Death of Immersion

[Sorenzo]

I think the game's decision trees could use a bit of polishing. Here's what I did:
Spoiler alert.

1: I intended to be a neutral agent of the Adjudicator.
2: I agreed with the Voices on ONE decision, and now the Disfavoured attack me on sight.
3: I was told to look for evidence on both archons, but the game only gives me two choices: Either serve the Voices, or randomly start killing his people.
4: When I randomly started killing The Voices' people, essentially hoping the Adjudicator would ask me what the heck was going on, or just have me killed, Bleden Mark shows up - deux ex machina - to give me (a level 7 scrub) a mission to clearly rebel against Kyros (just for laughs).
5: I went to see the Adjudicator to either implicate Bleden Mark in conspiracy, or explain why BOTH armies are now angry with me.
6: The Adjudicator stares at me blankly as if I'd just left his Court for a smoke, not spent 12 days failing his mission.
7: At this point, my immersion has been so thoroughly destroyed, I don't even know if I want to start a new character.
8: I figure the game shouldn't give me an option early on without impressing on me how significant it is, thus railroading me into a storyline I explicitly wanted to avoid, only to have the only suggestion of an off-ramp be the betrayal of my remaining allies, an act which doesn't get me punished, but rather puts me WAY AHEAD in the storyline, skipping countless steps that made no sense to me.

All I wanted is to serve the Adjudicator without getting involved in petty squabbles, but the devs don't seem to have even considered this a viable storyline, even though it's what the first two hours of the game strongly imply? I'm supposed to spend the entire first part of the game remaining impartial and distanced, only to start directly serving some faceless nutball because the other guys want to kill me because their leader threw a hissy-fit?

Is it really that hard for the developers to look at the decision tree and say "Oh, some players may end up doing X, and that wouldn't make sense to any of our storylines, so let's just have the player restart his game so as to protect our them from immersion-breaking. Next time he travels, Bleden Mark will ask them why they did what they did, and then kill them - because at that point, there's no way for us to continue the story."

Instead, I now feel like my first campaign, where I really just tried to play the role that was granted me, has been an endless series of frustrating choices with equally frustrating consequences, none of which made sense, but all of which spoiled the actual stories I could have (should have) experienced.

 

[aono]

I should notice I haven't a slightest idea WHY Bleeding Mark should try to kill you for doing Fatebinder job - being neutral and oversee that two military snobs. It's something Fatebinders supposed to do!

 

[Togukawa]

Believe it or not, it actually gets worse. I aligned with disfavored and the game allows me to choose between "slaughter everyone you meet" and "slaughter everyone you meet". There's one meaningful choice at the ascension hall, namely on whose orders you will blindly slaughter everyone you meet. I think there's at most two exceptions to that rule that I've encountered in my three playthroughs.

Sages you have 4 favor with? SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!
Mercenaries currently in the middle of their own private civil war? SLAUGHTER BOTH SIDES!
Beastmen where game hints you could challenge the leader for control of the clan? SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!

I started a new playthrough at that point, because killing the cubs was not something I wanted to do at all.

There are many more immersion breaking moments. You're walking around with the Archon of Song, which can control groups of people to join an enemy army and which actually at some point controls you, the Fatebinder, to try to remove her helmet. So you encounter a regular dude and you need him to tell the location of something, what do you do? Do you a) use the Archon to try and make him tell you, or b) SLAUGHTER EVERYONE IN THE AREA and hope you can find some clue on the corpses? Just kidding, the game only gives you option b.

Choices matter and your character makes world-altering decisions with far-reaching consequences. Only, the game doesn't actually let the player make those choices...

 

[aono]

You're walking around with the Archon of Song, which can control groups of people to join an enemy army and which actually at some point controls you, the Fatebinder, to try to remove her helmet.

Her abilities works really strange.
Let's start you need to find a core to equip her with her own magic...

 

[Togukawa]

I'm willing to forgive that in gameplay she's different from in dialogue. If she was as powerful in gameplay as she's made out in the dialogue, the game would be very boring .

But at least within the dialogue system itself the developers could have ensured some small measure of internal consistency...

 

[aono]

If she was as powerful in gameplay as she's made out in the dialogue, the game would be very boring .

Truth to be said she isn't so powerful in dialog.
In my game, she really managed to control:
1. PC, if he haven't Lore 40. Let's face it, it's not hard to have Lore 40.
2. Barik, who is not-so-clever metal man.
3. Kills-in-Shadow, who is beastman without real understanding how to <s>behave</s> control herself.

