Tyranny Pre-Release Thread

[Bubbles]

Not on her head at least.

Hot enough to rape, not hot enough to date.

What's going on here? Are you trying to get hired by inXile?

 

[Excidium II]

They are preparing the PR of firing notorious racist Zyklon Beekers and hiring a minority to take his place.

 

[Bubbles]

Zyklon Beekers is a much better name than Graven Ashe or Bleden Mark, that's for sure.

 

[Delterius]

In before we get blacklisted by Obsidian.

 

[Excidium II]

In before we get blacklisted by Obsidian.

Doubt they would dare. If we could dig this on BN imagine what Roguey has on Sawyer.

 

[Fry]

In before we get blacklisted by Obsidian.

Doubt they would dare. If we could dig this on BN imagine what Roguey has on Sawyer.

Tons of kitty porn.

No, that's not a spelling error.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Haha yeah, I had to do a double take when I saw they have a chick with normal hair.

 

[Roguey]

Valkyria Chronicles is a great choice gameplay-wise. Obsidian could only wish they could deliver turn-based real-time-with-pause combat that good.

 

[MRY]

So they've given up on the "Bronze Age" update huh? Or maybe they rolled that into the Polygon thing.

Shook!

 

[Delterius]

In before we get blacklisted by Obsidian.

Doubt they would dare. If we could dig this on BN imagine what Roguey has on Sawyer.

But where do Roguey's loyalties lies in such dark times?

I think you know the answer. Our agent cannot be trusted.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamerevolution.com/featu...ill-give-players-a-wealth-of-dialogue-options

Interview: Tyranny Lead Developers Are Annoyed by "False Choices" in RPGs, Will Give Players a Wealth of Dialogue Options

In the world of Tyranny, the development team at Obsidian Entertainment have asked, "What if evil won?" However, instead of the game revolving around trying to save the world and overthrow the tyrant, it asks what you, the player, would do for your own survival. In a Dungeons and Dragons sense, would you be neutral-neutral or chaotic-evil? You can try to be chaotic good or even neutral good, but you will not survive for very long. But the big question is, does it really matter how you choose to be? Does what you choose affect anything, especially the endgame?

The lead developers for Tyranny sat down with me a PAX West to talk about choice in RPGs, and how important these choices really are in Tyranny. After all, as Lead Narrative Designer Matt MacLean pointed out from their PAX West panel, an "RPG is a world that reacts to you." Without choices, how can a world react? Also, what should the world react to?

"You want a choice to be something you can actually pay off on, where you're able to see the consequences of that choice, and actually have interesting quests and dialogue play out from those choices. That is a good choice, one you want in an RPG," Tyranny Game Director Brian Hines said. "A bad choice is one that is purely for flavor, that has no impact on gameplay or story. It's a false choice, one that lets the player think they have a say in what's going on when they really don't."

And we've all played RPGs or games with "false choice" exactly like that, haven't we?

"We also tried to avoid another type of false choice where its only purpose is to screw you over," MacLean added. "The game that comes to mind is a really old one, Sierra Games' Adventure Quest, where you have a choice to push a button, and when you do, oh hey you're dead. Well, why did you give me that option? Oh, so I could see what happens. That's not a choice, that's just seeing something that can be done."

"There's also the problem of weeding out choices that break other choices," he went on. "For example, we're not going to give you an option to rob a bank, and then later down the line let you invest in and get a job at that bank."

"To elaborate on that point," Obsidian Design Director Josh Sawyer jumped in. "A lot of the times we think about choice and consequence we think what are a variety of players likely to want with that circumstance and what will they want to do to express the mechanics of their character or the personality of their character. As such, what would seem to be a 'false choice', if it provides entertainment or a reaction to the player, like making them laugh, then that's also a good choice to implement."

However, usually when we have choices in games such as this, the choice often lies on morality, whether we're being good or evil. But in Tyranny, you play as a hand of justice from the ruling tyrant. It's up to you to decide how that justice should and will be served. You won't survive by being that paragon of niceties. Those who enjoy finding ways to kill everyone in a game will have no problems jumping in with both feet, but what about those who have a hard time being mean? What choices will get them into the tyrannical spirit?

