Game News Tyranny Released

[you know what time it is]

Combat and encounters are shit (these 3-5 packs of humans you fought early on? yeah get ready to fight them for the rest of the game) go for the story mode from the get go and enjoy being a pg-13 dick for a change.

 

[Santander02]

Obsidian couldn't have picked a better time to release this game

"The RPG where the evil over lord won and you HELPED him"

Oh yes I did.

I think you know how will I go about role playing in this game , I'll pretend the rebel scum are those protester cucks in all those "progressive"American cities right now.

Oye DarkUnderlord! Found another Shillbot ready for the slammer!

Anyway the reception for this game seems to be better than the one for POE so this time I'll wait for a 40% sale instead of a 60% sale before getting it.

"No friendly fire"

50%

 

[Invictus]

I am enjoying the game too, the storyline so far is good and playing a baddie who doesnt have to act like a lunatic or jerk is refreshing. One of the hallmarks of a gane thats caught me is that I cannot wait to get back home to play it. Pillars ran so so on my laptop but I am itching to try and see how this runs for taking it with me to an upcoming trip

 

[Fenix]

Also Tranny kind of reminds me Avadon by Jeff Vogel lol.

 

[jungl]

Game does feel like a jeff vogel type world. I'm actually enjoying all the reading and I usually hate excessive reading in games. Also the fights are generally longer then pillars which is fun and not too long where its mmorpg garbage.

 

[Fenix]

So, who is actually Kyros - is it she or he? Is it tranny?

 

[Bubbles]

So, who is actually Kyros - is it she or he? Is it tranny?

Spoiler

You never find out.

 

[Fenix]

Spoiler

 

[Kev Inkline]

Bought Caves of Qud instead.

Thinking getting Rimworld as well, so I get to spend the same 40 eur.

 

[you know what time it is]

Bought Caves of Qud instead.

Thinking getting Rimworld as well, so I get to spend the same 40 eur.

More bang for a buck, especially with Rimworld.

 

[Junmarko]

About five hours in, enjoying it so far but it's definitely been rushed out the door, it could have used another 6+ months in development.

There is nowhere near the depth & variation that Pillars had with Abilities, Lore, Enemies, Character Customisation etc - it's a shame.

The overall pacing also feels abnormally quick, especially with your companions - you can gain their loyalty so fast and with such little effort that it barely feels deserved.

 

[Septaryeth]

About five hours in, enjoying it so far but it's definitely been rushed out the door, it could have used another 6+ months in development.

There is nowhere near the variation that Pillars had with Abilities, Lore, Enemies, Character Customisation etc - it's a shame.

The overall pacing also feels abnormally quick, especially with your companions - you can gain their loyalty so fast that it barely feels deserved.

Yeah I didn't realize it would be released so soon...then again I been avoiding all the updates after their first post which has the entire biography of a companion.
I was kind of expecting it to be released after another few months. Maybe I should wait until then for all the upcoming fixes and potential expansions?

I take it Obsidian is not working on the new South Park game, so what are they doing now?

 

[Bubbles]

I take it Obsidian is not working on the new South Park game, so what are they doing now?

PoE 2 and an unannounced multiplatform game.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Will get it when they release mods to fix all the shit systems.

Seriously! No toggle for friendly fire? Are we living in the dark ages?

 

[alphyna]

I'm mid-Act II now.

Worldbuilding
PoE had a very misguided idea that abundant lore equals good lore, so it showered the player with walls of text about events and locations that had nothing to do with the character or the story and that I consequently gave zero fucks about. Tyranny is way, way better in this regard, mostly adding details to the rather limited number of entities (places, factions, characters) through additional dialogues. I'd even go as far as to say that the two main evil factions give me a Planescape vibe: on the surface, they seem like common "noble orderly warriors" vs "chaotic individualistic mob", which they are, but I've found some aspects of their ideologies and some characters truly evocative. (And since the main conflict revolves around the two factions, I do give a shit.)

It starts to crumble mid-Act II though, as mage-type companions suddenly begin their wall-of-text spiel, and then you arrive to a town where you're supposed to read through its full history... For fuck's sake! The funny thing is, this town is actually included in the "Conquest" (CYOA-like character creation) part, and you can be its former governor. How about offering some non-fluff interactivity based off of that?

...Nah, better let us find more about the town's founder. 'Cause obviously the story of a random merchant is super thrilling.

