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I can see that someone hasn't played dominions and known the sweet taste of being a nation with old mages when someone else casts burden of time.
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Nov 11, 2020 00:58
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SIGSEGV posted:I can see that someone hasn't played dominions and known the sweet taste of being a nation with old mages when someone else casts burden of time. I mean, I'd argue that killing units in a strategy game with old age isn't the same as killing the actual antagonists, given that in a strategy game, the "enemy" is more the opposing faction itself rather than any of its members. Even once you kill all the mages, you still need to march in and fight the remaining enemy forces. Like, if that's the case, basically any Paradox grand strategy game qualifies (mostly Crusader Kings, since it works on the largest time scale).
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Nov 11, 2020 02:59
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I bought the game, largely thanks to how great the LP is. One thing that I noticed is that the thoughtful analysis in the LP plays down just how annoying the Scarlet Chrous is. They're blatantly making your job harder, purposefully putting you into danger and ambushes and then when you complain they rub it in your face that you need to suck it up. At the river crossing, if you don't have the subterfuge skill you have no choice but to pay Bitter Quip to fight, the excuse that he's doing it for his people doesn't work once he takes the money. There's an option to punch him but it does nothing, you literally can't proceed unless you give him money... or use your legal authority to force the Disfavored commanded to degrade himself for Bitter Quip's entertainment. What's really surprising is that despite all of this, the Scarlet Chorus still expect you to keep their best interests in mind. At some points there's a glimmer of self awareness, like the SC party member doesn't care how many of the chorus you kill and the higher ups don't seem to shocked when things go against them; but in any half-way functioning organization I'd expect the top person, Nerat, to pass down a command telling people not to antagonize the emperor's legal representative on purpose. By this point I was just letting everyone go, on the basis that as the Overlord's representative my job was to keep all of Kyrios' servants alive, and if anyone wanted to settle things differently, they should have gone first instead. At the second meeting with the Avatars I was already working with the Vendrian Guard, so I chose the SC as the front line to soak up the damage. In that case the two still fight, but the Disfavored Avatar doesn't make any attempt to save you, and it's the Scarlet Chorus that drags you out of the tent. Then the Disfavored ignore you and go first over the wall anyway.
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Nov 12, 2020 03:09
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Cleopatra Jones and the Lying Mercenary Last time on Tyranny, we completely ignored the main plot to go dork around in Tunon's court and learn why everything was terrible. Today we're going to completely ignore the main quest and gently caress around with Verse. Well, not literally. Get your minds out of the gutter, you pervs.  Having been out of the party for a lot of momentous events, Verse is going to be very chatty with us this update. Also I hit up the Spire to pick up some supplies, hence the unannounced transition.  : How'd you know where the bird came from? : The Voices' birds have a certain... hollowness to their movements. Like puppets. Or the Fifth Eye. She chuckles, running a hand down her hair feathers. : [Offer her the missive.] Want to read it? : You can't read? : I could teach you.It's funny, I've been reading a lot of the Lost Kingdom books, and one of the recurring themes is that Alfred the Great is trying to encourage his subjects to read so he can give them orders remotely. Uhtred - the protagonist, a Saxon raised by Danes to follow the old gods instead of Christianity - is somewhat skeptical of this despite having the ability to read himself. There's a whole undercurrent of the primitive and brutal Danish culture contrasted with the heavily repressed Christian one that I don't have the time to go into here, but the important thing is that literacy is consistently portrayed as a means to a modern state. Of course, illiterate people are exposed to less ideas and thus easier to control.  Verse at least has the good sense to not rant about book-reading NERDS. : He says someone's been bragging about your sisters. Know what he means by that? : There's something else, these strange symbols on the back.: There's a lot to love about spycraft. The trickery, the blade work, keeping your senses awake, balancing on the edge between confusion and discovery... Ooh, look, a primitive cipher! I have to hand it to Nerat, he not only devised a cipher but managed to make it so his illiterate commanders can understand said cipher. This problem could be solved by having literate commanders, but once again controlling the horde is more important than actually producing an effective army.  Harichand, huh? He's a merchant in Lethian's Crossing who sadly we have the least interaction with on the Chorus route. Earlier in the game posted:He's the gentleman on the far left. : If you can read Nerat's notifications, I bet you'd take to writing rather quickly.: Look, Fatebinder, if I need a reminder that I'm ignorant, I'll ask.: The Voices gave us the pass phrases that will get Malphora to open up to us. When we find her, let me do the talking and everything should run smooth as seaglass. She rubs her hands together. : The Archon's sudden interest in your revenge doesn't seem suspicious to you? "Connoisseur of Perversions" certainly is a title.  : Let's go.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Unfortunately for Verse, we will not be doing that.  I completely forgot that once you clear the Edict, there are a few more artifacts we can grab if you don't destroy the library.  Old news, Verse. : You think I made the right decision?: Claiming Vendrien's Well and kicking everyone out? It took brass balls the size of the Gates of Judgment, but I don't fault you.This gets us loyalty with Verse, unfortunately I screwed up the screencap here. : If the siege was really that badly mismanaged, then I don't see that you had any other choice. It'll make you more enemies than friends in the long run, but friends are overrated. This is an interesting bit of dialogue, as the reader is tempted to bring up how if you follow the laws of war you don't have to compromise - but even in a just war you have to determine who to save, who to have your soldiers kill (unacceptable in any other circumstance) and whether or not you can justify civilian casualties to attack the enemy's support base. War is hell no matter how moral you are.  We leave. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 I missed this sage. If we spare him he gives us some sigil research at the Library. Remember, sigils rule and you want more of them!  After a lot of backtracking, these Bane stand between us and our goal.  Verse wants to chat with us some more.  : I'm exposing myself to powers I don't understand.: War is about taking risks, and you're putting yourself out there more than anyone. I can't help but respect that.: I'm here if you need me, but I don't have a mind for arcane wisdom. I'll do whatever I can to get our little gang through this war. And if it ever looks like your strength is flagging, I'll put you out of your misery and take control. Cheer up. I take the opportunity to ask one single question. : I would like to discuss your apparent connection with Barik.I spoiled it in the thread, but as a reminder...   Remember what I said about Verse symbolizing the Scarlet Chorus as a whole? Much like the army itself, she's half Northern and half Tiersman, and much like the army itself she's not devoted to Nerat once he can't harm her. : I've heard enough, though I'd like to return to this topic when both of you are present.: Whatever you say. If it makes Barik uncomfortable, I'm game for anything. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