She can be very powerful, if you have a control for her helmet, that Voices of Nerat do; but PC haven't, just one glimpse of such control on high Loyality.

 

[Togukawa]

I doubt that the Voices has a lot of control over her helmet. Since without helmet control she's actually a threat to Kyros, I can't imagine that Kyros would allow the Voices of all people to be able to control it. Also, if he had such control, a good time to use it would have been when Sirin shows up in my party to come and kill him. Instead, in a shocking twist, he did not react to her presence.

Since most of the enemy soldiers you meet can't cast spells at all, their lore is clearly a lot lower than 40. If I remember correctly, that's less than the lore you need to blow Kills-in-Shadow of you while 'playfighting', instantly ending the fight with her surrender. While it might not be hard for a trained Fatebinder to achieve that level of lore, it's not exactly representative for the level of most people in the Tiers.

Barik's at least as clever as the bronze brotherhood mercenaries that don't even realize that their boss might not be all there in the head...

Anyway I wouldn't mind if you could tell her to try, only for her to say that it's not possible due to the helmet, or to try and fail for whatever reason, leading to violence. It would just involve adding maybe three lines of dialogue. It's just jarring to me that your character can not even realize that maybe that would be a good thing to try. As it is, my character seems a bit limited in the options that she sees in dealing with most situations. About on the level of Barik .

 

[aono]

I believe it's offtopic, but.

Spoiler: About Sirin

I doubt that the Voices has a lot of control over her helmet.

Well, Sirin says about her helmet, that it's Kyros and Voices masterpiece, and to remove it you should reap info from Voices or Kyros himself. And it's logical that the best magician have a kind of control of artefact, controlling a living weapon he given. Of course, it open a possibility to Voices to actually use Sirin against Kyros, but, until Kyros have such control himself AND have some control against Voices, I believe, it's ok as a risk.

Also, if he had such control, a good time to use it would have been when Sirin shows up in my party to come and kill him.

Well, he can actually remove helmet limitations and makes things easer for Sirin, but should he?

Since most of the enemy soldiers you meet can't cast spells at all, their lore is clearly a lot lower than 40.

Nah, it just means enemy soldiers haven't any spell cores. The simplest spell require 15 Lore, and Lore calculation formulae is <Ranks+(Wits*1.5)+(Resolve*0.5>. So a common man with every stat at 8 (and this is handicap, right?) and no training in Lore have at least (12+4)=16 Lore.
Of course, it's highly lower that 40. But it's enough for simple spells.
Also control for Barik was limited on just few seconds - it was enough to actually grab him. Because Sirin ability isn't mind control, it's actually emotion control - she can inspire a reverence and then demand complience, for example.

Barik's at least as clever as the bronze brotherhood mercenaries that don't even realize that their boss might not be all there in the head...

As I recall they DO realize, but a half of them says "it's ok until he kicks against that Kyros' bastards", and another half says "hey, we need to do something about it".

Anyway I wouldn't mind if you could tell her to try, only for her to say that it's not possible due to the helmet, or to try and fail for whatever reason, leading to violence. It would just involve adding maybe three lines of dialogue.

And this is true. I believe I just takes her explanation for helmet functions and take it.

 

[Shinros]

I should notice I haven't a slightest idea WHY Bleeding Mark should try to kill you for doing Fatebinder job - being neutral and oversee that two military snobs. It's something Fatebinders supposed to do!

Actually he approves of you rewarding their stupidness and infertile antics with justice(which fatebinders are also about tunon agree both armies did suck but wondered why you soured relations with the army and is just glad the edict is resolved) and believes both armies are inept and at their jobs.

Hence why he gains some wrath if you side with either disfavored or scarlet they saw fighting each other as more important than dealing with the rebels or edict. Also mark then finds you kinda boring.

Spoiler

Since it's clear Tunon and Mark know you are a growing Archon

 

[aono]

Hence why he gains some wrath if you side with either disfavored or scarlet they saw fighting each other as more important than dealing with the rebels or edict. Also mark then finds you kinda boring.

I haven't wrath with him joining Disfavored. And I had for joining rebels.

 

[Togukawa]

Eh true enough, I just gave one example out of many where immersion is broken due to the choices that the game gives the player character not reflecting what you as the player see as reasonable choices.
Not being able to challenge the prima for control of the beastmen clan but instead needing to slaughter everybody, including the beastmen cubs, was another big one for me.

