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idonotlikepeas
May 29, 2010

This reasoning is possible for forums user idonotlikepeas!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR0K3yEtmo8

Tyranny is a CRPG from Obsidian Entertainment, purveyors of fine RPGs that, these days, are sometimes even playable at launch. Tyranny is set to use the same engine as the award-winning, ridiculously good Pillars of Eternity, with various adjustments, tweaks, and upgrades, and many additional brown and yellow textures.



BACKGROUND

The tagline of Tyranny is "Sometimes Evil Wins", which should give you some idea as to what's going on here. In the Tyranny universe, the evil army of Kyros the Overlord has already conquered the known world... and you're a high-ranking member of it. As a reward for your loyal service, you've been chosen to be a Fatebinder, which seems to basically be a Magic Judge Dredd, empowered to act as judge, jury, and executioner by the will of the Tyrant. Unfortunately, some of the people you're judging, jurying, and executing are theoretically more powerful than you, and anyone you piss off can complain to your execution-happy boss, so let's just say Fatebinders have a hell of a time getting life insurance at any reasonable rate. Speaking of your boss, your order is supervised by Tunon the Adjudicator, one of many Archons that Kyros has appointed to oversee various parts of the empire, since ruling over an entire evil government by yourself leaves you very little time for flower arranging or painting landscapes or making delicious fudge. Tunon is a few centuries old and apparently made out of smoke, or possibly squirts ink to defend himself like a squid:



The empire has many, many laws, Kyros being the "rules for everything" sort of evil monarch, and the Fatebinders have to interpret them as well as enforcing them, adding another layer of complication to the job, which frankly sounds like less and less of a reward the more we talk about it. Although I guess it's better than being ground to dust beneath Kyros' iron-sandal'd heel? Oh, and speaking of iron, the game is set right at the end of the bronze age, so you're probably not going to see a lot of that stuff around, except maybe from meteors. All in all, it's a lovely old world, really, and it's going to be up to you to decide if it gets more or less lovely.



GAME SYSTEMS

Unlike Pillars, Tyranny will be a skill-based game, meaning progression is based on increasing specific skills rather than gaining levels in a particular class. You'll be able to mix and match skills as you choose to make whatever character you like, without the restrictions inherent to a class-based system. Of course, there seems to be a limited amount of progression you can do in the game, so doing anything other than specializing in a single themed set of skills is likely to cripple your character and make it harder to beat, meaning everyone will really have a class anyway. But under the rule of evil, isn't the illusion of freedom the best you can hope for, really?

Tyranny defines the following basic attributes for your character:

  • Might: how good you are at hitting people.
  • Finesse: your ability to attack quickly and accurately. Sort of like dexterity, except see also the next attribute.
  • Quickness: how fast you can move, which will be helpful when you inevitably get on the bad side of some dickhole Archon.
  • Vitality: healthiness. Also personality, sure, why not.
  • Wits: how good you are at magicking people.
  • Resolve: the ability to endure unbearable tortures, like being flayed alive or forced to read GBS.

There are also some secondary attributes that will mainly be determined by the primary ones, possibly with a sprinkling of experience; so far we've heard about Endurance, Will, and Arcane resistances. Each attribute grants a bonus to a particular set of skills (or, really, each skill has an attribute that gives us a large bonus and an attribute that gives us a small bonus). The skills that flow from these attributes are divided into three major groups:

  • Weapons: pick these to be a fighter or rogue.
  • Magic: pick these to be a wizard. Or maybe a cleric; there might be evil clerics. I hope there are evil clerics and they complain constantly about having to heal people.
  • Support: Knowledge skills, dodging skills, anything else that doesn't fit in the above. Pick these to win in dialogue trees.

Skills will increase the more you use them, so make sure you set up a spreadsheet early so you know exactly how many times you have to cast fire blast to get the right rank to create the character you actually want for end-game. Once you level enough skills, your character level will also increase. As your level increases, there are talents you can pick up; six unique trees, and each of your NPC companions will have their own unique tree as well. Information on these is scarce so far, although we do have this screenshot:



And, speaking of NPC companions, there will be some! This game will scale back from the six-person party available in Pillars to a four-person party, ostensibly to allow for the existence of combo attacks. (The example of this that has been brought up in every interview so far involves one character launching another into the air and the second character spraying arrows everywhere, so that's nice.) Which characters you can get to join you will depend on choices you make during your adventure, which factions you engage with or upset, etc.



RESOURCES




Tips

How do I get inside the Spire at Lethian's Crossing?

