Tyranny Previews and Audio Interview
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A fistful of new news regarding Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming CRPG Tyranny has made its way to the web this weekend, starting with an article on PCGamesN that shares information on the game while also quoting game director Brian Heins:
(Kyros' empire is a large, sprawling one that covers the known world,) Heins explains. (One person can't directly control and micromanage everyone, so Kyros has lieutenants called Archons, people who are very powerful, and one of those Archons is your boss, who created the Fatebinders to resolve disputes between the different Archons and the groups that report to them: the armies, the mage guilds and the bureaucrats who run the empire.)
So instead of being an aimless adventurer, you'll be an employee of the ruler of the known world, solving disputes and dishing out justice, more Judge Dredd than Bilbo Baggins. And this important role will be reflected in the quests.
(We want the quests to reflect your status in the world,) Heins says. (You're not the one being sent to get the cat out of the tree, you're the one that has to decide whether an entire population has to be relocated.)
And that means, thankfully, that the fetch and kill quests that fill up so many other RPGs won't be present in Tyranny. Instead, the Fatebinder will be mediating disputes and enforcing Kyros' will in the fringe of his empire, the last part of the world to be swallowed up by the tyrant. And being in the most distant part of the empire will make things difficult. While Kyros has ostensibly ended war and conflict by uniting the world, the region that Tyranny takes place in is still adapting to this new regime. While some welcome the structure it provides, the fact that it's demolishing native culture and subjugating people is a bit of a sticking point for others.
Next, we move to a standard GDC-based preview on HardcoreGamer:
You are what's only known as a '˜Fatebinder', a kind of Judge Dredd that judges and executes either loyalty or cruelty to the people of the Tiers. Since you technically have the forces of Kyros the Overlord and his armies behind you, your word is basically law, regardless of what you say. Every decision you make has some kind of impact on the world around you, meaning that places could literally be torn apart because of something you had mentioned before.
In the demo that was shown at GDC, Obsidian started viewers off at Halfgate, (or maybe it was Plainsgate), where two different save files were shown. One where a decision based on character creation allowed for the inhabitants of Plainsgate to live happily and well and another where a decision based on the same character creation forced a huge chasm to break apart Plainsgate. With the latter decision, some of the NPCs had been removed as well as much of the town because of a simple change that was made during the character customization process.
Before concluding with an audio interview with game director Brian Heins on AM 640 (via SoundCloud).
