Tyranny, the isometric RPG about being bad that's actually very good, is the latest addition to the lineup of free games being offered to Twitch Prime members. But you've only got until tomorrow to pick it up. 

Twitch Prime provides ad-free viewing, exclusive emotes and a chat badge, free channel subscription, and—as of March—free games every month. It's included with subscriptions to Amazon Prime, which offers free delivery on a huge range of products, access to Prime Video and Prime Music, and free ebooks via Prime Reading. Subscriptions recently went up from $100 to $120 a month (or $13 per month if you don't want to commit to a full year, but that'll end up costing you more in the long run), but it's still a pretty sweet deal if you're a regular Amazon user. 

Tyranny isn't the only free game on the table this month: Twitch is giving away a free game every day this month, and The Red Strings Club, Brutal Legend, The Bridge, Tacoma, Observer, Deponia Doomsday, and the SNK Bundle are all currently up for grabs, as are the Warframe: Prime Day and Trinity Prime bundles, a Call of Duty: WWII Ultimate Supply Drop pack, a Neverwinter: Purple Owlbear pack, and 500 bonus Bits. 

And in case you missed it, today is Prime Day, that most magical day of the year where we celebrate how wonderful Amazon is by giving it our money, and we've got an ongoing roundup of the best PC gaming deals right here. 

EA has been quietly packing its paid subscription service, Origin Access, with a long list of excellent games over the past few months. It all started when it let third-party publishers in on the act, adding most of the Batman games.  Both The Witness and Wasteland 2 weren't far behind, and last month Mad Max, Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera all entered the fray. This month, it's the turn of relaxing underwater explorer Abzû and old-school RPG Tyranny, as well as seven others. They'll all be available to subscribers tomorrow.

Origin Access is a bit like Netflix for PC gaming: you pay $5/£4 a month, or $30/£20 for the whole year, and get unlimited access to the 100 or so games inside the "vault". Out of the nine new ones, I'm most looking forward to Tyranny, which has been on my list for a while. Steven said it had a great story with moral shades of grey, but that it was let down by a dud ending. Abzû was the 2016 game about a deep-sea diver that you probably saw screenshots of everywhere. It's both beautiful and relaxing.

Kingdom: New Lands looks interesting, too. It's the expanded and improved version of 2015 management game Kingdoms, which James thought was solid enough already.

Here's the full list of the nine new games: 

• GoNNER, a side-scrolling shooter
• Europa Universalis III Complete
• Knights of Pen and Paper: +1 Edition
• The Guest, a creepy first-person exploration game
• Hearts of Iron III
• Victoria I Complete
• Abzû
• Tyranny
• Kingdom: New Lands

It's not as impressive a lineup as previous months, but it's a decent selection. If you want to sign up to Origin Access, you can do that here. Whatever you think about EA as a publisher, the service offers a lot of great games for a not-too-daunting subscription fee.

Being evil in an RPG is no easy feat. Not only do you need the stomach for it, but developers aren't always the best at making evil choices feel as nuanced and satisfying as their morally righteous counterparts. It's rare for a game to present you with a decision so evil that it actually upsets you, but there is also an undeniable joy in being a monstrous jackass—even if your reason for detonating a dormant nuke in the middle of a small town is just for the lols.

That's why we forced some of our writers into the confession booth to finally fess up about their favorite evil decisions in PC gaming. It's some pretty dark stuff—from smothering babies to forcing someone to murder their lifelong best friend—but if you've got a kink for the chaotic, here are our picks for some of the most sinful choices we've made in games. 

Tyranny - Hush little baby 

To be fair, Tyranny is an RPG that has no real shortage of evil choices to be made—you do murder millions of people in the introduction alone, after all. But later in the story, Tyranny trades mass murder for one decision that is hauntingly terrible. See, to undo your overlord's Edicts that, like magical natural disasters, are tearing apart the land, your character must help fulfill certain contractual clauses. When you first venture to the Blade Sea, that clause is killing the last of its traitorous ruling family. At first this seems like a pretty easy task after you besiege the castle, corner the Regent Herodin and make ready to end his life. But after he is dead, the edict remains mysteriously intact. It's then revealed that there is another heir—a child born out of love between Herodin's son and the kidnapped daughter of your commander, Graven Ashe.

