Overlord

[Traab]

Its a classic computer game (to me anyways) I just recently got the urge to play it again after awhile so I redownloaded it off steam and went to work. Anyone else ever play this? I both like and dislike parts of it. It is at least as much puzzle as it is combat as you find yourself going back to previous areas when you get new specialized troops that can bypass areas that had you blocked off before. On the downside, there are a few parts where the controls are super finicky and its a real pita to pull off the moves you need. Like there is one area where you need to lure a group of monsters away from a crank so you can activate it safely, because the only minions you have are terrible fighters and get slaughtered with ease. But the only way to do that is to send one minion to grab an egg from a nest and run away with it while sending your troops across quickly to hopefully take care of the crank before they come back and the timing is awful on it. They made both an expansion and a sequel for it too, so thats nice.

[factotum]

I played it, and enjoyed it right up until the point where they put this big guy in the city with a pretty much undodgeable AOE attack that took out my troops almost instantly, which is kind of a nasty move in a game which is almost all about killing stuff with your minions--and where you have strictly limited numbers of them that you can summon, of course. Just could not get past him, gave up. It's a real shame because I used to love the Diablo 2 Summoner Necro playstyle, which was all about positioning your minions to kill the enemies before they could get at you, and Overlord seemed like more of the same.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, I played the Overlord games back in the day.

It's okay, as a sort of more mischievous pikmin, most of the humour was them hiring Rhianna Pratchett and saying "we actually want your dad but can't afford him" though.

The "morality" system was probably the clunkiest thing though, it really was one of those ones where you didn't make any choices you decided which flavour you were going with and had to do everything that way for the whole game because if you weren't one hundred percent committed to the one path it didn't count.

The game would have been stronger without, just pick one way of having you deal with everything and make it amusing.

[Razade]

The controls are garbage, the humor...lacking and a serious amount of enemies getting stronger and stronger while you don't really get any kind of power in return. The fact that the Overlord character no matter how many upgrades is also about as thin as tissue paper from the start and only gets more flimsy just makes the game kinda frustrating. Add on top of that a serious amount of grinding to do any upgrades and fairly linear gameplay...I found myself just begging to finish swiftly. Really didn't enjoy my time with the game by the end. It doesn't help that almost all of your minions are utterly useless 90% of the time.

[Trekkin]

Overlord was, for me, an object lesson in why "you can be evil and it's totally cool and edgy" is not a plot, constant crude references to bodily functions are not humor, and walls with numbers on them are not puzzles. Bad Evil Pikmin is not a bad game; it is a deeply okay game that always feels like the slow boring intro is about to segue into the really fun bit but never does.

If they had picked one thing and built the game around it, I would have been happy. The story, for example, is an utterly run-of-the-mill bait-and-switch about who the REAL bad guy is. Heck with that. The real bad guy should be the guy I've been playing, not this scrub who's forcibly shoved into all these other stories. Rhianna Pratchett's good, but shoving her work into this kind of run-here-and-see-the-next-cutscene framework really undersells it. Likewise, I would totally play nominally evil Pikmin on PC, minimal story and all, if they hadn't gutted the puzzle complexity to add more painful dialogue.

[Aotrs Commander]

I played both back-to-back (got 'em for Christmas a few years ago). They were entertaining enough, though I may not play through them again.

The trick to the first one, was as I recall, grinding up to get the upgrade that granted you health regen or stolen health or something. I found it much easier to deal with at that point.

Shame the so-called third in the series went off the rails in to EA Dungeon Keeper modile sort of territory.



Overall, though, I think that Overlord was (for me anyway) an ill-fitting substitute for Dungeon Keeper. Shopes which War for the Overlord fills SO much better.

(Damn, how long ago WAS it I played Overlord? Could it have been befoe WftO released...? Probably.)

WftO took a while to find its feet, but, with at least one more expansion to go, it could very nearly reach the dizzy heights of DK1 (one of the best three games of all time).

[Leecros]

I enjoyed both Overlord and Overlord II overall.


With that said...I did sort of have an issue with the premise. One of the big draws to Overlord was the idea that "Hey! You get to play as an evil overlord and conquer the world!" It was all over the promotional material and even still is a big feature on the Steam Store page. With that said...I never really felt like I was some horrible and evil overlord hellbent on conquering the world. Outside of certain choices such as Rescuing some of the few remaining elf women or taking a bunch of gold. The forces you fight against are mostly worse than you. Yeah, the populace may not approve of your methods, but compared to the alternatives...You weren't so bad.

