I think that this is a sort of game where limiting player agency to a degree is important for preserving what they’re trying to do. I haven’t run into spots where I’m chafing at that yet so this may or may not be responsive, but for example, wiping out factions should absolutely be part of being the agent of an evil conquering overlord.
I think there are a large number of choices you can make. However, There are a limited number of choices that seem to almost completely change the story and have a HUGE effect on your game. There are still a lot of choices you can make that affect smaller things. Most games just have a small number of the smaller choices, so i think this is something to be celebrated rather than condemned. I was talking to my friend while playing through this game and their game was radically different than mine because they made different choices.
In my opinion, Obsidian is still a leader at implementing “Choices and Consequences” with very little competition. Witcher is one game series that comes to mind though.
I agree that there isn’t a big shortage on decisions, but there were times when I wished I could change an outcome when I couldn’t, or when a choice seemed like it is probably superficial. Also, since I’m only in my first playthrough I don’t see how different some choices may actually be in terms of story. I also agree that there is more choice here than in a lot of games, just that it doesn’t always feel that impactful - again just a feeling since I didn’t actually compare.
Does anyone remember when they completed this rubbing? The Ocean Spire rubbing? I’m not sure if I missed something as I’m wrapping up Act 2 (I think) and mine’s still incomplete.
Thanks
Edit: Never mind. I somehow missed the room that leads to the spire.
This seems like a feature, not a problem.
Yeah, I can only take some of the complaints here seriously, especially those talking about story changes due to decisions you made… when it’s only the first play through.
That’s why I admit it’s just a feeling - based on the types of choices I was presented with. It doesn’t seem like there are many choices that have a big impact, but maybe they just do a good job disguising it. I know I can be wrong about this. There is a big choice on who to back of course.
Do you feel that most of the choice comes from the beginning prolog story setup, or within the actual game?
Maybe I let my opinions about the combat bleed into my opinion about the rest of the game. I do have to say the way they handle consumables if one of the smartest changes they made. I actually use stuff like potions now since they don’t take away from attack time.
OK, maybe I’m confusing two feelings I’m having and put the blame on the wrong thing. It just became more obvious as I had to slaughter a particular settlement. Based on the side I chose, I don’t think I could have avoided this. Maybe I could have with other choices (other than side), but I don’t see any way I could have avoided it.
I don’t like being forced to do dastardly acts. I wish there were more ways to get out of some of these evil acts. Just like most RPGs really nudge the player into making ‘nice’ choices, this one seems to force me into making evil choices without giving many alternatives. Now I’ve been able to take a better path on some cases, but maybe not as much as I’d like.
This isn’t necessarily the game’s fault on this. They did emphasize the ‘evil’ aspect of the game, and maybe there will be a point where I can try to ‘make things right’ - but if so I’m not there yet.
Does this make more sense? I think I was maybe barking up the wrong tree before.
BIGTIME SPOILERS IN RESPONSE TO ROBCO
Are you supporting the rebels? If not, then yeah you are going to have to fuck a lot of people over.
3/4 plotlines involve working for one of
A) the blood magic death cult
B) the SS
C) the gestapo
Yeah, four paths - but only one is traditional ‘good’ from what I gather.
I think maybe I made a choice somewhere that made supporting the rebels impossible. I never seemed to have that option available. In some cases I could be at least sympathetic, but in the end I seemed to always have to do something bad. I wonder if it was a choice I made in the pregame story, or something I did later.
Secondly, apologies to the thread and @Scotch_Lufkin in particular. I can let my negative opinions about some part of a game start to dominate my thoughts altogether. Obviously I don’t think it is too bad because I’m still playing it.
I also must be really slow because I have probably about 40 hours played and I’m still in Act 2 with my characters and levels 13 and 14.
Extremely pretentious and spoilery thoughts follow:
[spoiler]TYRANNY AS HORROR-INFLECTED EVOLUTION ON BALDUR’S GATE
Tyranny dramatizes and problematizes the power fantasy of RPGs without being patronizing or tendentious.
It’s a real evolution on Baldur’s Gate / Baldur’s Gate 2. Once you kill your way into omnipotence (as RPGs ask you to do) what next? Tyranny’s answer: Hobbesian nightmare of WMD-level magic, genocidal armies and the end of history.
I think this is a lot more interesting than Bioware’s takes on the general RPG narrative arc/power curve. Bioware ignores the problem of “you are a murder hobo” through consequentialism --> An Existential Evil Justifies All Means. And the absurd polyamory in Bioware RPGs also reflects this consequentialism --> The Existential Evil Justifies All Romance Permutations.
So as someone mentioned upthread, it’s GREAT that Tyranny’s Oldwall builders never get surfaced in the plot, and I agree. If this was a Bioware RPG then you’d team up with Kyros to fight the Returning Oldwallians who are Threatening to Destroy Humanity and every NPC would have a second, third and fourth tier of reputation abilities tied to your Romance status.
