Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

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

HarveyBirdman

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 5, 2019
Messages
1,044
I can't understand why they're calling this dieselpunk. (First of all, fucking gay) Second of all, nothing they have shown resembles the concept even remotely. Wanna know what this game is? Worry no longer; I'll tell you.

Theme:
- From its inexplicable hyper-rich, FTL-capable, spacefaring ghetto societies, all the way down to its Pickle Rick humor, the theme is fucking Borderlands.
- Occasionally you'll get some serious stuff. These moments will be analogous to the times when Pickle Rick worries that he has treated Morty and the family poorly; they exist to forcefeed gravitas, giving the tumblr humor some faux pretentious context.

Story:
- The good guy story: Capitalism bad. Power to the people. Look at muh grey area (uneducated masses are bad at governing) in a slideshow once the game ends.
- Alternatively: lol wacky and exploitative capitalist pawn runs train on peasants for the thrillz. Look at muh dark consequences in a slideshow once the game ends.

Dialogue:
- It's nu-Bioware minus the romance. Deadfire with a budget.

Combat:
- Imagine combining Gamebryo's clunkiness with Borderlands' mindlessness. That's the combat.

Dungeon design:
- Mostly linear shootemups. Occasional secret rooms, looped hallways, and other similar "mazes" that were extensively tested on real labrats.

Companions:
- Ellen Degeneris raping the Han Solo role in an all-female reboot of Star Wars, probably some guy who wants to protect or avenge his younger sister or some shit, and Fawkes from Fallout 3 -- that about sums up every companion.

Levelling system:
- No innovations that will stick around in the industry.
- Only innovation they have is a half-baked "getting triggered by choice" system.
- Otherwise, just as bland as everything else you've seen.

Production values and replay-ability for different experiences:
- Will exist.

Final rating: 6-7/10. Decent to good.
 
Last edited:

Trashos

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2015
Messages
3,413
Yeah, I didn't get those vibes from the footage I have seen.

The 3D world has intense colors, and the companions look like punks instead of dieselpunk. I am not sure what they are saying in this interview, I can't reconcile it with the footage at all.
I'm sorry, the companions look like punks?

Does Ellie look to you like she belongs in the 1st part of the 20th century? To me she looks like she belongs in a Sex Pistols concert.
 

Hamster

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 18, 2005
Messages
5,934
Location
Moscow
Codex 2012 Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014
I can't understand why they're calling this dieselpunk. (First of all, fucking gay) Second of all, nothing they have shown resembles the concept even remotely. Wanna know what this game is? Worry no longer; I'll tell you.

Theme:
- From its inexplicable hyper-rich, FTL-capable, spacefaring ghetto societies, all the way down to its Pickle Rick humor, the theme is fucking Borderlands.
- Occasionally you'll get some serious stuff. These moments will be analogous to the times when Pickle Rick worries that he has treated Morty and the family poorly; they exist to forcefeed gravitas, giving the tumblr humor some faux pretentious context.

Story:
- The good guy story: Capitalism bad. Power to the people. Look at muh grey area (uneducated masses are bad at governing) in a slideshow once the game ends.
- Alternatively: lol wacky and exploitative capitalist pawn runs train on peasants for the thrillz. Look at muh dark consequences in a slideshow once the game ends.

Dialogue:
- It's nu-Bioware minus the romance. Deadfire with a budget.

Combat:
- Imagine combining Gamebryo's clunkiness with Borderlands' mindlessness. That's the combat.

Dungeon design:
- Mostly linear shootemups. Occasional secret rooms, looped hallways, and other similar "mazes" that were extensively tested on real labrats.

Companions:
- Ellen Degeneris raping the Han Solo role in an all-female reboot of Star Wars, probably some guy who wants to protect or avenge his younger sister or some shit, and Fawkes from Fallout 3 -- that about sums up every companion.

Levelling system:
- No innovations that will stick around in the industry.
- Only innovation they have is a half-baked "getting triggered by choice" system.
- Otherwise, just as bland as everything else you've seen.

Production values and replay-ability for different experiences:
- Will exist.

Final rating: 6-7/10. Decent to good.
I want to hope for the best, but this is most likely 90% accurate.:negative:
 

Kyl Von Kull

The Night Tripper
Patron
Joined
Jun 15, 2017
Messages
3,152
Location
Jamrock District
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
They’re not calling this dieselpunk—Boyarsky just said the idea “dieselpunk Deadwood,” was the original inspiration.

I can’t believe anyone who’s ever played a Tim & Leonard game would think the morality would be so black and white. There will be good guys and bad guys but sometimes helping the bad guys is the ethical thing to do. If their past work is any guide, most choices will have both upsides and downsides, morally speaking. e.g. Gizmo was the bad guy in Junktown, but his vision for the future is better for Junktown and if you help the good guy, Killian, the town slowly fades away into nothing.