All of the heros that serve as the opponents/enemies are pretty despicable with the most sympathetic ones being Jewel, Kahn, and maybe Oberon. Melvin probably would have eaten all of the halfling's food and would have caused a famine, Oberon was slowly killing his kind with nightmares and corrupted creatures, Sir William is just an awful person in general who cares more about banging the succubus queen than helping his city which is suffering from a plague, Goldo was a tyrant who cared only about gold, and The Wizard was literally the previous overlord who was said to be one of the worst, most tyrannical overlords ever.

So the idea that you were some evil overlord was kind of overshadowed by the fact that everyone you were fighting was worse. That idea also continued over into Overlord II where the premise of the game is fighting The Glorious Empire who was all for eradicating all magicfolk regardless of whether they were good or evil.


Although admittedly finding out that Florian was the emperor all along and murdering him horribly was one of the more satisfying moments of my gaming life

I probably don't have to spoil much. These are pretty old games, but oh well. I don't like being a spoiler.

So yeah, I guess they were going for a more cartoony version and didn't want to get too dark, but there are other games that made me feel more evil than Overlord...


If you're going to make a game about an evil overlord. Go all the way.

[Aotrs Commander]

If you're going to make a game about an evil overlord. Go all the way.

Yeah. I felt that was one problem with Overlord, too. It was still ultimately you being the hero against the villains, just with a different flavour. (Another was them turning the cartoon humour up perhaps just a notch to high in Overlord 2.)

But few games do the job well. Ceville was more or less in the same mould as Overlord, only replacing the sex and violence jokes. Tyranny didn't even do that a great job about a game serving one! (While I enjoyed Tyranny, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't a better take on BEING the Big Bad for once, since the preimse of a serious take on an Evil Empire for once was very promising ground to explore.)

DK1/DK2/WftO at least play that to the hilt. Evil Genius too, though that game also had its issues.

RPGs (e.g. KotR 1 & 2) and a few RTS (C&C overall) did a reasonable job with their bad guy playthroughs, but I'm not sure outside of maybe Revan you could call many of 'emn being an overlord, really.

[GloatingSwine]

The problem with trying to "be evil" is that the bad guy is a proactive force, and videogames are a structured goal led environment.

Like sure, you're "in charge" in Dungeon Keeper, but you're still doing what the disembodied voice tells you because that's who's really the boss around here.

The only game where you can really be the evil overlord is probably The Sims. (http://kotaku.com/the-sims-players-confess-their-most-evil-deeds-1694855714)

[danzibr]

Was this ported to NES? You take over planets and stuff? Rings a bell. I was young and couldn't figure anything out.

[GloatingSwine]

Overlord? No, it's an Xbox 360/PS3 game.Porting it to the NES would be challenging.

[Jasdoif]

Overlord was fun...for a while.


The problem is that the game ultimately places a lot of weight on grinding, without making grinding interesting or infrequent. You get life force to summon a minion with by killing living things, with different kinds of things allowing you to summon a different kind of minion...but always one. And besides just having minions around to fight those things, sacrificing minions is how you recover health or mana (at the appropriate pit), and how you upgrade your gear; with different types of sacrificed minions bestowing different effects.

But there's a limit to how many minions can be sacrificed to enhance a particular piece of gear, varying hundreds depending on the type and material of the gear....But you can't transfer from, say, a steel helmet to a durium helmet; you've got to start over and replace the several hundred minions you'd already sacrificed on the old helmet and then sacrifice another few hundred to get to the max on the new helmet.

And as Razade already mentioned, difficulty increases rather sharply while your abilities increase slightly. And the life force for non-basic minions aren't in benign areas, so you really benefit from having minions already when you go to get them, so....There's a lot of "go back to the starting level, kill harmless animals to get life force to get basic brown minions, go where the life force for the specialized minion you really want is and get it". It doesn't help that you can only get enough for one minion per creature, or that the sources for specialized minions don't appear in large groups, or that specialized minions have a lot less health and tend to die quickly and thus need to be replaced more often....

And just to top all that off....The only minions that can touch water without dying are also the flimsiest and the only ones unable to attack. The puzzles involving them are more frustrating than challenging, and failures involve dead minions and hence go back to the grinding above.


By the time I got to the mine entrance in dwarves' Golden Hills the game had completely stopped being fun. So I stopped playing it :smalltongue: To be fair, the dialog has definite funny moments and the environments are fairly interesting; But nowhere near enough to justify the slogging it ended up taking to progress.

