The Outer Worlds Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Terenty]

Isnt larping like one of the cringiest things in the world?

And its quite amusing how bethesda fans justify having almost zero roleplaying options in their games as this great design so they could imagine all kinds of things in their heads lol

 

[Black Angel]

The massive hardcore TES fanbase tends to disagree with you on that one. It's okay if it's not your taste. No need to get pissy about it.

Joined: Yesterday

I have this gut feeling that HarveyBirdman is actually a masterful troll, so I'm looking forward for tasteful shitposts he's going to make in the future

 

[Zibniyat]

Boethia
- orders you to sacrifice a follower to gain his favor
- turns our you were the sacrifice all along -- tells the cultists to kill you if they can after you present your own sacrifice
- once you win, he's still not happy -- you gotta go kill the old champion in a dungeon in order to become the new champion and claim your reward

This sounds so shallow and stupid. And it reminds of all those fetch/kill quests in Skyrim back when I played it, almost all quests involve killing and almost as a rule that means travelling to a distant dungeon for the same purpose. It gets repetitive and boring after a couple of quests.

As for the "TES lore", suffice it to say that it was butchered after Morrowind, and Skyrim really doubled down on stupidity after Oblivion. Only ES game worse than Skyrim in that regard is TESO.

 

[MajorMace]

I have this gut feeling that HarveyBirdman is actually a masterful troll

Maybe, he's particularly well-mannered for a bethestard.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The massive hardcore TES fanbase tends to disagree with you on that one.

This fucking n'wah right here.

 

[The Last Blackguard]

I come back after a 5 month break from Codex, to see some discussion on a non-Skyrim Video Game, and I come to a full page of talking about Skyrim.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

So, how about The Outer Worlds? I got a really iffy feeling from the trailer. The writing seems to be leaning really hard on its humor, and it's not really clicking for me. Good comedy is probably one of the hardest things to write, and one of the worst things to sit through if it's falling flat. Plus, the art reminds me a lot of brown, vaguely uninspired '00s/early '10s games. Rage comes to mind pretty quickly.

 

[Jedi Exile]

So, how about The Outer Worlds? I got a really iffy feeling from the trailer.

Everything which was and which wasn't in the trailer was already discussed. So people returned to usual debate about Skyrim. No one said it is good for what it is, though. Yet.

 

[Butter]

I almost said Skyrim is good for what it is (that being Animal Crossing + dragons). But then I remembered that the game isn't even worth playing without mods.

 

[Swigen]

I thought Skyrim sucked ‘til I got to that windmill murder mystery side quest, now I give it 10 outta 10! Mastapeece!!!

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Isnt larping like one of the cringiest things in the world?

And its quite amusing how bethesda fans justify having almost zero roleplaying options in their games as this great design so they could imagine all kinds of things in their heads lol

Actually what you describe is great incline when the mechanics are in place for it. It lets you use the most important parts of your being while gaming - your imagination and creativity. Take Kenshi for example. It's a giant sandbox but it's designed for you to make the story as you go, and the mechanics are there to create an awesome, unique to you story for yourself. It's a huge breath of fresh air from heavily scripted, dialogue tree CRPGs. So I think imagination and roleplaying with the tools the game gives you is a big plus when a game is made for you to do that. We have enough walls of text in CRPGs, including this one.

 

[Hellion]

Is this "shill for Skyrim using your main/alt account" month?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Isnt larping like one of the cringiest things in the world?

It is, but only because they're doing it out in public for the world to see and laugh at. When you do things in the secrecy of your home/apartment/attic then it's different. You can be the cringiest geek out there because if anyone happens upon you, it's either your mom or a serial killer.

I love my roleplayin' games but I keep everything D&D and computer game related hidden away in what I refer to as, "The Sex Closet." Not because anything sexual is there, but it's my version of finding out your parents keep whips and dog collars stored way in the back... and all you wanted was to see if you could find the Christmas gifts... but instead you find out your big, burly and strong father was just a bedroom bottom all along... and you can't ever respect him because of that shock.

I have to go.

