I have a hunch Kyros is genderless based on what they have revealed. Honestly Kyros being some eldritch entity sounds like the coolest option.
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Is Kyros a female?
- Thread starter wimplestiltskin
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This topic reminds me of when I read Ancillary Justice, the 2nd book specifically, where, due to the potagonist's inability to distinguish genders everyone is "female", and I was sitting there thinking "huh, it's actually rare to have a megalomaniac, evil female ruler of an interstellar empire." Then I realized I didn't actually know which gender "she" was, and hadn't paid enough attention to figure it out from clues (assuming there were any).
And then I realized it didn't matter.
And then I realized it didn't matter.
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And the least intresting if you ask me. It's such a cop out.
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Kyros is a singular entity - how else do you explain the edicts, that seemingly nobody else have access to, and how you can spring it on two of the top ranking Archons, without their knowledge? And potentially kill them with it?
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The ancient Greeks called, they said they have certain declension expectations but that it's OK if it's a man dressed up as a woman
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World of warcraft never really changes anything. Most likely as a result of the need to keep the game running. An MMO such as that suffers this problem. World shattering event takes place, great evil rises, heroe's foil the plot, some cities get wrecked, an npc or two bite it, but the cities get rebuilt, the npcs are replaced by others that aren't very different, alliances shift, rinse and repeat. Each time the world shattering event that takes place has to be that much more extreme, that much more flashy that it becomes a completely rediculous cycle, in which no matter the players actions, the cycle continues regardless ad infinitum. Tv shows have suffered the same problem, with each season having a big evil to be overcome. It's a fairly common format and only has so much mileage.
I can appreciate your point about over the top heroics, it's been done to death, but even DA:O was the same thing, Ferelden may have been the first port of call for the blight, but it was emphasised that if the blight hadn't been stopped there and then, the rest of Thedas future was pretty bleak. The story was just more focused imo, the stakes were just as high, it was just handled in a better way to say, DA:I .There can be no doubt that story wise, DA:O was the best outing in the franchise, sadly. Bioware scewed up with subsequent shoddy writing and plots. They created a compelling and rich universe, only to crap all over it and squander it's potential.
You mention Warhammer and the forgotten realms, but these are huge settings, absolutely huge, the opportunities for smaller scale conflicts and characters are far more abundant and doubly hard to believe in those, "one hero saves the entirety of the setting" I can understand what your saying here and in part agree with it.
Tyranny however is a new IP, it hasn't had twenty (or forty!) plus years of multiple individuals, groups and fans, contributing to its setting. So far, Tyranny is a single continent, we have no idea about the vaster universe that may or may not exist. I hope that with success of this first outing, it will be the foundation of a setting that grows to become akin to the forgotten realms, for example. For now imo, It needs a focused story that can be used to build the framework of the vaster universe beyond Kyros domain. Don't misunderstand, as others have said, some mystery is part of the charm and also part of creating the framework for the ocean of possibilities that such a setting requires. I would prefer not to see or meet Kyros in this first game or even in a second one, I'd like obsidian to take their time growing the setting, but eventually, I'd like to see Kyros being revealed, either in that personages confidence or in conflict with it, to have the idea of Kyros being the "great and awe inspiring evil" as being a misconception, yes it's been done before, both well and poorly. I wouldn't be surprised if this is how it will go, with the old walls and the spires, there is definately the suggestion that obsidian has some sort of idea for a wider universe, I'd like Kyros to be revealed as a human individual with a compelling purpose in it's actions that leads to the unfurling of a much broader and more mysterious plot and setting. At some point, I'd like to see Kyros receed into, either history or insignifiance on a grander stage, having played a role of initial antagonist. By creating such a character, obsidian gets to lay the ground works for the broader setting, while still having a "complete, self contained" story to act as a spring board for the kinds of adventures and stories such as the one you prefer.
I don't know if anyone here is big reader of fantasy fiction, but a good analogy (almost uncanny in a way) is Brandon Sandersons Mistborn Trilogy. The setting is described as one "in which the dark lord has won" The primary antagonist is portrayed as a godlike being of great power that crushed his world a thousand years before and teh protagonists are working to save the world from the Lord Rulers despotic rule.