It's a hopelessly complicated situation made even more complicated by the fact that the mother, Amelia, will die to protect her child. But if the child lives, the Edict of Storms will continue. True to developer Obsidian's great storytelling lineage, there's a few different ways to handle the decision. But if you're the ruthlessly pragmatic type, you can simply kill Amelia and then smother her child in its crib. Or if you're a real monster, you can force one of your unwilling companions to do it for you, probably subjecting them to a lifetime of guilt and self-loathing. Whichever way you go about it (or however you might justify it) smothering babies isn't exactly heroic.— Steven Messner

Fallout 3 - The Big Bang

The big, obvious one from Fallout 3 is such a grand moment that it's almost impossible to resist. I blew up Megaton for two reasons: one, I wanted a nice apartment in Tenpenny Tower, where I could have a little break from the depressing nuclear post-apocalypse and chill with my robot butler. Secondly, the layout of Megaton is really annoying, and needlessly tricky to navigate compared to other locations in Fallout 3. It had to go, really. I activated the nuke and watched that baby go off. I regret nothing—it's still one of the most shocking and exciting moments from any game in the last ten years. — Samuel Roberts

Dishonored - Lust for vengeance 

Despite being an assassin, Dishonored rightly punishes wanton murder and instead encourages players to seek their vengeance through more creative means. Each kill pushes the city of Dunwall closer to complete chaos, so finding an alternative is necessary if you hope to ultimately rid the city of evil and corruption. Instead of murdering the pope, for instance, you can brand him with a mark of shame and force him to live out the rest of his life as a beggar. It's poetic justice at its finest—except in the case of Lady Boyle.

This capitalist is the financier behind many of Dishonored's villains and is rightly deserving of justice. But Dishonored's non-lethal way of dealing with her is pretty abhorrent. During the Lady Boyle's Last Party mission, Corvo can choose to simple murder Boyle (and her lookalike sisters) or instead deliver her into the hands of a creepy-ass stalker named Lord Brisby who, in addition to confessing his love for her, promises to make her disappear forever. While his suggestion is vague, it's just insidious enough to make me believe that handing Lady Boyle over is little more than human trafficking. That, by knocking her unconscious and letting Lord Brisby have her, I'd be condemning her to a life of sexual slavery at the hands of this creep. I mean, I get it, she's a terrible person and absolutely deserves punishment—but I think we can all agree that this is a bit much.— Steven Messner

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow - No questions asked  

Okay, obviously this isn’t an RPG, but I’ve pulled rank in order to include it because it’s such a juicy moral dilemma. What, dear reader, would you do if your boss ordered you to shoot someone—and only gave you a second to decide. Luckily for Steven, that’s not a situation I’m ever likely to be in. But for Sam Fisher, double-tapping a colleague is all in a day’s work. So it goes when midway through Pandora Tomorrow you step into one of those elevators with a mesh door. Suddenly you get a call from your handler, Lambert. “Fisher, we need Dahlia Tal dead. Kill her.” The elevator starts moving. “Don’t think, just do it.”

To this point as far as you’re aware Tal is an undercover agent in the Israeli secret police who’s been helping Fisher infiltrate a terrorist base, and has been portrayed as the kind of entirely sympathetic ‘goody’ NPC you expect from the series. The game barely gives you a second to make the call—I shot her, as did the guy in this video—and afterwards I remember feeling something close to actual actual shock.

If I’m being honest, there was also some exhilaration that the game had thrust such a horrendous decision on the player with zero foreshadowing. Brilliantly, at least in terms of design, if you kill Tal you don’t get any explanation as to why it was necessary. Whether or not I’d made the right decision was just about all I could think about for the rest of the game.

A quick trip to Wikia now reveals that Tal was in fact planning the ol’ switcheroo on Fisher, and had a team of snipers waiting to ambush him outside the facility. If you decide to let her live, Lambert gives you a bollocking and explains the deal with the double cross. It always disappointed me that although subsequent Splinter Cell games also came with tough decisions, none felt as startling as that murderous phone call. It’s also a pity that Pandora Tomorrow doesn’t appear to be on GoG or Steam currently. Time for a stern talk with Ubisoft.— Tim Clark