But it's not really specific instances that are a problem, it's just time after time that I'm frustrated that my character is not given any options that I as a player would remotely like to do. Not difficult, since most of the time the options are to either attack yourself, or to try to walk away (which would block the quest), after which you are attacked. Especially since with just a few additional lines of dialog they could increase reactivity and immersion tremendously.

To come back to the issue raised by topic starter, Tunon does call you in for an intermediate report in some paths.

Spoiler

There is already dialog in the game where Tunon accuses you of going solo at the end of the game. If they would just move some of that up and trigger it when you show up early, it would fix a lot. Or even easier, you could have a line where Tunon says that now he's too busy with the civil war going on, but that he's following what you do very closely and not liking what he sees, and that when the war is resolved you will be called to trial to account for your actions. Even the Bleden Mark thing is very easy to accommodate, just have a line where you implicate him, Tunon calls you a liar, you lose favor and gain wrath and that's it. You could easily allow for the player to (try to) kill Bleden Mark and the other Archons on his own at any point, by asking the fatebinder with the missive for a list of locations where you can find artifacts. Okay, it would be a boring playthrough with all combat and barely any dialogue, but that's at least better than destroying immersion in my opinion.

A lot of the issues can be fixed to a large extent with some small modifications or additional lines of dialog.

 

[aono]

You know, I need to admit, I'm becoming more and more inclined to think a lot of content was just cut away.
I mean, well, a game surely gives me a point to believe that removing tank's armor and Sirin's helmet should be a subplots. Same for Verse' talent to consume parts of souls. Or something about Oldwalls and nature of Archons.
Of course, it could be possible developers just MAKE IT LOOKS THAT WAY, and it's kind of intentional expectation tvist from developers. Or maybe it's really just a placeholders for future DLCs. Or maybe both - when developers saw they can't put it all on release, they do it as it is and thought "ok, we will return it with patches and DLCs".
Not I'm quite against such twists, they can be good, and I especially likes it with Kyros. But there is TOO many of them, in my opinion.

 

[Togukawa]

I agree. I'm conflicted on the issue. On the one hand I do want these things to be filled in with DLC, and I want to support obsidian, since they are one of the only ones still making decent CRPGs at all. On the other hand I feel like for $46.2, while it has quite good worldbuilding, the game is very light on content, compared to things like planescape torment, or fallout 1, 1.5 or 2. I don't mean the ending comes too soon or the playtime is too short, but that the amount of options you get for solving quests and the reactivity of the world and your companions is just too limited.

I don't really want to throw more money at it to get the game I feel it should have been in the first place. I don't think they are going to fill in content with patches. Would be nice, but Obsidian is not CDPR.

 

[vedagon]

Instead, I now feel like my first campaign, where I really just tried to play the role that was granted me, has been an endless series of frustrating choices with equally frustrating consequences, none of which made sense, but all of which spoiled the actual stories I could have (should have) experienced.

Sages you have 4 favor with? SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!
Mercenaries currently in the middle of their own private civil war? SLAUGHTER BOTH SIDES!
Beastmen where game hints you could challenge the leader for control of the clan? SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!

While Tyranny is not overly bad game, being advertised as a game where you make choises and they do really matter, it just does not meet the expectations. Railroading and aproach to resolving in game situations makes me wonder have Fallout 1/2 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines ever existed?

 

[Sorenzo]

I just want to forget I ever played this game so I'd still be psyched to play it. I worry that I'll have already finished 90% of the game, and any different path I felt I could go down were actually never there.

Might be how the game designers do it these days, but I really hope this game is bigger than your average demo.

Bear in mind, I paid 70+ dollars for Baldur's Gate, and that was pre-2000 money. I will gladly pay 30 euros in DLC if they make this game everything we expected. I won't need money when I'm dead.

 

[GreatAlucard]

I enjoyed the game and actually finished it 2 times (Disfavored and Rebellion), with that in mind, it has a lot of issues.

The game railroads you completely and it is almost certain that content was cut, there is not much to say against that.

Only Verse and Barik have a combo ability among companions, I would expect that at the very least we had 3 possible combos (all characters would get involved with at least 1 other companion), not that it alone would save how the combat system currently is but...

The Spire CLEARLY has slots for 5 edicts, and you can only get access to 3.

The Favor / Wrath system just doesnt work, on both my playthroughs factions that I had 4 or 5 favor with and pretty much no wrath just attacked me for no reason, Bleden Mark being one of those, on the solo run he says that he will kill you if you kill Tunon, on all other runs he attacks you no matter what.

