Though no concrete date has been revealed for Tyranny (Wish I had a nickel for every time I had to type that), its ambiguous “late 2016” release must be getting close, since Obsidian’s developer’s diary has finally pulled back the curtain on the game’s combat.

Our own hands-on preview of Tyranny revealed a turn-based-with-pause combat system, but due to time constraints, we didn’t get a good look under the hood, so to speak.

The developer diary entry posted last night fills in the rest of the picture, however:

First of all, the same crit/hit/graze/miss system employed in Obsidian’s previous CRPG, Pillars of Eternity, has also been adopted by Tyranny. Though many disliked several aspects of its internal mechanics, that was one I rarely heard criticized and found awfully clever myself. This similarity to Pillars of Eternity also continues in the available damage types, with Tyranny using the same Slash/Pierce/Crush/elemental categories of attacks that travelers of the Dyrwood have already grown accustomed to exploiting.

Deviating from their previous game’s system is the party mechanic itself, which not only limits players to four combatants, but cleverly offsets the smaller roster by allowing for spell combinations to be employed. Sounding much like Dragon Age: Origins and its “Fire + Oil = Inferno” spell combo system, Tyranny encourages player characters to combine their abilities with those of their companions to create new and more powerful attacks.

Perhaps most surprising to hear is that these attacks are now all based on cooldowns rather than a spellbook-based memorization limit. How that balances out is something we’ll hopefully see as more information is revealed.

One other development worthy of noting is that Tyranny finally opened up its GOG and Steam profile pages, so those wishing to camp out on them and hit F5 until they’re updated with a release date may now do so.