Sheep posted:

Skip Lethian's Crossing in Act 2 until you have done the other branch of quests. You cannot get in the spire until you've gone elsewhere.

For the independent route:

Malek posted:

Honestly this path is fine BUT (and not spoilering this) as mentioned before, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, turn the shield into Mark WITHOUT visiting the tribe leader first. You WILL lose about 13 hours of content.

GlyphGryph posted:

Note that this can be done before obtaining the shield as well. Don't you have to visit her before finding out where the shield is? Basically: Don't leave until you actually get access to the other areas of the map.




SO HE SEZ TO ME, YEAH BABY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV2DaY4hLUI

idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Dec 3, 2016

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idonotlikepeas
May 29, 2010

This reasoning is possible for forums user idonotlikepeas!
Reserved in case the OP needs more space.

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon
I'm the law.

SNAKES N CAKES
Sep 6, 2005

DAVID GAIDER
Lead Writer
Gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk4L-fqdm3g

Orv
May 4, 2011
I hope this isn't as rote and predictable as almost every piece of writing in PoE was.

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'
Sounds interesting but this...

Orv posted:

I hope this isn't as rote and predictable as almost every piece of writing in PoE was.

...is my main thought. PoE was a bit of a letdown in the story and party member department. Also, all the backer reward NPCs.

SNAKES N CAKES
Sep 6, 2005

DAVID GAIDER
Lead Writer
One thing to note from the demo is that Tyranny seems to be going back to the genre's roots by featuring classic MMO gameplay; the party is split between a tank with AoE taunts, a dedicated healer with HoTs, instaheals, and AoEs, a damage dealing squishy rogue, and the main character.

Strudel Man
May 19, 2003
ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Milky Moor posted:

Sounds interesting but this...


...is my main thought. PoE was a bit of a letdown in the story and party member department. Also, all the backer reward NPCs.
How can you say that? The big reveal at the end, that...man, it was something about gods and souls...artificially created gods? I'm pretty sure there was something about that in there.

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

Basically what we're saying is that we'd like to gently caress some party members this time

Basic Chunnel
Sep 21, 2010

Jesus! Jesus Christ! Say his name! Jesus! Jesus! Come down now!

I'm assuming the whole "environments change with your decision-making!" hook is the reason for the overpowering amounts of brown in them. Like maybe everything gets less brown the more quests you do.

Lambs
Feb 11, 2014

It is very brown.
Also chrome tells me the official website is trying to steal my credit card or something.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Brown is the color of evil in video games. Evil is always drab and depressing.

idonotlikepeas
May 29, 2010

This reasoning is possible for forums user idonotlikepeas!

Lambs posted:

It is very brown.
Also chrome tells me the official website is trying to steal my credit card or something.

Fixed that, it was autolinking to https instead of http since I didn't specify.

Internet Kraken posted:

Brown is the color of evil in video games. Evil is always drab and depressing.

You forgot purple, which feels unnatural in large quantities.

I hope there are some green spaces in the game, though. It could be an interesting way of differentiating privileged areas from shittier ones.

Count Uvula
Dec 20, 2011

---

Basic Chunnel posted:

Basically what we're saying is that we'd like to gently caress some party members this time

I would virtually date each and every PoE party member, I wanted them to go full Bioware on that poo poo once I got a couple of those good sexy friends. It offends me someone would insult the writing of any companion in that game who isn't Grieving Mother.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

I know everyone has their favorite character to poo poo on, but Grieving Mother was the one I really didn't mind feeding to the blood pit as soon as I recruited her.

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


To be fair no one else minded either.

Accordion Man
Nov 7, 2012


Buglord
I'm hoping the game lets you play as the kind of evil where you actually help out the populace with their problems and don't treat the people loyal to you like poo poo but if someone even makes the slightest bit of criticism towards the government or even mention the word freedom they and their family get sent to a magic gulag or get executed on the spot.

You know a more interesting and scarier kind of evil instead of the usual cartoonish evil.

I have faith in Obsidian though.

Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jun 24, 2016

Doorknob Slobber
Sep 10, 2006

by Fluffdaddy

Orv posted:

I hope this isn't as rote and predictable as almost every piece of writing in PoE was.

Aren't most of the people that formed the heart of Obsidian gone now anyways? The art looks great at least.

prometheusbound2
Jul 5, 2010

Reason posted:

Aren't most of the people that formed the heart of Obsidian gone now anyways? The art looks great at least.

Other than Chris Avellone, pretty sure most of the original principals are still there, and they've added some talent from the Black Isle days(Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky).

