Pillars of Eternity & Tyranny Free On Epic

It is almost as if we’re days away from everyone disappearing to be with families, ignore the news, and be thankful the year ends. Monday, I wrote about Yooka Laylee returning to Prime Gaming for another giveaway for those with a Prime subscription. Tuesday, Zoë wrote about Candle Games’ next game getting announced and a Netflix series releasing based on a previous game. Wednesday, I admonished one of the most anticipated games of the year for not being safe for those with epilepsy, a day before its release. On Thursday, I berated Twitch for doing the bare minimum when overhauling their guidelines on harassment from nothing to basic common decency.

If I were allowed to just put a gif between the paragraph running through the week’s news and getting to the Epic Games Store content, it would be one of exhaustion. “So it begins,” could it not have just waited another week? At least then we’d be on our break; I’d be tweeting them out between pints of Sex On The Beach and Advocaat with lemonade. Starting next week, Epic will be doing daily offerings of free games, much like they did last year. Thus, we don’t know what will be available next Thursday, so from there on out you’ll want to stick to our Twitter as we’ll (try) to give daily updates.

However, what will close out the year on our weekly series? Well, two massive RPGs I already own. I’ve even played one of them a little bit. I’ve spoken about my dyslexia enough in recent weeks; I’ll boil it down: Copious amounts of reading required by classic-style RPGs with strange names put me off. Sometimes it is laziness for long paragraphs of fluff text, sometimes it is the stupid and long high fantasy names, and other times I just want to be in the world. I don’t get that last one with Obsidian’s games, though.

I tried Tyranny about a year or two ago and while I like it in many respects, it is tiresome in my experience. It is not the especially dry high fantasy as seen with Grimly the dwarf stripper down the way. However, it dances on the edge of the tried and tested lands of magic and occult. It could certainly hold my attention more than most with its depth, complexities, and general ease to understand it and keep up with it without boredom setting in. That said, I did put it down after a few hours and haven’t returned in quite some time.

The second game is the other game I did plan on playing proper this week, though prep work for our break got in the way of that. Pillars of Eternity (to my understanding) follows a more typical fantasy, as it is seen as a successor to that of Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment. Much like the latter of those inspirations, almost half of the bloody screen is often filled with text of conversations and your possible responses. Both Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity feature a pausable real-time combat system that– It’s alright.

Personally, outside of general curiosity I’d seldom touch anything like Tyranny or Pillars of Eternity. However, those around me that love these games would be killing me the minute we’re out of the current pandemic if I said they weren’t worth your time. They are more than worth your time, with both the special DLC-loaded editions. Though I’d say you need to be in the mood to sit with them. It is probably best summarized that they are slower games than we’re now used to with larger modern RPGs.

Both Pillars of Eternity – Definitive Edition and Tyranny – Gold Edition are free on the Epic Games Store right now, until the morning of the 17th of December. On the 17th, Epic begins what is the equivalent of Steam’s winter sale and will for 15-days give away games for free every 24-hours. Those of you smart enough already notice that takes us up to Friday the 1st of January. Unless one day is a double. As I said at the top, and I’ll repeat again next week as we slow down and go on our break until the 4th; we’ll keep you up to date over on our Twitter machine-thing along with Prime updates.