We've had a few hints before. Remember when Barik got really uncomfortable when Ashe suggested killing Verse? This is why.  Time to fight the Bane! The Bane teach me the hard way that the party you guys gave me is NOT my traditional Tyranny party of "Barik and 3 mages".  I don't get Rocket Healing Time off fast enough and Verse and Killsy go down. Verse is a lightly armored dodgy fighter, and Killsy is a high HP berserker. Neither are great tanks, though Killsy will absolutely wreck idiots if given the chance.  This is a Havoc Bane, the next tier up from Wisps. The other two Wisps apparently decided not to contribute to this fight, so Eb and Cleo are slowly able to grind it to death. It's incredibly boring.  Killsy is able to get back up but I guess Verse is too close to the Wisp or something. Oh well, we murder the remaining Bane offscreen. It's Tyranny combat.  This is why we're here! It's an artifact hammer that knocks people down on crits. Kills-in-Shadow deals extra damage to prone enemies. I think you all see where this is going.  We also get this guy, which reduces all incoming damage by 75% for the entire party for the first 8 seconds of combat. Baller! The wiki says it only appears if you spared the Sages, but it's wrong. We throw it on Cleopatra to turn her into even more of an overpowered engine of destruction.  Cleo has artifacts in everything except head, chest, and boots. We can fix that. Verse has one last chat for us as we leave the Library.  : Why doesn't the Voices like strongholds?: Because there's no point in standing still. The Voices prefers to keep his forces busy and on the move, with the only restful hours between dusk and dawn.First, that's bullshit, we found tons of people loafing around the Chorus camp in act one. Second, plenty of armies have erected strongholds as a means to wage offensive war (such as the Romans or "Mad Anthony" Wayne against the Native Americans) and they provide plenty of advantages for the offensive army, such as a place to store provisions or a securable retreat.  This is more like it. Charlemagne famously had a problem with his counts building castles, as a count in a castle can defy the king. The part Verse is missing is that the gang boss might just decide that his forces aren't fighting today or use the stronghold to rebel against Nerat. : What do you think of these Spires?: They're big, but make no mistake - a determined army could knock one down if they got enough shovels and picks together. Don't be so quick to assume that you're invincible.This ties back into our power metaphor, where if everyone is against us our power comes crumbling down.  We end the conversation there. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Alright game, if you're going to keep killing my frontliners I'm going to make this stupid mirror image spell. Big defensive numbers! This also synergizes really well with Verse, who has a talent that jacks her damage when she gets missed in melee.  On our way to meet Verse's spy contact we run into this encounter I've never seen before.   Wow, holy poo poo. Our options are: : Thank the woman for her service and give her some rings.: Execute the woman for illegally destroying potential war assets.: Torch the entire village for being complicit in these murders.Wow. This is a straight up clusterfuck, isn't it? I choose to execute the woman, because she burned four people alive that were considered guests. Murdering guests is a huge no-no in virtually every ancient culture, you can see it in myths like Baucis and Philemon where the people who safely harbor the disguised gods are rewarded while people who mistreat guests are destroyed. Of course, because this is Kyros' empire, we have to phrase it in the legally acceptable way.  This is the part that's weird to me. Yes, the lady did it to curry favor with Kyros, but the smarter thing would have been to detain the Sages to hand them over to Kyrosian forces instead of whatever this idiocy is. Betraying your guests is portrayed as evil in everything from Greek myth to Norse myth to even Shakespeare where Macbeth murders Duncan in Macbeth's own home. The settlers being universally horrified at the summary execution because we're so brutal is...incredibly ahistorical, because by every single standard of the ancient world she had this coming. We are legally empowered to judge and execute the law. I get what the writers are trying to do here, and we get favor with Tunon for doing this, but within the Bronze Age cultures we're aping people would understand. Remember, people in ancient times were exposed to a lot more daily violence than we are now.  Ah, of course. There was some complaining in the thread about how Tyranny assumes the Fatebinder's motive and you can't be a good person deluded, and I just want to reiterate that ultimately you are a servant of the tyrant who got this position by doing extremely horrible things. Oh well, we got a cool hat. What does it do?  This hat rules! We can add more spells to Cleo's rotation of death, and if we find a hat with better stats Eb or Lantry would love this thing. Sirin would love it too, but that's a little too soon. Kailor disappeared after the Edict, but he left us this great hat. Pour one out for Sage Kailor.  I give Cleo this sleep spell. The Ball Lightning spell unfortunately glitches out for me, and I'm not sure if it was mistakenly assigned or what, but Cleo can't cast it and I'll have to fix it in the next update. Oh well.  We finally make it to Verse's spy contact. : Soft and well-fed, this one - but look at her stance. She can handle herself. Verse takes the woman in with a long, appraising gaze. Verse explicitly told us to shut up, so... : [Glare silently.] : You must have me mistaken for someone else, I assure you-: Oh, fine. The road to Stalwart is paved in iron. Verse sighs.Interesting. The Disfavored are currently in Stalwart. Remember this for later.  : [Say nothing.]Picking any other option gets Verse to yell and call us a dumbass. : Yet their papers aren't aflame.: Sorry about the formalities. If word got back to the Voices that I was cutting corners on security... Let's just say I prefer my tongue in my mouth and my bowels in my, er, well, bowels I guess. She shakes her head.: You're the Fatebinder of the Mountain Spire, correct? : So what does the Voices of Nerat want us to know? : Right. Malphora glances between the two of you before her eyes settle on Verse.: The man you're interested in calls himself Krokus. No idea whether that's what his mother named him. Showed up in the Crossing a few months back picking fights and looking for rings.Keep this in mind.  : Not a smart thing to brag about.: Very stupid, in fact.: You'd think a story like that would scare off any potential employees, but Aesa's never been the brightest ring on the rope. She shakes her head.: Who is Aesa?: A cloth dealer originally out of the Azure. Runs a circuit from the Crossing to the Brothers and down into the calmer edges of the Blade Grave. : How do we find him?: Luckily for you, I'm very good at what I do. Malphora smiles and produces a scroll from her pack.: He usually goes to Stalwart by way of the Ocean Spire, but he's cutting east to make time and avoid Beasts. She taps a knuckle on a thick, black line. : What can you tell me about Hunter's Respite?: A small stretch of wilderness far enough off the trade road to dissuade raiders, but near enough to avoid losing much time. The isolation recommends it, but not much else. : I'm supposed to wait for him and hope he shows up? We know who she is, she's a Chorus spy masquerading as a merchant. Time to leave. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Of course, this is Tyranny, so nothing is ever at face value. They could have included a disclaimer like at the beginning of Age of Decadence, where the game warns you that the NPCs will all lie to, cheat, and steal from you.  Here's Krokus!  Here's Cario, rather.   : [Point to Verse] I'm Fatebinder Cleopatra Jones, but more importantly, this is Verse.: And I'm about to adjudicate your head open. Justice for my Fury sisters. She grins hungrily. This fight isn't as easy for me sadly.  I try to use Eb and Cleo's buff lifedrain combo which imbues everyone's weapons with the power to drain 30% of damage as health, but they're not having it.  Can you see the anomaly in this screenshot? Check the combat log.  Cario has Ashe's Aegis. That's the regenerative ability of the Disfavored, granted by Graven Ashe himself. It's unusual, because Cario is described as speaking in "a Tiers-accented growl" and the Disfavored are extremely proud of their Northern heritage. This must be some kind of Disfavored covert operation, no wonder Nerat wanted us to break it up.  When you beat the "experienced warriors" the screen fades to black.  : Hold like you held when you and your friends killed my loving sisters? For the love of Kyros, indeed! Her words escape her clenched teeth in a half-hissed breath. She slips a small knife from her boot, and in a flash of bronze opens the fallen man's cheek. Oh no! A family man! A classic moral dilemma - do we let this family man go if he repents for his evil ways? At least it's not a trolley primed to run over a space dog.  : You're not proud? You've been boasting about it all over Haven. : What? No, no, you don't understand! I couldn't find work otherwise. I thought maybe I could win a few fights in the Crossing to prove my mettle, but the loving guards there jumped me as a group.: So I HAD to tell people about the Furies! It was talk about your sisters or starve and let my wife starve! He looks to Verse. : I... Overlord help me. I never wanted to hurt anyone. It was my drat job. I swore an oath to an Apex lord because I wanted a bed and food - not because I thought Kyros would ever come to the Tiers! He sobs.: That oath didn't just dissolve when your armies passed the Gates of Judgment! I had to kill conscripted Tiersmen by the gang! And yes, I helped kill your friends. His head droops, a pink froth of sweat, mucus, and blood dripping from the tip of his nose.: Not friends, rear end in a top hat. Sisters. : You said Catorius cooked people?: I never actually saw him EAT someone, but I'm sure he did. You could see it in his eyes when he looked at you, that hunger. He was a Sage, so maybe that explains it. Overlord knows what those scrollfuckers do in their libraries.: We took one of you alive, you know.: What? What the gently caress are you talking about? Her eyes widen.: After you disappeared, we realized that one of your Furies was still alive. The big bald one. Catorius took her! Never saw her after! He's silenced by Verse's fist. : Where is Catorius now? : Where can we find Irissa?: After that Fatebinder negotiated peace, Irissa refused to let that truce apply to her - the crazy bitch couldn't lay down her spear.: Last I heard, she was down in the Blade Grave. Joined up with those Stalwart shitheels, killing Disfavored in the Overlord's endless storm. Here. He fumbles with a case at his side before offering a well-soiled parchment in his blood-slick fingers. : How do you want to play this, Verse? Oh no! Verse is going to kill him despite his reformation! : I've sworn loyalty to Kyros! Go hunt Irissa, go kill Catorius - they're your true enemies! They're the ones who deserve your justice! He tries to push himself away from Verse, but his heels skid uselessly, plowing furrows in the bloody muck.  Is this pitiful man even worth killing? Who am I to deny Verse? : Do it, Verse.  This is quite the brutal execution of a pitiful man begging for his life.  Are we taking our party down a dark path from which we can never return? : Thanks, Fatebinder. She proffers you a curt nod.  : Tell me about her.: Seeking was all dynamo. Short, with hair like moss on a stone and skin the color of the night sky. Laughed at everything, even insults. She smiles wistfully.: She never stopped moving. If we camped, she paced the tents or palisades, always pushing us to get on. She lets out a low chuckle. : [Laugh] She sounds amazing. I'm not going to even try to apply the law about disrespecting the Overlord. : Crazy thing about Seeking? It wasn't raw talent. She practiced that poo poo, the spear work and the javelins. Practiced every hour she wasn't sleeping or on assignment. : I thought it might be a sex thing.: That too! She laughs.: Her name meant more than the spear-play. Seeking always sought. Always looked for new things. New experiences. New stories, new men, new bits of lore.: In summer she'd collect stinging insects, fill thin clay jars with them, and smash them against her foes. No fight was ever even for Seeking. You either got the drop, or you got dropped.: Thanks. You know, for listening. She shakes her head roughly, as if clearing the fog from it. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Cleopatra has murdered a repentant man, furthering her decent into darkness.  We should probably let the wife know.  Captive? Huh?  Yea, Krokus is completely full of poo poo. This is the wrong way to handle the encounter. If you spare him you can't talk to the girl here, so many players have been tricked into letting the "repentant" man go. A lot of his poo poo wasn't adding up - if he's a poor mercenary, how does he know how to read? Would a man who wanted only to support his family fight the garrison of the Bronze Brotherhood, a mercenary unit presumably looking for new members? Why is this girl acting like she's drugged?  She's not even asking after her "husband".  Two things: first, Verse isn't completely incapable of empathy. Second, it's clear something very bad happened. : We'll leave her some supplies. Enough to get her back to the Crossing.Sometime the game gives you Stupid Evil options, and I really don't understand why. You can easily roleplay a selfish power seeker embracing division and fear to turn people against each other, and that's a more compelling evil than wantonly murdering NPCs.  : There's fruit and grain in the cart, too, and cloth to carry it, assuming she has any appetite after seeing this slaughter.Ugh. Tyranny, you do a lot of things right, but I'm beginning to think you didn't QA this section. Observant players might be asking "what cart, and what are you talking about?" Keep reading.  This is kind of out of context.  Hey! Free upgrade for Verse! Pity the only stance we want her in is her dodge stance. Let's try this again. There's a right way to do this encounter. Instead of going north, go southeast.   This is important - you have to butcher all the guards here. They tell you to go and talk to Krokus, and even let you pass. I think it's bugged, because something is obviously wrong if you talk to them.   They tell us to gently caress off, but they seem pretty suspicious.  Here's the cart Verse was talking about earlier.  : No wear or tear... has to be freshly woven. Aesa peddles cloth, right? So where is he? She frowns at her fingertips, then rubs them together.: Dried blood. Keep on your toes. This stinks higher than the Spires.Back to Krokus!  : [To Cario] You must be the merchant Aesa, and this your loudmouthed daughter. : I brought a few of my people to make sure that the clearing was as clear as he claimed. Which it clearly isn't. His head lilts to the side. All these options start a fight. While we're a little closer, you unfortunately need to slaughter those guards to get the full story.  They go down like chumps.  You need to kill the guards AND find the cart.  NOW we can ask about the guard. I don't know why all those guards had to die, were they supposed to attack you on seeing you walk past? : Speaking of down the hill, let's talk about that cart full of cloth we found.: What about it? It belongs to the merchant we're guarding. He glances askance at Cario.This is interesting. It seems to imply Cario is secretly running the shots here.  : And the merchant is where, exactly?: Er, emptying his bowls. He wanted some privacy, so most of us stayed back. With the camp and the cart. He scowls. Before, Verse was buying his repentance but vowing to kill him anyway. This is your reward for investigating - or it would be, if the quest wasn't bugged. : Do you not have someone else you can go harass? : [Athletics 47] [Shout menacingly] I'm here for Krokus. The rest of you have this one chance to leave with your guts still inside you. This makes the fight considerably easier.   I hate when games show things and then include unnecessary text descriptions.  We've seen the top option, so let's see the bottom. : [Attack] I'm your slow, painful death, Krokus.  : You know how to make a girl's day, Binder. Verse licks her lips as they split into a hungry grin. This starts the fight. I'll spare you most of it, but...  There it is again! Cario IS Disfavored! What the hell is going on here?  Krokus starts in on his same line of bullshit.  We have a new dialogue option! : Your wife slept through this noise?: She's a heavy sleeper, what do you want from me? Incidentally, if you spare Krokus he runs off with the girl. : [Lore 42] To sleep through that fight, she's either heavily sedated or complicit in all this. Start talking. : I thought you said he was off answering nature's call. It's blatantly a lie, along with Verse explicitly calling him a liar in this version.  : It's the truth! I swear it by my wife, by my daughter! I mean, by his daughter!The game is not even trying to hide how guilty this rear end in a top hat is.  The rest of the sequence proceeds exactly as we say. He lies and begs, Verse wants to kill him, we agree, Eb and Killsy do the wave. We rescue the girl and give her supplies, all is well.  We got some loot, I guess? The quest isn't over, but I'm stopping here due to the character limit. We will learn a bit more as the quest unfolds, but right now we have a weird Disfavored covert operation. Here's what we know: Krokus was hired to guard Aesa and his daughter Ptolia. He murdered Aesa, hid the cart, and took Ptolia captive. We don't know to what end yet, but he obviously didn't marry her. He confesses to murdering the Scarlet Furies because he was defending his country, and blames a cannibal Sage we haven't met along with a nationalist zealot named Irissa. We have yet to meet either of these individuals, but we should not take Krokus at face value The Disfavored are using Krokus and his mercenaries to do something, maybe related to the girl? It's not clear, but Krokus keeps glancing back at Cario for support. The entire group is obviously not Disfavored as they have a Beastman with them. Cario is benefiting from Ashe's Aegis. I have no idea what's going on there as far as what the Disfavored are doing, but as far as Nerat is concerned? He wins! We come in and bust up whatever the Disfavored were going to do with that girl of our own free will entirely because we want to in a way that can't be traced back to the Voices of Nerat! Ashe is going to blame Cleo for this (he knows Verse isn't under Chorus orders) and Nerat can go back to pretending he doesn't know the Disfavored spy units exist. This quest is DLC, so it's weird to see Ashe being vaguely competent at skullduggery and Nerat not loving himself over with his own ego. Tune in next time as we finish Verse's quest for revenge!