 

[RapineDel]

When it boils down to "time was spent on making this game, it had a big budget and there's lots content in it, so it's a good game" is the argument, I don't think you're getting anywhere. People are saying its a bad RPG and it is, it's really only "good" if you feel what it's setting out to achieve is good.

A lot of work was put into Skyrim, for it's time and the fact it's a console game it's large, flashy, there's a lot to do and there's not much else like it on the Xbox/Playstation. But i's a game marketed as an RPG to people who don't play RPGs and it is only good for an audience who actually aren't interested in anything non Bethesda (or at least anything that's not reflective of console RPGs).

Like Oblivion, exploring the world is boring and pointless and the game is designed for you to follow quest chains to take you around the world. Once you've done enough of this you can fast travel anyway and the world becomes a hub for you to teleport from point a to point b, this creates a bit of an addicting cycle of turning in quests and clearing dungeons for that feeling of 'accomplishment". It's a trademark of the modern game industry in which they've realised it's better to make the player simply feel accomplished rather then have them be actually interested, engaged and fulfilled with what's actually happening.

Then you've got the guilds, while some things are an improvement from Oblivion the guilds are actually much worse. There's barely a single interesting quest to be found and they go down the road of radiant quests pretty quickly, they're mixed in quite cleverly as well which ensures players who haven't really played RPGs mistake them for real hand crafted content and don't second guess what they're doing. I'd say the majority of console Skyrim players aren't the type to do any research online and wouldn't even know this.

The simple version is this game doesn't actually have very much good content in it. It doesn't because Bethesda have worked out that good content doesn't sell video games, most people don't even finish games and it's only the first 15-20 hours that really matter in the post 2004 industry. Console gamers (or console minded) just want to chase that feeling of accomplishment, or get lost in something where they can make their own fun and Bethesda games do both of those things which is why they're so popular. It's not a matter of incompetence that their stories and characters are rubbish, if the content was too good it might upstage the players trying to make their own fun and they'd lose their immersion, not to mention if the main story was too interesting then radiant quests would stick out like a sore thumb.

Publishers like EA/Ubisoft picked up on this years ago as well which is why they're convincing everyone that gamers really want multiplayer, why all the open worlds revolve around collecting and clearing outposts and why Dragon Age Inquisition was a single player MMO unlike Origins and ME1. Creating proper content costs a lot more money and doesn't increase sales in the console market.

 

[prodigydancer]

Bethesda have worked out that good content doesn't sell video games, most people don't even finish games and it's only the first 15-20 hours that really matter in the post 2004 industry.

It's a case of self-fulfilling prophecy though. If you only have enough ideas to make 15 hours of non-repetitive content but feel obliged (for marketing reasons probably) to make your game 150 hours long, it's easy to predict what will happen. Now I'm rather indifferent towards Bethesda (spent maybe 20 hours on Skyrim, even less on Oblivion) but they're hardly the only company filling games with redundant repetitive crap.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

So, how about The Outer Worlds? I got a really iffy feeling from the trailer. The writing seems to be leaning really hard on its humor, and it's not really clicking for me. Good comedy is probably one of the hardest things to write, and one of the worst things to sit through if it's falling flat. Plus, the art reminds me a lot of brown, vaguely uninspired '00s/early '10s games. Rage comes to mind pretty quickly.

The comedy is stuck on 2010's tumblr.
- Finger guns "you just keep being you"
- big bad corporation has an art deco moon with a tophat; only thing missing is a monocle and rage comic watermark.

Other dialogue from gameplay was borderline retarded
-"look, i can say the dumb option and get a snarky response from the dyke!" -- doesn't effect the outcome of the conversation at all though
-Mr. Scientist: "you'll have need of my code and keycard" -- this is actual dialogue. The writers are so dumb that they think prepositions make you sound smart.

Combat is a slow motion version of McCree with tacked-on poor man's VATS. Shocker. See Leonard below.

"we don't let you romance, because it's been done before..."
"if you're close to being able to pass a speech check, we will let you know so you can pop a drug or go level up before finishing the dialogue" -- save-scumming! now a feature built into the game!