[Aotrs Commander]

The problem with trying to "be evil" is that the bad guy is a proactive force, and videogames are a structured goal led environment.

Like sure, you're "in charge" in Dungeon Keeper, but you're still doing what the disembodied voice tells you because that's who's really the boss around here.

The only game where you can really be the evil overlord is probably The Sims. (http://kotaku.com/the-sims-players-confess-their-most-evil-deeds-1694855714)

And Crusader Kings 2.

Where I'd lay odds you can be worse than in the Sims, if perhaps at a more distant scale...!

(Actually, quite a few of those sorts of games, but I was discounting most of them because they lack that up-close and personal bit. CK2 does let you do that, I suppose, but you might struggle to rule the world...)

But being an Evil Overlord doesn't necessarily mean you need to be the TOP overlord - as indeed, strats tend to be the only sort of game you can be the top ruler of, well, anything. (Can't think of any RPGs off-hand where you were actually the true head-honcho of the good guys, for example. There's always someone telling you where to go and what to do. Unless there's a sandbox, but emergant gameplay usually lacks the emotional immersion of more scripted gameplay just because the latter is by design, better served to giving it.)

So that is what Tyranny could have achieved. Another approach would be, with a bit of creativity, to have a sort of reverse Mass Effect, where you gathered and united the disparate factions of Evil to attack and conquer the Good Federation or something and become the boss' Black Captain/Grand Moff/Grand Admiral etc etc.

I mean, a game where you played the Witch-King of Angmar would be to me PLENTY good enough Evil Overlording I wouldn't be feeling short-changed I couldn't play Sauron.



Overlord, could have, without THAT much narrative crowbarring (i.e. a revision to make the good guys not worse than you), have made a fair approximation.



(DK1, strictly, Richard Rider was flavoured as being your helpful servant, rather than your boss (as in DK2 or WftO); but your point stands.)




Overlord? No, it's an Xbox 360/PS3 game.Porting it to the NES would be challenging.

Also PC.

[Traab]

I kinda like the evil rep thing because you could play murder hobo and make everything hate and fear you, or be only technically evil because you are killing former "heroes" that all got twisted and evil themselves. Most of it was pure flavor so it was all about personal choice rather than, "Choose this side or else your game will suck" And at least parts of it had an effect on things, like changing what spells you use even if they all work just fine. Most of the choices werent a big deal. "Oooh you stole the villagers food? How evil! Now you can summon another handful of minions! You would have had to kill a dozen sheep at least to equal that!"

Also, factotum, iirc, that big bad was one of the bosses where positioning is annoyingly important. Like, you need to guide your minions along a path so they can leap up on his back (so greens basically) and stab a few times, then call them off and repeat. I remember he was way more obnoxious than most of the bosses because of the positioning requirements. Thats always been my least favorite part of the game, the guidance system is squirrely and timing is important.

[danzibr]

Overlord? No, it's an Xbox 360/PS3 game.Porting it to the NES would be challenging.
Yeah, that would be difficult.

However, I was right with what I was saying.


The game was initially released for the Amiga and Atari ST computers in the beginning of 1990 and later in the same year it was ported to the Commodore 64 too, but released only in the very beginning of 1991. Nearly one year later in late 1991 the game was ported to MS-DOS.[1]

The game was also ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993. The NES cartridge has an internal battery to retain game saves; the computer versions came on two disks.

[Grim Portent]

I enjoyed the games, I might even say Overlord 1 is in my top 20, puzzles were simple and mostly about finicky timing in places, but other than the sand worms in the first game I don't think I ever had a real problem with any of the environmental threats to the minions. Combat was also quite easy, being mostly about a 1->2->dodge kind of tempo when you fought anything strong since they all had a lot of wind up and a limited attack arc. I used to fight the golems in the arena that way, dancing around the group of them, making a few swipes and sidestepping around them.

I'm with some of the others in that my main complaint is that you do feel like the lesser evil, and I don't play evil to be lesser.

I can understand why they made the bad guys all so evil, they're the seven sins and all, which is very thematic, and a lot of people would be uncomfortable being the real bad guy. Nevertheless I still think I would have preferred the enemies being based on the classic virtues, or on folkloric and mythological heroes, the 'monsters' being played more straight and so on. The god dammned unicorns were more evil than the minions for pete's sake!

