Preview Tyranny Previews - Gameplay Footage and Conquest Mode Details

[Tigranes]

Tolkien wrote entire books as loredump.

 

[Urthor]

The neat thing about pop-ups over text is that you physically cannot port them to console. It just doesn't work barring some really awkward word by word highlighting, it's one of the many many cool UI features that have been left by the wayside.

Potential for incline is here.

 

[J_C]

Tyranny won't be on consoles, not sure why people are thinking otherwise.

 

[Haba]

God damn dumbfucks. Who in their right mind thinks it is a good idea to have lore tooltips? It is like jumping to wikipedia when reading a book.

Is modern day Obsidian this inept? Torment took Planescape and dumped all of it naturally into the writing, without ever needing to take the time to explain what "barmy berk" meant. The soldiers in Malazan curse saying "Hood take you" or exclaim "Hood's breath!" - the writer doesn't need to stop the story to tell you that Hood is the god of death in the setting.

A writer with actual talent would naturally incorporate the lore in the setting in a way that doesn't require explicit explanations, unless it is something the characters themselves haven't yet encountered. The incompetent hacks at Obsidian need to stop their storytelling whenever their characters use in-setting lingo because... they think their players are retarded?

"Kyros be praised! That oathbreaker fought with the rage of Cairn himself!"

Wow, evokes the feeling that this Cairn fellow is important. So he seems to be characterized by fearsome fighting spirit. Interesting!

Now, if this "Cairn" is somewhat relevant to the setting, you could reveal further details about him/it by further references that tell us more about his/its characteristics, like Malazan does with "Hood". The different curses reveal different facets of the person they are referring to, which eventually let you figure out what kind of a deity they are swearing to.

...obsidian on the other hand...

Cairn, the mountainous Archon of Stone, accompanied the Disfavoured on the conquest of the Tiers. His temper and proclivity toward destructive solutions often branded him a liability to the otherwise orderly takeover, but his powers were not easily dismissed. During the Azure campaign, Cairn went on a rampage - declaring himself independent of Kyros, and the conques...

Right-click for details

HOW WAS THIS RELEVANT TO THE CONVERSATION I WAS READING EARLIER?

 

[J_C]

God damn dumbfucks. Who in their right mind thinks it is a good idea to have lore tooltips? It is like jumping to wikipedia when reading a book.

Is modern day Obsidian this inept? Torment took Planescape and dumped all of it naturally into the writing, without ever needing to take the time to explain what "barmy berk" meant. The soldiers in Malazan curse saying "Hood take you" or exclaim "Hood's breath!" - the writer doesn't need to stop the story to tell you that Hood is the god of death in the setting.

A writer with actual talent would naturally incorporate the lore in the setting in a way that doesn't require explicit explanations, unless it is something the characters themselves haven't yet encountered. The incompetent hacks at Obsidian need to stop their storytelling whenever their characters use in-setting lingo because... they think their players are retarded?

"Kyros be praised! That oathbreaker fought with the rage of Cairn himself!"

Wow, evokes the feeling that this Cairn fellow is important. So he seems to be characterized by fearsome fighting spirit. Interesting!

Now, if this "Cairn" is somewhat relevant to the setting, you could reveal further details about him/it by further references that tell us more about his/its characteristics, like Malazan does with "Hood". The different curses reveal different facets of the person they are referring to, which eventually let you figure out what kind of a deity they are swearing to.

...obsidian on the other hand...

Cairn, the mountainous Archon of Stone, accompanied the Disfavoured on the conquest of the Tiers. His temper and proclivity toward destructive solutions often branded him a liability to the otherwise orderly takeover, but his powers were not easily dismissed. During the Azure campaign, Cairn went on a rampage - declaring himself independent of Kyros, and the conques...

Right-click for details

HOW WAS THIS RELEVANT TO THE CONVERSATION I WAS READING EARLIER?

While I don't mind the tooltips, you are perfectly right about good writers can incorporate these lore bits into their writing without it being overwhelming. And really, you don't even have to explain every detail about the setting, I think most players can figure them out. Even if they don't explain what rage of Cairn means, I think most of us can figure it out that he is a character who fought with uncontrollable rage, that's why there is a saying like 'fighting with the rage of Cairn". End of story. And you can put the story of Cairn into a book you can find in the game. Because it seems Cairn's story is not essential to the main storyline, so it doesn't hurt to put it into a lore book.