Knights of the Old Republic - Do as I command 

Playing the Dark Side in Knights of the Old Republic was way more fun, but this bit was twisted. Towards the end of the game, as you take on the mantle of the Sith and confront your party about their allegiances, things get pretty heated. The purehearted Mission Vao wants to redeem you, while her loyal wookiee friend Zaalbar is stuck in an impossible situation. He has a life debt to you, but loves Mission dearly. What's the most evil possible thing you can do, in this situation? Use Force Persuasion to convince Zaalbar to stab, strangle, or shoot Mission to death, while she shouts "It's me, Big Z! Noooo!" I don't think that's how the life debt is supposed to work.— Wes Fenlon

Planescape: Torment - I have no body and I must scream 

Planescape is full of potential bastardry, from selling your companions into slavery to, well, everything involving Deionarra. But in the Nine Hells of Baator there's an especially memorable moment. The Pillar of Skulls is where sage souls whose lies resulted in someone else's death are punished by being turned into chattering heads trapped in a column of flesh for eternity. The heads trade their knowledge for sacrifices, and know things you can't learn anywhere else. 

This is where you discover that one of your companions, a wisecracking floating skull named Morte, is an escapee of the pillar who has been trying to atone for his sin by serving you. Knowing this, you can put him back into the Pillar of Skulls in return for which it will answer one question. I don't know if shoving the first friend you make in the game back into a mass of bone and putrid flesh for eternity in trade for some information counts as Lawful Evil, Chaotic Evil, or Neutral Evil but whichever it is you are a dick for doing it.— Jody Macgregor

Fallout 2 - All is fair in love and war 

Fallout 2 was the first game I can recall where you could be truly evil—like, really, really evil. If you, like me, ended up sleeping with Miria (or her brother Daven), you'd be forced by her father into a shotgun marriage, straddling you with a completely useless companion. If you're truly evil, you can make the best of a bad situation and profit in the process. If you head over to The Hole or New Reno, you can pimp off your spouse for some extra caps or, if you encounter trappers, have Miria earn you some gecko skins by doing the dirty. That's probably not what her father intended to happen when he forced you to marry her.

Even worse, if you tire of any of your companions (and you don’t just let them get killed in a fight), you can sell them into slavery and be rid of them forever. ‘Losing’ Miriam to Metzger in The Den was my eventual choice, and when I happened to return to Modoc and mentioned what happened to her father, Grisham, the old geezer had a heart attack. RIP, dad, and thanks for the shotgun wedding.

— Jarred Walton

Tyranny may not have been the commercial success Obsidian and Paradox were hoping for, but it’s not been forgotten. Its first expansion, Bastard’s Wound, continues the story of fighting or working for Kyros, the titular tyrant, and is due out on September 7. 

Bastard’s Wound opens up a new region for players to explore, where a settlement has sprung up far from Kyros’ gaze. Your goals there will largely depend on how you finished the main game. You might end up trying to bring Kyros’ unpleasant justice and order to this hidden realm, or maybe you’ll find a way to undermine your old boss. 

Though my playthrough ended in a series of mostly unsatisfying fights, it remains one of my favourite RPGs of recent years. Obsidian really doubled down when it came to giving players the ability to shape the world around them, and did so without making the game 50+ hours long. The ending left me with a lot of unanswered questions, though, so I relish the chance to return. 

Paradox Interactive's recent round of price increases did not go over well with fans. The blowback was so bad that the publisher was ultimately forced to roll them back and promise refunds, or reimbursement "with games of a value exceeding the difference," to everyone who purchased any of its games at the higher prices. But the timing was a problem: The walkback came right at the start of the Steam Summer Sale, and Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester said that it wouldn't be possible to deal with the refunds until after it was over. 

The sale came to an end today, and Paradox has now revealed the details of its compensation plan. "After exploring options with our sales partners, we’ve come to the conclusion that partial refunds (as in, refunding the price difference) aren’t practically possible," Paradox senior community manager Escher explained. "Instead, we will gift everyone who purchased any Paradox product between May 17 and today (including pre-orders of Steel Division: Normandy 44 made before May 17), in any currency except USD (where prices were not changed), a free copy of a full PC game or two DLC, as a gesture of goodwill." 

Gamers eligible for the freebie can select from Stellaris, Hearts of Iron 4, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4, Magicka 2, or Tyranny, or any two of the HoI 4: Death or Dishonor, EU 4: Third Rome, CK 2: Monks and Mystics, Stellaris: Utopia, or Tyranny: Tales from the Tiers DLCs. If you already own all of them, you'll give credited with "equivalent giftable keys" instead. Players who purchased their games from GOG or or the App Store will be able to claim their game or DLC from either of those platforms instead; if you purchased through Origin or Twitch, you're not eligible for the freebie because their prices never actually went up on those storefronts. 