EDIT: I actually wonder if some of the ideas in the Shadow of Mordor games would be appropriate for an open world evil overlord game. The nemesis system could be neat if applied to a small group of heroic enemies, with small pockets of dialogue whenever you meet them that changes depending on if any have been killed, or if they've been defeated or captured by you before. Some sort of active war and corruption system for towns and cities would also be neat. I'd like a game where you lead your elite troops against the enemies' elite troops and square off against the hero leading the army while your minions focus on capping points.

[Leecros]

Also, factotum, iirc, that big bad was one of the bosses where positioning is annoyingly important. Like, you need to guide your minions along a path so they can leap up on his back (so greens basically) and stab a few times, then call them off and repeat. I remember he was way more obnoxious than most of the bosses because of the positioning requirements. Thats always been my least favorite part of the game, the guidance system is squirrely and timing is important.

Admittedly, I would like to note that while I only played through Overlord II once...I really felt as if the minion pathing was a bit better, or at least the puzzles were more suited for the mechanic. Heck Overlord II was overall probably better and more intricate overall than Overlord I. However, it severely suffered from the whole "Fighting against a greater evil" even more than the first Overlord.

The fact that you team up with the likes of Florian Greeheart - Hippie Extraordinaire and the Elf Queen who is definitely not evil because everyone who can use/born of magic is basically at the brink of extinction due to The Empire's culling is a pretty clear "Yeah, I'm evil but these guys are way worse." situation.

yeah, yeah I know Florian's The Emperor and you corrupt or kill the Elf Queen, but still...

[Anteros]

Yeah. I felt that was one problem with Overlord, too. It was still ultimately you being the hero against the villains, just with a different flavour. (Another was them turning the cartoon humour up perhaps just a notch to high in Overlord 2.)

But few games do the job well. Ceville was more or less in the same mould as Overlord, only replacing the sex and violence jokes. Tyranny didn't even do that a great job about a game serving one! (While I enjoyed Tyranny, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't a better take on BEING the Big Bad for once, since the preimse of a serious take on an Evil Empire for once was very promising ground to explore.)

DK1/DK2/WftO at least play that to the hilt. Evil Genius too, though that game also had its issues.

RPGs (e.g. KotR 1 & 2) and a few RTS (C&C overall) did a reasonable job with their bad guy playthroughs, but I'm not sure outside of maybe Revan you could call many of 'emn being an overlord, really.

You can be pretty darn evil in Tyranny. I think you have the option to betray or kill almost everyone you meet.


For Overlord, I never played it personally but my best friend spoke highly of it. He has somewhat strange tastes in games though. He's basically happy as long as a game lets him grind for things.

[Aotrs Commander]

You can be pretty darn evil in Tyranny. I think you have the option to betray or kill almost everyone you meet.

Being evil was never the problem - but you can do that in lots of RPGs. What Tyranny did not, in the end, fully commit to, was YOU being part of a larger Evil Empire, which was basically its selling point.

Particularly in the last gasp, forcing you to player-character-special-snowflake-can't-be-told-what-to-do away from under Kyros' rule, instead of being able to wrap the whole thing up for Kyros with a little bow on it and then say "where next, boss?"

That was my biggest complaint about the whole game. A game which was all set up to be Lawful Evil and then at the last minute, switched tracks because anti-authoritarism at the 11th hour. It killed my immersion stone dead.



We will see if any half-rumoured additional content ever materialises whether they attempt to address this.

[Vaz]

The problem with trying to "be evil" is that the bad guy is a proactive force, and videogames are a structured goal led environment.

Like sure, you're "in charge" in Dungeon Keeper, but you're still doing what the disembodied voice tells you because that's who's really the boss around here.

The only game where you can really be the evil overlord is probably The Sims. (http://kotaku.com/the-sims-players-confess-their-most-evil-deeds-1694855714)

Not sure what point you're trying to make here. That story modes can never result in evil characters because they're scripted to tell you to do evil things? Getting a list of orders therefore equating to not being evil is quite a slippery slope of an argument to make.

[GloatingSwine]

Not sure what point you're trying to make here. That story modes can never result in evil characters because they're scripted to tell you to do evil things? Getting a list of orders therefore equating to not being evil is quite a slippery slope of an argument to make.

It's not that you can't be an evil character, but that you can't be the big bad, because the big bad is the motive force of the story and except in relatively free systems driven sandboxes like Sims, or Crusader Kings, or so on the player isn't the motive force of the story, they're someone who follows the story and only works within its limits.

You can't be the Overlord, because you can only ever do what someone else thinks an overlord does..

[Anteros]

Being evil was never the problem - but you can do that in lots of RPGs. What Tyranny did not, in the end, fully commit to, was YOU being part of a larger Evil Empire, which was basically its selling point.

