Tyranny Pre-Release Thread

[veevoir]

Why bother to do it now, Infinitron? As you say, "low effort". Might as well package it with the dev diary that should hit in two hours!

In the land without brofists a post count agenda emerges

 

[HoboForEternity]

This topic really has devolved into one hivemind. Fuck the haters, this game looks good and gonna be pretty decent at least, and a great AoD-like game at best

 

[Sannom]

In the land without brofists a post count agenda emerges

What's a brofist?

 

[veevoir]

In the land without brofists a post count agenda emerges

What's a brofist?

Something that can change the nature of a man.

 

[Sannom]

Late to the party and reading the text on the spellcrafting screenshots, I wonder how the Archon of Stone got caught in an Edict? Did he betray Kyros? Did Kyros decide to punish him for being too destructive? Or was it simply a case of failing to get to safety before the Edict struck? Maybe we got in an argument with him and made sure that he got squashed?

 

[Infinitron]

Might as well package it with the dev diary that should hit in two hours!

Another preview: http://www.gamegrin.com/previews/tyranny-gamescom-preview/

Tyranny - gamescom Preview
During my time at gamescom I went to see what Paradox Interactive has upcoming. In what felt like a secret entrance, I was taken to an outside location to see what Obsidian Entertainment has been cooking up. What I saw impressed and revitalised my interest back in the isometric RPG akin to Baldur's Gate.

I had the opportunity to play and talk with a couple of the developers of Tyranny, the upcoming RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. Developed by the same team that brought usPillars of Eternity, fans will be pleased to know that Obsidian haven’t compromised on quality and have crafted an original and intriguing RPG. The build I got to play was pre-alpha and did contain a some bugs, but the overall experience was solid.

Tyranny takes place in a high fantasy world with a dark tone closer to the style of Game of Thrones. The world is already overrun and ruled by the Overlord Kyros. Taken by force the world now is ruled with an iron fist. You play as a Fatebinder, a high ranked office of Kyros’ order. Under the new order, factions are separated across the lands, with many in chaos with one another, your role has you become judge, jury and executioner as you travel across the lands bringing order and maintaining balance. This isn’t a story of good and evil as evil has already won, but is a story of progress and change where your actions will change the course of the world.

While talking with the developers I was handed the controls and placed in the middle of an instance, which allowed me to take an opportunity to try out the key features of the gameplay and experiment with the spell system.

My team comprised of a rogue, warrior and healer. Those who have played Pillars of Eternity will have a grasp of the controls straight away. The game uses an isometric view point with point and click controls. Lore, Athletics and Subterfuge are your main skills and they affect your character and party in many different ways. As the Fatebinder you are not defined with a class, your characters abilities are defined by how you play. Weapons, armor and spells can be found and can be used by any means, but they still hold certain requirements. The Fatebinder I was playing as had a focus of Lore meaning that he was a very capable and powerful mage. All members have Lore, but others have higher skill in other abilities. Others in my party had skills in Athletics, the warrior and Subterfuge, the rogue.

As you are classless, you can change your style throughout and your skills will raise depending on which skills you focus upon. Throughout your journey you will encounter other NPC’s that, depending on your choices, can join your party but other actions and decisions can have an impact on your party and the quests you’ll have available. You may not always have a healer, warrior or rogue in your party and you will have to adapt.

Combat is tactical with the option to pause before engaging to plan out your strategy. The enemies I fought had a number of weaknesses and strengths, these vary from weakness to fire to protection against lightning, furthermore abilities can be backed by combining your abilities with a teammate to create a power combo attack. You have adapt and manage your spells effectively, this can be used extensively with the ability to craft your own spells.

When crafting your own skills, secrets within the world can offer you lore about the world and new spells, called Sigils. You can have a variety of options to create unique spells. You start with a base sigil, whether it be fire, lightning or ice etc, you then chose the area of effect; it can be ranged or close quarters, finally you can choose the damage output, whether you want it to be instant damage or cause consistent damage over time, but you do need to bare in mind that the more detailed and powerful you craft the higher the Lore requirement will be. It’s a very indepth system and as the development continues the team promise more customisation throughout.

So far what I’ve experienced has been enjoyable. It’s been a long time since I’ve played an isometric RPG such as this and I know that fans of Obsidian’s previous RPG’s will be eager to jump in and explore this new lore driven RPG for many hours. Obsidian Entertainment plans release Tyranny later this year for PC, Mac OS and Linux.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Bubbles]

While talking with the developers I was handed the controls and placed in the middle of an instance

Intriguing. Multiplayer confirmed?

 

[Sannom]

It was denied multiple times before, so I don't think so. It might just be a case of a word having multiple meanings or a case of a word being used wrongly.