To claim your free stuff, fill out this form, which will require your order ID, original purchase currency, platform information, a copy of your receipt, your email address, and of course a note of which game or DLC you'd like. You have until August 9 to make your claim, but Escher warned that they won't be handed out immediately: Paradox is currently aiming to have everything wrapped up by September 30. As for the price changes that started all the trouble, he said they have all been rolled back to their pre-increase levels, and will be held there for three months. 

It looks like yesterday’s Tyranny tease was indeed for some new DLC. Today, Obsidian announced Bastard’s Wound, also the name of the region the DLC is set in. It’s due out later this year. 

“The Bastard's Wound region is all new to Tyranny, with a host of new quests, and new people to kill, betray, or befriend,” said Obsidian. “With this new expansion, we delve deeper into the mysteries of Terratus as players bring Kyros' justice (or their own version of it) to a new corner of the Tiers. In addition to the new region, Bastard's Wound gives players a chance to learn more about their companions in a trio of quests tied to key members of their traveling group.”

In the region of Bastard’s Wound, refugees hide from Kyros, the Overlord, and players will be able to determine their fate. Unfortunately for them, my character is a total arsehole, so things probably won’t go too well for these poor refugees. 

Before that, however, Obsidian is releasing an event pack called Tales from the Tiers, fattening up the base game with new encounters and stories. It will be accompanied by a free update that tweaks combats, skills and lets you retrain your character and companions, along with adding a New Game + mode. 

Tales from the Tiers and the free update will be available from today. 

Cheers, Polygon.

Obsidian’s villainous RPG Tyranny might be getting some DLC in the near future, and the studio has been teasing an announcement on Twitter. 

Two cryptic tweets appeared over the weekend, each with a single piece of art, a volcano and perhaps a dungeon wall, accompanied by a date. June 13. That’s tomorrow, in case you’ve lost your calendar. 

What is going to be announced is anyone’s guess, but given that the end of Tyranny left things open for more adventures, there’s a good chance it’s some DLC. Less likely is a sequel, unfortunately, as Tyranny wasn’t nearly as successful as Obsidian’s other recent RPG, Pillars of Eternity. 

We’ll find out tomorrow. 

Cheers, PCGamesN.

For our recent special edition magazine, PC Gamer: The Ultimate RPG Handbook, we asked game developers about the future of role-playing—how they'd like to see the genre evolve, and what advancements we can expect in the years to come. Here, as a supplement to that feature, you can read Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart's thoughts on the future of RPGs. PC Gamer: The Ultimate RPG Handbook is out now in UK newsagents, and through My Favourite Magazines.

PC Gamer: How exactly would you define “role-playing game”, right now?

Feargus Urquhart: For me, role-playing is what it has always been. It’s about choice. It’s about letting players do what they want to do, and having the game react to their particular way of playing the game. In the early days of CRPGs it was mostly about party choice. Players could choose to have certain classes in their party, but there were always more classes than party slots. So, players made choices, and then had to fight their way through the game with that party. In modern RPGs those choices have become much more about what type of role the player wants to play – are they good, evil, male, female, straight, gay, violent, charismatic, stealthy, etc… We talk a lot in the industry about AR and VR, but often look at the best RPGs as the best way to escape from reality, and immerse yourself in another world.

PCG: What do you think have been the most important role-playing games of the past few years? Which games have inspired you?

FU: It’s probably been more than a few years, but I was always impressed with the Mass Effects. You have to play a more specific role, but they really fulfill the feeling of being James T. Kirk in many ways. More recently, the Witcher 3 did an incredible job of creating a very living world, and it’s cool to play an RPG with a bit more of an action slant. When it comes to Fallout 4, no one does it better than Bethesda in creating a visually dense environment helping to really put you in the post nuclear world of Fallout. I’d also like to point out Spider, another RPG developer, who is still learning the craft, but has made some interesting games with Mars: War Logs and Technomancer. I’m interested to see where they go in the next few years.

