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Submit to the Peace of Kyros! [Tyranny]
Hobnail
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Tyranny is a new CPRG by Obsidian Entertainment and it is terribly excellent! It is set in the new world of Terratus, specifically the region currently being embraced by the Peace of Kyros.
Kyros is the Overlord of all that there is, and those who have not yet embraced their Peace will inevitably be brought to heel. To this end, two distinct factions serve Kyros on the front lines. The ironclad Disfavored, a disciplined phalanx-formed legion utterly devoted to the Archon of War, Graven Ashe.
Graven Ashe is an old and battle-hardened general, as devoted to his troops as they are to him, and extends his protection across great spans of distance. Disfavored rise from greivous injury to fight for Kyros once again! This stands in stark contrast to the painfully mortal horde that is the Scarlet Chorus, lead by the Archon of Secrets, the utterly insane Voices of Nerat.
A multi-faceted gem of madness, treachery and sadism, the Archon of Secrets controls the Scarlet Chorus, a horde of lightly armoured skirmishers, berserkers and mages. The Scarlet Chorus spreads terror as it ravages its way across Terratus, swelling its ranks with conscripts and sellswords who are just as likely to desert as throw themselves on the spears of the enemy without fear.
You represent the Archon of Justice, Tunon the Adjudicator.
As a Fatebinder, it is your duty to ensure the Peace of Kyros. How will you serve?
Kyros is the Overlord of all that there is, and those who have not yet embraced their Peace will inevitably be brought to heel. To this end, two distinct factions serve Kyros on the front lines. The ironclad Disfavored, a disciplined phalanx-formed legion utterly devoted to the Archon of War, Graven Ashe.
Graven Ashe is an old and battle-hardened general, as devoted to his troops as they are to him, and extends his protection across great spans of distance. Disfavored rise from greivous injury to fight for Kyros once again! This stands in stark contrast to the painfully mortal horde that is the Scarlet Chorus, lead by the Archon of Secrets, the utterly insane Voices of Nerat.
A multi-faceted gem of madness, treachery and sadism, the Archon of Secrets controls the Scarlet Chorus, a horde of lightly armoured skirmishers, berserkers and mages. The Scarlet Chorus spreads terror as it ravages its way across Terratus, swelling its ranks with conscripts and sellswords who are just as likely to desert as throw themselves on the spears of the enemy without fear.
You represent the Archon of Justice, Tunon the Adjudicator.
As a Fatebinder, it is your duty to ensure the Peace of Kyros. How will you serve?
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I'm curious where it goes after this part is done. I'm assuming the entire game isn't spread out over a week, that would seem really short.
But I haven't had my morning coffee yet, so that's gotta wait. For now, I'm gonna just share my power rankings:
But I think the premise of this one sounds really good.
Do you think it might grab me more?
If you enable Gibs in the options, when an enemy is crit to death they explode.
I cast False Pit, an illusion spell, on an enemy at low health. It crit.
He believed he was falling in to a pit so thoroughly he exploded.
So far, yes, I think the story is, if not necessarily better, more actively engaging than Pillars was. And I think mechanically speaking, the story supports the gameplay of this style of game more than any other one has before, which is definitely helpful. A lot of the system is still very similar to Pillars, which I don't think is a bad thing, but your mileage may vary.
Have you enjoyed other games of this style? Your Gates Baldur, your Dales Icewind, your Scapes Plane?
Luckily she seems pretty good at ripping shit up
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Hrm, I found a lot of those hard to get far into.
Particularly Baulder's Gate and Icewind Dale. Because I felt with how weak you start that quicksave abuse was the only way to make it any distance into the game which is a pet peeve of mine. (same with fallout 1 and 2)
I never got planescape to run good on my PC as I never played any of them back in the day. But it did seem to have a much more engaging storyline than the other two which bummed me out that it kept crashing.
I very much enjoyed Neverwinter Nights though.
I haven't even taken a good look at her - what is her skill setup like? Is she more comparable to Barik or to dual wielding Verse?
Because Verse is probably never leaving my party, and my main character is very similar to Verse, so another rogue type, as her name implies, seems like it would be a bad idea at this point
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I went with the Edict of Fire
also
I also killed the Queen when we took Apex, so people I talk to can't choose whether they wanted to call me Firestarter or Queenslayer.