Besides, aren't you the one who went to Gamescom? Shouldn't you know?

 

[Infinitron]

It's like how there are people who call their characters in a single-player RPG "toons". Disgusting.

 

[LESS T_T]

A detailed lore-focused interview: http://www.polygon.com/features/201...-disfavored-kyros-a-story-of-bronze-iron-evil

OBSIDIAN’S TYRANNY: A STORY OF BRONZE, IRON AND EVIL

Explore your darker side on the front lines of a conquering army.


Many expected Obsidian Entertainment to follow its hit role-playing game Pillars of Eternity with a sequel. Instead, after some well-received downloadable content, the studio is on to an entirely new setting. Its next game, called Tyranny, is a departure in more ways than one. Yes, it’s still an isometric role-playing game of a classic style, but it takes place in a different time period on a different world, and it tells its stories from an utterly foreign perspective.

That’s because in Tyranny, players are agents of evil.

Instead of fighting against the darkness threatening to overtake the land, they pull that darkness behind them like a cloak. The goal of the game, says director Brian Heins, is not to create situations where players must choose between saving the puppy and sacrificing the puppy. Instead, players will explore the many ways in which that sacrifice can take place.

"When we’re designing our quests and dialogues," Heins says, "we have five evil options and then maybe a good option for players who want to take a slightly better path. You can bribe and extort and harass people, or threaten them with the death of their loved ones, if they don’t do what you tell them."

But Tyranny isn’t a cartoon, and you won’t be playing a mustache-twirling ne’er do well. Characters and their factions have goals and motivations of their own, and that is where Tyranny hopes to make its darkness shine.

The forces of Kyros the Overlord on the march.


LASHED UPON THE WHEEL

The best place to begin understanding the world of Tyranny is with a discussion of its technology. While Pillars of Eternity was a fantasy world, it took place in a pseudo-historical period following the invention of gunpowder.Tyranny, in contrast, rolls the clock back to the bronze age.

For hundreds of years, a shadowy figure known as Kyros the Overlord has been sweeping across the known world from the east, bringing Tyranny’s large, single continent under his control. The secret of his vast war machine, Heins says, is a new and fearsome technology — iron.

Historically speaking, it’s not that iron was any better than bronze, though. It was just way cheaper.

"A lot of times to make bronze you had to trade," Heins says, sounding more like a college professor than a game developer. "You didn’t always have the minerals necessary to forge bronze weapons in your own territory. Then you had very skilled smiths who knew the proper ratios to actually create the alloy that was durable enough to make weapons and armor. There’s a lot of expense that came with that, so most places could only outfit either partially in bronze or a small number in bronze.

"For Tyranny, the majority of nations in this world prior to Kyros’ conquest ... had armies that were numbered in the dozens of people, possibly over 100 for wealthy nations because outfitting warriors with bronze armor was very expensive. It took a lot of money to make ‘weapons-grade bronze’ as I like to say. It was a skill and a high art."

In so many role-playing games the materials that the weapons of war are made from are simply a pastiche. Imagine World of Warcraft or the Elder Scrolls games and how they treat the difference between stone and metal and glass as simply a set of stat buffs. But in Tyranny, Heins and his team went a step further to explore how new materials would have changed the face of warfare in an ancient land.

"One of the things I love about this period in history is that a lot of people have this idea that iron weapons are inherently better than bronze. That’s because they’re thinking of steel."

While steel is thin and light, iron is dark, heavy, black as night and crudely wrought. Imagine swinging around a cast iron pan on the battlefield. Now imagine wearing a half dozen pans woven into a jacket.

"The first iron weapons were crude, heavy, brittle and prone to shattering," Heins says. But the proliferation was a game changer.

"With iron you only need a single source of iron in order to make weapons and armor. It was much easier for people to outfit larger armies."

And it’s with those bigger armies, some 10 times larger than those that stood against them, that Tyranny’s villain Kyros has conquered the land.

Graven Ashe (center), leader of the Disfavored and Kyros' Archon of War.


JUDGE, JURY AND EXECUTIONER

In Tyranny players will take on the role of a fatebinder, a kind of justice of the peace on the edge of Kyros’ advance.

"Your role in Kyros’ empire is, whenever there are different armies and mage guilds in the same area they’re going to have conflicts with each other, either from their own personal politics or driven by the Archons that control them," Heins says. "When those arise, it’s your job as a fatebinder to settle disputes that decide who gets to win. Who gets to proceed forward with their plans and who has to admit failure to their leader.

"We think of you as the Judge Dredd character, judge jury and executioner of everyone you meet because your word effectively is law."