PCG: Broadly speaking, what would you say are the topics, types of subject matter or story themes that you think RPGs will explore (or explore more) in the next few years? Are there any kinds of story you personally wish that RPGs would look into more - or less?

FU: Funnily enough, this is something we talk about a lot. We ask ourselves questions like, if Fallout came out now, would it resonate the same way as it did in 1997. Fallout was made by a bunch of Gen Xers – the cold war kids. Now-a-days, I think we should look at how invasive technology has gotten into our lives, where AI is going, what is it to be human or machine (Tears in Rain by Bruna Husky is a cool book about that), hacking biological viruses, could anything we want be printed in twenty years and what would that mean, and what is the natural progression of mega-corporations like Apple and Amazon and their ecosystems? I’m not trying to get all paranoid here, but it’s interesting to take a lot of these things to a logical end, particularly when I think those things are concerning to a lot people.

PCG: Where do you see the most room for growth in terms of game mechanics and systems? And again, is there anything you wish RPG developers would look into more?

FU: I want our games to feel just more real with even more choice for players. I don’t mean real from the standpoint of how they look, but that you just feel a part of the world. It’s not a world that starts and stops as the player enters and then exits an area. It’s a world that feels like it is always moving. A denseness of experience. I read an article about Blade Runner years ago, where one of the guys working on the set sat down in Deckard’s apartment, looked around, and then realized that it truly felt like someone lived there. That’s what I want us to hit not just with how an area looks and feels, but with the choices that players have as well.

PCG: Are there any technologies or platforms you think will strongly affect the evolution of role-playing games at this stage (e.g. VR or distributed processing)?

FU: I like to say that RPGs are probably the most adaptable of the game genres. We’ve been playing them since monitors only had one color, and I think we’ll be playing them into the generation of VR and AR. Ultimately, I always go back to how RPGs are about the experience of choice, which is not about the technology, but about what we let them do.

PCG: How do you think your own projects have contributed to the genre's evolution? If you could do anything differently, what would it be?

FU: I wouldn’t screw up the entire balance of Fallout 1 by inventing the Turbo Plasma Rifle. That was really dumb on my part. Now that’s me personally, and not the fault of anyone else at the time back in Black Isle Studios. What I think we have contributed is constantly pushing player agency, multi-faceted deep companions, and that RPGs can both be non-linear and have compelling stories. I think we can all do more there as well, but I am incredibly proud of what the teams at Black Isle Studios and Obsidian have been able to do when creating what is our own unique flavor of the RPG genre.

RPGs have, for some time, been enslaved by the idea that every decision should be filtered through a lens of good or evil. Who are you, what are your deeds, and how do others view you? Many RPGs grant access to different quests or abilities depending on your morality rating. But Tyranny's reputation system dares to be different, and in the process it creates space for characters that don't need to fit into arbitrary definitions of good or bad. Tyranny's moral relativity proves why the whole system is pointless, and why RPGs should aspire to do better.

In Tyranny, you're the Fatebinder, an agent of a totalitarian empire that's wrapping up a global conquest. Your mission is to bring Kyros' law to her new subjects, but how you interpret and execute that law is up to you. Obsidian Entertainment has made no secret that Tyranny is about what happens after evil has won that pitched battle against good. But slogans like "sometimes evil wins" are misleading because, ultimately, Tyranny isn't really about evil. Sure, Kyros' secret weapon is magical Edicts that can turn entire cities to rubble. But then again, I live next to a popular country that at one time reduced two Japanese cities to nuclear craters. Like in real life, nothing in Tyranny is black or white.

That theme is explored in a complex reputation system that puts your basic morality meter to shame. Instead of judging whether an action is universally good or bad, each major character and faction will filter it according to their principles. Those actions aren't mapped on a single spectrum, but influence two separate meters. For factions, their opinion of you is summarized by favor and wrath. Companions see you through the lens of loyalty and fear. There's no tug-of-war between the two, as each are independent of the other, which allows for very complex relationships. Barik, for example, is so loyal to me I'm convinced he'd fall on his sword if I told him to, but he's also terrified of me probably because I'd consider asking him to fall on his sword. Relationships like these show how firm a grasp Tyranny has on the nuances that can exist in personal relationships.

By avoiding an all-encompassing morality system, Tyranny itself avoids judging my decisions. When I chose to sacrifice a vulnerable character for the good of thousands, a popup didn't alert me that I had gained 25 evil points. It's up to me to wrestle with whether or not that was the right thing to do.