Darkhold
Feb 19, 2011

No Heart❤️
No Soul👻
No Service🙅
I think most of the complains about the story not being as good as their old stuff is the classic selective memory (not calling anyone out everyone does this). Nobody looks back and says 'I expected the writing to be better this is the team behind Neverwinter Nights 2!' sometimes they get it right most times they pump out something that's ok to blah and we forget those times.

Accordion Man
Nov 7, 2012


Buglord
I actually felt that Pillars is like a superior version of Mask of the Betrayer having played through the latter for the first time recently.

prometheusbound2
Jul 5, 2010

Darkhold posted:

I think most of the complains about the story not being as good as their old stuff is the classic selective memory (not calling anyone out everyone does this). Nobody looks back and says 'I expected the writing to be better this is the team behind Neverwinter Nights 2!' sometimes they get it right most times they pump out something that's ok to blah and we forget those times.

That's a little selective. Neverwinter Nights 2 was pretty mediocre on story(but still had some great moments) but its expansion Mask of the Betrayer, KOTOR2, and Fallout: New Vegas all warrant pretty high expections for writing.

Orv
May 4, 2011

Darkhold posted:

I think most of the complains about the story not being as good as their old stuff is the classic selective memory (not calling anyone out everyone does this). Nobody looks back and says 'I expected the writing to be better this is the team behind Neverwinter Nights 2!' sometimes they get it right most times they pump out something that's ok to blah and we forget those times.

No, the writing in PoE was bad, flat out, nostalgia is not involved. Even for a video game it was the most predictable poo poo. A character started talking and I knew where the entire quest line was going, and the world building itself was safe and boring. Almost every single quest was some flavor of Obvious Bad Guy, Obvious Good Guy, skip ahead, Oh No Good Guy Is Bad!

Orv fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Jun 24, 2016

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

Orv posted:

No, the writing in PoE was bad, flat out, nostalgia is not involved. Even for a video game it was the most predictable poo poo. A character started talking and I knew where the entire quest line was going, and the world building itself was safe and boring.

Really? I never picked it up myself but I thought people generally liked PoE.

Riot Bimbo
Dec 28, 2006


PoE didnt subvert high fantasy much if at all but it was written fine. I got it for free from a key posted on here and loved it enough that i bought the expansions and played those too.

Orv
May 4, 2011

Internet Kraken posted:

Really? I never picked it up myself but I thought people generally liked PoE.

I mean, look, an Infinity Engine game (or one trying to succeed them) has basically two elements, the story and the combat. Both of those were fairly divisive between people who played the game, and I came down on the side of both of them being garbage.

idonotlikepeas
May 29, 2010

This reasoning is possible for forums user idonotlikepeas!

Accordion Man posted:

I'm hoping the game lets you play as the kind of evil where you actually help out the populace with their problems and don't treat the people loyal to you like poo poo but if someone even makes the slightest bit of criticism towards the government or even mention the word freedom they and their family get sent to a magic gulag or get executed on the spot.

You know a more interesting and scarier kind of evil instead of the usual cartoonish evil.

Based on the pre-release information we have, that is exactly Kyros' deal. One has to assume that, as his trusted servant, you can play that out pretty much as you wrote it.

Internet Kraken posted:

Really? I never picked it up myself but I thought people generally liked PoE.

Most people did (very strong reviews, very good sales especially considering it's an isometric RPG, won a couple awards, a thread on this very forum where the vast majority of participants raved about it for months). Some people didn't like it. It's fine; there's never going to be a game everyone likes. The writing is, by and large, quite good. I mean, by video game standards it's loving Septuple Shakespeare, but even by Obisidian standards it's pretty good. The system design is great. The setting is interesting, even if it does have elves in it. And so on.

StoryTime
Feb 26, 2010

Now listen to me children and I'll tell you of the legend of the Ninja
This game sounds cool. Basically you're an evil Spectre working for an rear end in a top hat? I'm down with that.

I thought PoE was okay, if a bit safe and rote at places. Like that giant dungeon under your castle; there was stuff there that was more fit for Card Hunter than an actual story driven RPG. The Animancy stuff was pretty funny too. They tried to present it like there were arguments for and against, but every single time you deal with Animancers they turn out to be a pile of gigantic Hitlers, constantly on the brink of getting everyone around them killed. On the other hand, I thought the different nations and their histories were really interesting. Angry Priest Guy was also a fun party member, but I've already forgotten his name, so take from that what you will.

Count Uvula
Dec 20, 2011

---

StoryTime posted:

The Animancy stuff was pretty funny too. They tried to present it like there were arguments for and against, but every single time you deal with Animancers they turn out to be a pile of gigantic Hitlers, constantly on the brink of getting everyone around them killed.