Particularly in the last gasp, forcing you to player-character-special-snowflake-can't-be-told-what-to-do away from under Kyros' rule, instead of being able to wrap the whole thing up for Kyros with a little bow on it and then say "where next, boss?"

That was my biggest complaint about the whole game. A game which was all set up to be Lawful Evil and then at the last minute, switched tracks because anti-authoritarism at the 11th hour. It killed my immersion stone dead.



We will see if any half-rumoured additional content ever materialises whether they attempt to address this.


That's not really what happens though. Even if you're loyal to Kyros, he/she wants you and all the other Archons dead. Everything is conquered and they don't need you any more. It has nothing to do with disliking authority. Kyros is just super evil and doesn't want anyone around who can possibly threaten their position. Which makes perfect sense considering we're told over and over again that's how they act throughout the course of the game.

[Vaz]

It's not that you can't be an evil character, but that you can't be the big bad, because the big bad is the motive force of the story and except in relatively free systems driven sandboxes like Sims, or Crusader Kings, or so on the player isn't the motive force of the story, they're someone who follows the story and only works within its limits.

You can't be the Overlord, because you can only ever do what someone else thinks an overlord does..

This is a ridiculous assertion. Sauron was no less of an overlord. Morgoth no less of a big bad. Nor Voldemort, the Tyranid Norn Queens/Synapse leaders, Stellaris Unbidden, the Destroyer or Corruption from Darksiders, the Borgia's from Assassin's Creed, or General Shepherd from Modern Warfare 2.

They are all dramatically different ideals of Big Bad Overlords, but that doesn't make them any less of a big bad, despite them being written by another individual compared to the Big Bad Overlords who are written and limited by code. Just because CK2 allows you to 'create' a Devil Worshipping Harlot Queen who sacrifices her own children from her illicit arrangements with everyone from the Pope to the Emperor to the Sultan in order to livd forever doesn't mean that they are any less overlord.

Just because I'm playing a Mod of Total War and using the forces of Mordor doesn't mean that Sauron is instantly delegated to the role of being not the big bad.

I think you're deluding yourself to believe that just because you can't realistically market your game where you play as some who hangs babies with their own umbilical cord or whatever your overlord kink fetish maybe, you aren't playing as an overlord.

[Aotrs Commander]

That's not really what happens though. Even if you're loyal to Kyros, he/she wants you and all the other Archons dead. Everything is conquered and they don't need you any more. It has nothing to do with disliking authority. Kyros is just super evil and doesn't want anyone around who can possibly threaten their position. Which makes perfect sense considering we're told over and over again that's how they act throughout the course of the game.

Which is the base problem with Tyranny's writing that they chose to write it that way, especially since they didn't have to. Bollocks to their in-universe (and flimsy) justification, frankly; it pulled me so far out of immersion that it means in-universe excuses don't work when all I can see the the chap or chappess writing the script.



Also, when discussing this topic with my mate, he raised an extremely valid candiate of actual Evil Overlordship: Tropico. (Though perhaps, for what he says, less Tropico 5).

[GloatingSwine]

This is a ridiculous assertion. Sauron was no less of an overlord. Morgoth no less of a big bad. Nor Voldemort, the Tyranid Norn Queens/Synapse leaders, Stellaris Unbidden, the Destroyer or Corruption from Darksiders, the Borgia's from Assassin's Creed, or General Shepherd from Modern Warfare 2.


Right, but the central point is that they're the motive force in the story. The story moves because they want it to, the protagonists react to something they set in motion.


You can't do that in a videogame unless the story can move in the way and manner that the player wants it to. The Unbidden in Stelllaris aren't the player, they're a slightly annoying event the player has to deal with, the Borgias in Assassin's Creed aren't the player, they're the force that makes all the player's actions necessary (at least the one the player cares about, because who cares about stupid future Desmond amirite?).

That's literally the point in all the game examples you gave. They aren't the player, the player's will doesn't guide them to doing things, the player reacts to things they already did.

[Cikomyr]

I really liked both games. I felt the gameplay of Overlord II was far superior. The magic use + combat was more strategic and smart. It has made me crave a similar, grittier game with "Necromancer" as the core focus.

The story was nicer with Overlord I. Its nothing revolutionary, and the dialogue itself is clunky at times, i felt the whole thematic centering around the Seven Deadly Sins to be pretty smart and enjoyable; where you get to meet a Hero who has been corrupted by their respective Sin and will slowly destroy everything because of it. And after you destroy the heroes, you are tempted yourself with the Sin you just conquered.