From the one quest we’ve had described in these game informer pieces, you can find some medicine to save an old man who asked you for help, or you can sell it to an entrepreneur to mass produce, but it sounds like the old man either doesn’t make it or won’t be able to afford it. On a strict utilitarian basis, selling the medicine produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but you need to possibly let one old man die after promising to help him. IMO there will be a lot of quests where the real moral issue is whether or not you believe the ends justify the means.

The other thing they like to do is make the quest results hard to anticipate. You may think you’re doing the right thing but it causes bad consequences down the road.

I really doubt that the plot of the game will have you leading any kind of revolution. They keep saying that the whole society is indoctrinated to love their employers and this is one of the core pillars of the anarcho-capitalist setting. At best, it sounds like you’ll be able to defy the board and unfreeze your fellow colonists. If they do let you overthrow the board, I bet you’ll get more than just ending slides: revolutions ain’t pretty. The best outcome might be some kind of unsatisfying negotiated settlement that leaves the board in charge but limits their power.

Just look through the ending slides for Arcanum. It wasn’t just a good-evil binary, you had C&C along a bunch of other axes, with magic/technology being the most obvious.
 

jewboy

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 13, 2012
Messages
657
Location
Oumuamua
The politics reminds me of Jennifer Government and that's not a bad thing. I love that book. Laissez-faire dystopias can be cool and interesting settings.
 

Orma

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
1,698
Location
Kraków
Torment: Tides of Numenera
Everything We Know About Companions In The Outer Worlds

companiontop.jpg


You may be exploring a faraway star system in The Outer Worlds, but that doesn’t mean you need to be lonely. You encounter other people during your travels who are willing to fight by your side and join your crew, and who enrich your experience by offering different perspectives. We talked to a team of writers at Obsidian to get specific info on three of the companions you can recruit, as well as various other tidbits about the studio’s general approach to these characters.

Generally, one writer handles all of a companion’s interactions

If you take a liking to one particular companion, odds are good that you have a single member of Obsidian’s writing team to thank. Though parts of the process are certainly collaborative, all of a character’s interactions are usually guided by one person for consistency’s sake. “It’s a lot easier to keep any character in the hands of one person, because everyone’s going to put their own spin on a character to some extent,” says senior narrative designer Carrie Patel. “The more a character changes hands, the more you’re getting multiple different executions, multiple different flavors.”

The crew dynamic is important

While the team wants the companions to be interesting as individuals, they also need to cohere as a group. They banter as you walk around, interact with each other on your ship, and bring different capabilities into combat. “We knew we needed companions with sort of that Firefly flavor,” says narrative designer Nitai Poddar. “We wanted them to be a band of, not quite misfits, but different personalities coming together on the same ship. And we knew we wanted a fairly confined number of them so that each would be individual.”
ellie.jpg

Profile: Ellie
“She a professional sort of pirate, but she also has a very mercenary outlook toward a lot of things,” says senior narrative designer Carrie Patel. “She’s fairly pragmatic, pretty easygoing. I think it’s important, when you’re talking about companions, to have a spread of dispositions. She’s definitely not someone who’s going to get too mad at your for being the bad guy. And she has a few things about her past that she’s tried to get away from.”

You encounter them early

Opportunities to recruit companions are front-loaded, to avoid the sense of under-developed characters joining late in the journey. “You encounter all the companions in the first third of the game, because it’s no fun getting a companion in the last hour,” co-director Tim Cain told us at the game’s unveiling.

They help in battle and beyond

You can bring two companions along with you when you leave your ship. In addition to their unique special attacks, you can also give them weapons to steer their approach to combat. You also benefit from a portion of each companion's key skill scores; if a lock is too difficult for you to pick alone, bringing the right companion might give you the boost you need. If you need an even bigger boost, you can take certain perks to increase how much you benefit from your allies' aptitudes. "We realized that companions could be used a lot more tactically," Cain says. "We wanted to put in skills that control that."

You can do quests for them

Every companion has something you can help them with. While these tasks varying in length (don’t expect them all to be multi-stage, multi-hour affairs), they give players a chance to get to know the companions better – and get rewards to improve their performance or customize their quarters. “Some problem that is essential to their character that is explored in that particular quest,” Poddar says. “And that’s also something we like to ask ourselves when we start fleshing out these companions: What is their motivation? What is driving them?”
parvati.jpg

Profile: Parvati
“Parvati is a very sweet, naïve person,” says senior narrative designer Megan Starks. “She doesn’t really fit in with the community, because it’s all about conforming and putting the corporations first. As a mechanic, she likes to give personalities to the machines she’s working on and creating, and that doesn’t fit in very well with the society. So I think it’s nice to have two companions who are coming at it from opposite sides. Parvati saying ‘Oh, we should help these people,’ and then Ellie is a lot more like, ‘Well, me and mine.’”

