CerberusGate
I should save my game in a whole new slot
Ave. True to Kyros!I'm sure you all know what i mean.
Tyranny Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Ragemage
- Start date
eissa
Artanis "Altáriel" Nerwen Nos Finwe
Dev Diary #12 – Spires
27 October, 2016 Author by Brian Heins
In our last developer update, we introduced you to Kills-in-Shadow (affectionately known around the office as “Killsy”), one of your potential Companions and a member of the Beast race on Terratus. For today’s update, I wanted to talk more about the player’s base mechanic, which we revealed yesterday during a live stream.
Two of the most prominent features of the world of Terratus are the Oldwalls and the Spires. We mentioned the Oldwalls in our update about the Bane and showed some gameplay inside the Oldwalls in a previous stream. The Spires play a prominent role in the game’s narrative, and also serve as the location for the player’s base.
As you explore the Tiers you have the opportunity to gain access to several of these Spires. Claiming a Spire unlocks several gameplay benefits:
Reduced Travel Time: Each Spire is magically linked with the others. Once activated, you can teleport between your spires, reducing your travel time through the Tiers.
Upgrading Your Spires: Once you’ve acquired a Spire, you can spend money to build an upgrade on top of the Spire. You can find the details of each upgrade below. Each upgrade provides different benefits to your party, among them providing different rest bonuses when you rest at your Spire. You receive the bonuses for all of your upgrades when you rest at any of your spires.
Hiring Recruits: Once an upgrade has been built on top of a spire, you can begin hiring recruits to work for you at that upgrade. Recruits provide several functions for your party: they can train your party members in skills, they can sell unique weapons and armor, and they can produce new items for your party while they’re out adventuring.
Recruits can come from many different factions in the game, including from your enemies. With the right price, some members of factions that hate you are more than willing to work for you at your Spire. Some recruits are only available if you make certain choices during Conquest.
Spire Upgrades
There are four possible upgrades you can build on a Spire. Each upgrade can only be built once and cannot be removed once built. So once you choose to build a Training Ground, you’ll need to find another Spire before you can build the Library.
Once an upgrade has been constructed, it costs money to maintain. Each month than an upgrade is active, you must pay its maintenance cost. If you don’t have the money for the maintenance cost, then the upgrade is suspended and you no longer receive any benefits of the upgrade until you can pay it again.
Infirmary: The Infirmary upgrade provides a place where healers and alchemists can gather. Once this upgrade is built, you will be able to brew your own potions and poisons and prepare various plants to be safely consumed by your party. This upgrade can be vital to ensure your party’s survival – especially on harder difficulty modes.
Library: Once constructed, the Library upgrade attracts Sages and scholars from around the Tiers. After all, there aren’t many great libraries left after Kyros destroyed the Vellum Citadel. The Library allows your recruits to research hidden lore – from powerful magical Sigils that allow you to enhance and customize your spells, to stories of ancient Artifacts that you might be able to forge anew. Players who want to get the most out of the Spell Crafting system will make the Library and priority.
Forge: Smiths throughout the Tiers, including Kyros’ Forge-Bound, will be amazed at the Forge you can construct on one of your Spires. Building this upgrade allows you to increase the quality of your weapons and armor, improving their damage and defense characteristics. The Forge also allows you to create unique Artifacts and special named items that you won’t find anywhere else in the game.
Training Grounds: The greatest weapon masters and mages in the Tiers are drawn to the Training Grounds. Once constructed, you’ll be able to attract the finest skill trainers, able to increase your party members’ skills to the highest ranks.
~Brian Heins, Game Director
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hopefully spire bonus will be overpowered, something that needed in RPG. This is not 4x strategy people
27 October, 2016 Author by Brian Heins
In our last developer update, we introduced you to Kills-in-Shadow (affectionately known around the office as “Killsy”), one of your potential Companions and a member of the Beast race on Terratus. For today’s update, I wanted to talk more about the player’s base mechanic, which we revealed yesterday during a live stream.
Two of the most prominent features of the world of Terratus are the Oldwalls and the Spires. We mentioned the Oldwalls in our update about the Bane and showed some gameplay inside the Oldwalls in a previous stream. The Spires play a prominent role in the game’s narrative, and also serve as the location for the player’s base.