 

[Kev Inkline]

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

The problem was it was not reactive enough, like Vailian ambassador telling my pc about their politics and whatnot, even if I had that vailian background.

 

[Kev Inkline]

(e) All those writers and designers are gone from Obsidian and there's only mmo devs now

Here's a picture of some chimps passing on culture that will be inherited by future generations of chimp.
Culture is a bit like a virus that can be passed on indirectly like through contact with door knobs or surfaces that have been touched by sick people.

A-are you saying it's like a m-meme?

 

[Lacrymas]

What I meant with the Tolkien example is that he doesn't have his characters explaining to each other basic in-universe common knowledge. Yes, he is description heavy, that doesn't mean it's all exposition dumps, the Silmarillion's idea is to present legends and stories in Middle-Earth, so that can hardly be at fault for lore dumping, i.e. you know what you are getting into.

You really, really can't compare Tolkien and Obsidian and have Obsidian come out on top, no matter how contrarian you want to be.

 

[Infinitron]

It looks like resting does pass time. Also, you can train your skills for money. Watch both here: https://youtu.be/4izf55L8Tsw?t=4183

 

[yes plz]

Have they clarified what the eight day limit is for? Just one quest or for the main plot?

 

[Infinitron]

Have they clarified what the eight day limit is for? Just one quest or for the main plot?

It's for the capture of Ascension Hall, which we saw back in June. You can see the Edict being lifted at the end: https://youtu.be/Dk4L-fqdm3g?t=730

 

[Kev Inkline]

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.

Ok, evil overlord, his powerful lieutenants and even telepathy - they said the game is influenced by the Black Company, I didn't realize it was this extensively. I am not saying it's bad, but I wonder how they can pull this off.

Now, if someone could instead make a game where I can lead a mercenary band from a battle to another, low-magic, turn-based, budget-managing - that would be cool...

 

[Infinitron]

I think this might be more of a clever one-time subversion of the tooltip mechanic than a regular thing.

 

[Doktor Best]

What I meant with the Tolkien example is that he doesn't have his characters explaining to each other basic in-universe common knowledge. Yes, he is description heavy, that doesn't mean it's all exposition dumps, the Silmarillion's idea is to present legends and stories in Middle-Earth, so that can hardly be at fault for lore dumping, i.e. you know what you are getting into.

You really, really can't compare Tolkien and Obsidian and have Obsidian come out on top, no matter how contrarian you want to be.

The problem is that the term loredump, same as the term grind, describes negative positions to an ingame activity. How we perceive those ingame activities is highly subjective and we will only see and recognize them as what they are if they failed to entertain us. Its kind of like with CGI. Most people dislike CGI because whenever they see it, it is because the implention was done poorly, breaks the immersion and therefor is rightfully shit on by the viewer. But that doesnt make all CGI bad, because in a better movie there were probably a hundred CGI effects that were done so well that the viewer simply didnt see them.

Back to POE and Tolkien. Tolkien managed to invoke so much interest for the setting in you that you didnt mind those pagelong descriptions of the universe, and thats a good thing. But i know quite some people where he failed to invoke this same interest. Same goes for POE. I remember some slog in the dialogue at some parts of the game, but all in all i was interested enough in the setting to not mind the loreheavy texts. Others on this board stated that they were constantly annoyed by an insufferable amount of horribly written loredumps, which simply isnt true in my own subjective view.

Now Obsidian adressed that problem. They implented highlighted text tooltips for people who are interested enough in the setting (or even so obsessed) that they WANT to absorb every piece of information about it. Everybody else, who is not interested enough in that part of the lore, or maybe even prefers to keep the mystery about this Cairn character and make up his own story, can simply choose not to click on the text and read on.

 

[Roguey]

God damn dumbfucks. Who in their right mind thinks it is a good idea to have lore tooltips? It is like jumping to wikipedia when reading a book.

If you don't like footnotes, don't read them.

 

[Kev Inkline]

God damn dumbfucks. Who in their right mind thinks it is a good idea to have lore tooltips? It is like jumping to wikipedia when reading a book.

If you don't like footnotes, don't read them.

That's a lame response, you just cherrypicked that part of the quote, let me extend.

Who in their right mind thinks it is a good idea to have lore tooltips? It is like jumping to wikipedia when reading a book.

Is modern day Obsidian this inept? Torment took Planescape and dumped all of it naturally into the writing, without ever needing to take the time to explain what "barmy berk" meant.

