[PC] Tyranny

[christian]

https://www.tyrannygame.com

JyXKvTQ.jpg (98.62 KiB) Viewed 1322 times

Launch trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg0WsR3EnGg

[christian]

It's very jarring going from turn-based tactics (as in D:OS) to real-time with pause.

[christian]

Tyranny begins with the Conquest mini-game, meant to simulate a Tryanny 0 save, if you will. It's an interesting way of making the player feel like he participated in a campaign that could have been its own full game, which reaches into and affects the current world. With it, Obsidian found a shortcut to this peculiar strength of the RPG sequel.

[christian]

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePe ... meplay.php

Sadly, many gamers, journalists and devs are still trapped in this "RPG choices = BioWare" mentality.

The latest example is Obsidian's Tyranny. The game had a great premise: offering a shorter experience, focusing on replayability and meaningful choices — width, not length.

Yet, once again, playstyle is not a choice. Outside the boundaries of its carefully-crafted dialog boxes, it's just a game about following orders and killing stuff. The player has almost no agency.

This is particularly bad here because Tyranny's biggest flaw is precisely its dull, repetitive and mandatory combat. It's so disconnected from the rest of the game that it feels as if a (good) story was pasted to an Infinity Engine-like game just because "Well, all RPGs have combat, so..."

So I ask — are those battles really necessary? Would it be so unthinkable if one of the factions I could ally with played more as spies / assassins, avoiding conflicts and acting in the shadows? That killings — if any — were made through dialog? To have my choices alter how the game plays?

To offer me what Fallout offered in 1997?

Precisely my own disappointment with the game. As Felipe also laments further on in the article, this should have been Obsidian's Age of Decadence. Oh well.