As you explore the Tiers you have the opportunity to gain access to several of these Spires. Claiming a Spire unlocks several gameplay benefits:
Reduced Travel Time: Each Spire is magically linked with the others. Once activated, you can teleport between your spires, reducing your travel time through the Tiers.
Upgrading Your Spires: Once you’ve acquired a Spire, you can spend money to build an upgrade on top of the Spire. You can find the details of each upgrade below. Each upgrade provides different benefits to your party, among them providing different rest bonuses when you rest at your Spire. You receive the bonuses for all of your upgrades when you rest at any of your spires.
Hiring Recruits: Once an upgrade has been built on top of a spire, you can begin hiring recruits to work for you at that upgrade. Recruits provide several functions for your party: they can train your party members in skills, they can sell unique weapons and armor, and they can produce new items for your party while they’re out adventuring.
Recruits can come from many different factions in the game, including from your enemies. With the right price, some members of factions that hate you are more than willing to work for you at your Spire. Some recruits are only available if you make certain choices during Conquest.
Spire Upgrades
There are four possible upgrades you can build on a Spire. Each upgrade can only be built once and cannot be removed once built. So once you choose to build a Training Ground, you’ll need to find another Spire before you can build the Library.
Once an upgrade has been constructed, it costs money to maintain. Each month than an upgrade is active, you must pay its maintenance cost. If you don’t have the money for the maintenance cost, then the upgrade is suspended and you no longer receive any benefits of the upgrade until you can pay it again.
Infirmary: The Infirmary upgrade provides a place where healers and alchemists can gather. Once this upgrade is built, you will be able to brew your own potions and poisons and prepare various plants to be safely consumed by your party. This upgrade can be vital to ensure your party’s survival – especially on harder difficulty modes.
Library: Once constructed, the Library upgrade attracts Sages and scholars from around the Tiers. After all, there aren’t many great libraries left after Kyros destroyed the Vellum Citadel. The Library allows your recruits to research hidden lore – from powerful magical Sigils that allow you to enhance and customize your spells, to stories of ancient Artifacts that you might be able to forge anew. Players who want to get the most out of the Spell Crafting system will make the Library and priority.
Forge: Smiths throughout the Tiers, including Kyros’ Forge-Bound, will be amazed at the Forge you can construct on one of your Spires. Building this upgrade allows you to increase the quality of your weapons and armor, improving their damage and defense characteristics. The Forge also allows you to create unique Artifacts and special named items that you won’t find anywhere else in the game.
Training Grounds: The greatest weapon masters and mages in the Tiers are drawn to the Training Grounds. Once constructed, you’ll be able to attract the finest skill trainers, able to increase your party members’ skills to the highest ranks.
~Brian Heins, Game Director
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hopefully spire bonus will be overpowered, something that needed in RPG. This is not 4x strategy people
eissa
Artanis "Altáriel" Nerwen Nos Finwe
Sirin - Archon of Song
Sirin caused the death of more people before she was seven than most soldiers do in their entire careers. One of the few mages on Terratus who was born with magic, Sirin first displayed her abilities the first time she cried. Her parents quickly learned anyone who heard Sirin’s voice was compelled by the emotion behind it.
Eventually, tales of Sirin’s voice reached Kyros, who knew that if this child truly was as powerful as everyone said, she could be a power tool for conquest. Using the Voices of Nerat, Kyros kidnapped Sirin from her family and delivered her to the royal court for training.
Once she was deemed ready (and properly under control), she was given back to the Voices of Nerat to help the Scarlet Chorus in their recruiting efforts. From that point on, her voice was used to convince any and all to join the Scarlet Chorus and fight for Kyros. But Sirin knew that she – and her voice – were simply a means to an end and that the moment she stopped being useful, her life was forfeit, so she did her best to recruit as many bodies as she could for the Chorus while planning a means of escape if the opportunity ever presented itself.
Sirin caused the death of more people before she was seven than most soldiers do in their entire careers. One of the few mages on Terratus who was born with magic, Sirin first displayed her abilities the first time she cried. Her parents quickly learned anyone who heard Sirin’s voice was compelled by the emotion behind it.
