Tyranny Developer Diary #11: Kills-in-Shadow

Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive have published a new developer diary for Tyranny. This time, we get a look at yet another companion from the RPG where “evil won”, Kills-in-Shadow, a Beastwoman. I’ve been mostly focusing on the companions’ personalities and backgrounds in these posts so far, so to shake things up, I’m going to quote an excerpt from the description of her abilities:

Kills-in-Shadow was designed to be a silent predator and a savage bruiser on the battlefield. She possesses an abundance of stealth talents to help her initiate combat with an advantage over her prey and a tremendous hit point pool that allows her to stand her ground as she continues to batter her enemies into mush. Her talent trees focus on either further developing her skills as a deadly clawed stalker or those of a massive primal brute.

When building Kills-in-Shadow’s talent trees, we wanted to give players elements that focused on evolving KIS’ inherent racial advantages. Being a Beastwoman KIS possesses deadly claws, natural hide Armor, an affinity for stealth, as well as a sizable amount of health. She’s quite the perfect hunter. Her talent trees take different aspects of these traits and enhance them further to help fit the play style most desired. Kills-in-Shadow’s ‘Ravager’ tree is efficient at leaping from the shadows onto weaker prey, aiming to kill instantly, before moving on to rend surviving enemies with her claws, tear into Armor, and cause heavy bleed effects. KIS’ ‘Titan’ tree is built to take advantage of her massive size, by providing talents such as those that expand her larger health pool, allow her to engage multiple enemies, or that grant her devastating enrage effects.

Below are some of the abilities available to Kills-in-Shadow:

Beastmen Race: Kills-in-Shadow cannot wear armor, dual wield, or use ranged weapons that require both hands, but she possesses natural hide armor and is capable of wielding two handed weapons in a single hand.

Leaping Death: Leap onto a nearby enemy from stealth, heavily damaging all foes in the area and knocking them Prone.

Primal Scream: Roar at nearby enemies, Frightening them. If this ability is used while stealthed enemies become Terrified instead.

Disembowel: Use both claws to rip the target’s stomach open, dealing a large amount of Slash / Pierce (best of) damage and leaving them Bleeding for an extended duration.