That describes mages in Dragon Age a lot more than animancers in Pillars. In Pillars you find a couple obviously terrible people (Raedric's basement witch, the sewer necromancer) but then for the most part they're fair and reasonable people, and you straight up just fail to stop a plot to frame them as the source of all the country's troubles.

Dragon Age has tons of mages and 80% of them are colossal fuckups or terrorists.



e:

Arzachel posted:

It made a lot of people find out that they don't actually like reading or gameplay in their RPGs.

Haha. hosed up, too. PoE (after like a year and a half of regular patches adjusting it) has the best gameplay of any RPG. That rare game where the hardest difficulty is just more fun instead of being a chore.

Count Uvula fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Jun 24, 2016

Arzachel
May 12, 2012

Internet Kraken posted:

Really? I never picked it up myself but I thought people generally liked PoE.

It made a lot of people find out that they don't actually like reading or gameplay in their RPGs.

Darkhold
Feb 19, 2011

No Heart❤️
No Soul👻
No Service🙅

prometheusbound2 posted:

That's a little selective. Neverwinter Nights 2 was pretty mediocre on story(but still had some great moments) but its expansion Mask of the Betrayer, KOTOR2, and Fallout: New Vegas all warrant pretty high expections for writing.
Yes did you miss that part where I said selective memory?
Sith Lords? Hard to tell with how hacked it was. Tried something new.
NWN2? Good in spots very bad in others. Not many think it was great though.
Mask of the Betrayer? Really good
Storm of the Zehir? Deliberately minimalist story so hard to judge. Not anything anyone brings up though.
Alpha Protocol? Story itself was boring as hell but so well presented and so dynamic nobody cared about that. Bad story told very very well.
New Vegas? Pretty darn good.
Dungeon Siege III? Does anyone even remember the story here?
South Park? Well it's a South Park episode. If you like SP you'll like the story if not you won't.

So yeah. Around half were pretty good and around half were forgettable to bad. You remember Mask but forget the ones that are forgettable.

Minor Edit: I guess I should say that AP isn't bad so much as very clearly a collection of spy cliches. Bad is a poor way to describe it as it was doing what it was supposed to but I don't feel the writing was actually great on that just passable enough to make the dynamic way it responds carry the game more than the actual story it told.

Orv posted:

No, the writing in PoE was bad, flat out, nostalgia is not involved. Even for a video game it was the most predictable poo poo. A character started talking and I knew where the entire quest line was going, and the world building itself was safe and boring. Almost every single quest was some flavor of Obvious Bad Guy, Obvious Good Guy, skip ahead, Oh No Good Guy Is Bad!
I'm not even sure what you're ranting about? Which quests had good guy is actually bad resolutions? And calling out a game that was specifically a homage to old games for not turning things on their head is very weird.

I'd be happy to give you the gods reveal at the end fell a bit flat and the fact the danger to the player wasn't communicated well at all but you seem to be complaining about things that weren't notable enough for me to even notice or things the game was specifically trying to do.

Darkhold fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Jun 24, 2016

StoryTime
Feb 26, 2010

Now listen to me children and I'll tell you of the legend of the Ninja

Count Uvula posted:

That describes mages in Dragon Age a lot more than animancers in Pillars. In Pillars you find a couple obviously terrible people (Raedric's basement witch, the sewer necromancer) but then for the most part they're fair and reasonable people, and you straight up just fail to stop a plot to frame them as the source of all the country's troubles.

Dragon Age has tons of mages and 80% of them are colossal fuckups or terrorists.

I dunno. The point where a bunch of animancers went "hey, let's trap souls in these clockwork guardsmen statues to make them go, they will obviously not go haywire and murder everyone", is about where I formed my final opinion on animancers. Maybe their intentions were good, but christ that is a bad idea.

Viral Warfare
Aug 4, 2010

~~a n d I a m c a l m~~

SNAKES N CAKES posted:

One thing to note from the demo is that Tyranny seems to be going back to the genre's roots by featuring classic MMO gameplay; the party is split between a tank with AoE taunts, a dedicated healer with HoTs, instaheals, and AoEs, a damage dealing squishy rogue, and the main character.

How does it compare to Dragon Age 2 though?

Orv
May 4, 2011

Darkhold posted:

I'm not even sure what you're ranting about? Which quests had good guy is actually bad resolutions? And calling out a game that was specifically a homage to old games for not turning things on their head is very weird.