Writing & Dialogue
It's fine, but nothing to write home about. No jarring purple prose, no funny jokes, no memorable catchphrases. I'll take it. Reactivity is abundant and feels good, although the tutorial tooltip claiming that "options available due to certain stats aren't better, they're just different" is a laugh since you train your skills when you use them. Obviously it's always rational to choose the [Lore: X] answer over a common one since not only does it usually yield better results, but also increases your Lore skill.

Fighting
...Why do you even criticize it? This is obviously a PST-type game that's supposed to be played more as an adventure than an RPG. Sometimes the abundant reading is spiced up with a fight or two, but they're plainly not the focus. And for this non-central purpose the fights are okay (although I don't like the whole PoE system).

Characters
The companions felt super bland to me, the only one remotely having a personality is probably Verse. Some NPCs (especially the archons) are intriguing though, I want to find out where their stories will go.

Systems
Oh hey, it's the Dragon Age 2 system of "doing bad shit to a character/faction is a viable strategy of communication"! This particular system worked well there and it works well here. When you offend or slight someone, you don't lose their favour, but rather gain a separate stat (Wrath or Fear). So a character can both like and fear you, for example, and both stats offer separate perks. This was clearly the right choice for a game of this kind.

I don't think anyone has mentioned here that the wiki-style links in the dialogues are of two types: the orange ones give you general information and lore, while the green ones represent the information directly related to the playable character, sometimes even including their analysis, musings, and assumptions. I've found the latter rather interesting, and the whole system is a bit overwhelming at first, but quickly becomes unobtrusive.

Art&Sound
Profoundly uninspired, but completely fine in my book. There hasn't been a single design I would call interesting yet, but no eyebleed either.

Evilness
To me, not evil enough (perhaps I'm a sucker for immature moustache-twirling). Not a single choice I made felt evil—at most, they felt utilitarian. As a matter of fact, just like a traditional RPG, Tyranny kind of expects of you to be kind to friends, humble before the leaders, etc... while I would rather play an edgy asshole or a cold sadist. I want to learn every detail about a character to subject them to their worst fears. I want to personally break artists' fingers and cut out singers' tongues. I want to force someone to beg on their knees for something that I was already planning to give them—just for fun.

But hey, sure, listening to the sob story of another companion's childhood works too.

Still, the premise and position of the playable character in the game world do feel rather refreshing and fun to play.

Bottom line
This is an adventure game with a lot of C&C. It doesn't (yet?) feature a very compelling story—it's more about the personal story of your character and the choices they make. The presentation is all right. I'm mildly curious and will most likely finish it (unlike PoE).

Just... forget that it's supposed to have combat.

 

[Sentinel]

I'm mid-Act II now, so I'm gonna review the game

Hey you should be a game reviewer.
Regardless, didn't read lol.

 

[felipepepe]

Fighting
...Why do you even criticize it? This is obviously a PST-type game that's supposed to be played more as an adventure than an RPG. Sometimes the abundant reading is spiced up with a fight or two, but they're plainly not the focus. And for this non-central purpose the fights are okay (although I don't like the whole PoE system).

Because that's the laziest & dumbest design possible. You're literally saying combat is nothing but filler.

Compare that masterful design to what a fan-made module like Maimed God's Saga does it - it's also a text & adventure heavy game, so each combat is embraced as part of that. You don't battle generic dudes, you battle only enemies that have a well-defined world function and you probably heard / interacted with before. You're not facing 100 nameless zombies, you're battling Boris the escaped necromancer and the reanimated corpse of the Innkeeper and his 12-year old daughter he kidnapped.

Moreover, combat bits and dialogs & adventure bits are connected. The game allows you to use Cleric spells like Hold Person, Dispel or Healing during dialogs, unlocking new options. So if you played like a retard and wasted all your spells dealing damage or healing yourself, you're locked out of those extra options. OMG, COMBAT THAT IMPACTS DIALOG! IT EXISTS!

Tyranny could easily have done something like this - you have those OP edicts from Kyros, why not make them a resource? Something you can spend in battle to quickly annihilate enemies, or use in dialogs & quests to get special outcomes. This can even be used to create special challenges - "are you badass enough to beat the game without ever using a single edict?"

Instead, we get this garbage you are defending - meaningless combat that servers only to pad time and give ADHD kids something to do between lore dumps.

Hell, just do it like AoD, where a clever guy can play the entire game without going through a single battle. But no... "Gaem has combat cause that's what RPGs haes!"

 

[Excidium II]

It's shit. Uninstalled.

Worse than PoE at every level.

 

[alphyna]

I'm mid-Act II now, so I'm gonna review the game

Hey you should be a game reviewer.
Regardless, didn't read lol.