The leaders who sit below Kyros are called archons, and at least one of them is a traitor to his people. While Kyros brings the sword, he also brings an open hand. Rather than conquer his enemies and destroy them utterly, he — like the historical Achaemenid Persian empire — is willing to bring them under his flag if they’re willing to fight at his side.

One of those great archons is named Graven Ashe. He is the leader of faction known as the Disfavored. And, in keeping with the bronze-age theme, they fight like ancient Greeks.

Stoneshields

"Stoneshields they fight with spear and shield — large tower shields. They create the phalanx that everyone else revolves around. The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around. When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army."

Crescent Runners

"Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins and other thrown attacks trying to provoke the enemy into the charge, at which point the crescent runners run back behind the phalanx and allow the enemies to break themselves against the spears and shield wall itself. Then they’ll harass with more javelin attacks while they’re fighting."

Iron Walkers

"These are the guys who stand in the center of the phalanx waiting for either people to break through the phalanx and reach the interior, or to wait for a high value enemy target. At that point the phalanx will part and the iron walkers come charging out and will take out the enemy commander or mage or whoever it is that needs to be defeated before retreating back inside the phalanx.

"I called them the Iron Walkers because the idea is that, just being able to be encased in a suit of iron armor and move is incredibly impressive at this point. Iron is crude and thick and heavy so it’s not like steel where it can be fairly light and still protective. It’s a lot of weight to carry on the battlefield. These are men and women at peak physical condition, they need a lot of strength just to carry around the armor they’ve got."

Oath Bound

"The Oath Bound are the elite among an already elite group. Each squad – or Fist – of Oath Bound is magically linked to the rest. When one dies, their strength is shared with the survivors. In addition, each living Oath Bound knows where and how their Oathmate died, and can seek out their killer for vengeance. The Oath Bound are the Disfavored legion’s scouts and assassins, sent ahead of the army to clear any obstacles."

Earthshakers

"Earthshakers get their power from the Archon of Stone. They’ve been studying him and his powers and developed a new school of magic based around creating tremors in the earth and ripping boulders out of the ground and throwing them at the enemy. They’re the ones who if the phalanx is approaching will send out tremors to knock them to the ground so they are weakened and can’t stand against the Disfavored units. They’re a small group of mages but when they’re coordinated with the Disfavored they’re highly effective."

While players won’t encounter a solid phalanx of Stonshields in battle, they will meet small groups of warriors before and after larger battles. Understanding how they fight in rank-and-file units, Heins says, will help contextualize their abilities in a CRPG setting.

"We tried to design the AI so the Stoneshields will hunker down and try to attack you with spears or swords if you get close enough," Heins says. "The Earthshakers and the Oath Bound will attack from a distance while the Iron Walkers take you out from close up. Depending on the encounter and which enemies are spawned, you’ll get different tactics from the units and have to adjust your strategy accordingly."

But in order to survive the harsh world of Tyranny, in order to bring judgement to a frontier at war, players will have to deal with the leader of the Disfavored — Graven Ashe himself.

The warrior, already several hundred years old, has been in the vanguard of Kyros’ armies for generations. And, just as some Greek city states who first fought against and later allied with Persia in antiquity, Graven Ashe is a freedom fighter who was forced to kneel long ago.

"Somehow through that interaction Kyros won Graven Ashe’s loyalty," Heins says. "He’s one of the overlord’s most loyal generals leading the Disfavored, trying to fulfill Kyros’ dream of conquering the entire world under the peace of his law. He’s one of my favorite characters we’ve created so far in the game.

"Graven Ashe is a couple hundred years old. No one knows why but becoming an Archon extends peoples’ life. Mages can live maybe 150 years just by the fact of using magic. Archons seem to live until they’re killed. No one’s seen them die of natural causes. They only die when challenged by another Archon or someone of equal power."

EXPLORING THE FACE OF EVIL

Even more so than Pillars of Eternity, Heins says that the teamplans to explore mature themes in Tyranny. Pressed on what exactly that means, he isn’t willing to give up many details. What he says is that Obsidian’s next game will take great care to explore the nuance of what it means to be, and to be seen as, evil in the face of the game’s non-player characters.

"What makes you ‘evil’ is that the choices you’ll make in Tyranny are a lot darker than the ones you’ll make in other RPGs," Heins says. "Each person inTyranny, from their own perspective, has something that they want to do. No one wakes up and says ‘I’m gonna be evil today.’ As we’re trying to tell the various stories in Tyranny, we’re not trying to say ‘you can be a cartoonish villain.’ We want you to be a character that has rational reasons for doing what you’re doing in the world and things that make sense."