The first book see's the heroes defeat this enemy and it's awesome powers are revealed to be born from something else entirely and the evil lord ruler, while being petty and prone to all manner of human weakness, had been holding back something else more sinister. Yeah, it's been done before, but the Lord ruler, in my mind shifted from a generic example of uber power and became someone who was flawed, driven by some base urges but generally for a good cause did some despicable things. This was an enemy that was relateable, somewhat pitiable and utlimately less two dimensional than say, Lloth of dnd fame (or infamy) I get that some people don't find that compelling, but I found myself asking, would I hve done any different. In having the mystery of the Lord Ruler revealed, a greater mystery was made known and the series continues in other books, the series being linked to a subtle metaverse which Sanderson is working on across several series, all inter linked, in which a truelly, cosmic evil is at play and in the end, the heroes of the first mistborn trilogy seem inisgnificant, as does the lord ruler. It is just the first threads in a much larger tapestry that we get to learn about and it is that journey that is so enjoyable and rewarding, with each mystery solved leading onto a more complete view of the setting of the series.
If we have a universe in which Kyros is the primary antagonist from the get go, Obsidian are already limiting the scope of the franchise and setting.
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Just because those things it makes no sense for Kyros to a be a person, why would a single person possess power like that but as an institution? Kyros could have a thousand mages combine their powers to create an edict in the name of Kyros.
You are totally ignoring my suggestions on how to do it though. And my references to real life evil.
Also no WoW is the opposite by allowing the players to defeat the primary big bad they get a revolving door of suspiciously similar replacements because they obviously need a villain, but if thye instead had placed their evil as a non personal entitity, a natural law (like warhammer or wheel of time) or a concept or institution, they could have you have reasonable victories against it without it suffering a true defeat. They kind of had this with the scarlet crusade, no matter how many leaders you strike down there will always be those who believe that the only way to save the world is by their methods. Thus someone else will always take their place. The enemy is not so much the crusade as the paranoia, fear and desperation they were born out of.
Sorry but I don't believe in real world evil
We'll have to agree to disagree here. I recognise your arguement regarding Hitler and the Nazi's as an example, I agree with it, but I don't regard them or him as evil or their ideologies as evil, Which isn't to say I agree with or support them, I simply regard them as reductionist, restrictive, negative and non beneficial. Your arguements as to where such ideologies come from and with whom they gain purchase are accurate, but I don;t regard them as coming from some source that is evil, but deficiencies in the human condition that must be overcome. Thats a much broader debate.As to your suggestion on "how to do it", again, I'm not very familiar with Warhammer, so can't really speak to it that much, I think we have a difference of opinion, As I said in my previous post, your reasoning is compelling and I hear your arguements and they are fuel for thought, I simply sought to provide my own opinions in contrast for your own deliberation and to clarify as best as I can, for anyone else that might be reading.
It's the revolving door syndrome that I detest the most in story telling and world building. I have simply tried to explain that I prefer a layered, yet bookended narrative. I like the Beginning, middle, end, format of story telling. More a branching tree than a circle. I like completion and finality. I like things to move on, to progress and not to stomp over the same territory time and time again, I feel Kyros as an individual is preferable as it fits into what I want out of the story and think it still leaves the wider world of Tyranny open to growth and developement, that other stories might be told, with vary degrees of scope. I'd prefer that Kyros doesn't become a replacement term for, cosmic order, or cosmic evil, because we might aswell discard Kyros entirely and simply call Kyros by what it would be in those circumstances. Order.
As I said before, it all depends on what people are looking for out of the experience. It's ok to want different things, to have differing opinions. I'll say it again, your arguements have given me something to think about.
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Evil is not the word I usually use either but if I were to list the evils of reality then yes those would be it. Not the people mind you but the actions, because of their consequences. And "the things you must overcome" is also a pretty good definition of evil.Sorry but I don't believe in real world evil
As to your suggestion on "how to do it", again, I'm not very familiar with Warhammer, so can't really speak to it that much, I think we have a difference of opinion, As I said in my previous post, your reasoning is compelling and I hear your arguements and they are fuel for thought, I simply sought to provide my own opinions in contrast for your own deliberation and to clarify as best as I can, for anyone else that might be reading.
It's the revolving door syndrome that I detest the most in story telling and world building. I have simply tried to explain that I prefer a layered, yet bookended narrative. I like the Beginning, middle, end, format of story telling. More a branching tree than a circle. I like completion and finality. I like things to move on, to progress and not to stomp over the same territory time and time again, I feel Kyros as an individual is preferable as it fits into what I want out of the story and think it still leaves the wider world of Tyranny open to growth and developement, that other stories might be told, with vary degrees of scope. I'd prefer that Kyros doesn't become a replacement term for, cosmic order, or cosmic evil, because we might aswell discard Kyros entirely and simply call Kyros by what it would be in those circumstances. Order.
