The Tyranny Review - Part One?

I'm working through the game now, and it'll take too long to gather everything into a long essay. So, I'll drop thoughts as I feel them, and see where we land.

First, let me say this: Tyranny has a better sense of style than both Pillars of Eternity games and Avowed combined. The visual identity of this game immediately sucked me back in just from the main menu - it feels very Trojan War crossed with Dragon Age, in a way that effortlessly scratched my dark fantasy itch.

Obsidian's other fantasy isometrics have been visually stunning, yet their 3D models have often left me wanting and pulled me from the experience. I chose to ignore it in Pillars 1, because that game came out before Tyranny and I presumed Deadfire would remedy this. But the 3D character models in Deadfire somehow felt worse than the original game, and then I realized it wasn't a time thing. Tyranny's character models are just more stylized, utilizing shadow and light to their advantage in a way that downplays the weaknesses which Pillars puts so prominently on display.

The player's optional tattoos have primary and secondary colors, and though I doubt that I missed it originally, I certainly didn't remember. Each tattoo uses the colors differently; some will have the secondary colors blend with the primaries, others will have hard separation, and the placement of secondary and primary makes me feel like someone had to manually dictate which part of each tattoo would be colored in which way - and in certain instances, where those colors would mix together, and how much.

Once character creation "ends", the Conquest begins. An optional extension of the character building process that is run like a text adventure and rendered in 3D on a war table, and a necessity for every playthrough. The events you change within the Conquest sequence have a real, prominent impact on the wider world, to the extent that I'd almost treat it like creating your world state in a Dragon Age game (I still mourn the Keep's drop from Veilguard). You get to define how your involvement changed the world that you'll be exploring, which can bring some serious consequences when you later have to revisit the people and places whose lives you touched before the game ever truly began.

The Fear and Loyalty mechanic is something I didn't explore fully the last time, but it has some interesting uses. Sometimes, for a character to actually change for the better, it may be necessary for them to fear you rather than being loyal. Scaring a character straight, in a way. I'm interested to see how this goes with that in mind.

I'm getting tired of typing, need to go play something now. See you at the next one!