Paradox Interactive on Tyranny 2

Since Paradox Interactive owns the rights to the Tyranny IP, the possible sequel to Obsidian’s evil henchman RPG may not be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, or may not even be an RPG at all, according to Paradox’s Fred Wester and Shams Jorjani. And while nothing is set in stone at the moment, some of their comments suggest that the next Tyranny may end up as a grand strategy in the same vein as Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings. A bit on that:

At last year’s PDXCON, the publishers told us that Tyranny sold below their expectations; that “everyone was hoping that it would do better.” But Paradox and Obsidian never fell out according to Wester. In fact, their relationship is perfectly healthy.

“I’m going to have a beer with Feargus Urquhart at E3 this year as usual,” he says. “It’s more that, they want to be more independent and do their own things, and we want to publish things where we are in control. It’s not really compatible on a corporation level. On a personal level, there’s no problem.”

To understand that publisher demand for control, you need to look at the nature of Paradox’s recent success. Part of their explosive growth over the past half a decade has been down to patience – Crusader Kings, Cities, and Europa Universalis are all names that didn’t find a wider audience until two, three, or even four entries in. In order to repeat the trick, Paradox want to own what they work on.

“We always work super long-term,” VP of business development Shams Jorjani says. “If we have the choice of investing in our IP and ourselves, rather than Games Workshop or somebody else’s IP, we’d rather choose ourselves. Us owning IP ends up being just a direct result of us paying for everything. We’re taking all the financial risk, so we should see most of the financial upside as well.”

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“Just the other day on Twitter, somebody was talking about setting a grand strategy game in the Tyranny universe,” Jorjani notes. “I think that would be cool. We’re absolutely interested in exploring grand fantasy in the strategy space.”

It’s especially intriguing that, without prompting, Wester mentions the same concept too: “If someone in the studio says, ‘I want to make a grand strategy game out of Tyranny’, I would approve that day one.”

Perhaps in the next Tyranny game, we’re more likely to be playing as Kyros than cowering in the Overlord’s shadow.