And above all that, in the end, whatever you do doesn't matter at all... There is no option other than becoming an enemy of Kyros. Which if you think about it is pretty ridiculous, as the initial objective of the game is simply impossible, even if the player wants to do it.



It definitely can improve, but as it stands Tyranny is not all that great

On a sidenote, the backstory and lore of the game are pretty great. Barik's specifically, if you end up killing Ashe is heartbreaking.

 

[Togukawa]

There are 5 edicts, one is exclusive to the solo path and another one you can find by researching apparently. I guess only on the solo path you can nab all five in a single playthrough. I didn't get to do it myself because the game arbitrarily locked me out of resolving the edict of stone on my solo playthrough, but apparently it's possible.

I don't mind that so much you get railroaded in the big picture, multiple endings would have been nice (and I expected them based on how much marketing claimed that your choices matter), but I don't mind a great game with just one well executed ending. After all, Kyros sets you up to become an enemy, for some reason that you never find out.

What absolutely ruins the game for me though is that all interactions are determined by the one choice you make at the end of act 1, regardless of the favor/wrath system. It also completely trivializes all of the choices you made in conquest mode. You don't have any choice whatsoever anymore (with one or two minor exceptions) for the entirety of act 2.

It's sad that there are many fan made nwn and nwn2 modules that are made by just single persons in their spare time, which do quest resolution, reactivity and immersion much, much better. And Obsidian has already proven several times that they can do great character development, quest resolutations and immersion, such as with fallout new vegas, mask of the betrayer, kotor 2 and alpha protocol. I really don't understand what happened.

I also like the setting and the lore quite a bit, which is why I'm so disappointed that they didn't add good rpg mechanics in this setting. The setting of pillars of eternity just wasn't my cup of tea, but this is the first time that I think Obsidian just made a bad rpg. It's not a bad game and I did enjoy the solo and the coalition paths to some extent, but as a linear action rpg.

Barik's development is indeed quite nice, but the game ruins it by being able to resolve it before even leaving Iron Hearth again.

Spoiler

Talk to Verse, then to Barik again and he's already gotten over having personally murdered the Archon he spent his entire life worshipping just a few minutes ago by a one, maybe two dialogue choices at most.

 

[GreatAlucard]

I pretty much always walk with tab pressed to see highlights and frankly I never found the possibility of researching an edict, I'm not sure of what I could have missed.

I also always thought that the only edict you could actually miss among the 3 initial ones was the edict of fire, the idea that the game can prevent you from solving the edict of blades or the edict of stone too is actually pretty stupid, considering both of those regions have spires in it and the player necessarily has activities in them.

The FAVOR / WRATH mechanic just plain doesn't work. On my second run I played a min / maxing of favor character, telling people what they wanted to hear, and even though the Chorus was the only faction I didn't have high favor with, the game still forced me to speak against factions I supported.

About Barik, I never took him along to kill Ashe, I only saw how much of a husk he was when talking to him at the spire and it was soul crushing, even after talking with Verse it didn't "fix" him. But the idea that IF he is brought along some minutes of conversation make him start talking again is pretty bad too. (Although in the end slides it probably still says he abandoned the fatebinder without saying a word, so there's that)

 

[John the Gamer]

There are 5 edicts, one is exclusive to the solo path and another one you can find by researching apparently. I guess only on the solo path you can nab all five in a single playthrough. I didn't get to do it myself because the game arbitrarily locked me out of resolving the edict of stone on my solo playthrough, but apparently it's possible.

Spoiler

I had the same problem, so I guess you have to choose which edict you want to solve. It also prevented me from unlocking the stone spire, so I could only get four spires.

 

[Luckmann]

I agree. I'm conflicted on the issue. On the one hand I do want these things to be filled in with DLC, and I want to support obsidian, since they are one of the only ones still making decent CRPGs at all. On the other hand I feel like for $46.2, while it has quite good worldbuilding, the game is very light on content, compared to things like planescape torment, or fallout 1, 1.5 or 2. I don't mean the ending comes too soon or the playtime is too short, but that the amount of options you get for solving quests and the reactivity of the world and your companions is just too limited.

I don't really want to throw more money at it to get the game I feel it should have been in the first place. I don't think they are going to fill in content with patches. Would be nice, but Obsidian is not CDPR.

Yeah, I'm definitely not spending any money on DLC as long as the game remains in it's current state. It is, and I say this without a shred of irony or hyperbole, on a level I'd expect from an early access or open beta title. The potential is there, and the framework is there, and there's a hint of what the game could become, but it's just not a finished product.