, you’ll have realised that the only way to complete all three is to give up your job and seal yourself in your apartment like a zombie pandemic is kicking off outside. And secondly, making an RPG a quarter of the length of its triple-A competitors means even more branching choices and consequences can be squeezed in.

“Ultimately, we wanted to make a game that people could finish in a reasonable timeframe, and then maybe come back to and play again,” Heins tells RedBull.com of the game’s truncated play time. “The amount of time that I can dedicate to 100-plus hour games is very limited… So I want to make a game that I could sit down with for a couple of weekends and finish and have a great experience, and then when I come back to it again, I can make different choices and have a very different experience.”

Tyranny’s replay factor will, Heins explains, come down to more than just choosing different factions. Unlike Pillars, Tyranny’s character progression system isn’t based on classes; instead, there’s an Elder Scrolls-ian skill-based structure in which your character will (intuitively) get better at the things they do most – like real life, only with more fireballs. The result, according to Heins, is that players who want to run a standard fantasy build – your Mages, your Tanks, your Rogues – will be able to do so organically by choosing actions that play to those classes’ strengths. But if you’re feeling more adventurous, you can invest your time in novel combinations of abilities to create your own anti-heroic mish-mash.


The upgrade system makes mixed classes intuitive © Obsidian Entertainment

“One of the things I like about this sort of system is that you can make your character the way you want to, and those players who want to make a Tank or a Mage or a Rogue, they can still do that,” Heins says. “The thing we’re trying to do is to show people that you can [also] create hybrids very easily. If you want to make a guy who uses a particular type of shield but can also use a bow or a javelin to attack from range, and then switch to a sword when enemies get closer, that’s a great character build. So, you can create these hybrid characters if you want to, and have the guy who’s using bow attacks for distance and also calling down lightning bolts if you want to, and those options are great for players to try and mix and match.”

This is usually the paragraph that comes with a ‘but’. You know the one we’re talking about. “All this sounds lovely, but: the game’s a Kickstarter, the mechanics a list of promises in a backer update, the story scrawled down on patchwork quilt made of bar napkins.” But, you would be wrong. Because while Pillars pulled in a little under $4 million on its Kickstarter, setting Obsidian up alongside Wasteland 2 developers inXile and Shadowrun creators Harebrained Schemes as one of the crowdfunding successes triumvirate, Tyranny has seen nary a cent of backer funding. Rather, Tyranny is being published by Paradox Interactive, of (among others) Cities: Skylines and Crusader Kings fame (Paradox also published Pillars, but only after it was successfully crowdfunded). Why is this a good thing? Because a), it means more details of Tyranny’s story can be kept as surprises, and b) it’ll be out this year.
“Ultimately, one of the benefits of working with a publisher on Tyranny is that we just announced the game at GDC, and that’s within a year of us releasing. When you’re doing a Kickstarter, from the very beginning the game is out there. That’s great for press and PR, but also means that every decision you make is in the public spotlight to a certain extent… We don’t have [that thing of], ‘Oh, we’re talking about this [feature] in a fan update, and then it becomes an assumed part of the game. We can remove things that aren’t working out from the game and not have to worry about having already talked about it publicly and having people be disappointed that it doesn’t make it in.”

“We don’t want to abuse Kickstarter,” Heins clarifies. “We don’t want to go there too often… I think we will do more crowdfunded games in the future, we just want to do it strategically.”

A new Obsidian RPG being developed in secret by a shadowy team of strategically-minded game designers? Sounds delightfully evil to us.

 

[Crooked Bee]

making an RPG a quarter of the length of its triple-A competitors means even more branching choices and consequences can be squeezed in.

That sort of sounds AoD-inspired (emphasis on factions + short but lots of branching), but we'll see.

 

[badler]

badler is a systems designer on tyranny btw.

Congratulations for going back into design.

Thanks, Duraframe. I've been wanting to go back into design for a while now. Just hopped onto Tyranny last week and have been playing through the game.

 

[Infinitron]

badler is a systems designer on tyranny btw.

Congratulations for going back into design.

Thanks, Duraframe. I've been wanting to go back into design for a while now. Just hopped onto Tyranny last week and have been playing through the game.

Oh, so you really joined just now? Wondering what the point is of becoming a designer on a game that's (I hope) pretty close to release.

 

[badler]

badler is a systems designer on tyranny btw.

Congratulations for going back into design.

Thanks, Duraframe. I've been wanting to go back into design for a while now. Just hopped onto Tyranny last week and have been playing through the game.

Oh, so you really joined just now? Wondering what the point is of becoming a designer on a game that's (I hope) pretty close to release.

Well, it has to do more with me just becoming a designer and finding a spot that can fit another designer. Although, I did request to go to Tyranny. I am very familiar with the engine and the Obsidian tools created for it.

Also, if there are two things that an Obsidian always seems to need more of at the tail of a project, it's design and programming.

Not sure how much I can talk about since this isn't an Obsidian published title. I'll sit down with Brian today and see if I am able to talk a bit about what I will be doing on the project.

 

[Infinitron]

Not sure how much I can talk about since this isn't an Obsidian published title. I'll sit down with Brian today and see if I am able to talk a bit about what I will be doing on the project.

Ask him if Josh can answer the last question I asked him on Tumblr, too.

(it's about whether any of the ~hypothetical~ PoE2 engine improvements that he and Adam talked about last year at PAX Prime are already in Tyranny)

 

[badler]

Not sure how much I can talk about since this isn't an Obsidian published title. I'll sit down with Brian today and see if I am able to talk a bit about what I will be doing on the project.

Ask him if Josh can answer the last question I asked him on Tumblr, too.

(it's about whether any of the ~hypothetical~ PoE2 engine improvements that he and Adam talked about last year at PAX Prime are already in Tyranny)

Nice try. I don't expect that he'll answer many questions about any of that, though.

 

[Infinitron]

Nice try. I don't expect that he'll answer many questions about any of that, though.

Hey, he is the DESIGN DIRECTOR now, you never know.

 

[Crooked Bee]

 

[Ninjerk]

Reads like AoD.