Tyranny + Bastard's Wound Expansion Thread

[Storyfag]

Great idea, poorly executed.

Or rather, a neat rip-off of the Black Company series, but still poorly executed.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Great idea, poorly executed.

Or rather, a neat rip-off of the Black Company series, but still poorly executed.

Heard good things about the Black Company, but I can't say that the geopolitical lore is that impressive.

 

[Monocause]

So gave a shot to Tyranny and man, talk about potential. The game would've been much better if they just dropped combat out of it. It would even make sense lorewise.

Imagine if they turned combat into more of a management game, where you focus on logistics and numbers. You're a fatebinder of Tunon's court, leave the fighting to the grunts. They could also put in some setpieces where you can choose to participate or defend yourself, in which case you can step in with overwhelming force of magic, but then the fact you bloodied your own hands makes you lose face. Whether to participate in fights or stay behind the lines could even be a decision arc of its own, with political consequences.

Anyway, burned out because combat is so lacklustre but the setting pulled me in enough to scour the net for the lore I missed, all the endings etc. As much as it's unlikely, given that it was a low-budget title I'd really wish for a sequel. I remember feeling the same about PS:T but I guess I was much more patient with content padding when I was younger.

 

[jac8awol]

So gave a shot to Tyranny and man, talk about potential. The game would've been much better if they just dropped combat out of it. It would even make sense lorewise.

Imagine if they turned combat into more of a management game, where you focus on logistics and numbers. You're a fatebinder of Tunon's court, leave the fighting to the grunts. They could also put in some setpieces where you can choose to participate or defend yourself, in which case you can step in with overwhelming force of magic, but then the fact you bloodied your own hands makes you lose face. Whether to participate in fights or stay behind the lines could even be a decision arc of its own, with political consequences.

Anyway, burned out because combat is so lacklustre but the setting pulled me in enough to scour the net for the lore I missed, all the endings etc. As much as it's unlikely, given that it was a low-budget title I'd really wish for a sequel. I remember feeling the same about PS:T but I guess I was much more patient with content padding when I was younger.

That's a great suggestion and a simple solution to one of the game's serious down sides. There is only one battle I remember, that was freeing the old scribe guy from the Scarlet Chorus camp. I had to reload a bunch of times, it was challenging and it felt really satisfying to overcome. That was very early in the game, and it was the last time I faced any challenge or fun in combat.

But for me the biggest shit tier element in the game was the SJW agenda shoehorned in. I just could not reconcile a psuedo historical setting with so much feminine authority. Realistically, the scarlet chorus would have been a total rapefest (Caesar's Legoin, anyone?). I spent a lot of time thinking how they could have made the setting work, and my conclusion was: make magic exclusive to women. That way they'd be respected and feared and would rightly occupy positions of power.

Tyranny had a lot of potential, but again was a serious let down.

 

[Monocause]

I just could not reconcile a psuedo historical setting with so much feminine authority.

Tyranny does not feature a pseudohistorical setting, and the Scarlet Chorus had bigger issues in terms of its organisation and it fitting within the broader framework of Kyros' empire than the fact that fe. the Scarlet Furies were arbitrarily composed only of women.

You have a bloodthirsty horde that has barely any control over its members, is lead by a madman, lacks any kind of discipline and it's never explained how on Earth would it ever be efficient in any way - and this is supposed to be okay for Kyros, who apparently is a control freak. Seriously the position of women there is the least of that concept's problems.

 

[jac8awol]

By pseudohistorical I just meant bronze age (with fantasy elements), which they stated openly. I don't dispute any of the other inconsistencies you've raised.

 

[Monocause]

By pseudohistorical I just meant bronze age (with fantasy elements), which they stated openly. I don't dispute any of the other inconsistencies you've raised.

Well the way I've taken it, at least, was that it's just called "bronze age" but obviously when you look at the game world it bears little if any resemblance to the real world bronze age. While Kyros' empire is loosely picking up some cues from Greece/Persia, the disfavored were likely influenced by the Roman legions and the Chorus possibly by a bastardized idea of Roman barbarian auxiliaries and the mongol horde, socially in the Tiers you have a fantasy land that picks up some ideas here and there like Tunon's court, or the existence of pressed military service or slavery, but as far as I've seen it doesn't really try to emulate any real world social models present in history. Trade is regulated by weird permits that are never fully explained. Law is only spoken about and doesn't seem to be codified (yet everyone you talk to seems to be a legal expert) and is maintained by Tunon and a bunch of his underlings (who apparently apart from being judges are also superb fighters, diplomats and generally can do anything), but you never see anything resembling a proper court system that could really function. The subjugated populace at times seems to be brutally controlled, the other times exhibits a surpring amount of freedom. I could go on.

