Preview Tyranny Previews - Gameplay Footage and Conquest Mode Details

[Roguey]

It's stupid if resting consumes no time.

Doesn't necessarily have to be an hours-long rest.

 

[an Administrator]

Restoring health and mana in a few minutes is even more stupid.

 

[Roguey]

Restoring health and mana in a few minutes is even more stupid.

All that stuff regenerates on its own in seconds anyway. You rest in Tyranny to get rid of knockout wounds.

 

[Infinitron]

Hah, there are context-specific mouse-over pop-ups in dialogue:

Definitely a new approach to writing.

 

[HoboForEternity]

it's better than pillars' lore dump where every NPC is a talking texbooks.

 

[vortex]

Lore highlight explanation was used in Morrowind a long long time ago and I welcome it in Tyranny.

Spoiler

 

[Drowed]

Wikipedia text in-game. Oh, that's new (not).

But I agree, that it's way, way better than a loredump conversation out of nowhere, like those dialogs where they say things that your character should know from the beginning. That is, when they don't play the amnesia card, or when the character came from a very remote area and conveniently doesn't know anything about the place - but any gardener or garbage man has as his life's mission to teach the details of local politics to a complete stranger.

 

[HoboForEternity]

actually, it is a pretty elegant solution on giving lore in a more meta-way. sometimes lore dump bothers me especially if you play as a character who live their whole life in that world. planescape torment and baldur's gate work when you ask basic knowledge question because you're an amnesiac and the latter lived a very sheltered life. but for example, geneforge (esp the later games) or avadon, you ask this basic questions like what is this country, who rule this city, etc just kinda breaks the immersion ( i dislike that word, but i don't have enough vocabulary to express what i feel) of the game.

it's like i asked my neigbor "hey, where's the way to the nearest market?"

 

[Lacrymas]

It's interesting how Tolkien managed to present Middle-Earth to the world without long-winded, boring exposition dumps or appendices attached to his books which explained things. Sure, he is description-heavy and that somewhat bogs down the pacing (it also being a book is a factor), but he was creating a new world for arguably the first time in history, so that can be excused. NPCs spending paragraphs upon paragraphs explaining common in-universe knowledge, which is not only pace-stiffening and boring, breaks the much lauded "suspension of disbelief" that Coleridge was talking about all those years ago. You have to be able to weave that information into the narrative in such a way as to present it to the audience and not confuse them on the way there. I remember Kingdom of Amalur's intro going on and on about "See-lie fey" (or however it was spelled) and courts of winter and summer having some kind of conflict which wasn't explained and it could not be explained because we didn't even know what those fey things are. Kinda like going "The Smarghansks are in a terrible war with the Murskonkiks over ideological differences in their Trerkrantsk Lertravik and only the Furskalresrim and their Movtreronik Teqsum made headway in the decisive battle of Rezormerik during the Neskalpic Vetrerum." Literally nothing was said there and none of this matters to anyone, let alone being understood. Now imagine having to click on every one of those words to get whole new paragraphs upon paragraphs of explanations.

Anyway, better world presentation, please.

 

[HoboForEternity]

You just have to find the sweet spot between long winded explanation and complete silence.

Videogame is a few medium where you can get a pass of using meta knowledge to build a world (in the olden games, i remember the manuals often have lore dumps so they dont have to force it into the game) and have the choice of it being optional.

In PoE, i honestly enjoyed abit about the lore dumps, but it got old in the end of the game or when you try to do a second playtru

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Will this just be snippets of lore or will it move into handholding territory? Mentioning the historical precedents is one thing, is it necessary to then spell out that "It is highly unlikely that Ashe's Aegis will save Drastus..."? Too early to tell without seeing more of the game, but given the casualised approach to other things I know what I'd bet.

 

[Neanderthal]

Meanwhile Torment had weird world o Planescape explained by good design, interestin characters an intriguing quests that explained setting an all its peculiarities, an that you wanted to find out about. Tyranny, fuck that lets just make a wiki full o exposition, lazy an crude MMO shit.