This is what Obsidian wanted us to see. This is what they thought captured the essence of Outer Worlds to hype up its target fanbase. Remember, nobody from the old days is left at the studio. Now it's just a bunch of purple haired gender studies majors writing the game. The last time Tim Cain did anything -> 2004. The last time Leonard did anything good -> 2005 (then he worked for Blizzard, and then he did some bullshit with nu-Obsidian). So don't get your hopes up.

 

[RapineDel]

Bethesda have worked out that good content doesn't sell video games, most people don't even finish games and it's only the first 15-20 hours that really matter in the post 2004 industry.

It's a case of self-fulfilling prophecy though. If you only have enough ideas to make 15 hours of non-repetitive content but feel obliged (for marketing reasons probably) to make your game 150 hours long, it's easy to predict what will happen. Now I'm rather indifferent towards Bethesda (spent maybe 20 hours on Skyrim, even less on Oblivion) but they're hardly the only company filling games with redundant repetitive crap.

Which is why I pointed to the entire AAA industry post 2004 and also mentioned EA/Ubisoft, some of the biggest publishers who're following the same trend that's been going on since this has been the case.

Bethesda is one of the easier companies to look at this with though as you have the very easy comparison to look at between Fallout 3 and New Vegas. On the surface and if only watching minor game play footage, New Vegas looks like an almost identical expansion pack but obviously if you play them both they're very, very different. It's not just a matter of "better writing, better perks" which is what you'll usually see on somewhere like reddit, they've been designed with a very different approach from the start.

In Fallout 3 while there's a few side quests, and a few settlements it's just a simple game play loop that Bethesda wanted to perfect, that is go anywhere, find outpost/dungeon, clear it, loot it, rinse and repeat. They want you to do this over the whole map, it takes 80 hours and they want you to have that "reward" feeling at the end of each of the location so you keep going. Any NPCs and the handful of quests are just there to add some purpose to the world you're doing this in. That's all it is, and anyone, not just RPG fans feel the same accomplishment which is why they've gone down that road.

NV is completely different in that it plays like a pre-2004 RPG. Yes, you could approach it the same with given on the surface it all looks the same but if you do, you're just going to find boring caves and the odd one room shack. This is why there's a clear path for most people to go south and all the way around to The Strip, because it actually plays like the Black Isle era RPGs, there's just a lot more filler because they were stuck with Bethesda's engine and were probably instructed to make the game similar to Fallout 3 (open world). If Obsidian had free reign with the license (and it still had to be an FPS) I would've expected it to be hub based like TOW.

 

[Grotesque]

Which game is better?
Skyrim or Witcher 3?

3... 2... 1...

Spoiler

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Game is going to be incline, just wait and see. Setting is going to be a standout and you'll see a lot of throwbacks to Arcanum and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Trussit.

 

[Big Wrangle]

Which game is better?
Skyrim or Witcher 3?

3... 2... 1...

Spoiler

Praise Geralde de Rivère!

 

[Volrath]

Isnt larping like one of the cringiest things in the world?

It is, but only because they're doing it out in public for the world to see and laugh at. When you do things in the secrecy of your home/apartment/attic then it's different. You can be the cringiest geek out there because if anyone happens upon you, it's either your mom or a serial killer.

I love my roleplayin' games but I keep everything D&D and computer game related hidden away in what I refer to as, "The Sex Closet." Not because anything sexual is there, but it's my version of finding out your parents keep whips and dog collars stored way in the back... and all you wanted was to see if you could find the Christmas gifts... but instead you find out your big, burly and strong father was just a bedroom bottom all along... and you can't ever respect him because of that shock.

I have to go.

Why do you assume the collar and the whip were for your dad and not the other way around?

 

[imweasel]

Game is going to be incline, just wait and see.

Anything that Cain and Boyarsky create will be ruined by that writing team. Space dyke was just the beginning.

 

[fantadomat]

It is time for this thread to turn in to realisation one,that the game will be mediocre at best and most likely shit.

 

[Abu Antar]

It will be game of the year and we will all cry tears of joy. Daddy Tim will save us.

 

[Doktor Best]

Only here to remind you that Gothic 2 was developed by 30 people in one year development time.

 

[AW8]

"we don't let you romance, because it's been done before..."

This is a major plus though.