As a sidenote, the way Tunon explains the boundaries of the law to you, and tells you how you basically are above the law, yet you are still subject to the law, was hilariously confused coming from the Archon of Justice. I also liked how you can get away with siding with the rebels by using a primitive legal sleight of hand and Tunon seems surprised and accepts your argumentation. I mean, seriously - he's the fucking archon of justice. You'd think he'd have taken a few minutes to ponder the ins and outs of the edict, especially one that threatens to kill him and his entire court as well. You could defend that by saying Tunon is only feigning ignorance to gauge your intent, but overall he gives the impression of a rather clueless and impressionable figure, rather than the personification of the Law he's supposed to be.

I don't think the game ever intended to present a realistic depiction of a society and focused rather on presenting a power struggle between interesting actors so that they can thrust you into the thick of it. Also, creating fake yet believable societies is tons of work and considering the scope of the game I don't think it would vastly change anything, so there you have it. I felt it was fleshed out enough to maintain suspension of disbelief.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Realistically, the scarlet chorus would have been a total rapefest

Huh? The Scarlet Chorus is a total rapefest. They talk about it A LOT. There’s even a trial where you can defend the fatebinder who illegally murdered two members of the Chorus for raping a tierswoman. We’re told that it’s not a crime for the Chorus to rape the locals.

Nor is it against their rules for a commander to rape his subordinates. There are plenty of hints of this all over the place.

If you side with the Chorus and convince one of the rebel leaders to defect, they ass rape him so much that his anus prolapses and he starts shitting himself uncontrollably, thus his new nickname: Mattias Brown-Bottom.

If your problem is that there’s an elite female unit in the Chorus, that’s not inconsistent with the omnipresence of rape. All the toughest women band together to form an elite unit for mutual protection. The ones who can’t hack it either die or stay in the horde where they can be preyed on.

 

[Quillon]

Realistically, the scarlet chorus would have been a total rapefest

Huh? The Scarlet Chorus is a total rapefest. They talk about it A LOT. There’s even a trial where you can defend the fatebinder who illegally murdered two members of the Chorus for raping a tierswoman. We’re told that it’s not a crime for the Chorus to rape the locals.

Nor is it against their rules for a commander to rape his subordinates. There are plenty of hints of this all over the place.

If you side with the Chorus and convince one of the rebel leaders to defect, they ass rape him so much that his anus prolapses and he starts shitting himself uncontrollably, thus his new nickname: Mattias Brown-Bottom.

If your problem is that there’s an elite female unit in the Chorus, that’s not inconsistent with the omnipresence of rape. All the toughest women band together to form an elite unit for mutual protection. The ones who can’t hack it either die or stay in the horde where they can be preyed on.

How dare they make a rape faction without Sawyer!?

 

[jac8awol]

Realistically, the scarlet chorus would have been a total rapefest

Huh? The Scarlet Chorus is a total rapefest. They talk about it A LOT. There’s even a trial where you can defend the fatebinder who illegally murdered two members of the Chorus for raping a tierswoman. We’re told that it’s not a crime for the Chorus to rape the locals.

Nor is it against their rules for a commander to rape his subordinates. There are plenty of hints of this all over the place.

If you side with the Chorus and convince one of the rebel leaders to defect, they ass rape him so much that his anus prolapses and he starts shitting himself uncontrollably, thus his new nickname: Mattias Brown-Bottom.

If your problem is that there’s an elite female unit in the Chorus, that’s not inconsistent with the omnipresence of rape. All the toughest women band together to form an elite unit for mutual protection. The ones who can’t hack it either die or stay in the horde where they can be preyed on.

They'd be too busy getting molested to organize themselves into anything. If by 'elite unit' you mean too ugly to rape, then I concede the point.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Eirinjas]

Just finished it yesterday. Wow. This game is a steaming pile of Anita Sarkeesian's droppings with tactical combat on par with Pac-Man. I can't believe this exists and that it came from a studio with the bonafides that it does. I'll projectile vomit my intestines before buying another Obsidian game.

 

[DalekFlay]

Just finished it yesterday. Wow. This game is a steaming pile of Anita Sarkeesian's droppings with tactical combat on par with Pac-Man. I can't believe this exists and that it came from a studio with the bonafides that it does. I'll projectile vomit my intestines before buying another Obsidian game.

