Tyranny (2016)
Tyranny is a 2016 real time strategy (rts) video game made by Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive.
Evil won. Kyros the Overlord has conquered nearly all the known world, and you serve as a Fatebinder, judge and enforcer of that conquest. Before the story proper begins, a Conquest sequence lets you decide how the invasion of the Tiers unfolded, and the fallout shapes who trusts or hates you from the first hour. Obsidian wraps this in reactive dialogue, spell-crafting from combined sigils, and warring factions like the feral Scarlet Chorus and the disciplined Disfavored. Choices carry weight with no tidy good option waiting. Compact by CRPG standards, sharp in its writing, and morally uncomfortable throughout.
Quick answers
What is Tyranny about?
Evil won. Kyros the Overlord has conquered nearly all the known world, and you serve as a Fatebinder, judge and enforcer of that conquest. Before the story proper begins, a Conquest sequence lets you decide how the invasion of the Tiers unfolded, and the fallout shapes who trusts or hates you from the first hour. Obsidian wraps this in reactive dialogue, spell-crafting from combined sigils, and warring factions like the feral Scarlet Chorus and the disciplined Disfavored. Choices carry weight with no tidy good option waiting. Compact by CRPG standards, sharp in its writing, and morally uncomfortable throughout.
When was Tyranny released?
Tyranny was released on 10 November 2016.
Who made Tyranny?
Tyranny was made by Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive.
Similar games
Explore Tyranny guides
Tyranny in our writing
- Companion guide: The CRPG: The Complete Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games
- Companion guide: The CRPG Renaissance: How Kickstarter Brought the Genre Back from the Dead
A few thoughts on Tyranny
Ruling from inside the empire's machinery is the real draw. Pillars of Eternity offers Obsidian's deeper world and party system, while Disco Elysium shares the same appetite for ideology and consequence buried in dialogue. Planescape: Torment remains the benchmark for a CRPG that treats philosophy as its true combat.
Grim fantasy worlds already crushed by an overwhelming power
Tyranny starts after Kyros the Overlord has already conquered nearly everything, leaving you to enforce a victory you didn't choose. Attack on Titan traps its cast inside walls built by a power nobody can beat, Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon carry that same weight of factions with nothing clean to root for, and Wizard and Glass and Oathbringer wear a similar exhaustion of a world past saving.
RPGs about serving a cause with no clean side
Tyranny puts you to work for the side that already won, with no righteous faction waiting in the wings. The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 hand out the same kind of compromised loyalty, Skyrim's civil war offers two flawed sides instead of a good one, and The Last of Us keeps proving that survival and decency rarely line up.
Dark, war-heavy soundtracks for a conquered world
Tyranny's Conquest is already over by the time you arrive, and the mood stays grim from there. In the Court of the Crimson King and The Spectre Within carry that same ominous weight, Painkiller and IX Equilibrium push it into outright aggression, and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King score mourns a war already decided.
Warring factions where loyalty gets messy
Tyranny splits its cast between the feral Scarlet Chorus and the disciplined Disfavored, and neither faction offers a clean conscience. Lord of the Flies traces that same slide into tribal loyalty, The Song of Achilles wears the cost of duty pulling against personal loyalty, Fullmetal Alchemist stacks military factions and schemers atop each other, and God of War carries Kratos's messy history between warring gods.