Eventually, tales of Sirin’s voice reached Kyros, who knew that if this child truly was as powerful as everyone said, she could be a power tool for conquest. Using the Voices of Nerat, Kyros kidnapped Sirin from her family and delivered her to the royal court for training.
Once she was deemed ready (and properly under control), she was given back to the Voices of Nerat to help the Scarlet Chorus in their recruiting efforts. From that point on, her voice was used to convince any and all to join the Scarlet Chorus and fight for Kyros. But Sirin knew that she – and her voice – were simply a means to an end and that the moment she stopped being useful, her life was forfeit, so she did her best to recruit as many bodies as she could for the Chorus while planning a means of escape if the opportunity ever presented itself.
CerberusGate
I should save my game in a whole new slot
IIRC, some of the decisions in Conquest (the prologue) do center around her and her abilities with the possibility of reducing her forces or adding more to it. I guess this means she will have the most variety when it comes to reactions to the world, the armies and the player.
eissa
Artanis "Altáriel" Nerwen Nos Finwe
Papa Graven Ashe FEELs You! Join the Disfavored army Now!
Last edited:
eissa
Artanis "Altáriel" Nerwen Nos Finwe
Obsidian’s Tyranny: A story of bronze, iron and evil
Explore your darker side on the front lines of a conquering army.
Many expected Obsidian Entertainment to follow its hit role-playing game Pillars of Eternity with a sequel. Instead, after some well-received downloadable content, the studio is on to an entirely new setting. Its next game, called Tyranny, is a departure in more ways than one. Yes, it’s still an isometric role-playing game of a classic style, but it takes place in a different time period on a different world, and it tells its stories from an utterly foreign perspective.
That’s because in Tyranny, players are agents of evil.
Instead of fighting against the darkness threatening to overtake the land, they pull that darkness behind them like a cloak. The goal of the game, says director Brian Heins, is not to create situations where players must choose between saving the puppy and sacrificing the puppy. Instead, players will explore the many ways in which that sacrifice can take place.
"When we’re designing our quests and dialogues," Heins says, "we have five evil options and then maybe a good option for players who want to take a slightly better path. You can bribe and extort and harass people, or threaten them with the death of their loved ones, if they don’t do what you tell them."
But Tyranny isn’t a cartoon, and you won’t be playing a mustache-twirling ne’er do well. Characters and their factions have goals and motivations of their own, and that is where Tyranny hopes to make its darkness shine.
The forces of Kyros the Overlord on the march.
Lashed upon the wheel
The best place to begin understanding the world of Tyranny is with a discussion of its technology. While Pillars of Eternity was a fantasy world, it took place in a pseudo-historical period following the invention of gunpowder. Tyranny, in contrast, rolls the clock back to the bronze age.
For hundreds of years, a shadowy figure known as Kyros the Overlord has been sweeping across the known world from the east, bringing Tyranny’s large, single continent under his control. The secret of his vast war machine, Heins says, is a new and fearsome technology — iron.
Historically speaking, it’s not that iron was any better than bronze, though. It was just way cheaper.
"A lot of times to make bronze you had to trade," Heins says, sounding more like a college professor than a game developer. "You didn’t always have the minerals necessary to forge bronze weapons in your own territory. Then you had very skilled smiths who knew the proper ratios to actually create the alloy that was durable enough to make weapons and armor. There’s a lot of expense that came with that, so most places could only outfit either partially in bronze or a small number in bronze.
"For Tyranny, the majority of nations in this world prior to Kyros’ conquest ... had armies that were numbered in the dozens of people, possibly over 100 for wealthy nations because outfitting warriors with bronze armor was very expensive. It took a lot of money to make ‘weapons-grade bronze’ as I like to say. It was a skill and a high art."
Kyros the Overlord's secret weapon is a new and fearsome technology — iron.
In so many role-playing games the materials that the weapons of war are made from are simply a pastiche. Imagine World of Warcraft or the Elder Scrolls games and how they treat the difference between stone and metal and glass as simply a set of stat buffs. But in Tyranny, Heins and his team went a step further to explore how new materials would have changed the face of warfare in an ancient land.
