I've heard Tyranny pitched as the "RPG where you get to play the bad guy".

And while that's certainly a clever marketing hook...it also totally undersells the true beauty of the game.

Point of order before I go any further: I'm not saying ALL RPGs need to be like Tyranny. I enjoy a wide range of RPGs and they all have their own merits. (Even Skyrim, which is one of the least RPG-ish games out there in my book.)

On top of that, Tyranny is far from a perfect game. Though I don't plan to do a comprehensive review here, I could point out it's rushed ending, iffy combat, and occasionally immersion-breaking glitches just to name a few.

Still, if I had to name one game that truly captures the soul of RPGs for me...it's Tyranny.

Heck, I was about to include a nod to Fallout New Vegas here, but on reflection Tyranny still has it beat. Sure, both games feature fantastic writing and deep, thoughtful world-building...

But Tyranny truly lets you Play. A. Role.

Though you do get to pick a few background details during character creation, you will ALWAYS start the game as a Fatebinder -- which I saw one reviewer refer to as "dark fantasy Judge Dredd".

And that role informs every single decision you make throughout the game.

Want to be a gleefully evil bastard? Great! You might step on a few toes, but the people in power will happily sic you on their enemies.

Want to become the most powerful force in the world? You can try...but only by taking that power away from others -- either by negotiation or by force.

Want to be a moral paragon and bring justice to this corrupted world? You can. Sometimes. For now. And you'll have to make some terrible compromises to do it.

See...the problem with RPGs like Skyrim is that they insist on letting you make any choice and any time. By definition, that means any given choice CANNOT have meaningful long-term consequences -- since that would rob future you of all those endless choices.

And on the flip side, there are plenty of "hero of the land" RPGs that really only give you mechanical choices. No matter how you play, the story will force you to become the great savior of the people either way.

And sure, there are your Bioshocks and Fallout 3s that force you into a cartoonish moral binary of "good vs. evil" -- where both paths are equally powerful in terms of mechanics. Even the Mass Effect trilogy -- which I love -- struggles to escape this kind of binary railroading.

Which brings me back to Tyranny. Tyranny does not present a straight railroad nor does it present a field of infinite options. Instead, it gives you a constrained set of meaningful options at every turn.

You are a Fatebinder. You do have important choices to make. But you must always act within your role.

Yes, even if you take the rebellion path at the very end. After all, you'd hardly be the first Archon to rebel against Kyros...

If I can amend the elevator pitch from the beginning, I'd argue Tyranny isn't really a game about "playing the bad guy". It's not even necessarily a game about tyranny.

It's a game about power.

Specifically, what it means to wield power...and all the things power can and cannot do.

And Tyranny -- more so than any other game I've played -- brings those questions to life through the mechanics of an RPG.

It forces you to stop and think about what choices you really have -- and what those choices mean.

It's so committed to that process of questioning that it refuses to give easy answers...or even any answers to certain questions. It obscures significant portions of the worldbuilding, especially Overlord Kyros and her (his?) ultimate intentions.

Oh, and forget having a morality system. All you have is a reputation system, which further incentivizes you to think in terms of power and influence. Are you a good person? Tyranny won't tell you. Maybe it doesn't even care. Maybe that's up to you to decide on your own.

Besides, being a good person or bad person won't ultimately change much about the game world.

After all...your role was designed by someone with more power than you.

And you get to decide the roles of people with less power than you.

And if that sounds a little bit icky...well, isn't it?

Personally, I LOVE sitting in that discomfort. It's what I crave in all my fiction -- and I know from experience that interactive fiction can make the discomfort dig even deeper by making me feel complicit in it.

And "complicit" is exactly how I felt at the end when I bowed to Kyros. I felt -- and still feel -- that it was the right decision. That this world had already seen enough catastrophic warfare and that even a corrupted peacetime would be better than none at all. Nonetheless, I still feel gross when I think back to that decision...and I still love it.

That -- to me -- is the soul of an RPG. A game where my choices matter because of their consequences. A world where the role I play means more than a set of abilities and a fancy title. A story that makes me think (and feel) about my actions.

10/10, would submit to a dictatorial demigod again.