A writer with actual talent would naturally incorporate the lore in the setting in a way that doesn't require explicit explanations, unless it is something the characters themselves haven't yet encountered.

Suggesting to ignore the tooltips doesn't really solve anything that's inherently wrong with this approach.

I would say Haba has something of a point here: Gaining information should feel natural to the setting, organic even.

 

[Roguey]

Suggesting to ignore the tooltips doesn't really solve anything that's inherently wrong with this approach.

Torment's writing was full of lengthy infodumps, that certainly wasn't natural-sounding dialogue.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Suggesting to ignore the tooltips doesn't really solve anything that's inherently wrong with this approach.

Torment's writing was full of lengthy infodumps, that certainly wasn't natural-sounding dialogue.

Even if it was so, and I am not saying I would fully agree with that, how things were done in Torment is irrelevant to the argument for demanding writing that sheds light on the setting and the world naturally, isn't it? I could remove the quote about Torment, and it wouldn't change anything with respect to the present discussion.

 

[Haba]

Suggesting to ignore the tooltips doesn't really solve anything that's inherently wrong with this approach.

Torment's writing was full of lengthy infodumps, that certainly wasn't natural-sounding dialogue.

And yet Torment still didn't interrupt the conversation to explain exactly what Lady of Pain or Mercykillers or whatever was. Let me highlight, interrupt the conversation. Those "footnotes" are exactly that, skipping back to the end of the book to figure out what the hell the term or reference was again. It simply does not work with anything where you are supposed to immerse yourself in.

If the game is written with a crutch like that, it will definitely impact the writing. It isn't something you can just ignore. No need to think about subtlety or natural flow, players will just read the tooltips, right?

 

[Infinitron]

I think you could argue that gaining information from footnotes is organic and natural to this game's setting. You could think of it as your Fatebinder consulting his notes.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Suggesting to ignore the tooltips doesn't really solve anything that's inherently wrong with this approach.

Torment's writing was full of lengthy infodumps, that certainly wasn't natural-sounding dialogue.

and at least put in context by the player is supposed to be an amnesiac

 

[Kev Inkline]

I think you could argue that gaining information from footnotes is organic and natural to this game's setting. You could think of it as your Fatebinder consulting his notes.

I guess you only find that out by actually playing the game and gaining insight how it feels. I don't think it will, after all, be something that makes or breaks the game. But as shown, does certainly not look the most elegant of the solutions.

 

[Sizzle]

God damn dumbfucks. Who in their right mind thinks it is a good idea to have lore tooltips? It is like jumping to wikipedia when reading a book.

If you don't like footnotes, don't read them.

Agreed. It may not be the most elegant solution, but having to read it once, and then being free to disregard it, is much better - especially for a game which is supposedly very replayable - than PoE's approach.

 

[Cosmo]

Once again a bunch of aspies splitting hairs ITT...

Quick reminder : infodumps are every science-fiction and fantasy book's bane ; they're not CRPG's prerogative, and if there was a universal solution to them, it would be known, trust me.
And if you think you've found this game's writing's secret flaw, just fuck off, this system is not ideal, but it's fine. At least tooltips are more elegant than the "unnatural infodump dialog + external menu encyclopaedia" formula.

 

[Roguey]

Even if it was so, and I am not saying I would fully agree with that, how things were done in Torment is irrelevant to the argument for demanding writing that sheds light on the setting and the world naturally, isn't it? I could remove the quote about Torment, and it wouldn't change anything with respect to the present discussion.

Everything you need to know will be told to you through dialogue. This is similar to how Mass Effect and The Witcher dumped everything Shepherd/Geralt knew but you didn't into the Codex for optional reading later. The big difference here is that you can read that stuff in the dialogue window itself instead of having to open an entirely different menu later.

And yet Torment still didn't interrupt the conversation to explain exactly what Lady of Pain or Mercykillers or whatever was. Let me highlight, interrupt the conversation. Those "footnotes" are exactly that, skipping back to the end of the book to figure out what the hell the term or reference was again. It simply does not work with anything where you are supposed to immerse yourself in.

If the game is written with a crutch like that, it will definitely impact the writing. It isn't something you can just ignore. No need to think about subtlety or natural flow, players will just read the tooltips, right?

This is how Witcher 3 was written, and as I said earlier, lots of people enjoy the way it was written.