"One of the things I love about this period in history is that a lot of people have this idea that iron weapons are inherently better than bronze. That’s because they’re thinking of steel."
While steel is thin and light, iron is dark, heavy, black as night and crudely wrought. Imagine swinging around a cast iron pan on the battlefield. Now imagine wearing a half dozen pans woven into a jacket.
"The first iron weapons were crude, heavy, brittle and prone to shattering," Heins says. But the proliferation was a game changer.
"With iron you only need a single source of iron in order to make weapons and armor. It was much easier for people to outfit larger armies."
And it’s with those bigger armies, some 10 times larger than those that stood against them, that Tyranny’s villain Kyros has conquered the land.
Graven Ashe (center), leader of the Disfavored and Kyros' Archon of War.
Judge, jury and executioner
In Tyranny players will take on the role of a fatebinder, a kind of justice of the peace on the edge of Kyros’ advance.
"Your role in Kyros’ empire is, whenever there are different armies and mage guilds in the same area they’re going to have conflicts with each other, either from their own personal politics or driven by the Archons that control them," Heins says. "When those arise, it’s your job as a fatebinder to settle disputes that decide who gets to win. Who gets to proceed forward with their plans and who has to admit failure to their leader.
"We think of you as the Judge Dredd character, judge jury and executioner of everyone you meet because your word effectively is law."
The leaders who sit below Kyros are called archons, and at least one of them is a traitor to his people. While Kyros brings the sword, he also brings an open hand. Rather than conquer his enemies and destroy them utterly, he — like the historical Achaemenid Persian empire — is willing to bring them under his flag if they’re willing to fight at his side.
One of those great archons is named Graven Ashe. He is the leader of faction known as the Disfavored. And, in keeping with the bronze-age theme, they fight like ancient Greeks.
Stoneshields
"Stoneshields they fight with spear and shield — large tower shields. They create the phalanx that everyone else revolves around. The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around. When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army."
Crescent Runners
"Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins and other thrown attacks trying to provoke the enemy into the charge, at which point the crescent runners run back behind the phalanx and allow the enemies to break themselves against the spears and shield wall itself. Then they’ll harass with more javelin attacks while they’re fighting."
Iron Walkers
"These are the guys who stand in the center of the phalanx waiting for either people to break through the phalanx and reach the interior, or to wait for a high value enemy target. At that point the phalanx will part and the iron walkers come charging out and will take out the enemy commander or mage or whoever it is that needs to be defeated before retreating back inside the phalanx.
"I called them the Iron Walkers because the idea is that, just being able to be encased in a suit of iron armor and move is incredibly impressive at this point. Iron is crude and thick and heavy so it’s not like steel where it can be fairly light and still protective. It’s a lot of weight to carry on the battlefield. These are men and women at peak physical condition, they need a lot of strength just to carry around the armor they’ve got."
Oath Bound
"The Oath Bound are the elite among an already elite group. Each squad – or Fist – of Oath Bound is magically linked to the rest. When one dies, their strength is shared with the survivors. In addition, each living Oath Bound knows where and how their Oathmate died, and can seek out their killer for vengeance. The Oath Bound are the Disfavored legion’s scouts and assassins, sent ahead of the army to clear any obstacles."
Earthshakers
"Earthshakers get their power from the Archon of Stone. They’ve been studying him and his powers and developed a new school of magic based around creating tremors in the earth and ripping boulders out of the ground and throwing them at the enemy. They’re the ones who if the phalanx is approaching will send out tremors to knock them to the ground so they are weakened and can’t stand against the Disfavored units. They’re a small group of mages but when they’re coordinated with the Disfavored they’re highly effective."
While players won’t encounter a solid phalanx of Stonshields in battle, they will meet small groups of warriors before and after larger battles. Understanding how they fight in rank-and-file units, Heins says, will help contextualize their abilities in a CRPG setting.
"We tried to design the AI so the Stoneshields will hunker down and try to attack you with spears or swords if you get close enough," Heins says. "The Earthshakers and the Oath Bound will attack from a distance while the Iron Walkers take you out from close up. Depending on the encounter and which enemies are spawned, you’ll get different tactics from the units and have to adjust your strategy accordingly."