All you had to do was compare the art design to cartoons to fill your Codex bingo card.

 

[Eirinjas]

Just finished it yesterday. Wow. This game is a steaming pile of Anita Sarkeesian's droppings with tactical combat on par with Pac-Man. I can't believe this exists and that it came from a studio with the bonafides that it does. I'll projectile vomit my intestines before buying another Obsidian game.

All you had to do was compare the art design to cartoons to fill your Codex bingo card.

I actually think the game looks and sounds great. The character portrait's are pretty fantastic. It's a highly polished turd.

 

[Roguey]

If you side with the Chorus and convince one of the rebel leaders to defect, they ass rape him so much that his anus prolapses and he starts shitting himself uncontrollably, thus his new nickname: Mattias Brown-Bottom.

I was thinking of eventually running through the Scarlet Chorus path just to see what it was like and this bit of info has made me heavily reconsider, so thanks, I guess.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I don't find any faction appealing in this game

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I don't find any faction appealing in this game

Eh, Disfavored are alright albeit a bit vanilla and the peaceful resolution with Graven Ashe at the end is quite heartwarming.

 

[Efe]

why is that roguey?
is it rape or anal that makes you reconsider?

 

[Roguey]

why is that roguey?
is it rape or anal that makes you reconsider?

Violent rape that results in permanent disability is disgusting. Also apparently a fetish of Matt MacLean's given

He and I have similar taste in women ( Safiya and Eb aside from the latter's violent and overtly-lascivious tendencies) but this aspect I can do without.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Tyranny has no waifus, only bros (Lantry and Barik).

 

[Storyfag]

why is that roguey?
is it rape or anal that makes you reconsider?

Violent rape that results in permanent disability is disgusting. Also apparently a fetish of Matt MacLean's given

He and I have similar taste in women ( Safiya and Eb aside from the latter's violent and overtly-lascivious tendencies) but this aspect I can do without.

 

[Efe]

i thought eb was the only "good" member of the group.
also he should have used that to make himselfs tronger.. its not choruses fault he didnt live up to the challenge

 

[Fishy]

Really enjoyed Tyranny, and loved the whole Conquest of the Tiers thing after realising how it directly affected some areas/factions in my playthrough. But it's certainly let down by various points, combat being the biggest offender, and then, well, the execution of the main plot.

Combat-wise, I have nothing against RTwP, but here it's just badly executed, with wayyyy too many skills and short cooldowns, so it becomes a constant skill rotation optimisation click fest. But worse, some of the premises for combat broke down my suspension of disbelief. Namely, each supposedly "big battles". There's one point in the game where you go back to your tower and it's besieged by an opposing faction (the Disfavored in my case). The whole thing gets resolved through text without showing you the armies a single time, and critically without having you fight 8 guys and pretend you mowed down hundreds. It was brilliant, and it felt genuine. Compare to the time later when I went to finish off the Disfavored in their own stronghold, and then... Frankly, fighting 3/4 groups of 3/4 dudes then a boss felt like an insult to the legion itself. It feels fake, cheap, etc. Apart from being a combat mission which I guess was part of the quota for the game, those fights mean nothing. I'm pretty sure they could have found a way to textplain how you end up there, facing Graven to settle things with an honorable 1v5 fight without the intervention of his guards, and the game would have been all the better for it.

With regards to the execution of the main plot, everything screams of cut corners and budget limitations. Almost every part of the quest line feels like they have tons of additional background that they could/should have used to enrich things. Too many interesting premises end up being solved through a minimalist dungeon-crawl. The whole Chorus vs Disfavored choice is badly ham-fisted and relies on making both sides genuinely dumb, making you wonder how they got that far in the first place. And the biggest offender: turning on Kyros should be the alternative option. At every step, I felt like the game hadn't planned that the player could want to be loyal to Kyros/Tunon. It sorts of works out in the end but man, was that some serious effort compared to the 98621498612e14 hints that I should go turncloak. More stories, more situations to solve, more loyalist options... I just feel it's all there on a drawing board somewhere.

Pity it doesn't seem to have done well enough to be expanded upon because I feel it's a little gem of a game. Well flawed, but a gem nonetheless, which could have sparked something great with an expanded budget sequel.

 

[Efe]

since obsidian is off limits now maybe paradox makes a deal with owlcat...
would be sweet

 

[Lacrymas]

At every step, I felt like the game hadn't planned that the player could want to be loyal to Kyros/Tunon.

That's because it wasn't, it was patched in later.