Which is why I did this in a comment on a forum, not as a journalist for money. (Also I'm like the tenth person to describe my impressions, why are you suddenly attacking me?)

Fighting
...Why do you even criticize it? This is obviously a PST-type game that's supposed to be played more as an adventure than an RPG. Sometimes the abundant reading is spiced up with a fight or two, but they're plainly not the focus. And for this non-central purpose the fights are okay (although I don't like the whole PoE system).

Because that's the laziest & dumbest design possible. You're literally saying combat is nothing but filler.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying. I'm not so much defending it as pointing out that it's incredibly dumb to critisize and analyze filler, as some people here do. Filler doesn't warrant analysis.

I know that it's an unpopular opinion, but I do believe that filler has the right to exist to a certain extent. There is such a thing as pacing. A game often works better when it has pauses, breaks, and changes of scenery. Up until this point, there honestly have been so few fights in Tyranny that I'm fine with this amount of filler.

But more importantly, I do not enjoy shitting on things that have positive and negative elements to them. Tyranny is a mixed bag to me, so I prefer to enjoy the good bits and accept the mediocre combat as "filler that allows me to relax my eyes between all the reading" rather than get angry over it. (And I wrote about it since I think the game plays better if you perceive it like that.) But I'm obviously not arguing with the fact that a game that has good dialogues and good combat is better.

 

[Sentinel]

I'm mid-Act II now, so I'm gonna review the game

Hey you should be a game reviewer.
Regardless, didn't read lol.

Which is why I did this in a comment on a forum, not as a journalist for money. (Also I'm like the tenth person to describe my impressions, why are you suddenly attacking me?)

Because you haven't finished it. What if the game suddenly goes full gear in the last act and turns into a 10/10? Never know.
I don't think they should get a free pass for the combat. The fact that the game was in development for 3 years and has combat this fucking terrible is an accomplishment.

 

[Excidium II]

They should have simply used PoE systems. Game would be immediately better and more playable.

 

[alphyna]

I'm mid-Act II now, so I'm gonna review the game

Hey you should be a game reviewer.
Regardless, didn't read lol.

Which is why I did this in a comment on a forum, not as a journalist for money. (Also I'm like the tenth person to describe my impressions, why are you suddenly attacking me?)

Because you haven't finished it. What if the game suddenly goes full gear in the last act and turns into a 10/10? Never know.
I don't think they should get a free pass for the combat. The fact that the game was in development for 3 years and has combat this fucking terrible is an accomplishment.

I'll rephrase: there are many people in this thread who describe their first impressions of the unfinished game. Am I to assume that you just chose to attack me randomly and that the same remark applies to everyone? I kind of thought first hands-on impressions were the point of this thread.

As for combat, it's entirely reasonable to not give the game a free pass for it and not play it. Tastes (and levels of optimism) differ.
Ding! Problem solved.

 

[Sentinel]

I'm mid-Act II now, so I'm gonna review the game

Hey you should be a game reviewer.
Regardless, didn't read lol.

Which is why I did this in a comment on a forum, not as a journalist for money. (Also I'm like the tenth person to describe my impressions, why are you suddenly attacking me?)

Because you haven't finished it. What if the game suddenly goes full gear in the last act and turns into a 10/10? Never know.
I don't think they should get a free pass for the combat. The fact that the game was in development for 3 years and has combat this fucking terrible is an accomplishment.

I'll rephrase: there are many people in this thread who describe their first impressions of the unfinished game. Am I to assume that you just chose to attack me randomly and that the same remark applies to everyone? I kind of thought first hands-on impressions were the point of this thread.

As for combat, it's entirely reasonable to not give the game a free pass for it and not play it. Tastes (and levels of optimism) differ.
Ding! Problem solved.

You're the only one I read who said

"I'm mid-Act II now."

And then went on to use the past, in cases such as

"The companions felt super bland to me"

Implying your experience had come to an end and this was your conclusion.
You also go on to evaluate the evilness, despite being halfway through Act II. In a game about being an agent in a world of evil, I'd wager acts become increasingly evil as the scale of the conflict increases. So your judgement isn't exactly fair.

 

[duanth123]

In a game about being an agent in a world of evil, I'd wager acts become increasingly evil

irony

 

[Ruzen]

The game is fun. While the story is enjoyable and interesting, I didn't like the writing that much. Maybe It was intended to be this way by not taking It too seriously.
It's like Tarantino movie; you get to do sick combos, be a badass, don't take shit from anybody and do cheesy talks.
Honestly, It's really refreshing setting but I have to say World Crafting is the new standard for me now. Now I have even more care for lore.