But in order to survive the harsh world of Tyranny, in order to bring judgement to a frontier at war, players will have to deal with the leader of the Disfavored — Graven Ashe himself.
The warrior, already several hundred years old, has been in the vanguard of Kyros’ armies for generations. And, just as some Greek city states who first fought against and later allied with Persia in antiquity, Graven Ashe is a freedom fighter who was forced to kneel long ago.
"Somehow through that interaction Kyros won Graven Ashe’s loyalty," Heins says. "He’s one of the overlord’s most loyal generals leading the Disfavored, trying to fulfill Kyros’ dream of conquering the entire world under the peace of his law. He’s one of my favorite characters we’ve created so far in the game.
"Graven Ashe is a couple hundred years old. No one knows why but becoming an Archon extends peoples’ life. Mages can live maybe 150 years just by the fact of using magic. Archons seem to live until they’re killed. No one’s seen them die of natural causes. They only die when challenged by another Archon or someone of equal power."
Exploring the face of evil
Even more so than Pillars of Eternity, Heins says that the teamplans to explore mature themes in Tyranny. Pressed on what exactly that means, he isn’t willing to give up many details. What he says is that Obsidian’s next game will take great care to explore the nuance of what it means to be, and to be seen as, evil in the face of the game’s non-player characters.
"What makes you ‘evil’ is that the choices you’ll make in Tyranny are a lot darker than the ones you’ll make in other RPGs," Heins says. "Each person in Tyranny, from their own perspective, has something that they want to do. No one wakes up and says ‘I’m gonna be evil today.’ As we’re trying to tell the various stories in Tyranny, we’re not trying to say ‘you can be a cartoonish villain.’ We want you to be a character that has rational reasons for doing what you’re doing in the world and things that make sense."
Obsidian, which is publishing the game through Paradox Interactive, also wants Tyranny to be a shorter experience. Where Pillars of Eternity had a main story that extended from 60 to 80 hours of playtime, Heins says that Tyranny will be a focused 25-hour experience.
The goal will be to create a game that players are curious about replaying, and to create decisions and forking paths that will reward returning to that material again and again.
"We wanted there to be a lot of possible different stories you could play through in the game," Heins says. "Right now there are four major paths in the game, and in that there’s a lot of variations based on what quests you choose, which regions you visit, that can create more variety."
While there’s no release date yet, Tyranny is scheduled for a 2016 release.
Explore your darker side on the front lines of a conquering army.
Many expected Obsidian Entertainment to follow its hit role-playing game Pillars of Eternity with a sequel. Instead, after some well-received downloadable content, the studio is on to an entirely new setting. Its next game, called Tyranny, is a departure in more ways than one. Yes, it’s still an isometric role-playing game of a classic style, but it takes place in a different time period on a different world, and it tells its stories from an utterly foreign perspective.
That’s because in Tyranny, players are agents of evil.
Instead of fighting against the darkness threatening to overtake the land, they pull that darkness behind them like a cloak. The goal of the game, says director Brian Heins, is not to create situations where players must choose between saving the puppy and sacrificing the puppy. Instead, players will explore the many ways in which that sacrifice can take place.
"When we’re designing our quests and dialogues," Heins says, "we have five evil options and then maybe a good option for players who want to take a slightly better path. You can bribe and extort and harass people, or threaten them with the death of their loved ones, if they don’t do what you tell them."
But Tyranny isn’t a cartoon, and you won’t be playing a mustache-twirling ne’er do well. Characters and their factions have goals and motivations of their own, and that is where Tyranny hopes to make its darkness shine.
The forces of Kyros the Overlord on the march.
Lashed upon the wheel
The best place to begin understanding the world of Tyranny is with a discussion of its technology. While Pillars of Eternity was a fantasy world, it took place in a pseudo-historical period following the invention of gunpowder. Tyranny, in contrast, rolls the clock back to the bronze age.
For hundreds of years, a shadowy figure known as Kyros the Overlord has been sweeping across the known world from the east, bringing Tyranny’s large, single continent under his control. The secret of his vast war machine, Heins says, is a new and fearsome technology — iron.