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Nov 12, 2020 08:26
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: Dew it!
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It's kind of a pity the DLC isn't quite up to the same standards in terms of playtesting as the rest of the game as the actual content is interesting. It's just that this seems coded kind of messily.
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Nov 12, 2020 09:02
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Now that you've revisited the Burning Library, I guess it's safe to post this, since it's unlikely to come up again otherwise: that is the one other spot you can get the Sigil of Guarded form (for spells like Haste and Mirror Image). You've got to spot a guy floating in the lava, click on and talk to him, and pick a series of specific dialogue options to get the sigil from him. You have to pull him from the lava, and he's mostly screaming about being on fire. You can discover a sigil carved into his skin and deduce it's what's keeping him alive, giving you the option of cutting off a slice of his skin to get the sigil, allowing him to finally burn to death. Any other attempt to heal him or put him out of his misery means no sigil for you. I've no idea what causes it to trigger, and it's extremely missable even if you have triggered it, since you have to revisit the library after clearing the edict, spot the guy, and can easily pick any more reasonable-seeming dialogue option to lock you out anyways. I think the trigger is having been the one reading the edict in Conquest and given the sages time to prepare, but the encounter doesn't even appear on the wiki. Or you can just let the merchant in act 1 hang around and get it from him.
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Nov 12, 2020 11:16
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Now that you've revisited the Burning Library, I guess it's safe to post this, since it's unlikely to come up again otherwise: that is the one other spot you can get the Sigil of Guarded form (for spells like Haste and Mirror Image). You've got to spot a guy floating in the lava, click on and talk to him, and pick a series of specific dialogue options to get the sigil from him. You have to pull him from the lava, and he's mostly screaming about being on fire. You can discover a sigil carved into his skin and deduce it's what's keeping him alive, giving you the option of cutting off a slice of his skin to get the sigil, allowing him to finally burn to death. Any other attempt to heal him or put him out of his misery means no sigil for you. The guy actually shows up on the first visit, but he only shows up if you warned the Sages. Also, if you pull him from the lava without cutting off the sigil, he'll actually be in decent shape and can talk to you a bit about what happened, even having a little dialog with Lantry. I guess if you miss him until after you finish the library, he's worse off? Good to know. Also, as an aside, the Burning Library decision, while still pretty big, isn't quite as momentous a decision as I thought it was, if the Banner of Ardent is still available no matter what. It still affects more in terms of loot you can get than any of the other edict decisions, as far as I'm aware, but the Banner of Ardent was kind of the biggest deal involved there.
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Nov 12, 2020 17:34
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I feel like the disdain for literacy is another modern addition to Tyranny. Cuneiform writing was originally developed for record-keeping and accounting. As Alfred the Great demonstrates, olden tyrants and kings often encourage learning so they can more royal/imperial bureaucrats to carry out their will. I feel the writers don't understand how hard it is to manage and control large areas without a modern bureaucratic state. This isn't like modern tyranny where one can automatically assume there are enough potential bureaucrats. In the bronze age, every additional bureaucrat represents a real expansion of the tyrant's ability to directly control things rather than having to delegate.
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Nov 12, 2020 18:17
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There's disdain for literacy among the armies because that makes them easier to control, but the civil service of the empire is Tunon's court and they're all literate.
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Nov 12, 2020 18:31
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Let's also keep in mind that actively spending resources teaching the Scarlet Chorus how to read would be largely a big waste, given that the average life expectancy can be measured in days, if not hours. Anyone who survives long enough to be worth teaching to read can generally procure their own tutor, if they're interested in learning.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:52
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quote:I get what the writers are trying to do here, and we get favor with Tunon for doing this, but within the Bronze Age cultures we're aping people would understand. I do wonder if you're taking this "people have iron and bronze weapons, therefore ethics and morality are as they were in real bronze/iron age societies" thing a bit far. The game appears to disagree, for one thing. Does that make the game wrong for not following your premise, or your premise wrong? Keep in mind we have magic people who can (among a thousand other things) create and destroy structures with their minds alone. That'd have some unpredictable effects on society.
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Nov 12, 2020 23:47
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Gort posted:I do wonder if you're taking this "people have iron and bronze weapons, therefore ethics and morality are as they were in real bronze/iron age societies" thing a bit far. The game appears to disagree, for one thing. Does that make the game wrong for not following your premise, or your premise wrong? Keep in mind we have magic people who can (among a thousand other things) create and destroy structures with their minds alone. That'd have some unpredictable effects on society. I mean, the designers intent was looking at historical regimes(Specifically tyrannical ones) and writing a commentary on them. So in that context, this is either a deliberate choice in the execution of that idea or a flub. The settlers are initially stated to be divisive about the woman's actions and Tunon liked us for the call, so the group that was upset at her for breaking the laws of hospitality suddenly vanishing feels like a flub rather than a choice.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:11
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rastilin posted:I bought the game, largely thanks to how great the LP is. One thing that I noticed is that the thoughtful analysis in the LP plays down just how annoying the Scarlet Chrous is. They're blatantly making your job harder, purposefully putting you into danger and ambushes and then when you complain they rub it in your face that you need to suck it up. Yeah, the Scarlet Chorus really seems like the Chaotic Stupid faction from the first time you meet them and the game doesn't ever seem to introduce any compelling reason to overlook that glaringly obvious flaw and choose to work with them, it's kind of strange.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:16
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FoolyCharged posted:I mean, the designers intent was looking at historical regimes(Specifically tyrannical ones) and writing a commentary on them. So in that context, this is either a deliberate choice in the execution of that idea or a flub. The settlers are initially stated to be divisive about the woman's actions and Tunon liked us for the call, so the group that was upset at her for breaking the laws of hospitality suddenly vanishing feels like a flub rather than a choice. Tyrannical regimes have existed long past the iron and bronze ages, and Tyranny reflects that, by having a lot of concepts that didn't exist during that period. The legal system under Kyros is vastly more sophisticated and organized than anything that would have been possible in the bronze age, for example.
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Nov 13, 2020 00:50
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Speaking of cannibal sages... Is cannibalism ok in the Scarlet Chorus? Weird to ask, I know, but when you've got a destructive trash horde of soldiers I imagine their are bound to be logistics and supply problems. With the amount of "Anything Goes" I can see the army either eating the conquered/populace or weaker members of the Scarlet Chorus. Or is that a quest plot point down the line?
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Nov 13, 2020 00:59
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Donkringel posted:Speaking of cannibal sages... Is cannibalism ok in the Scarlet Chorus? There might be a Kyros law about it but it's not not allowed. As a rule cannibalism is dumb because the best place to find a whole bunch of bacteria that can hurt a human is on a dead human.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:26
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wiegieman posted:There might be a Kyros law about it but it's not not allowed. Yeah, it's pretty rare because lots of sicknesses don't jump between species so you're a lot more likely to get sick cannibalizing because if an animals food is sick it is something that will make it sick. On the upside in starvation situations it's also full of everything an animal needs so it's pretty nutritious if the critter doesn't get sick and die. All that said, I doubt any cannibals in the chorus give a wooden nickel about any of this and do it for kicks.
