Well, it's been quite a while since my last post here - i've been playing Tyranny (and some other games here and there, but mostly Tyranny). A game where "sometimes, evil wins", as the advertising tagline said back then. Tyranny is a game from Obsidian, who have explored similar themes of power and the nature of evil in Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (with similar levels of quality writing). Here they dive straight in though; evil is not just a path you can choose in your fantasy role-play, it's the baseline state of the world. Your choices here are ones of compromise and negotiation, of choosing the "lesser evil" - whatever that is to you

Gameplay-wise, it has the same backbone as their game before this one, Pillars of Eternity, which itself was largely a recreation of the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale) - an isometric party RPG roughly based on Dungeons & Dragons' rules, that opts for real-time play (with tactical pause), rather than fully turn-based. Where Pillars was explicitly modelled after D & D and its character class system, Tyranny goes for a skill-based system instead: every character can use any skill, and doing so gives some experience in that skill; enough experience and it ranks up, which then contributes to overall character experience (and levels there). If you've played Skyrim (who hasn't) you'll know what i'm talking about. The six fundamental character attributes will give inherent bonuses to different skills, along with their usual bonuses to health, defense, damage, etc

There are skill trees though, with passive and active abilities, and since each playable character has a unique set, this ends up mostly defining their "class". As the MC, you have a bit more leeway in how you want to define your play-style though. Along with abilities, we have a fairly unique spell system, which everyone can make use of, provided they've trained the appropriate skills. It's worth mentioning because of its interesting implementation; all spells need a core sigil, which defines the type of magic (fire, frost, emotion, etc), and an expression sigil which defines the form of the spell (touch, ranged bolt, cone blast, area, aura, etc), along with some optional accents, which modify aspects of the spell (damage, range, duration, etc). Besides being genuinely fun to explore all the spell constructions, the use of linguistic terms draws parallels to the real source of power in this world (we'll get to that in a bit)

Game mechanics are all well and good, but the reason we're here is for the masterful writing and narrative. The game starts (after character creation, naturally) with a conquest phase, where you choose the actions that your character made during the Conquest of the Tiers, the last corner of the world unconquered by Kyros the Overlord. This section is a great snapshot of the decisions you'll make during the game, because there is no option to save the people of the Tiers - it will be dominated; you only get to decide how that domination is carried out. After that, you are sent to administer Kyros' Peace to the final remaining rebellion in the Tiers (and the whole world), where two of Kyros' armies, the Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus, are struggling to cooperate enough to squash the rebels

And so the stage is set for an exploration of evil, and all the tiny compromises we make with ourselves to protect what we have, but which ultimately enable the spread of tyranny. There are three major factions you can join up with (Disfavored, Scarlet Chorus, and Rebels), and each of them explore different aspects of this negotiation with yourself, and with the people hoping to exert their power on you. The storyline sends you and your party to a couple of areas, with their own factions, and their own disputes, so you can explore these questions even more. You play as a Fatebinder of Tunon the Adjudicator, which means most of the game involves arbitrating disputes, interpreting Kyros' laws into a suitable resolution

Along the way, you start to realise that it's these judgements and resolutions, and the reputation that they generate among the people, is the source of Kyros' overwhelming power. To me, this is simply a supernatural skew of the power structures of this world, the real one, where power generates reputation, and is rewarded with more power. Just that idea on its own would be impressive, but the fact that it's conveyed through a video-game - an interactive medium - where you can actively make choices and exert your will, is simply amazing