Historically speaking, it’s not that iron was any better than bronze, though. It was just way cheaper.
"A lot of times to make bronze you had to trade," Heins says, sounding more like a college professor than a game developer. "You didn’t always have the minerals necessary to forge bronze weapons in your own territory. Then you had very skilled smiths who knew the proper ratios to actually create the alloy that was durable enough to make weapons and armor. There’s a lot of expense that came with that, so most places could only outfit either partially in bronze or a small number in bronze.
"For Tyranny, the majority of nations in this world prior to Kyros’ conquest ... had armies that were numbered in the dozens of people, possibly over 100 for wealthy nations because outfitting warriors with bronze armor was very expensive. It took a lot of money to make ‘weapons-grade bronze’ as I like to say. It was a skill and a high art."
Kyros the Overlord's secret weapon is a new and fearsome technology — iron.
In so many role-playing games the materials that the weapons of war are made from are simply a pastiche. Imagine World of Warcraft or the Elder Scrolls games and how they treat the difference between stone and metal and glass as simply a set of stat buffs. But in Tyranny, Heins and his team went a step further to explore how new materials would have changed the face of warfare in an ancient land.
"One of the things I love about this period in history is that a lot of people have this idea that iron weapons are inherently better than bronze. That’s because they’re thinking of steel."
While steel is thin and light, iron is dark, heavy, black as night and crudely wrought. Imagine swinging around a cast iron pan on the battlefield. Now imagine wearing a half dozen pans woven into a jacket.
"The first iron weapons were crude, heavy, brittle and prone to shattering," Heins says. But the proliferation was a game changer.
"With iron you only need a single source of iron in order to make weapons and armor. It was much easier for people to outfit larger armies."
And it’s with those bigger armies, some 10 times larger than those that stood against them, that Tyranny’s villain Kyros has conquered the land.
Graven Ashe (center), leader of the Disfavored and Kyros' Archon of War.
Judge, jury and executioner
In Tyranny players will take on the role of a fatebinder, a kind of justice of the peace on the edge of Kyros’ advance.
"Your role in Kyros’ empire is, whenever there are different armies and mage guilds in the same area they’re going to have conflicts with each other, either from their own personal politics or driven by the Archons that control them," Heins says. "When those arise, it’s your job as a fatebinder to settle disputes that decide who gets to win. Who gets to proceed forward with their plans and who has to admit failure to their leader.
"We think of you as the Judge Dredd character, judge jury and executioner of everyone you meet because your word effectively is law."
The leaders who sit below Kyros are called archons, and at least one of them is a traitor to his people. While Kyros brings the sword, he also brings an open hand. Rather than conquer his enemies and destroy them utterly, he — like the historical Achaemenid Persian empire — is willing to bring them under his flag if they’re willing to fight at his side.
One of those great archons is named Graven Ashe. He is the leader of faction known as the Disfavored. And, in keeping with the bronze-age theme, they fight like ancient Greeks.
Stoneshields
"Stoneshields they fight with spear and shield — large tower shields. They create the phalanx that everyone else revolves around. The shields they carry are massive iron tower shields that are very heavy to carry around. When the shields join together in the phalanx, they got their names from the idea that the enemies break against the shield wall like waves on a stone. That’s the core of the Disfavored army."
Crescent Runners
"Supporting them is a group called Crescent Runners. They’re the greek hoplites. Much more like skirmishers, they’ll run ahead of the army and harass the enemy with javelins and other thrown attacks trying to provoke the enemy into the charge, at which point the crescent runners run back behind the phalanx and allow the enemies to break themselves against the spears and shield wall itself. Then they’ll harass with more javelin attacks while they’re fighting."
Iron Walkers
"These are the guys who stand in the center of the phalanx waiting for either people to break through the phalanx and reach the interior, or to wait for a high value enemy target. At that point the phalanx will part and the iron walkers come charging out and will take out the enemy commander or mage or whoever it is that needs to be defeated before retreating back inside the phalanx.