 

[Sizzle]

Meanwhile Torment had weird world o Planescape explained by good design, interestin characters an intriguing quests that explained setting an all its peculiarities, an that you wanted to find out about. Tyranny, fuck that lets just make a wiki full o exposition, lazy an crude MMO shit.

Maybe, but in PST you played an amnesiac (one of the few good instances of that tired old cliche), while here you play as a war veteran who's intimately familiar with the world's lore.

In PST it makes sense (heck - the game encourages you) to ask questions most beings know the answers to. Here, asking "Who is Graven Ashe?" would make you seem retarded.

So, maybe not the best possible solution, but much better than PoE's "They don't have adra where you come from?"

 

[Neanderthal]

Or have a tutorial/opening section where everythin like this is introduced organically through characters, items, quests an good design, Fatebinder had to find out about all this shit himself, hes livin in a Bronze Age world wi out modern communications after all. Could have battle where he was turned by Overlord, his ascension to Fatebinder position an learnin his duties, war council wi Voices, Graven an Tuna preparin to invade Tiers, audience wi Overlord or any o a hundred scenarios, but instead wi get this wiki shit.

Make world an situations interestin enough an well explained in openin an you've no need o this exposition handholdin crap.

 

[Infinitron]

Isn't that what the game is already doing? The fact that the information is in a pop-up probably means that it's not strictly necessary to read it to understand what's going on. Read "Graven Ashe will protect", fight in a battle with the Disfavored and watch their health regenerate, figure it out yourself.

 

[Mark Richard]

actually, it is a pretty elegant solution on giving lore in a more meta-way. sometimes lore dump bothers me especially if you play as a character who live their whole life in that world. planescape torment and baldur's gate work when you ask basic knowledge question because you're an amnesiac and the latter lived a very sheltered life. but for example, geneforge (esp the later games) or avadon, you ask this basic questions like what is this country, who rule this city, etc just kinda breaks the immersion

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Here, asking "Who is Graven Ashe?" would make you seem retarded.

But it helps typical bethesda fanbase to associate their character with themselves.

 

[Invictus]

Pretty good solution and something that definetly was a criticism from everybody for PoE... gives me hope that Obsidian is learning from their mistakes
Everytime I see a video of loredumps and see Ultima I remember Spoony's epic rant on "whats a paladin"

 

[hpstg]

This looks better than I expected it to look after seeing some of the people making it. I really hope I was wrong.

 

[Sannom]

So let me get this straight: this entire game happens in the span of 8 days? Will we get to see more of Tyranny universe or we are stuck inside that one area?

It's more likely that the timer ends when you conquer the citadel that was featured in the first gameplay videos.

Will this just be snippets of lore or will it move into handholding territory?

My guess is that the red/orange tooltips are pure lore dumps whereas the blue ones (like the one above) gives you information/tips about how to handle the current situation.

Or have a tutorial/opening section where everythin like this is introduced organically through characters, items, quests an good design, Fatebinder had to find out about all this shit himself, hes livin in a Bronze Age world wi out modern communications after all. Could have battle where he was turned by Overlord, his ascension to Fatebinder position an learnin his duties, war council wi Voices, Graven an Tuna preparin to invade Tiers, audience wi Overlord or any o a hundred scenarios, but instead wi get this wiki shit.

Fuck you, I had enough of that in Dragon Age : Origins. No more Battle of Ostagar!

 

[Morkar Left]

It would be cool if the context-specific infolinks would be dependent on your abilities/skills.

 

[Excidium II]

Hah, there are context-specific mouse-over pop-ups in dialogue:

Definitely a new approach to writing.

They used that to show voices of nerat using telepathy with the player, so isn't just infodump.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Writers will get lazy and make us read the pop-ups to be able to understand what's going on. Just like quest-markers, avoiding them will not be an option. Decline I say.

 

[Excidium II]

One thing you certainly don't need to worry about is modern crpg writers letting you figure out anything by yourself.

 

[Morality Games]

I'm reasonably sure that the Faction system/C&C in this will make it a diamond in the rough that excels at one thing at the expense of everything else. Whether the writing is the absolute best it could be, the fact that it won't be textbook info dumps automatically means it will be good enough to get the job done.