When you compare that to RPGs like Mass Effect, you begin to see how limiting the conventional morality systems can be. By designing choices that are definitively good or bad (or in this case paragon or renegade) BioWare's system quantitatively measures your character's morality in the eyes of 'god' the game itself. In Tyranny, it's measured relative to your relationships. During one of the biggest decisions in Mass Effect, you have to decide whether to save the Citadel Council or sacrifice them to focus on repelling a Reaper assault already you can tell which option is considered good and bad. I don't think it's exactly fair to be considered a renegade because I chose to focus on an imminent threat to the entire galaxy first.

Law of the land 

My problem with a universal set of morals in an RPG is the way it makes my character feel inconsistent. Take Fallout 3 for example, where Bethesda haphazardly defines what's wrong and right in a lawless wasteland. It's perfectly fine for me to saw a woman's head off with a kitchen knife but only because Fallout has made a moral judgment on her: she's a bandit. But if I so much as take an ashtray off of someone's coffee table when they're not looking, I'm a bad person. It doesn't matter how I, my companions, or anyone else feels. Fallout says it's bad, so it's bad.

Because these systems tend to assign points to each decision, it also reduces morality to a basic grade scale with some hilarious and reductive results. I can farm up all the positive karma I want in Fallout 3 and then walk into Megaton and crush a resident's skull with a baseball bat.

"I know he crushed Jerry's head like a watermelon and drank his blood in front of the kids," they'd say, "But I dunno, he did give that homeless man some clean water a few times."

Morality doesn't work like that, and good decisions don't negate our bad ones. Reducing every decision to 'angel points' or 'devil points' ultimately weakens the writing of RPGs because it removes extrinsic rewards and ambiguity. It discourages players from interpreting for themselves whether something was bad, good, just, immoral, or something in between. While Tyranny's reputation system does grant reputation-specific abilities, they don't feel like carrots on a stick meant to entice you one way or the other. No matter what decisions you make, you'll earn extra abilities depending on how factions and characters feel about you.

Roleplaying games, more than any other genre, aspire to create believable characters and situations I feel invested in but they undermine that ambition by slapping a big tacky meter that simplifies who my character is. Morals aren't absolute truths, they're a reflection of the societies and cultures we belong to. The more games start creating systems that better understand this or better yet ignore the idea of a moral compass altogether, the more thoughtfully we can explore choice and consequence.

Obsidian's "evil conquers the world" fantasy RPG Tyranny came out yesterday, and it's really very good. Maybe not quite a classic, as we said in our review, but still well worth the time of any fan of the genre. And if you're playing it, here's something you might not know, but probably should: You can earn "daily rewards," in the form of randomly-distributed consumables, just for playing while connected to a Paradox account.

"You will receive one daily reward for playing logged in to a Paradox account on consecutive days," the release FAQ states. Those rewards include:

• Healing Potion (Fine) - 50% HP Healing Potion (Superior) - 100% HP
• Potion of Revival - brings a fallen party member back from KO
• Cairn's Leaf - +4 Armor, +20% Endurance defense
• Oldwater - +10 Arcane Armor, +20% Magic defense
• Potion of Elemental Barrier - +10 Shock/Fire/Frost Armor, +50 Defense vs. Paralyzed/Burning/Frozen
• Dire Remedy - 120-pt Stasis Shield, +4% Max Health
• Potion of Heroes - +2 to all Attributes
• Scarlet Poison - Poisons enemies on Crit
• Fatiguing Toxin - Weakens enemies on Crit
• Potion of Invisibility
• Skycap - +10 Lore, +10 Magic Skills, +4 Wits

"Free stuff" seems like the sort of thing that would be prominently noted somewhere, but I don't see any mention of it on the Steam page, and it also appears to have caught the PC Gaming subreddit by surprise. The response among Redditors isn't entirely enthusiastic, either. Paradox accounts are free and therefore so are the rewards, but some players have expressed concerns that the extra consumables will throw the game out of balance or worse, that they're just being softened up for a future in which these extras become non-optional, and non-free.

Personally, though, I'm inclined to think that Reddit user princessprity has the right approach. If you don't like it, "Just don't take advantage of it. Boom, fixed."

The Tyranny launch trailer, since I don't think we've looked at it yet, is below.