"Making people fear you will be as rewarded as getting people to like you," Sawyer admitted.

"But," Level Designer Denise McMurry cut in, "with this game sometimes the nice option isn't necessarily the nice option because the person you're talking to is not a nice person. It seems nice, but then you will discover that being nice and helping them caused a terrible, terrible thing."

"Also, you aren't playing as a big evil army going to conquer nice people," MacLean explained. "The people you are conquering have their own flaws that may make you think that. hey, perhaps the Overlord does have it right, because actually, these cultures are kind of awful too."

"They certainly provoke you too," Sawyer said. "You may show up and say, 'Hey, native people,' and they will respond, 'Hey, asshole.' They will really test your patience sometimes, so it becomes easy to quickly decide you're done trying to be nice to people."

"Really, I'd tell people the best way to embrace Tyranny is to not do what you would normally do," Narrative Designer Megan Starks laughed. "You'll see how fun it is to play a character you typically do not choose to."

The entire team spoke at great length about how much fun it is to experiment with the choices and see the various rabbit holes you can go down with the terrible or not-as-terrible things you can do. I remembered my time with Pillars of Eternity, a game I still have not completed, so I had to ask, how long is Tyranny? If what makes the game so great is seeing all the variations, it can't be as long as Pillars.

"It's quite a bit shorter," Hines explained. "A typical playthrough runs about 20 to 25 hours. We wanted something that would be shorter than Pillars of Eternity and something that had a high focus on replayability. Those who want to see many of the effects of choices will get a lot out of the game, but we also know people want a game they can finish in just a couple of weekends."

That is how important choice is for this team; they want players to see just how much choice affects the world by creating a more densely compact experience instead of a massive, sprawling 100-plus hour game.

No release date yet for Tyranny, but the team did say it would release this year, 2016.

 

[Roguey]

Tyranny lead developers are annoyed by false choices, such as those found in last year's hit title Pillars of Eternity.

 

[Infinitron]

Sierra Games' Adventure Quest

wat

 

[Sentinel]

Tyranny lead developers are annoyed by false choices, such as those found in last year's hit title Pillars of Eternity.

How so? Your choices in dialogue affect how regions perceive you, characters react to you and how you can solve future quests.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Sierra Games' Adventure Quest

wat

Adventure Quest was Sierra's hit mash-up of King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, and Quest for Glory.

 

[Roguey]

How so? Your choices in dialogue affect how regions perceive you, characters react to you and how you can solve future quests.

It's my understanding a lot of it is flavor "that has no impact on gameplay or story."

If their definition of flavor is just "multiple choices that lead to the same node" that's a pretty low bar. And yet still true when it comes to the trial.

 

[Sentinel]

How so? Your choices in dialogue affect how regions perceive you, characters react to you and how you can solve future quests.

It's my understanding a lot of it is flavor "that has no impact on gameplay or story."

If their definition of flavor is just "multiple choices that lead to the same node" that's a pretty low bar. And yet still true when it comes to the trial.

If by "same node" you mean "quest conclusion", then yeah, they all lead to the quest conclusion. If by "same node" you mean "same outcome", then no, they don't.
By "trial" I assume you mean the hearing with the Duc. Yeah it was underwhelming, but I wasn't exactly expecting a much more non-linear story than what BG had. Maybe that's just me though.

 

[LESS T_T]

A short story by Megan Starks: http://blog.tyrannygame.com/2016/09/09/carved-of-shadow-crept-from-darkness

Carved of Shadow, Crept from Darkness

When I sat down to write Carved of Shadow, Crept in Darkness I had a couple of goals in mind. The first was that I wanted to write a short story from the point of view of a Fatebinder during or leading up to the years of Kyros’ conquest of the Tiers. I wanted to get into the head of someone who knowingly served a higher, “evil” calling but was not necessarily a bad person himself. I wanted to play with the idea that even when people do bad things, that doesn’t mean they can’t be a good-looking, charismatic war hero, or have people they dearly love. I also wanted to hurt that Fatebinder — because I, myself, am a terrible person, ha.