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Nov 13, 2020 01:55
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Gort posted:I do wonder if you're taking this "people have iron and bronze weapons, therefore ethics and morality are as they were in real bronze/iron age societies" thing a bit far. The game appears to disagree, for one thing. Does that make the game wrong for not following your premise, or your premise wrong? Keep in mind we have magic people who can (among a thousand other things) create and destroy structures with their minds alone. That'd have some unpredictable effects on society. So my assumption is that the writers are going for something by setting it in the Bronze Age against a 20th century-style authoritarianism rather than cynically assuming they picked it because it was cool. Now, so far, the magic of the Kyrosian empire is limited to war usage (the Spires predate Kyros and the current crop of Archons) and the only other structure building we've seen is the Earthshakers hiding behind a wall, and that is apparently something they can't just do because no one proposes building an earth wall ramp to the fortress at Ascension Hall. Other than that, we see Sirin blessing the crops and...precious little else that isn't just for war. The premise I'm operating under (this was going to be a bonus update after I'd finished reading Leviathan) is that the authors are deliberately contrasting Kyros' semi-modern tyranny with the Bronze Age, when everyone was violent, resources were hard to find, everything was made by hand, and life was generally terrible. The game is - by my interpretation - trying to convey that Kyros' semi-modern communist regime is worse than living in the Bronze Age, and going into detail about how Kyros ruins everything. I'm not sure the developers agree. GameBanshee interview with the developers* posted:GB: Tyranny is set in the transitional era between the bronze and the iron age of its fictional setting. How much will the setting be influenced by that period of our own planet's history, and how much will the presence of powerful magical forces and fantastical creatures make it diverge? How will that influence the plotlines and mechanics of the game? Now, this is completely at odds with what we see in the game. Yes, the smith explains that bronze and iron weapons are comparable, but in Kyros' legions the small, elite Disfavored are armed exclusively in iron, while the teeming hordes of the Scarlet Chorus have bronze. Despite the supposed rarity of bronze, bronze weapons are everywhere in the Tiers to the point where bronze weapons get handed out to conscripts en masse while only the elite troops have iron. It's not a consistent look at all. I honestly don't think you needed to go too in depth about how Kyros was able to conquer the nations of the world, because the story starts once the conquest is over. I'm trying really hard NOT to write off the setting as "generic fantasy stuff" because if you look at Communism/Fascism/Your Favorite Bad 20th Century Idea You Think Kyros Is you need actual technology for all of this to work. The Communist Manifesto posted:In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. Notice how Marx and friends are condemning modern machinery? We get a few hints from the game that Kyros is vaguely communist (the Law of Sharing is a big one) and it just doesn't work in the Bronze Age because crop yields are bad and you can't transport food overland very easily because all your horses pulling your food wagons just eat the food. If we don't have a real reason for being in the Bronze Age, we just run into the problem of "why are we clumsily backporting the 20th century into the Bronze Age when we could make a game set in 1984 instead" that plagues so much of fantasy fiction. We can dismiss it as "lol RPGs" - and I've done this to various works in the past - but then the tone of our commentary changes considerably. FoolyCharged posted:I mean, the designers intent was looking at historical regimes(Specifically tyrannical ones) and writing a commentary on them. So in that context, this is either a deliberate choice in the execution of that idea or a flub. The settlers are initially stated to be divisive about the woman's actions and Tunon liked us for the call, so the group that was upset at her for breaking the laws of hospitality suddenly vanishing feels like a flub rather than a choice. The other thing that should be noted is that I can't think of a single society where it is acceptable to burn your guests alive, up to and including the modern day. We are effectively a judge, so that sequence of events goes something like this: -We, a legally appointed judge of the sovereign Kyros, witness a burning house. -A mob of villagers is surrounding a woman, who confesses she lit the house on fire to burn four people alive after the village offered them hospitality -We give her a bench trial and sentence her to death for "destroying potential war assets" -We carry out the sentence -The villagers, who live in a society where food shortages are a very real thing along with high infant mortality rates, gasp at our brutality for executing a mass murderer who was trying to curry favor with us by doing murder. It's weird and I'm not sure what the developers thought we were supposed to do as the non tyrannical thing. Juries don't exist. We don't have a massive prison system and we can't actually feed prisoners, because we live in the Bronze Age and the only means we have of alleviating food shortages is asking Sirin to sing at plants. Torching the village is a major overreaction that most likely violates Kyros' peace, and giving the woman money for murdering people...I don't need to explain why this is bad, do I? If anything this is a rare example of Kyros' laws dovetailing with actual justice. It won't surprise astute readers to learn this is a DLC encounter, and I personally believe a lot of the DLC story additions kind of crap on the themes of the original game. We will get to this in time. Donkringel posted:Speaking of cannibal sages... Is cannibalism ok in the Scarlet Chorus? Earlier in the game posted:
Make of that what you will. *https://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/117654-tyranny-interview.html
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Nov 13, 2020 02:31
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: Oh, it's a wonder of wonders. I eat what I want, I poo poo where I want, and I kill who I want. Sometimes I even combine pleasures. She winks at you
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Marx does not condemn modern machinery, rather, he condemns the fungible dehumanizing relationship to the working class which it enables.
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Nov 13, 2020 02:35
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wiegieman posted:Marx does not condemn modern machinery, rather, he condemns the fungible dehumanizing relationship to the working class which it enables. Right, but the point stands that you need modern machinery to provoke the condemnation.
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Nov 13, 2020 02:38
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Eh, Marxism specifically was developed in response to the conditions of industrial capitalism, but pre-industrial sorta-socialist ideas did exist. They just focused more on land reform (e.g. levelers, diggers, and such). There was an ancient Babylonian heretic priest who espoused communistic-y ideas although I can't remember his name. Edit: Though I guess in that case, if Kyros were more true to history, the line would be less "share (the actually scarce) food" than "break up the big estates of the nobility and distribute plots of land to the poor." GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 02:43
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The reason there are more bronze weapons is because bronze weapons don't suddenly despawn when people die. There are centuries upon centuries of bronze weapons and armor (though, less armor given how much more easy it is to damage, hence all the leather armor), whereas iron has simply not be smithed for nearly as long, so there's no historical stockpile to draw from when outfitting armies. Also, Kyros' regime is not communist. It's fascist. Full stop. There is no communal ownership of the means of production nor is the proletariat remotely empowered. All means of everything are owned by the state and controlled autocratically, and distribution is designed to be efficient not for the people, but for the state. All is in service to the state. This is the definition of fascism. That certain regimes claiming the title of "communist" were, in fact, fascist, is an example of a weird linguistic quirk some people refer to as "lying". This also explains the whole issue with the burning house. Under fascism, murder in the name of the state is good, which is why the actual crime being committed was Unlawful Destruction of Potential War Assets. Also, as much as I love the writing in Tyranny, yeah, a lot of the decisions were clearly justified as "fantasy settings and magic are cool" and, frankly, I agree with that sentiment.
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Nov 13, 2020 02:53
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I think people are reading too much into this horrified reaction thing. There's no incongruity between knowing this woman has it coming, and still being shocked by a sudden and brutal execution happening right in front of you.
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Nov 13, 2020 03:42
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Yeah same, you can say a blanket "oh violence is common in the bronze age", and yeah, that's true, but it doesn't really say much? Not all violence is equivalent. Being in a bar fight every day of your life doesn't do much to prepare you to see someone suddenly get beheaded or disemboweled. And even if it was the sudden nature of someone who showed up two minutes ago suddenly doing it wouldn't shock you.
