‘Tyranny’: A New RPG From ‘Pillars Of Eternity’ Developer

Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive, makers of last year’s critically-acclaimed title Pillars of Eternity, have announced Tyranny—a new story-driven role-playing game for the PC that flips the script in favor of the forces of evil—during the 2016 Game Developer’s Conference being held this week in San Francisco, California.

Aside from Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian Entertainment is the independent developer behind other popular RPG titles such as Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II.

Tyranny is set to introduce a whole new original fantasy world and story featuring nonlinear narrative and gameplay, where “a brutal clash between good and evil has taken place—and evil emerged triumphant,” and players will be made to make “difficult, morally unclear decisions.”

A great majority of video game would have players be the hero who battles against the forces of evil. This doesn’t seem to be the case in Tyranny, wherein the “great war” between good and evil has already ended and the bad guys actually won. Kyros the Overlord and his armies had swept through the world and brought it under despotic rule.

In Tyranny, the player assumes the role of a Fatebinder, an authority figure under Kyros’ command whose word is law. Under the watchful eye of Tunon the Adjudicator, the Fatebinder is to perform his duties while growing his reputation to either inspire awe and loyalty or fuel fear and disgust among the subjugated population.

During the announcement at GDC, aside from detailing the premise and overall direction of the game, much was also said about the present and future of RPGs and how Tyranny fits into all of it.

Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian Entertainment, showed enthusiasm about this new age in role-playing games.

“What’s incredible is that we’ve been able to continue evolving the types of RPGs we make since Obsidian was founded in 2003. With Tyranny, we love the twist we’ve put on the world which started with the premise ‘What if evil already won?’ Coupled with that is our ongoing dedication to giving our players games full of choice and consequence. Games they can play not just once, but many times.”

Meanwhile, Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, expressed his excitement over their continued partnership with Obsidian Entertainment.

“In Obsidian, we’ve identified a partner whose development and design ideals are a perfect match for our own. We’ve been involved with Tyranny from the ground up, and are proud to be working with the Obsidian team on the creation of this unique world. This will mark a bold step for Paradox into the RPG genre, and we can’t think of a better partner to have for the journey.”

Role-playing games that came out in recent years such as Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, and others have ushered in a sort of renaissance for 2D top-down isometric RPGs, a genre once thought to be dead with the advent of 3D role-playing games. This has opened the floodgates for other story-driven isometric RPG titles to follow suit, which is where Tyranny is set to come in.

Pillars of Eternity had been previously covered here in the Inquisitr as “a retro D&D game with a modern feel.” Its development was financed by a 2012 Kickstarter campaign and was released on March 26, 2015. It was the beginning of the partnership between Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive, a publisher known for grand strategy titles such as Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Crusader Kings. Tyranny is now their second collaboration, which sets a good precedent for independent game development and the RPG genre.

Tyranny is set for release sometime later this year on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Meanwhile, further details will be released on the official website throughout the game’s final stages of development.

[Image via Paradox Interactive]