I felt it was a pretty fun story to follow. Sure, being a Uber Overlord of Pure Evil would have been a different experience, but it's not what the game tried to be about.

[Aotrs Commander]

Right, but the central point is that they're the motive force in the story. The story moves because they want it to, the protagonists react to something they set in motion.


You can't do that in a videogame unless the story can move in the way and manner that the player wants it to. The Unbidden in Stelllaris aren't the player, they're a slightly annoying event the player has to deal with, the Borgias in Assassin's Creed aren't the player, they're the force that makes all the player's actions necessary (at least the one the player cares about, because who cares about stupid future Desmond amirite?).

That's literally the point in all the game examples you gave. They aren't the player, the player's will doesn't guide them to doing things, the player reacts to things they already did.

And I will argue that is not dependant on alignment, but a function of the protagonist/antagonist dynamic - since, as I said before, you cannot (by the metric of being the absolute top you are using for overlord) play the GOOD overall commander, either; not outside the aforementioned strats. Shepard was not the good overlord, nor is Mario.

It is trivially easy to have a Good antagonist (I mean, literally 50% of my tabletop RPG parties for day quests are evil-aligned, I do it all the time) as the motive force, or to have at least one level of rank above the player character as the evil motive force. Making the player the motive force and top overlord is harder and requires a little bit of concession... But it's not impossible. Overlord and DK1 did it, after all; Overlord's problems (thematically) were related to the fact they made the antagonists More Eviller, when they could have just as easily taken the Dungeon Keeper route.

[S@tanicoaldo]

I prefer Dungeon Keeper, similar concept, better execution.

[Olinser]

I enjoyed the Overlord games, solid premise with some good humor throughout, but they kind of ran their course and there just wasn't anywhere for the franchise to go.

I do kind of agree that I wish they really let you go full in on EVIL Overlording, though. Especially in the first game you don't really do anything particularly evil and pretty much everybody else is unambiguously worse.

[Anteros]

Which is the base problem with Tyranny's writing that they chose to write it that way, especially since they didn't have to. Bollocks to their in-universe (and flimsy) justification, frankly; it pulled me so far out of immersion that it means in-universe excuses don't work when all I can see the the chap or chappess writing the script.



Also, when discussing this topic with my mate, he raised an extremely valid candiate of actual Evil Overlordship: Tropico. (Though perhaps, for what he says, less Tropico 5).

That doesn't make it a bad story though. It just means it's not the story you wanted to be told. Which is fair enough.

Tyranny isn't the tale of a loyal soldier in an evil empire. It's the tale of a rising dictator carving out his own empire from an existing one. I wouldn't have minded an option to stay loyal to Kyros either, but I didn't think the game really hurt for a lack of it. When your boss is explicitly evil and rules by murdering every possible threat to their power, you can't really say it's out of character for them to turn on you when you get too powerful. It made perfect sense to me. Lack of loyalty and backstabbing goes hand in hand with the theme of the game.

[Aotrs Commander]

That doesn't make it a bad story though.

It does. It makes it lazy and cliche. It makes it literally Saturday morning villainy, and Tyranny was advertised as attempting a proper serious take on an evil empire. But no; at the last, they went the same old, same old and wasted the oppotunity, and without even the attempt of DK or WftO or Overlord to actually try and be funny with it.


Tyranny isn't the tale of a loyal soldier in an evil empire.

Except that was EXACTLY what it was advertised as.


It's the tale of a rising dictator carving out his own empire from an existing one. I wouldn't have minded an option to stay loyal to Kyros either, but I didn't think the game really hurt for a lack of it. When your boss is explicitly evil and rules by murdering every possible threat to their power, you can't really say it's out of character for them to turn on you when you get too powerful.

I can and I do. Kyros was a SUCCESSFUL Evil Overlord, and that implies a level of actual competance. Kyros should not have been written like fracking Saw Boss.

The whole popular attitude of "evil must be self-destructively incompetant" (apparently based on the fact most people don't want to acknowledge that if evil got its act together, it might actually, y'know WIN), I find annoying and just a little bit personally offensive, frankly.

Tyranny was pretty good, but that crowbarred ending was definitely down there with the Worst Game Endings; I've see worse, but it was not that many steps above NWN2 or ME3. I got the strong impression they basically did a KotR2, ran out of time and money and just cobbled a half-arsed ending at the last minute.