"I called them the Iron Walkers because the idea is that, just being able to be encased in a suit of iron armor and move is incredibly impressive at this point. Iron is crude and thick and heavy so it’s not like steel where it can be fairly light and still protective. It’s a lot of weight to carry on the battlefield. These are men and women at peak physical condition, they need a lot of strength just to carry around the armor they’ve got."
Oath Bound
"The Oath Bound are the elite among an already elite group. Each squad – or Fist – of Oath Bound is magically linked to the rest. When one dies, their strength is shared with the survivors. In addition, each living Oath Bound knows where and how their Oathmate died, and can seek out their killer for vengeance. The Oath Bound are the Disfavored legion’s scouts and assassins, sent ahead of the army to clear any obstacles."
Earthshakers
"Earthshakers get their power from the Archon of Stone. They’ve been studying him and his powers and developed a new school of magic based around creating tremors in the earth and ripping boulders out of the ground and throwing them at the enemy. They’re the ones who if the phalanx is approaching will send out tremors to knock them to the ground so they are weakened and can’t stand against the Disfavored units. They’re a small group of mages but when they’re coordinated with the Disfavored they’re highly effective."
While players won’t encounter a solid phalanx of Stonshields in battle, they will meet small groups of warriors before and after larger battles. Understanding how they fight in rank-and-file units, Heins says, will help contextualize their abilities in a CRPG setting.
"We tried to design the AI so the Stoneshields will hunker down and try to attack you with spears or swords if you get close enough," Heins says. "The Earthshakers and the Oath Bound will attack from a distance while the Iron Walkers take you out from close up. Depending on the encounter and which enemies are spawned, you’ll get different tactics from the units and have to adjust your strategy accordingly."
But in order to survive the harsh world of Tyranny, in order to bring judgement to a frontier at war, players will have to deal with the leader of the Disfavored — Graven Ashe himself.
The warrior, already several hundred years old, has been in the vanguard of Kyros’ armies for generations. And, just as some Greek city states who first fought against and later allied with Persia in antiquity, Graven Ashe is a freedom fighter who was forced to kneel long ago.
"Somehow through that interaction Kyros won Graven Ashe’s loyalty," Heins says. "He’s one of the overlord’s most loyal generals leading the Disfavored, trying to fulfill Kyros’ dream of conquering the entire world under the peace of his law. He’s one of my favorite characters we’ve created so far in the game.
"Graven Ashe is a couple hundred years old. No one knows why but becoming an Archon extends peoples’ life. Mages can live maybe 150 years just by the fact of using magic. Archons seem to live until they’re killed. No one’s seen them die of natural causes. They only die when challenged by another Archon or someone of equal power."
Exploring the face of evil
Even more so than Pillars of Eternity, Heins says that the teamplans to explore mature themes in Tyranny. Pressed on what exactly that means, he isn’t willing to give up many details. What he says is that Obsidian’s next game will take great care to explore the nuance of what it means to be, and to be seen as, evil in the face of the game’s non-player characters.
"What makes you ‘evil’ is that the choices you’ll make in Tyranny are a lot darker than the ones you’ll make in other RPGs," Heins says. "Each person in Tyranny, from their own perspective, has something that they want to do. No one wakes up and says ‘I’m gonna be evil today.’ As we’re trying to tell the various stories in Tyranny, we’re not trying to say ‘you can be a cartoonish villain.’ We want you to be a character that has rational reasons for doing what you’re doing in the world and things that make sense."
Obsidian, which is publishing the game through Paradox Interactive, also wants Tyranny to be a shorter experience. Where Pillars of Eternity had a main story that extended from 60 to 80 hours of playtime, Heins says that Tyranny will be a focused 25-hour experience.
The goal will be to create a game that players are curious about replaying, and to create decisions and forking paths that will reward returning to that material again and again.
"We wanted there to be a lot of possible different stories you could play through in the game," Heins says. "Right now there are four major paths in the game, and in that there’s a lot of variations based on what quests you choose, which regions you visit, that can create more variety."
While there’s no release date yet, Tyranny is scheduled for a 2016 release.
CerberusGate
I should save my game in a whole new slot
Isn't the release date 10th November? I'm guessing this was from an old article on Tyranny?