I'd be happy to give you the gods reveal at the end fell a bit flat and the fact the danger to the player wasn't communicated well at all but you seem to be complaining about things that weren't notable enough for me to even notice or things the game was specifically trying to do.

Let me put it this way. Right at the top of the game, you get the quest from the guy on the road into town about his friend being killed by a bear and would you kindly go look and see if he made it? From the second or third panel of quest text it was obvious that the guy shafted his partner to get the wife and the business, because it's a pretty traditional cliche. On top of that, the game paints the living partner as a very sympathetic guy who obviously could do no wrong. But five seconds of digging and oops, he's actually a giant, murdering rear end in a top hat. That quest encapsulates every quest in the rest of the game. If you're at all familiar with any sort of story telling media, every quest telegraphs its choices, its twist and its endings from the first few lines of each encounter or quest. And there is of course a point to be made for the typical "Well for a video game..." but no other video game has been so resoundingly obvious with every single outcome that the gameplay didn't really push it past those problems. PoE was just so predictable and by the book that I never enjoyed a single story it told.

Superstring
Jul 22, 2007

I thought I was going insane for a second.

Orv posted:

Let me put it this way. Right at the top of the game, you get the quest from the guy on the road into town about his friend being killed by a bear and would you kindly go look and see if he made it? From the second or third panel of quest text it was obvious that the guy shafted his partner to get the wife and the business, because it's a pretty traditional cliche. On top of that, the game paints the living partner as a very sympathetic guy who obviously could do no wrong. But five seconds of digging and oops, he's actually a giant, murdering rear end in a top hat. That quest encapsulates every quest in the rest of the game. If you're at all familiar with any sort of story telling media, every quest telegraphs its choices, its twist and its endings from the first few lines of each encounter or quest. And there is of course a point to be made for the typical "Well for a video game..." but no other video game has been so resoundingly obvious with every single outcome that the gameplay didn't really push it past those problems. PoE was just so predictable and by the book that I never enjoyed a single story it told.

Hahaha holy poo poo! You don't remember anything right at all!

Darkhold
Feb 19, 2011

No Heart❤️
No Soul👻
No Service🙅
Well if you didn't enjoy a single aspect of it there's obviously no middle ground to be found. I hope you enjoy Tyranny more.

Personally I thought it was fine with a few major flaws. I wasn't really looking for anything that caught me off guard but I did really enjoy Eldar's 'I guess I'll never find out WTF was up with my brother. Guess I'll just have to live with it' which I don't recall seeing before. I will be really saddened if that's resolved in a sequel or something.

drgnvale
Apr 30, 2004

A sword is not cutlery!

Superstring posted:

Hahaha holy poo poo! You don't remember anything right at all!

Oh, good. For a minute I thought I had gotten everything backwards. I remember the guy on the road warning me not to go investigate and finding that he was actually okayish for a murderer and it was the dead man that was probably abusing his wife.

Orv
May 4, 2011

Darkhold posted:

Well if you didn't enjoy a single aspect of it there's obviously no middle ground to be found. I hope you enjoy Tyranny more.

Personally I thought it was fine with a few major flaws. I wasn't really looking for anything that caught me off guard but I did really enjoy Eldar's 'I guess I'll never find out WTF was up with my brother. Guess I'll just have to live with it' which I don't recall seeing before. I will be really saddened if that's resolved in a sequel or something.

So do I, it's a cool concept that video games seem extra suited to do weird stuff with.


Superstring posted:

Hahaha holy poo poo! You don't remember anything right at all!

Oh man, you're right, I don't have eidetic memory for things I didn't enjoy. The main point stands whether I remember the particulars or not, the guy opened his mouth that his partner was killed by a bear and oh surprise you did it, didn't you guy who made it.

Orv fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Jun 24, 2016

Dog Fat Man Chaser
Jan 13, 2009

maybe being miserable
is not unpredictable
maybe that's
the problem
with me
I remember having a very similar experience, though. As soon as this guy talked about his dead friend I thought "you killed him you're the bad guy" and surprise. They went for a twist and took the easiest option they had, and this kept happening so often that I didn't bother to finish the game as it felt so predictable. Every quest (or at least enough that it felt like it) seemed to have this "whoa shocking twist!!!" moment that you could see coming a mile away because it was the most cliche option.

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Chadzok
Apr 25, 2002

can't wait, loved PoE, take my goddamn money now.
I thought the overall world-building of PoE was one of the most successful parts of the game, even if some quests or plot-railroading weren't the world's greatest. Looking forward stupid amounts to getting into the Tyranny-verse.
is ropekid involved? will he be popping in here periodically to quell nerdrage?

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