I hate the Chorus but I find The Voices to be a ton of fun, I love how he
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I might be able to use her as a replacement for Barik then. Set up a whole stealth squad with her, Verse, and Lantry (whose stealth attack ability is insanely good).
I might like, play a magic user in one of my future runs
I do not know the last time I played a traditional magic user in a video game where I was allowed to be literally anything else
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
hey man
do you want to be presented with difficult moral questions for which there are no good answers or satisfying outcomes, like, constantly
if so then boy howdy
I played through the game on hard, and my pure mage definitely followed an exponential power curve.
I think I stopped using consumables entirely around Act 2? I could just lock everything down, or nuke it to bits, or one and then the other.
you know, despite the general cruelty and bloodlust
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My character has a couple of different motives for backing them. First off, they're very easy to take advantage of. Play by their couple of rules, and you can get them to do basically whatever you want. For someone as cold and calculating as my gal, that's very appealing. Second, she admires how the Chorus doesn't try to gussy up what conquest is. She likes their honesty. The Disfavored dress everything up in honor and duty, but they're still killing just as many innocent civilians - significantly more, in a lot of cases. It's cruel, and more importantly to my character, it's inefficient. Raze all the cities and there's nobody left to rule. Better to fold them into your teeming hordes.
End of Act One spoilers:
Start of Act Two spoiler:
Really digging that the game is making me think of my character's relationships to the world like that. The game is very, very good about setting the table, asking you some complicated questions, and letting you find your own answers.
And the world they're building is so, so much cooler than, say, PoE. I liked PoE plenty, but the worldbuilding felt a little... Abstract. Philosophical at the expense of character or personal stakes. This one, right away, feels a lot more grounded. It's a bottom-up approach to building the world, instead of the top-down, exposition crush of PoE.
I also think the combat is much improved, but that might just be that my sneaky character has more utility than a similar build did in PoE. I played a rogue in that one, and felt just perpetually useless. The powers at my disposal here, especially with the very cool combo systems, are a lot more engaging.
So let's start off. This is a game made for people who have played these games before. I mean, it has to be - this is not the dominant paradigm in RPGs anymore (if it ever was), and will almost certainly never be that again. The system is kind of weird and clunky, the graphics are probably not that great, much of the game is hidden in weird lore posts, it's not designed for people who are not willing to dive into it wholeheartedly, and quite frankly, most of those people are people who have played this sort of game before. And that's fine - it's a niche audience, but it's a niche audience who is very willing to engage with you, so make some games for 'em.
Under the assumption that we've all played this sort of game before, let's discuss a totally different one. It doesn't really matter which one. Here's what you do in it:
On a Dungeon Map
- Hunt down and kill every creature that lives here
- Painstakingly search for traps and hidden objects
- Maybe solve a puzzle or two
- Loot every body, even if you don't really need that stuff or the money that will be gained from selling it
On a City Map- Talk to everyone, in case they have a problem in which you, a total fucking stranger, are the only person who can help them
- Search every single barrel, box, and wardrobe for treasure, even if it is technically stealing
- Complete quests and try to get everyone to like you, even if they're at each other's throat all of the time
You might be objecting that maybe you don't do all that, but you definitely have, right? Maybe it was only in your first play of one of these games, or maybe only in certain playthroughs, but it's pretty much baked into the design of these games that you're going to do that. And for some of these things, that's fine - solving puzzles and killing things is a core part of a lot of videogames. But some of these things just don't make sense. You're in a rush to solve a problem, and you're still going to talk to every single person and solve their shitty little goblin infestation, even though you're the son of the God of Murder and everyone hates and distrusts you? You're a fundamentally good person, but you're going to walk into a peasant's shitty little hovel and grab their family heirloom sword because you don't get a better one until you kill a dragon? You're going to disrespect the dead by taking all of their clothes and selling them to a fence that lives in the sewers, despite allegedly being a man of god?And some games will try to dissuade you from doing these things. Time limits to prevent excessive sidequests, or maybe someone gets mad at you because they see you stealing things, or you have to choose a faction that will prevent you from taking sidequests. And every time games do this, people try to find a way around it. You do your quests in just the right order and you can complete them all, even though they're from different factions, or you take an invisibility potion right as you enter the building and it won't wear off for twenty seconds so as long as your rogue has downed a potion of master thievery as well you should be able to pick the lock and get out before anyone notices. These are all bullshit hypothetical things I'm making up off the top of my head, but they all sound kind of familiar, don't they?