Dr Fallout
Centurion
Oh I just cannot wait for this game... Scarlet Chorus! Voices of Nerat!
eissa
Artanis "Altáriel" Nerwen Nos Finwe
a bunch of howling mob are nothing compared to the might of physc linked Disfavored, protected and blessed by the loves of Papa Graven Ashe himself!
Long live the Graven ashe, Ave to kyros! Go n-éirí an t'ádh leat!
Dr Fallout
Centurion
So? Nerat believes in social equality! EVERYONE Can be in the Scarlet Chorus!a bunch of howling mob are nothing compared to the might of physc linked Disfavored, protected and blessed by the loves of Papa Graven Ashe himself!
CerberusGate
I should save my game in a whole new slot
@eissa and @Dr Fallout
You both are in the wrong, squabbling among each other rather than the fools who would oppose our Overlord. In the end, all will submit the will of Kyros.
You both are in the wrong, squabbling among each other rather than the fools who would oppose our Overlord. In the end, all will submit the will of Kyros.
Dr Fallout
Centurion
Kyros... perhaps things would be better if we ditched Kyros and had Nerat in charge...
CerberusGate
I should save my game in a whole new slot
Treasonous wretch! May Kyros's edict fall directly upon you!
Though I am curious to see what will happen if the player chooses the rebellion route against Kyros. Is it possible for the rebellion to succeed or as a twist of the usual rebels beating the evil overlord cliche, will it be a non-standard game over with Kyros unleashing an edict to destroy the Fatebinder's army?
Dr Fallout
Centurion
Someone needs to read that edict though... what if that never happens...
He's too big to fail.
eissa
Artanis "Altáriel" Nerwen Nos Finwe
Spoiler not unlees you kill bleden Mark and steal the title of archon of shadow. Spoiler
Everyone in social equality ala mob justice, Those poor farmer willingly serve overlord kyros only to be throwed as meat shield
Join the disfavored, Save your life by feed the people! leave the fight by those worthy above you!
Dr Fallout
Centurion
That's only because the disfavoured hog all the attention and weapons!
Ragemage
Wept for Zion
Why bow to the will of some jumpstart lordling who only became so powerful because he/she basically has the ability to fart nuclear bombs at will?
Nay to the rebellion as well! A bunch of so-called "do-gooders" trying to do mindless charity work and help anyone and everyone? Such an agenda will never work.
A pox on them both! Instead I will create my own army, and the Tiers will become my kingdom! It will be like the Independent Ending of New Vegas all over again but even more glorious, I will rule with an iron fist and none will oppose me!
Nay to the rebellion as well! A bunch of so-called "do-gooders" trying to do mindless charity work and help anyone and everyone? Such an agenda will never work.
A pox on them both! Instead I will create my own army, and the Tiers will become my kingdom! It will be like the Independent Ending of New Vegas all over again but even more glorious, I will rule with an iron fist and none will oppose me!
Dr Fallout
Centurion
1. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
2. HEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!!!
3. Just help the Voices of Nerat.
Ragemage
Wept for Zion
Help the Voices of Nerat? So you want me to help what basically amounts to a giant lynch mob hellbent on destroying anyone and anything that gets in their way? (sort of like the Fiends from NV in that regard, or like a much more evil version of The Dozens from PoE) With a leader who, upon realizing someone has a lot of talent, doesn't promote them but instead steals their soul and makes them part of him? (from what I gathered from that one story anyway)
I usually save my Chaotic Evil runs for last tbh, because by the time I get to it I've probably done just about every quest and gone through every quest option there is, so now it's time to just plain kill everybody. One thing I love about being Chaotic Evil in Obsidan's latest games is that the endings will actually accomodate you if you decide to kill everyone and everything. (all the "and so the whole town was slain" type slides in New Vegas for example) Thus the Scarlet Chorus will actually most likely be the last faction I go with.
eissa
Artanis "Altáriel" Nerwen Nos Finwe
A finest Form of unbroken warrior caste, no need for levies degenerate and poor farmer; left them to feed people and kyros subject instead. tell that to your clown archon, how to treat his warrior like lovely chosen born as graven ashe did. Everyone get their own prosperity, as like what kyros originally wish. (heh, caste system doesnt feel bad so far
)