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Nov 13, 2020 03:53
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paragon1 posted:Yeah same, you can say a blanket "oh violence is common in the bronze age", and yeah, that's true, but it doesn't really say much? Not all violence is equivalent. Being in a bar fight every day of your life doesn't do much to prepare you to see someone suddenly get beheaded or disemboweled. And even if it was the sudden nature of someone who showed up two minutes ago suddenly doing it wouldn't shock you. I dunno, I kind of feel like living under a tyrannical regime that suppresses dissidents by flooding their fort with magma would likely leave people pretty desensitized to violence and death. Granted, this region is relatively new to this and maybe these guys didn't get exposed overly much in the conquest?
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Nov 13, 2020 04:52
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FoolyCharged posted:I dunno, I kind of feel like living under a tyrannical regime that suppresses dissidents by flooding their fort with magma would likely leave people pretty desensitized to violence and death. Granted, this region is relatively new to this and maybe these guys didn't get exposed overly much in the conquest? Also that a lot of big things like that or any of the other edicts are pretty distant, both physically and mentally. It's pretty different hearing that a castle you've never seen was destroyed by magic way beyond the scope of whatever's near your dinky little village and seeing someone that you know beheaded in front of you by a stranger.
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Nov 13, 2020 05:14
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FoolyCharged posted:I dunno, I kind of feel like living under a tyrannical regime that suppresses dissidents by flooding their fort with magma would likely leave people pretty desensitized to violence and death. Granted, this region is relatively new to this and maybe these guys didn't get exposed overly much in the conquest? This is like saying a farmer near Rome should be desensitized to seeing someone get stabbed because Vesuvius exploded. The violence and death aren't equivalent in the eyes of the observer, they wouldn't get the same reaction.
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Nov 13, 2020 05:50
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EclecticTastes posted:The reason there are more bronze weapons is because bronze weapons don't suddenly despawn when people die. There are centuries upon centuries of bronze weapons and armor (though, less armor given how much more easy it is to damage, hence all the leather armor), whereas iron has simply not be smithed for nearly as long, so there's no historical stockpile to draw from when outfitting armies. I agree and thanks for pointing this stuff out OP while your critique of some inconsistencies is understandable I also think that you are probably asking too much of a video game this isn't a treatise on socioeconomic issues, it's an rpg with wizards trying to explore themes of oppression and morality
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Nov 13, 2020 07:50
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sunken fleet posted:Yeah, the Scarlet Chorus really seems like the Chaotic Stupid faction from the first time you meet them and the game doesn't ever seem to introduce any compelling reason to overlook that glaringly obvious flaw and choose to work with them, it's kind of strange. The main reason to work with the Chorus is that your alternatives are the Disfavored, who are straight up nazis all hopped up on racial purity and enslaving their lessers and poo poo. You can also opt to work with nobody at all (as demonstrated by Cleopatra Jones) or the rebels, assuming you've jumped through all the right hoops for them to give you a chance. It's entirely possible to miss the latter two as options, or decide to stick with one of the main Kyros-approved factions for roleplaying or replaying reasons. The Scarlet Chorus at least have a Darwinist egalitarianism going for them, and Nerat is batshit insane, which is interesting. Ashe runs a cadre of nazis, who are sometimes polite to you because you are a fellow member of the master race, and internally mostly run on military discipline. Even if you consider them to be morally equivalent, the latter is way more boring. EclecticTastes posted:Also, Kyros' regime is not communist. It's fascist. Full stop. There is no communal ownership of the means of production nor is the proletariat remotely empowered. All means of everything are owned by the state and controlled autocratically, and distribution is designed to be efficient not for the people, but for the state. All is in service to the state. This is the definition of fascism. That certain regimes claiming the title of "communist" were, in fact, fascist, is an example of a weird linguistic quirk some people refer to as "lying". I may be entirely wrong here, but my understanding is that "communist" regimes like the ones you're describing fall under the term "state capitalist" which technically is distinct from fascist, even if it's not exactly preferable and has similar end results.
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Nov 13, 2020 09:07
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:The Scarlet Chorus at least have a Darwinist egalitarianism going for them, and Nerat is batshit insane, which is interesting. Ashe runs a cadre of nazis, who are sometimes polite to you because you are a fellow member of the master race, and internally mostly run on military discipline. Even if you consider them to be morally equivalent, the latter is way more boring. The main problem with the Scarlet Chorus is that they're literally trying to get you killed while you're helping them, but don't seem to get that you might have a problem with this. Additionally, for all their claims that anyone "could" make it, it's very similar to the modern capitalist rat race, in that while anyone "can" make it, it conveniently ignores the fact that the vast majority "won't". Yes, you have a chance, assuming that the commander you end up with isn't a blood thirsty psycho, or doesn't like the look of you, or you killed one of his men during the fight and he retroactively decides that the person you killed was cool (I still can't believe we're taking revenge for someone in the Scarlet Chorus who died during the fighting) and assuming you survive the human wave tactics the Chrous uses when led by people who literally say they don't care if their men die (Bitter Quip). Then yes, if you make it past all of that and have eaten well (lol) and end up with a good group then you have the chance, that's the starting line right there. Verse made it because she was the spoiled daughter of a landlord, she ate super well and was healthier than most other people she would ever get a chance to meet other than the nobility. She was also a psycho who was born to love knives and instinctively took to them. She was born into these things, and without them she'd have been dead ages ago. My problem with "Darwinist", is that it's basically a different kind of "Feudalism", if you're born into the right family, you get to live, else, death. The only thing that changes is which family is the right one to be born into. Nothing's really improved here. One thing I noticed about the game engine is that it's a lot like Baldur's Gate, which is awesome. I loved Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, etc, there should have been way, way more of them. My main criticism is with how many abilities there are, and how poor the AI control is. In order to keep the game playable with loads of abilities, you need really good AI, or either you're playing with the speed in super slow motion or it becomes an effort in micro. Baldur's Gate had very few abilities comparatively, but they were big deals. If you laid down a "Hold Person" and it connected the fight was over, same for a Poison Cloud or a summon. Here there are loads of abilities but very few of them make a big difference, so you can't just make your front line fighters use AI and micro the mages; which I think is an annoyance.
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Nov 13, 2020 09:25
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rastilin posted:One thing I noticed about the game engine is that it's a lot like Baldur's Gate, which is awesome. I loved Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, etc, there should have been way, way more of them. Do you specifically mean D&D-based CRPGs, or isometric CRPGs in general, because there have been, like, a lot of those. Granted, some take more after Fallout, which has a somewhat clunkier interface, but aside from the bevy of Infinity Engine titles and Neverwinter Nights 2 (the first one diverges pretty severely in its control scheme), you've got Arcanum, the Divinity series (the original ones that came out back then, though the more modern titles fall into the genre), Fallout 1 and 2, Lionheart, Inquisitor, Temple of Elemental Evil (there are even mods that make it good), and probably half a dozen others I can't think of off the top of my head. And then in the modern era we've got the newer Divinity games (not my cup of tea, but they're pretty popular), the Paradox-Obsidian cycle (of which Tyranny is one), Torment: Tides of Numenera (it's actually pretty good), and Wasteland 2, again, just off the top of my head. Baldur's Gate was massively influential (as was Planescape: Torment, which a few of these titles more closely resemble), and it's basically a whole subgenre with lots of great stuff. Zulily Zoetrope posted:I may be entirely wrong here, but my understanding is that "communist" regimes like the ones you're describing fall under the term "state capitalist" which technically is distinct from fascist, even if it's not exactly preferable and has similar end results. While there's a lot of good scholarship on this topic, I personally have trouble shaking the feeling that the distinction here was created partly to fuel Red Scare-era anti-communist propaganda (i.e. "No, no, just because it's virtually indistinguishable from fascism doesn't mean it's not its own thing that we can then link directly to communism since we made it up and can thus define the associations it has"). Like, the whole "true communism has never been tried" meme relies entirely on the assumption that the USSR, Maoist China, etc. were communist in the first place, rather than fascism masquerading as communism (though this does reveal how easy it is to use "communism" and other populist movements as a smokescreen for more sinister intentions, something the Nazis themselves used by claiming to be socialists). Like, I don't know if this is a counterpoint, so much as just something to consider. As Tyranny itself demonstrates, the words we use to define things are important, and thus we should carefully consider the intentions behind any given label.