[Anteros]

It does. It makes it lazy and cliche. It makes it literally Saturday morning villainy, and Tyranny was advertised as attempting a proper serious take on an evil empire. But no; at the last, they went the same old, same old and wasted the oppotunity, and without even the attempt of DK or WftO or Overlord to actually try and be funny with it.



Except that was EXACTLY what it was advertised as.



I can and I do. Kyros was a SUCCESSFUL Evil Overlord, and that implies a level of actual competance. Kyros should not have been written like fracking Saw Boss.

The whole popular attitude of "evil must be self-destructively incompetant" (apparently based on the fact most people don't want to acknowledge that if evil got its act together, it might actually, y'know WIN), I find annoying and just a little bit personally offensive, frankly.

Tyranny was pretty good, but that crowbarred ending was definitely down there with the Worst Game Endings; I've see worse, but it was not that many steps above NWN2 or ME3. I got the strong impression they basically did a KotR2, ran out of time and money and just cobbled a half-arsed ending at the last minute.

You understand that just because something isn't to your personal tastes doesn't mean it's automatically lazy and cliche, right?

[factotum]

You understand that just because something isn't to your personal tastes doesn't mean it's automatically lazy and cliche, right?

While I don't have a horse in this particular race since I've never played Tyranny, you understand that just because you like something doesn't mean it's automatically perfect, right?

[Anteros]

While I don't have a horse in this particular race since I've never played Tyranny, you understand that just because you like something doesn't mean it's automatically perfect, right?

Of course. Honestly, Tyranny is pretty poorly written and has a lot of problems. It's just not cliche and lazy simply because the plot didn't end how Aotrs wanted it to.

The part that upsets him is that you can't stay loyal to the big bad since he decides you're getting too much power and wants to wipe out any potential rivals. The thing is, even if that's a valid complaint (which I don't agree with) you actually can stay loyal and just follow orders until like the last 5 minutes of the game when you find out you've been betrayed.

The entire game allows you to play as a loyal servant of the evil emperor, which is exactly what he wants. It's just the epilogue he doesn't like.

[DaedalusMkV]

Being evil was never the problem - but you can do that in lots of RPGs. What Tyranny did not, in the end, fully commit to, was YOU being part of a larger Evil Empire, which was basically its selling point.

Particularly in the last gasp, forcing you to player-character-special-snowflake-can't-be-told-what-to-do away from under Kyros' rule, instead of being able to wrap the whole thing up for Kyros with a little bow on it and then say "where next, boss?"

That was my biggest complaint about the whole game. A game which was all set up to be Lawful Evil and then at the last minute, switched tracks because anti-authoritarism at the 11th hour. It killed my immersion stone dead.



We will see if any half-rumoured additional content ever materialises whether they attempt to address this.



That's not really what happens though. Even if you're loyal to Kyros, he/she wants you and all the other Archons dead. Everything is conquered and they don't need you any more. It has nothing to do with disliking authority. Kyros is just super evil and doesn't want anyone around who can possibly threaten their position. Which makes perfect sense considering we're told over and over again that's how they act throughout the course of the game.


Actually, I'm pretty sure that what happens is exactly what Kyros wanted to happen. Kyros seems to be fairly certain that her empire cannot survive not having an external enemy; the entire thing is based on military power and an inherent assumption that the terrible things the empire does are better than the barbarism and lawlessness of the lands beyond; without said lands beyond, Kyros has no justification for her tyranny and will inevitably face rebellions and uprisings at home, which are unpredictable and could actually wind up undoing all her progress. So, when she runs out of enemies she manipulates events to create one, something powerful enough to last for a long, long time but external and predictable, able to serve as a focus for malcontents acting against Kyros' rule. She gets all of her most powerful, but potentially rebellious, Archons together in one place a long way from the Empire and sets events in motion such that, no matter what, one of them will wind up in charge of the Tiers and in possession of enough power to be able to serve as a 'threat' to Kyros' empire. Yes, this includes the player character, who Kyros almost certainly knew was a nascent Archon ahead of time (having survived reading an Edict without being crippled, something that is nearly unheard of according to a senior Fatebinder in-game).

Basically, if the player actually wrapped the Tiers up with a neat little bow, handed it to Kyros and said 'where next, boss?', that would be literally the only result that actually foils Kyros' plans. Because there is no 'where next'. The Tiers are the only place left that isn't already part of Kyros' empire. Kyros doesn't care who runs the Tiers once everything is said and done, as long as that person is not Kyros.