As I said before, it all depends on what people are looking for out of the experience. It's ok to want different things, to have differing opinions. I'll say it again, your arguements have given me something to think about.
Well warhammer was an early adopter or perhaps the origin of the villain as gestalt being of the darker psyche of humanity (Or the mortal races in general). The idea is that all humans are pyschic but since most can't controll their psychic potential they are basically screaming their emotions at the top of their lungs into the warp(warhammer 40k)/realm of chaos(warhammer fantasy), these then coalesce into clusters of similar emotions which leches of some measure of self consciousness from the people who feeds them and becomes self aware chaos gods. The most major of these are the four gods of chaos representing roughly aggression, lust, despair, and hope/ambition. They are also because they are only capable of feeling one emotion (or a narrow set of emotions) totally insane. The warp/realm of chaos is sort of a extra dimension/subspace where psychic things, souls, and warp travel happens. In the warhammer 40k chaos manifests itself around places where the walls between reality and the warp are weak, or they hitch a ride on ships passing in and out of warp or are summoned/possesses psykers and so on. Humanity will in time master it's psychic potential but nothing can make that happen faster.
The warhammer fantasy version of the setting (no idea what happened in the "age of sigmar" reboot so I will ignore that) there was this race of demigods who arrived in the world by the means of this gate and when that broke down the chaos gods spilled into the world.
The point is that warhammer (both kinds) work entirely with unreliable narrators, you have by now been told a dozen different versions of every major event, each buying into the biases of the one telling the story. And that worked great for a long time, it allowed for a lot of space for storytelling, there were always areas left unexplored, theories left unconfirmed and so on. And it worked well, because anything we could imagine were always better suited to us than what they could write. Then they decided that they could make a lot of money by writing books on these great events, and while some of them were fairly good, it worked a lot less well than obscuring it had (Helped by the fact that the horus heresy series, wh40k, was pretty hit and miss, and the time of legend series, whfb, was utter rubbish).
Another example of the crapsack setting done right is Robert Jordan's wheel of time. Granted their villain is not particularly interesting, he end sup being the incarnation of entropy or some such nonsense (I was so disappointed). But the real evil of the series is the fact that it takes place in a massive time loop. The heroes job is to sustain it because the world only exists as long as the time loop does, while the villain is the one who seeks to break it even if doing so will end the world. Shai'tan (the villain) is imprisoned in the setting but it's really hinted that the time loop and the world itself may be an even greater prison. And that's the tragic beauty of it. Since it's a loop the best the heroes can hope for is to keep the world going, which means thta if the dragon reborn (the main hero guy wins) he will eventually find himself back at the end of the second age, becoming insane and murdering everyone who has a shred of his blood in them (This happens in the prologue of the first book so no spoilers). The villains (aside from the big bad) are all either in denial of what he seeks, or have gone mad from truly understnading it and seeks to break the cycle.
It all comes down to if you like a piece of fiction for the setting or the story. I usually like settings. Stories are just interesting because they allow me to step into that setting. I am quite intrested in just finding out abour daily life of people in such a setting.
And yes I would really have gone with Kyros as both the name for the overlord and his empire if I was them, and left if totally open to interpretation if Kyros is even a person or the state itself. It's kind of like the guard in Catherine Fisher's the Relic Master. It has no one leader is only exists to ensure it's own existence. It has leaders but they are all balanced against each other so no one can get absolute power. It's ordered anarchy, chronic backstabbing disorder made into law. Another example would be Engsos and big brother from 1984.
I try to avoid the use of the word evil entirely in a real world context, too often the term is used to explain crappy actions, as something that comes from outside of the human condition, in some way negating the need to deal with or overcome it, absolving us of responsibility and impeding true reflection, self realisation and understanding in favour of an immutable, primal force over which we can exert no influence. When we say, that person was evil, we are saying, I either can't be bothered or feel uncomfortable trying to understand the motivation and place from which that person was coming, we don't want to recognise that such exists inside us all. It's true that in denying something battle you deny it victory, but the same holds true for us aswell. In order to overcome, we must confront these things. The concept of evil doesn't help with that. In a way it's a strawman.
The warhammer universe sounds cool. I like the idea of humanity being the source of it's own dark gods, bourne forth from the dark corners of our minds. Pretty neat. Might check it out if I should get the time. Also puts your arguements more in context. I agree that it wouldn't be the worst way to go with Tyranny, I'd place this second in my list of prefered directions, after an individual Kyros, purely personal for the reasons I've given and as once locked into this format, it would be impossible to pull away or diverge too heavily.