Tyranny fixes all of this, more or less. Tyranny justifies your worst behavior, because you're a bad guy. You don't have to be evil, of course, you can just be a dedicated civil servant, but there's definitely nothing wrong with walking into a subjugated town and taking whatever you want from the peasants. Playing the factions off of one another is encouraged, both because you need both of them, to some extent, and because, at the end of the day, they're both jerks and they deserve each other. Your first companion, when/if you choose to loot one of the first dead bodies in the game, will congratulate you on your pragmatism for taking all of their shit. And, my favorite part of this, you have a reason to talk to everyone.
By making the main character a traveling judge figure, you have a reason to get involved in every shitty little petty dispute, even if your solution is to hang 'em both. Everyone wants to talk to you, even though you're a mysterious stranger, and everyone has a reason to give you their quests. You're not the only one who can help them, but you're the only one who can do it legally, and under the harsh rule of Kyros, that's an absolute necessity for many people.
Sometimes I wonder, man
Made a noble Pale Elf cipher with high Might, Dex and Intelligence.
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Yeah, in a game with a monstrous hyena person and a woman who is jilling off with the blood of her enemies it is kind of impressive that there's still someone who smells worse
I felt with PoE they built the world but didn't really populate it, or finish populating it anyway.
yeah, exactly! there's so much going on there and you can tell that it's a very active place but it also just wound up feeling empty
The dumb Kickstarter backer characters added to this a bit, I think - there were people everywhere, but only a fraction of them were "important." It was a clever thing, of course, using the main character's special ability to be able to view someone's fanfiction, but I warrant most of us only did it a couple of times before we learned better.
In hindsight, Pillars feels a lot like a stepping stone game, from BG2 to Tyranny.
The system is different from D&D, but still beholden to its thematic constructs, as is the entire world, for the most part. There are a number of things that are done differently, but at the end of the day, it still kind of just feels like someone's homebrew campaign setting. Which is fine, honestly, and is certainly an easier sell, especially if you need to build some confidence in your ability to make these sort of games (I think Obsidian has a good enough pedigree for this sort of thing, but others may disagree).
But now we're in something that, while still a fantasy game, doesn't really feel like a D&D based thing anymore. There are no elves or dwarves, magic functions totally differently, the whole class structure has been dissolved, the entire aesthetic is very Romanesque rather than medieval. And, like I said, Pillars was still a stepping stone, and there's a lot of Pillars in this game. Sirin functions real similar to Chanters, status effects are just as fucking ruinous, and even the use of the primary mechanic to justify conversations with people is back (in this it's Judgement as opposed to reading fanfiction, but it's definitely an idea that makes sense as a descendant).
Ending talk
I think the idea is, by that point in time you represent a legitimate threat to their rule. You're a symbol now, doing things that were previously solely their domain that literally no one else understood.
Did you write to the veteran retired Fatebinder? She often tells you to think more like an Overlord. Part of Kyros' peace is the snuffing out of any possible challenger before they begin, and rewriting history so they never existed. There was a person camped out under a Spire, with a shrine to Kyros who said that Kyros used to live in this village in -50. The person was summarily executed, instead of merely having their tongue removed for blasphemy.
There was and is an conscious effort to destroy the knowledge of how Kyros came to power, learned to cast Edicts, and the like. Edicts seem to tie back to Spires, and you've mastered as many as five, and there's only ten little slots to light up at the top of any of the Spires.
By the end, you've killed or subjugated a few archons, going from a battlejudge to proof positive that Kyros is not unique. One of the characters specifies that when Kyros states "one Archon will rule the tiers, and you're an Archon now" is explicitly not an Edict. I think that's because they're already afraid of feeding you any more of them.
I was really looking forward to bending the knee and being declared the Archon of Fates
but I really like crpgs
Let me tell you about your first party member, Verse.
(yes)
hail Kyros