My second goal with Carved of Shadow, Crept in Darkness was to provide a satisfying and hopefully exciting introduction to the companion I’d been writing over the past year for the game. Because Kills-in-Shadow is a monster, (albeit an intelligent, humanoid one with her own desires and motivations,) I thought it would be fun to draw upon classic horror fiction and film techniques for revealing her, such as unveiling the monster slowly, glimpse by glimpse, claw… by fang… by glowing red eyes.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy it!

~Megan Starks, Narrative Designer

Carved of Shadow, Crept from Darkness
Three. “A charmer till the end,” she says. Her face is pallid, her voice cracked as the tiled porcelain beneath their feet. Listless, she weighs no more than a ragdoll in his arms.

“Your fate is not yet finished. Remain steadfast.” For Terratus, for Tunon. For me.

If he speaks with enough conviction maybe, just maybe, by the grace of Kyros, he can make it true. Can really, truly bend reality to his will. To save her life. Her lips split in a fleeting smile, her teeth tinged red. She bleeds rivers from her back, drenching his hands.

He’s never felt so useless as a Fatebinder.

He slips on the slicked, split porcelain tiles of the bathhouse floor as he lunges forward. In his haste, he nearly forgets his halberd. The steam stings at his eyes. Clogs his throat.

This is unfamiliar territory for a battlefield.

“Where is it?” he asks. His muscled body surges like a thrust spear through the steam. With each damp, panting breath, he tastes perspiration and mead.

For Nunoval, Fatebinder of War, death takes the form of a Beast.

A shadowed silhouette rises like the jut of a mountain, hazed before him. Blocking the door.

Layla takes a ragged breath but doesn’t scream. She rattles in his grip as he crashes into the wall. The entire right side of his body throbs acutely, numbed. Soon he won’t be able to feel anything. Not panic, not grief, not the haft in his hand. Not heat nor anger nor love.

“My dagger,” she says as it skitters across the floor.

How she’d maintained a clutch on it before is beyond him. Even draining like a split boar, she’s tough as bronze. Had always been the toughest of all of them.

“Rademos!” he howls.

“Did you see it?” she asks. “It slunk from the shadows.”

“Rademos!” Nunoval shouts again. “Rademos!”

Layla’s head lolls, and the darkness draws closer. Hunched and hulking, it moves inhumanly on elongated hands and feet, crawling, creeping, no, stalking across the room, its saber-like claws tap-tap-tapping slowly, deliberately, against the mosaic tiles. It is hunting. And they are its prey.

Cold sweat beads Nunoval’s brow. His pulse pounds in his neck, thump-thump-thumping to the clawed beat of their coming death. For a skip of several heartbeats, everything feels surreal.

When the creature, the form of darkness, is only a few yards away, it rises once more and, ambling, drags its black claws along the wall, casually but deeply furrowing the stone.

It’s savoring this, toying with them.

“Do not close your eyes,” he says to Layla and jounces her to force her awake, but maybe he says it as much to himself, and all the while his thoughts are racing, thinking—where is Rademos? Gaien and Evander and Niccol he knows already are gone. Branwen, as well, cannot help them, and if no one can come, he will have to set Layla down in order to fight, and then she will be dead. Behind his back, she will slip away like the sands in an hourglass, while he savagely hacks their attacker to bloodied chunks in his fury and anguish.

“Wouldn’t dream of sleeping now, might have nightmares,” she says. She jokes, teasing him unbearably to the end, but her lips are ashen and grimaced as she speaks. “Might dream of you, mewling and pawing at my breasts, kissing my clavicle in that sloppy way you do.”

She is looking at him, eyes half-focused and bluer than the northern sky. So he offers her the softest quirk of a smile, though he cannot decide what to do.

Fight or die?

It is a decision he should have no problem answering, has never had a problem answering before.

Fight or die?

Yet now he asks himself again and again—

Fight or die?

And where is Rademos?!

Blessedly, in answer, the door in the crook of the far wall splinters. Finally. A thud, a beat, and it bursts fully inward, slamming against the stucco wall before hanging askew in its frame.

