I mentioned before that one of my worries about Tyranny was whether playing the ‘bad guy’ would feel as good as playing the more traditional role of the good guy in an RPG, and how that would all be handled. This post is based on having completed Act 1 (about 7 hours in), so while certainly not the whole picture, I think I get enough of what is going on to write up some initial thoughts.

First a quick comment on Tyranny in general though; if you are going to play it, don’t judge it until you have completed Act 1. I say this because the game throws you into the deep end right away (it honestly feels like Tyranny is a sequel to a first game, and expects you to know the back story and mechanics from that game, and I don’t mean Pillars being the first game), and I don’t think what it’s trying to do clicks until around that point. If you put it down after an hour or so, I really think you might be doing yourself and the game a great disservice. If you still don’t like it after Act 1, that’s fair IMO.

Anyway, to the topic at hand. Playing the bad guy does feel odd for me still, mostly because I have a hard time ‘staying in character’ all the time. Plus I don’t really know who my guy is yet. I picked the diplomat back story, but my guy uses 2h weapons and has high strength/athletics, so in a lot of dialog I go for the brute force answer. I’m trying not to be sadist evil, but also not take crap from those I imagine are below me, while at the same time trying to stay on the good side of my traveling companions. That balance is tricky, especially when choices are limited. In some ways that’s great and forces hard decisions, but at other times it feels like my character is inconsistent in terms of motivations.

That said, once I got rolling a bit things did start to fit into place, which is one reason I stated to play at least until the first act is complete. By that point it seemed my character had more control over situations, and I was better able to mold things around me. Having options in terms of who travels with you was also pretty huge.

So far I like the game, and I’m eager to see where it goes as I dig into act 2. Full review coming at some point as well.