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Nov 13, 2020 09:43
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EclecticTastes posted:Do you specifically mean D&D-based CRPGs, or isometric CRPGs in general, because there have been, like, a lot of those. Granted, some take more after Fallout, which has a somewhat clunkier interface, but aside from the bevy of Infinity Engine titles and Neverwinter Nights 2 (the first one diverges pretty severely in its control scheme), you've got Arcanum, the Divinity series (the original ones that came out back then, though the more modern titles fall into the genre), Fallout 1 and 2, Lionheart, Inquisitor, Temple of Elemental Evil (there are even mods that make it good), and probably half a dozen others I can't think of off the top of my head. And then in the modern era we've got the newer Divinity games (not my cup of tea, but they're pretty popular), the Paradox-Obsidian cycle (of which Tyranny is one), Torment: Tides of Numenera (it's actually pretty good), and Wasteland 2, again, just off the top of my head. Baldur's Gate was massively influential (as was Planescape: Torment, which a few of these titles more closely resemble), and it's basically a whole subgenre with lots of great stuff. I mean specifically D&D Based CRPGs running the Infinity Engine. So Baldur's Gate 1,2 Icewind Dale 1,2 and Planescape Torment. In my opinion those are the ones that have excellent flow, the engine, interface and story just mesh together really well and give the impression of a smooth dungeon dive where nothing gets in the way of the fun. The other games are great, but to an extent they don't have that Engine <> Story sync that the Infinity Engine games do and the interface starts to get in the way of the story they're trying to tell. They also don't have the writing that the Infinity Engine games did, with the exception of Fallout. Like, with the exception of the Sci-fi ones, Arcanum, Neverwinter Nights 1,2 Temple of Elemental Evil, Lionheart, Inquisitor would ALL have been better as a BG2 style Infinity Engine game. I could write easily write a paragraph on why each of them fell flat at what they were trying to do, and the basic reason is that the engine gets in the way of the game. They each also lacked the writers the Baldurs Gate series had, but that's another problem. For example, Temple of Elemental evil is a party based dungeon crawler. So technically Icewind Dale, right? But it sucks. For one thing, the interface is just so fiddly, there's like a billion options, but you'll never use any of them because they basically all suck and all of them have a too high failure chance. There's no point in giving trap options, it's just annoying. It's also repetitive, because you're always giving the fighter the attack option, as a turn based game you can't just give him AI and tell him to just keep tanking. Then there's the graphics, they went for early 3D, but it just looks off. It's got 3d on a painted, locked background and it's jarring. They tried to make party interactions, but that mostly means that every party member you can hire will take a massively disproportionate amount of treasure (thus throwing off your curve on an already hard game) and most also betray you down the line, which is aggravating. The mix between fighting and not-fighting is also a problem, because in other games you could take advantage of the system to pull enemies into traps or other rooms and choke point them, but in this game it's harder than it should be (what with your party being teleported during talking, so when you pull aggro your party is beamed into the ambush along with your tank). Part of the fun in D&D is breaking the system, so any system where the player's options are filed down is going to be less fun, then they provide a dungeon filled with paralyzing enemies, enemies with loads of DR and a boss that is much higher level than your party could possibly be, and his mates. If you had options, it could be a fun battle, but as a stand up brawl it's just frustrating. It's one thing to lose to a better enemy, but it's a problem when you lose because the design of the game purposefully limits you to taking bad choices. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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Nov 13, 2020 10:06
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rastilin posted:My problem with "Darwinist", is that it's basically a different kind of "Feudalism", if you're born into the right family, you get to live, else, death. The only thing that changes is which family is the right one to be born into. Nothing's really improved here. "Darwinist" is not a word I consider to have any positive connotations. I meant it as a qualifier that the claims of egalitarianism are bullshit, but I can see how it was phrased poorly. I agree with everything you've outlined. And yet, I contend that the Disfavored are at least as reprehensible as the Chorus, and are additionally much more boring. EclecticTastes posted:While there's a lot of good scholarship on this topic, I personally have trouble shaking the feeling that the distinction here was created partly to fuel Red Scare-era anti-communist propaganda (i.e. "No, no, just because it's virtually indistinguishable from fascism doesn't mean it's not its own thing that we can then link directly to communism since we made it up and can thus define the associations it has"). Like, the whole "true communism has never been tried" meme relies entirely on the assumption that the USSR, Maoist China, etc. were communist in the first place, rather than fascism masquerading as communism (though this does reveal how easy it is to use "communism" and other populist movements as a smokescreen for more sinister intentions, something the Nazis themselves used by claiming to be socialists). Like, I don't know if this is a counterpoint, so much as just something to consider. As Tyranny itself demonstrates, the words we use to define things are important, and thus we should carefully consider the intentions behind any given label. That honestly doesn't make a lot of sense to me; why acknowledge the distinction at all, if you're comfortable labeling all those states as communist? Hell, why not go the extra step and say that fascism is also socialism, as you point out the nazis claimed? I don't see a motive for acknowleding that the USSR and China were never communist while also maintaining that communism is exactly as evil as those states. I'm not saying you're wrong, as propaganda has never needed to be internally consistent, but I think there's a path of less resistance here. I'm coming at it from the angle that I think the label of "fascist" is too widely applied. It's a fairly specific ideology, and I don't think every totalitarian regime fits into that box. Which is a distinction worth making, not for moral reasons, but because they arise from different material conditions.
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Nov 13, 2020 10:55
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When it comes to why you'd side with the Scarlet Chorus, I did when I first played. Partly this was me coming to the game with more of a "Dungeon Keeper RPG" attitude than a sober examination of totalitarianism - and it's definitely got a bit of that with all the pointless acts of brutality it gives you the option to do - so they didn't come across as badly conceived so much as a traditional horde-style evil army. But also, with all the early choices between Chorus and Disfavoured, the Chorus were the ones all about actually using the resources you claim in the campaign rather than simply destroying everything. If you're the sort who likes to collect and hoard things in your games, the Chorus is going to give you the opportunity to do that, at least by proxy though Nerat literally collecting his enemies.
Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 11:16
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I feel that you're all discussing the definitions and the finer points of ideologies that at their true core share a socialist root, even after their deviations into national socialism or authoritarian socialism terms like fascist and communist have lost most of their true meaning to the average person since they've been overused, often incorrectly
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Nov 13, 2020 11:18
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:That honestly doesn't make a lot of sense to me; why acknowledge the distinction at all, if you're comfortable labeling all those states as communist? Hell, why not go the extra step and say that fascism is also socialism, as you point out the nazis claimed? I don't see a motive for acknowleding that the USSR and China were never communist while also maintaining that communism is exactly as evil as those states. By creating the "State capitalist" distinction, you achieve the rhetorical goal of acknowledging the other person's point (that the regimes in question were not adhering to the actual tenets of communism), while allowing you to further your argument (by claiming that communism inherently leads to this "state capitalist" state, whereas acknowledging it as "fascist" divorces it from the idea of communism entirely). Essentially, by giving the USSR, communist China, Cuba, etc. their own distinction from fascism, you've defined something that can then be tied intrinsically to communism, despite those regimes never actually practicing communism. I'm not saying that's definitely what's going on there, but there's not a whole lot of daylight between the definitions of fascism and "state capitalism", and I've always been a bit of a cynic about things like this. rastilin posted:For example, Temple of Elemental evil is a party based dungeon crawler. So technically Icewind Dale, right? But it sucks. For one thing, the interface is just so fiddly, there's like a billion options, but you'll never use any of them because they basically all suck and all of them have a too high failure chance. There's no point in giving trap options, it's just annoying. It's also repetitive, because you're always giving the fighter the attack option, as a turn based game you can't just give him AI and tell him to just keep tanking. Then there's the graphics, they went for early 3D, but it just looks off. It's got 3d on a painted, locked background and it's jarring. They tried to make party interactions, but that mostly means that every party member you can hire will take a massively disproportionate amount of treasure (thus throwing off your curve on an already hard game) and most also betray you down the line, which is aggravating. The mix between fighting and not-fighting is also a problem, because in other games you could take advantage of the system to pull enemies into traps or other rooms and choke point them, but in this game it's harder than it should be (what with your party being teleported during talking, so when you pull aggro your party is beamed into the ambush along with your tank). Part of the fun in D&D is breaking the system, so any system where the player's options are filed down is going to be less fun, then they provide a dungeon filled with paralyzing enemies, enemies with loads of DR and a boss that is much higher level than your party could possibly be, and his mates. If you had options, it could be a fun battle, but as a stand up brawl it's just frustrating. A lot of your issues with Temple of Elemental Evil sound like criticisms of D&D 3.5 itself, particularly all the "trap options", which are all faithful to the tabletop game (and in which case, that's totally valid, 3.5 has a lot of glaring issues). That said, yeah, it's far from a perfect game and the mods make it vastly better by fixing basically everything wrong with it aside from stuff that's just kinda part of 3.5e. Now, that having been said, since you've narrowed your point down to just the Infinity Engine games, I mean, five games from a single company in the same engine within a fairly brief window of time is actually quite a lot. Even if the various studios involved in the Infinity Engine games had kept on working, it's unlikely they'd have kept using the same engine forever, and with the added complexity of 3e, systems like those in Neverwinter Nights and Temple of Elemental Evil were kind of inevitable for any attempt to remain faithful to the pen-and-paper (rather than the pared-down version seen in Icewind Dale 2). Like, the reason Baldur's Gate, et al were so much simpler was because they were based on 2e, which didn't have as many defined options (for example, maneuvers such as tripping or bullrushing didn't exist unless the DM liked your description enough to make it happen). For a modern example of how this level of complexity looks, Pathfinder: Kingmaker adapts their version of 3.5 extremely faithfully, to mixed results. Also, when hasn't a Fighter's only move in a D&D game been "hit bad guy with sword, repeat until dead"? Not counting Baldur's Gate 3, of course.
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Nov 13, 2020 11:42
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necroid posted:I feel that you're all discussing the definitions and the finer points of ideologies that at their true core share a socialist root, even after their deviations into national socialism or authoritarian socialism The only roots fascism has from socialism is that the former used rhetoric and cribbed terms from the latter, the ideologies are not similar. Fascism has its roots from western colonialism and essentially imported the oppression and violence usually meted out in the colonies back to the metropole.
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Nov 13, 2020 12:09
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EclecticTastes posted:By creating the "State capitalist" distinction, you achieve the rhetorical goal of acknowledging the other person's point (that the regimes in question were not adhering to the actual tenets of communism), while allowing you to further your argument (by claiming that communism inherently leads to this "state capitalist" state, whereas acknowledging it as "fascist" divorces it from the idea of communism entirely). Essentially, by giving the USSR, communist China, Cuba, etc. their own distinction from fascism, you've defined something that can then be tied intrinsically to communism, despite those regimes never actually practicing communism. I'm not saying that's definitely what's going on there, but there's not a whole lot of daylight between the definitions of fascism and "state capitalism", and I've always been a bit of a cynic about things like this. In fairness, D&D 2nd edition wasn't the most balanced game in the world, but the Infinity Engine series still made it work well. I could write the same length about Inquisitor and Lionheart if you'd like; my major issue isn't necessarily the 3.5 rule set, but the design decisions used to implement it into gaming form. My main argument is that the problem with Neverwinter Nights and ToEE is that their mesh of the system they were using, to the game engine, to the story they were trying to tell, just wasn't as good as it could have been. I won't say it sucked, as Neverwinter Nights was ok for what it was... but it wasn't great, and as an Infinity Engine game, it would have been much better. Maneouvers are new in 3rd edition, but 2nd edition had fighter subclasses like Kensai or full classes like Barbarian or Paladin that had their own options (which in BG2 were fairly reasonable to take). Beyond that 3rd edition had feats you could learn that would give you (horrible) abilities you could use in battle that would almost always make things worse for you, but they were there. I'm ashamed to admit I haven't played Kingmaker yet.
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Nov 13, 2020 12:16
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rastilin posted:Maneouvers are new in 3rd edition, but 2nd edition had fighter subclasses like Kensai or full classes like Barbarian or Paladin that had their own options (which in BG2 were fairly reasonable to take). Beyond that 3rd edition had feats you could learn that would give you (horrible) abilities you could use in battle that would almost always make things worse for you, but they were there. Barbarians, Paladins, and Rangers still existed in Temple of Elemental Evil, and BG2 Kensai was basically just "hit bad guy with sword, but with different equipment options" (though I suppose you could use Kai to temporarily do more damage, but that's not exactly a world of tactical versatility). Also, I feel like you might have just been picking the wrong feats if they were that bad for you. Also with the right weapon, tripping is always potentially busted as hell against enemies susceptible to it, like anything that messes with action economy. That's kinda the main problem with 3.5, is that it's pretty easy to mess up a build if you don't have a clear plan right from the outset, but it doesn't feel right to blame the games based on it for those flaws. As for Kingmaker, if you liked the Infinity Engine, it's definitely worth a go. It's very ambitious, and loving huge, but on the other hand it's also a little janky and its reach definitely exceeds its grasp in a lot of ways. It's one of those games where there's a fair bit of bad mixed in with the good, but the good is very good, if you can tolerate the rest of it.
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Nov 13, 2020 12:56
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HiHo ChiRho posted:The only roots fascism has from socialism is that the former used rhetoric and cribbed terms from the latter, the ideologies are not similar. Fascism has its roots from western colonialism and essentially imported the oppression and violence usually meted out in the colonies back to the metropole. Mussolini was originally in charge of the Partito Socialista Italiano, the oldest party in Italy's modern politics (founded in 1892 as Partito dei Lavoratori Italiani = Italian Workers Party) and the first left-leaning, mass-appealing properly organized movement in 1912 he accused other members of "gravissima offesa allo spirito della dottrina e alla tradizione socialista" (literally "serious offense to the spirit of socialist doctrine and tradition") which caused a big split he then perverted the socialist ideals because he got a little too much into nationalism, it's the first thing you learn in school about fascism (at least here in Italy), it was a corruption of socialist ideals perpetrated by that piece of poo poo e : fixed a translation necroid fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 14:27
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