“Commander?” Garbed in a rucked tunic, leather trousers, and flaking, mud-caked boots, flaxen hair mussed with sleep, Rademos strides into the room. His eyes dart about before settling on the pair of them. “Shit, Layla.” His fingers falter mid-sigil.

Help is near, but so far away.

“Careful!” Nunoval shouts. “It’s among us!”

“In here?! How?”

Layla simply says, “It’s a clever one,” as if that explains everything.

Nunoval surges again for the door. He shifts Layla more to one arm so he can better heft his weapon. The dark Beast swipes again, but this time Nunoval halts the attack. One-handed, muscles straining against the force, he holds the brute at bay. It is no easy feat. Black claws like scythes score his fingers before he returns the slash, the blade of his halberd lancing across the Beast’s thigh.

Then he is moving again. And with a rumbling chuckle, the creature disappears into the steam.

Rademos raises his staff, knuckles blanched where they grip the helve. “I thought we lost it at Lethian’s bridge.”

“Clearly, we did not.”

Rademos swears profusely before invoking the name of his Archon, fingers contorting into the form of a familiar sigil, a rune he’s favored a hundred times and more in battle, but now hesitates to cast, holding back the acrid swell of energy, jaw set grimly as he waits on his commander and squad-mate to slip past, and the air pops with accumulated power.

“Forget the Beast,” Nunoval gasps as he skids into the doorway. “Help her.”

Rademos glances to them sidelong before releasing a whiplash of lightening arching throughout the steam-clouded room. Behind the haze it looks like a distant thunderstorm. “You know I can’t mend flesh and blood,” he says.

“I don’t care. Do something, whatever you must,” Nunoval counters. “Save her.”

“Do you hear it?” Layla asks, eyes closed as she listens, and the men fall quiet as well, panting and straining to hear over the rushing of their blood in their ears.

Rademos is the first to speak. “No.”

“I didn’t either,” Layla says. She reaches for her hip, fingers fumbling for the dagger that isn’t there. “But that’s the trick, isn’t it? Not to feel it first.”

In the moment before the Beast struck, she’d been laughing deeply, abs bunching beneath taut, bronzed skin, water swirling her navel. Then her drink sloshed as she pitched forward, face twisted in confusion and pain, and his arms outstretched to catch hers, grasping desperately to hold on.

***

Five. The Beast had been hunting them for days. He’d issued orders for caution. He’d tightened their formation and altered their route. He’d taught them, for so many years, how to survive no matter what, how not to fear or falter, how to strike hard and bury their foes in the dirt.

Evander and Niccol went to take a piss in pairs, but only Niccol stumbled back, swearing and shaking. Nunoval stared down the line of his soldier’s arm, rent red from shoulder to elbow. Then he rolled his eyes to the sky.

Kyros have mercy. His soldiers had turned to mewling piglets in the face of a single Beast. Even he was beginning to worry, to wonder. Yet had he not, himself, cut down an entire pack with tawny fur and citrine eyes less than a fortnight before? Beastmen were nothing to be feared.

A Beast was nothing he could not best, yet despite his efforts, both Gaien and Evander had carelessly gotten themselves killed. And now Niccol was injured.

“Branwen! Stitch Niccol before we eat. Layla, Rademos—with me.”

He did not wait for a reply as he set at a sturdy pace for the edge of the clearing. Withered leaves crunched beneath his boots. With each step, he felt his pulse quickening as he approached the spot where Evander’s corpse would forever lie.

What should have been a simple scouting expedition had become a tepid and drawn-out bloodbath. Forget mapping Haven’s marshes. He was tired of soaking in the blood of his own men. It felt unbearable to lose them now, when the invasion of the Tiers had yet to even begin, when they were only just preparing a military stratagem for Tunon the Adjudicator. At least, if they were to die honorably in battle, he could accept the loss. But like this? Like this he would have only failed them.

He was going to confront the Beast that night. And barring his assured victory, they would head for Lethian’s Crossing—the closest human settlement to their position in the realm.

The three of them stood silent, nearly elbow to elbow as they peered down at the hewn gore that was their former companion.

Nunoval gritted his teeth as he barked a single command.