Has the warhammer universe been "concluded"? Alot of people felt the same way about the classic world of darkness (or Old world of darkness, it's gone through so many iterations!) Which I loved, both the setting and lore, aswell as the story opportunities. We had the biblical Caine and his grandchildren, Antedeluvians (read godlike vampires) and a vast metaplot with a foreshadowed ending. Lots of unreliable narration and mystery surrounding the antedeluvians, their identities and motivations. Now some people hated the metaplot, felt restricted and constrained by it, which I understood, but it was the plot that drew me in, perhaps more so than the setting. I relished the end of times sequence of events and all the details being laid bare, none of it was 100% and people could pick bits they liked or mak up their own end of times stories or ignore them entirely (some did) and alot of people hated it, hated having all the mystery dispelled and felt it didn't meet expecations. But I loved it, I loved getting all the details on the Antedeluvians and their secrets, the werewolves and the battle with the wyrm. It was the pay off for the investment for me and allowed me to experience the pneultimate story. The gehenna event concluded the setting and, yes like others I was sad to see it go, it felt right that it should have an ending. Contrast that with the New world of darkness and in particular, requiem (vomit) I hated it, very similar setting but minus the metaplot. I just found it lacked any sense of direction, for me it felt like an excersie in vanity and escapism lacking purpose. I know some people prefered it but I wouldn't go near it. So could be I'm more story orientated. And this is the source of our divergence of opinion.
Oddly enough, wheel of time was completed by Sanderson, was it not? Its funny as Sandersons series have very similar themes and I can see why he was chosen to finish the series following Jordans demise.
If they ever do decide to "reveal" Kyros, my bet would be that there is no Kyros, and it's actually just the Archon of Justice ruling through the great, feared "Big Brother" persona. After all, he's older than any Archon, just as feared by the Archons as Kyros and 100% loyal and committed to the Overlord's rule.
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I like the Baru Cormorant concept; where there's some sort of ruling cabal that drug some random guy, place him on the throne, and let him pretend to be the ruling Emperor. Since he's masked and not easily approached and such nobody knows that instead of some type of monarchy the system is actually closer to a weird oligarchy. So the Emperor is more of a living symbol than anything else: might be true for Kyros, too.
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Yeah but now we're talking the other way around, allowing evil in fiction to be inspired by conflict and problems in real life. Bringing the fictional universes closer to rela life where there as you say there is no "For evulz" evil.
I actually place it the lowest, it was cool when warhammer did it, because then it was fresh, now it has been done to death, almost as dead as the Cthulhu inspired eldritch abominations. Like I said I would much prefer a more 1984 style villain. Or to some extent a harry potter style one, seeing that Voldemort is just a Hitler analogy.
I think warhammer fantasy got concluded by the age of Sigmar thing. I was the opposite to you I hated it. They destroyed the world I loved, even going back to it becomes pointless when you know the ending. I prefer to pretend to think of both Age of sigmar and the time of legend books series as fanfic and concentrate on the older written materials which are generally way better (Or rather the ones we remember are, the bad ones are forgotten).
Yes but the creative decision's were not his, he just wrote it out from Jordan's notes. As much as I disliked the wheel of time books written by Sanderson I can't blame him for the lack of a creative ending.
Yeah the thing is a world spanning empire is simply to large to be ruled by a single individual. All real life counterparts the Chinese, Egyptian, and Roman empires had vast bureaucratic machines.
I don't really buy obsidians, "when evil has won" sales pitch and I hope they don't get burned for it as I think it's not entirely true of the game they have created, I think they'd have been better off touting the game as, "When the authoritarian dictator won" but lets be honet, it's not as catchy. It's indicitive of the issue I mentioned.
It's quite clear we are of different minds and oppossing opinions on what constitutes a satisfying narrative. Which is fine. I'm perfectly happy with that and it's good to share the why's and hows that we come to our differing view points
While I'd like to see a narrative that I find satisfying come out of Tyranny, I'm certainly not blind to the fact that, while I might not get what I want, somebody else, might just get what they want. I certainly wont be whining about it atleast. But I do hold out hope nonetheless.
So we pretty much have as close to the official word as we're going to get in this PC Gamer article.
The TLDR: No one knows, and those who do know aren't saying
The TLDR: No one knows, and those who do know aren't saying
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PC Gamer said:
At least five or seven nerds have been discussing it on an online forum with their smartphones.
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I beg your pardon! I don't even own a smartphone! I'm a proper nerd and use a pc...
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Proper nerds use their smartphones to mock people using macbooks when they don't have access to their PCs.I beg your pardon! I don't even own a smartphone! I'm a proper nerd and use a pc...
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