Obsidian, which is publishing the game through Paradox Interactive, also wants Tyranny to be a shorter experience. Where Pillars of Eternity had a main story that extended from 60 to 80 hours of playtime, Heins says that Tyrannywill be a focused 25-hour experience.

The goal will be to create a game that players are curious about replaying, and to create decisions and forking paths that will reward returning to that material again and again.

"We wanted there to be a lot of possible different stories you could play through in the game," Heins says. "Right now there are four major paths in the game, and in that there’s a lot of variations based on what quests you choose, which regions you visit, that can create more variety."

While there’s no release date yet, Tyranny is scheduled for a 2016 release.

 

[Sannom]

I like the lore, but the presentation of the article itself is awful. The faction-focus of the Scarlet Chorus was much better written in my opinion, just having Brian's quotes here doesn't feel right.

 

[Neanderthal]

Stoneshields

"Stoneshields they fight with spear and shield — large tower shields. They create the phalanx that everyone else revolves around. The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around. When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army."

Crescent Runners

"Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins and other thrown attacks trying to provoke the enemy into the charge, at which point the crescent runners run back behind the phalanx and allow the enemies to break themselves against the spears and shield wall itself. Then they’ll harass with more javelin attacks while they’re fighting."

Greek Hoplites were heavy line infantry o their day, equivalent o Stoneshields, as they were named after their shields. Skirmishers name Polygon dumbfuck is looking for is Peltasts or Helots. Polygon gonna Polygon.

 

[Sannom]

The quotes make me think this is Brian Heins talking, not Polygon.

 

[Neanderthal]

If so man needs to up his autism. Get on Codex Brian, we'll sort you out.

 

[Sannom]

Well, that's in my hour range, I will probably watch it.

Also, it's PDT, not PST.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Also, hoplites running behind the phalanx? Weren't they pre-phalanx unit?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

After extensive consultation with Wikipedia world renown historians, apparently hoplites ARE the phalanx. And they've made them light skirmishing infantry, while making separate unit that serves as phalanx.

This game needs more Sawyer.

 

[Kuattro]

After extensive consultation with Wikipedia world renown historians, apparently hoplites ARE the phalanx. And they've made them light skirmishing infantry, while making separate unit that serves as phalanx.

This game needs more Sawyer.

Yes... and no.

Phalanx is a general term that, when used, is normally refering to the macedonian phalanx, carrying pikes instead of the greek phalanx that carried shorter spears, and that relied very heavily on cavalry support. Hoplites were pre-macedonian phalanx units, in the sense that they were used before the macedonians started their thing, but both phalanxes coexisted for a long time, and the hoplites evolved in parallel into new, lighter troops.

Anyway, seeing as what they call "greek hoplites" are "skirmshers", I don't think they're that worried about history. Maybe has to take precedence.*

*If someone is not clear about this, hoplites were heavy infantry. What they evolved later was medium infantry with capacity for skirmishing, but those were not hoplites.

 

[Neanderthal]

Stoneshields

"Stoneshields they fight with spear and shield — large tower shields. They create the phalanx that everyone else revolves around. The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around. When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army."

Crescent Runners

"Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins and other thrown attacks trying to provoke the enemy into the charge, at which point the crescent runners run back behind the phalanx and allow the enemies to break themselves against the spears and shield wall itself. Then they’ll harass with more javelin attacks while they’re fighting."

Greek Hoplites were heavy line infantry o their day, equivalent o Stoneshields, as they were named after their shields. Skirmishers name Polygon dumbfuck is looking for is Peltasts or Helots. Polygon gonna Polygon.

As I said earlier I think they just slipped up an meant Peltasts, famous Thracian skirmishers who gave name to any light infantry o period. Wonder if thats where we get word "Pelt" to throw stuff from?

Oh good books to read if you're into this Ancient Greek stuff is Macht trilogy by Paul Kearney, starts wi Ten Thousands Macht Hoplites venturing into Great Kingdom o east to serve in a war of succession. You can see obvious inspiration, but its set in a fantasy world thats just a bit off from reality. Good stonking reads.

 

[Infinitron]

Strange, it appears to be at the same time as Obsidian's panel.

EDIT: I'm an idiot, they're the same thing http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...discussion-thread.84849/page-141#post-4718297

 

[Fry]

They should let Matt MacLean do more press. Seems like he has a brain.

 

[Excidium II]

They should let Matt MacLean do more press. Seems like he has a brain.

Yeah good example that you shouldn't judge people by their appearances.

 

[Delterius]

It's like how there are people who call their characters in a single-player RPG "toons". Disgusting.

is that even a thing, though?

Yes.

 

[J_C]

They should let Matt MacLean do more press. Seems like he has a brain.

I like his fast talking somewhat nerdy behaviour. Symphathetic guy.