Lethian’s Crossing was protected by a well-known band of mercenaries. No Beast would dare follow them there.

“Dig.”

***

One. His chest heaves as he runs. The Beast slams into him, pitching him to the ground. Layla tumbles from his arms and rolls, a twisted heap, her hair spilled around her like a golden crown, her damp skin caked with blood and mud from the road. She’s gone.

Aching, he crawls to his forearms, palms and knees. He scrapes his hand over the haft of his halberd, so livid he can’t even speak. He feels it looming over him before its dusky, gnarled foot steps into view. With a low, rippling growl, it drops Rademos’s severed head before him, and he screams, stabbing it in the gut. He twists the blade, cursing it back to the darkness from whence it came, forcing it backwards as he shoves to his feet.

“Damn you!” he chokes, “Kyros damn you all!”

His voice breaks, but he doesn’t stop. He’s wounded the Beast. He can barely distinguish it from the surrounding shadows, but he can smell its blood. He hacks and slashes and thrusts, pressing his advantage. He will end this.

He will kill it.

It tries to block an upward thrust, and triumphantly, he stabs straight through its thick-muscled forearm. A fiendish grin breaks across his face, the first outward sign of his surging bloodlust. Of his fury and raw desire. But instead of shirking or yowling, the Beast chuffs with a dark amusement. It stalks forward, pressing further onto the sharp, speared tip, closing the distance between them. Swiftly, he moves to rip the blade back, but it grabs onto the helve of the staff and with a monstrous strength wrenches it away. It tugs the barbed blade from its flesh with a snick, and then his weapon is tossed, clattering, into the darkness.

The Beast is on him in an instant.

His back hits the ground, hard, the wind painfully jarred from his lungs. His fists lash out, but its massive, calloused hands grab his wrists, and he realizes with a shock that it’s a woman. Her naked, scarred teats brush his chest.

Her nostrils flare as she inhales his scent, and she growls deeply, purpled lips peeling back to bare yellowed fangs. Her scarlet eyes hungrily rove his face. Shattered, his thoughts flee his mind, deserting him to his fate. This is how he’s going to die.

She speaks. Words form with heated effort, her voice rumbling, low. “Did human think own roaming pack could hunt as wished? Could slaughter three river-whelps in Beastwomen-lands?” She licks his neck, her mauve tongue rough as wood. “Did not know Shadowhunter would take vengeance?”

When she breathes, her exhale is hot against his skin.

“How? How could I have known?!” he howls. He grits his teeth until he tastes blood. “Do it! It’s because of me they’re dead.”

All of them. Because of his mistake.

She grins, fierce and dangerous.

For reasons he’ll never understand, or maybe for no reason at all, she spares him. Unlike the others, she leaves him – alive, heart thrashing, emotionally riven but bodily whole, battered and nearly broken in the rammed-clay street, staring up through clouded eyes at a starless sky.

But before she slips as the ebb of a shadow into the pitch blackness of the night, she carves, slowly, painstakingly with one claw, a deep scar into his chest. With it, her parting words brand into his mind.

“Remember Beastwoman’s vengeance. Remember Kills-in-Shadow.”

THE END

 

[Neanderthal]

The inspiration:
:trigglypuff:

 

[Tom Selleck]

That's some shit-tier fantasy fiction level writing. The PoE stories weren't great but were better than this by miles.

 

[Roguey]

The fuck

I can hardly make any sense of what's going in. Why is there a flashback in the middle of the story?

She bleeds rivers from her back

His muscled body surges like a thrust spear through the steam.

A shadowed silhouette rises like the jut of a mountain

Even draining like a split boar

Behind his back, she will slip away like the sands in an hourglass,

Black claws like scythes score his fingers

Drinking from the same well of purple incoherence as Benjanun Sriduangkaew.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The fuck

I can hardly make any sense of what's going in. Why is there a flashback in the middle of the story?

You made it to the middle? Respect.

 

[Bubbles]

Is this what Wildstar was like?

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, that story was trying way too hard. She needs to master the basics before trying to pull off something like that.

 

[CyberWhale]

Just watched the Pax West Tyranny panel - that girl is pure personalized.