Instead, Tyranny mixes Grand Guignol-esque characterization with stagings of mass murder and ecological catastrophe to argue that large scale violence+callousness produces dehumanization and degradation on the individual and social scale.
In Verse and Barik, we see an inverted pair that personify Tyranny’s critique. Verse is totally disfigured as a personality and Barik is just totally disfigured.
If Verse and Barik showed up in a Bioware story, there’d be an elaborate arc of redemption for both of them. You’d have to have sex with them a lot, but in the end they’d come to some sort of terms and be redeemed, and then continue to kill things in your service.
But in Tyranny, Verse and Barik are just disfigured. They are gross because they are uncritical genocidaires.
I think that is cool and original. Tyranny is really morally skeptical about violence and using people as a means to an end. But it has enough trust in players that it doesn’t just give you a lecture for 30 hours. You’re welcome to role play as a death squad member and draw your own conclusions.
Again, very different from the Bioware approach, which has come to view games as an explicit pedagogical vehicle to allow people to play act in a set of prescribed roles (largely related to a few particular positions in US identity politics) that are never outside the spectrum of what the game’s creators perceive to be correct.
By implication, Bioware devs are OK with instrumental violence, as long as it isn’t directed at equity-seeking groups. I don’t know if this is true. I do know that Obsidian has a history of working political protest in their games. Alpha Protocol was a very strong critique of the Iraq War and corporatized militarism. Tyranny has a similar pacifistic sensibility, and it gets there by keeping an eye open to what violence really does to people and communities.
On the identity politics note: Obsidian does a fine job here. Women have a full spectrum of roles (indeed, Tyranny’s world is largely matriarchal) without any preening about the developers’ own enlightenment or moral superiority for having done so.[/spoiler]
You can definitely support the rebels. You have to stop thinking like a concentration camp guard. Instead of just following orders, think “what is the RIGHT thing to do in this situation?” But yes you can only do so in the First Act.
Thanks for the info
No apologies needed, @robc04.
And yeah, from what I could tell playing the game that first time you have a very wide base of options at the start, and as you begin making those choices, the scope of the game starts to narrow and narrow and eventually you are shoe horned into what must be done based on earlier options. At one point at the end of the game I had two options in a particularly horrible story moment. Do a horrible thing for the right reasons (or so my character believed), or do said horrible thing because it was something I wanted to do for selfish reasons. But, I WAS going to be doing that horrible thing, I’d backed my own character into a corner.
This is honestly the best outcome - you don’t want the story to let you flip flop around between three different factions and then at the end of the game you can just pick which of the 4 endings you want to see, reload and see the other three (think: Deus Ex Human Revolution. Your changes, from the start, have serious weight.
And I suspect no matter which of the four main story paths you choose by your decisions, you will have to fight off the other factions in some fashion. You won’t be talking your way out of every (or most) situations because it’s really at the end of the day an RPG and a video game, so it’s going to feature a lot of gameplay (or, in this case, combat). I do think depending on your choices you have quite a few more options available to you. I know of one area of the game I couldn’t access so I went nuts and killed everyone, and it worked! I was able to access the area and the natives even respected and praised me. But I watched a video where that exact area was totally accessible by just making smart choices in the dialog and talking to some folks in an order different than what I had done. So that’s where I mean by my comment earlier - making any claims like how the game will feel based on your choices is meaningless unless you’ve played a few times at least, I suspect.
This.
I agree with you. I just wish I didn’t miss the choice that would have taken me down my preferred path. I don’t know if I just missed something, or misinterpreted something that caused me to take the path I took.
That’s very possible - there is a lot going on story wise, and it might be easy to miss something. I would definitely leave on the dialog clues that indicate which faction you gain or lose favor or wrath with, as there was a few early on that I could have easily started siding with the rebels using (and a few I had thanks to choices in the pre-game conquest setup).
One of the paths is very difficult not to lose access to. I am on it my second time through the game, but only because I know major events and how to deal with them. I can’t personally attest to it, but I’ve even heard you can block yourself out of this path during the Conquest phase with certain choices.
Chris Woods
I ended up finishing and was kinda happy how it wrapped up. I was able to take care of one side peacefully, and after all the leveling the combat was pretty easy so I felt like the spire owning badass I was. The difficulty on hard was definitely a bit harder towards the beginning / middle than it was the last 3rd or so.
I was definitely more on the bad side than I was hoping for, but I was able to get the justice archon on my side, along with the Dishonored guy. After killing the assassin, I only had to go and mop up the Scarlet Chorus dude.
I would have liked to back the rebels I think, but that seems like it may need to have more fighting.
I don’t remember if time has made my memory of Baldur’s Gate hazy, but it seems like that system allowed for more tactical options. I kinda feel like I was on autopilot in Tyranny’s combat. Some of the powers were pretty cool, but I could use them pretty indiscriminately and have success. There are some exceptions to that.
All in all I had a decent time with it but wish I had done some things differently.