Quoting Fatebinder Myothis in-game
"Based on what you've told me, it seems a stretch to believe these events are mere coincidence or circumstance. Kyros' Edict of Execution was a setup for SOMEONE to claim Ascension Hall... to think that Kyros did not know what would happen is a massive underestimation of the Overlord's long view."

"To me, the most obvious answer is that Kyros knows EXACTLY what you are doing - she probably approves of your actions and is likely working at every opportunity to create a situation wherein you are acting in your own self-interest while satisfying her ambitions as well.

You have to consider one important detail: there's nowhere left in Terratus to conquer now that the Tiers are in the Overlord's grasp. What would the great generals even do in a time of peace? The Voices of Nerat is barely tolerable when you have need of a spy master, why keep around such a monster when you no longer have need of such a gruesome weapon?

I would argue it is in Kyros' interest that the Tiers be a costly invasion that claims the lives of as many of the Archons as possible - not enough meat on the Tiers to keep too many sharks sated very long.

Kyros ordered everyone to take Ascension Hall or die - the 'or die' must have been an acceptable option, correct? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say you have the unspoken backing of the Overlord - it's not like Bleden Mark can't find you whenever he wants."

[Anteros]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that what happens is exactly what Kyros wanted to happen. Kyros seems to be fairly certain that her empire cannot survive not having an external enemy; the entire thing is based on military power and an inherent assumption that the terrible things the empire does are better than the barbarism and lawlessness of the lands beyond; without said lands beyond, Kyros has no justification for her tyranny and will inevitably face rebellions and uprisings at home, which are unpredictable and could actually wind up undoing all her progress. So, when she runs out of enemies she manipulates events to create one, something powerful enough to last for a long, long time but external and predictable, able to serve as a focus for malcontents acting against Kyros' rule. She gets all of her most powerful, but potentially rebellious, Archons together in one place a long way from the Empire and sets events in motion such that, no matter what, one of them will wind up in charge of the Tiers and in possession of enough power to be able to serve as a 'threat' to Kyros' empire. Yes, this includes the player character, who Kyros almost certainly knew was a nascent Archon ahead of time (having survived reading an Edict without being crippled, something that is nearly unheard of according to a senior Fatebinder in-game).

Basically, if the player actually wrapped the Tiers up with a neat little bow, handed it to Kyros and said 'where next, boss?', that would be literally the only result that actually foils Kyros' plans. Because there is no 'where next'. The Tiers are the only place left that isn't already part of Kyros' empire. Kyros doesn't care who runs the Tiers once everything is said and done, as long as that person is not Kyros.

Quoting Fatebinder Myothis in-game
"Based on what you've told me, it seems a stretch to believe these events are mere coincidence or circumstance. Kyros' Edict of Execution was a setup for SOMEONE to claim Ascension Hall... to think that Kyros did not know what would happen is a massive underestimation of the Overlord's long view."

"To me, the most obvious answer is that Kyros knows EXACTLY what you are doing - she probably approves of your actions and is likely working at every opportunity to create a situation wherein you are acting in your own self-interest while satisfying her ambitions as well.

You have to consider one important detail: there's nowhere left in Terratus to conquer now that the Tiers are in the Overlord's grasp. What would the great generals even do in a time of peace? The Voices of Nerat is barely tolerable when you have need of a spy master, why keep around such a monster when you no longer have need of such a gruesome weapon?

I would argue it is in Kyros' interest that the Tiers be a costly invasion that claims the lives of as many of the Archons as possible - not enough meat on the Tiers to keep too many sharks sated very long.

Kyros ordered everyone to take Ascension Hall or die - the 'or die' must have been an acceptable option, correct? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say you have the unspoken backing of the Overlord - it's not like Bleden Mark can't find you whenever he wants."


I agree with most of this. Especially the part about the Archons. After all, she/he does literally order you to murder each other. Pretty obvious that she wants you all out of the way at that point.

The part I disagree with is that I don't think you capturing the Spires and getting the power to lay Edicts was part of her plan. After all, in the epilogue Kyros marches an army against you and gets it destroyed. While outside threats are good for consolidating power, having your armies crushed by an opponent has the opposite effect.

It's a shame we'll probably never know since they just ended the game abruptly where the final act should have been.

[Cikomyr]

Hey guys, how about Overlord, eh?

I think you shouldnt criticize Overlord for not being what it didn't set itself to be in the first place. When you hire a Pratchett to do.your writing, you aint planning a grim examination of Grim and Dark Overlording.

Overlord's writing, when looked within the confine of what it tried to be, can be somewhat faulty. But its still interesting and entertaining.