Companions are cool, but not required

The Outer Worlds puts a big focus on player choice, and that extends to deciding whether or not you even recruit companions when you have the chance. Would you prefer to play as a loner? You can do that and finish the game, though you might miss some neat stuff. “With a game like ours, there’s a balance you have to strike, because you don’t have to recruit the companions,” Patel says. “You can have a full, complete experience of our game – minus the companion content – if you never recruit them. But at the same time, we do want them to feel very involved for players who choose to bring them along. While we have to be careful not to make them mandatory, we also look for ways to bring them in.”

Companions aren’t necessarily forever

When companions join, they aren’t swearing a fealty oath for eternity. If you do things they don’t like, they aren’t obligated to stick around. “We do have ways that a companion can choose to leave you,” says senior narrative designer Megan Starks.
felix.jpg

Profile: Felix
“Felix is a rebel without a cause,” says narrative designer Nitai Poddar. “According to some companions, he would also be a rebel without a clue. He’s a young, impetuous, brash kid who really loves fighting ‘the man.’ He doesn’t have a stable political philosophy beyond ‘smash the system,’ and he tends to get in trouble everywhere he goes. When the player finds him, he got into an altercation with his foreman, which may have involved his foreman making fun of his favorite tossball team – and that’s just not acceptable. Despite his problem with authority, Felix will latch onto the player very quickly.”

They aren’t governed by a morale system

If a companion does leave, it won’t be because of a gradual affinity erosion, or because you don’t give them enough random gifts. The game doesn’t quantify your relationships in that sense. Instead, their commitment to you is thrown into jeopardy depending on certain major choices you make. Plus, you will understand the characters’ personalities well enough to know their positions, so it won’t be a big surprise if they get upset when or if you cross the line. “Even if you lose a points-based morale system, I think you gain something by hand-crafting specific moments where a companion is like, “Why would you do this? You’re completely out of your mind!’” Poddar says. “And that also gives the player an interesting opportunity to say, ‘You might be thinking that, but here are my reasons why…’ and sometimes we can attach that to a persuade or leadership check, and that helps the player feel more rewarded.”

They are different, but unified

Companions have different (and sometimes directly oppositional) personalities and viewpoints, but they do have something that brings them together: You. “Them wanting to go with you unites them more than anything,” Starks says. “Because they still argue with each other, and it takes a while for them to get comfortable.” But they are also tied together by more than just physical proximity; in a world that values corporate loyalty and assimilation, they all have trouble finding what they want. “I think they all end up where they are, and they all end up willing to step back from where they start out, because they look at their situation and they realize something isn’t right or satisfying for them,” Patel says.

For more on The Outer Worlds, click on the banner below for more exclusive features during our month of coverage.
 
Last edited:

santino27

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
2,678
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Hoping the unannounced companions are a bit more interesting than these 3. The descriptions provided are obviously just thumbnail sketches of their personalities--which tend to lend themselves to using tropes as shorthand for description--but I'm not sure I trust Obsidian's witers to expand beyond the trope.
 

Terenty

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 29, 2018
Messages
1,367
They look like random npcs not companions, especially the dude. Look at his face, straight out if fallout 4
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
What a pointless fucking article. Every single bullet point about the companions could be "uh yeah this is an obsidian RPG."

It's weird how completely 'normal' they've made the companions, that's one thing that breaks the trend. At my most Fabulously Optimistic that's part of an interesting way to make these companions "not Semi-Special Ones following The Special One" but much more like normal people caught up in the clusterfuck you're rolling down the hill.

(The big-percentage bet, as with anything, is that they're just a bunch of shitty Carths.)
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
It's weird how completely 'normal' they've made the companions, that's one thing that breaks the trend. At my most Fabulously Optimistic that's part of an interesting way to make these companions "not Semi-Special Ones following The Special One" but much more like normal people caught up in the clusterfuck you're rolling down the hill.

This seems fairly par for the course for post-Avellone Obsidian ("Sawyersidian"), no?

Of course, it's only three of them. It's not unheard to have a few "straight man" companions and then some weirder ones.
 

ScrotumBroth

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2018
Messages
1,288
Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
After the initial response to the first video released, I think my thoughts have matured enough for me to say, the main disappointment is that I've expected something new and different, along the lines of Fallout, Arcanum or VTBM, but got served with New Vegas in No Man's Sky world. If Sawyer was the lead, it would be fine, expected.

It's just hard to imagine Tim and Leonard sitting down and being like, hey wanna do another New Vegas? It feels wrong.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
After the initial response to the first video released, I think my thoughts have matured enough for me to say, the main disappointment is that I've expected something new and different, along the lines of Fallout, Arcanum or VTBM, but got served with New Vegas in No Man's Sky world. If Sawyer was the lead, it would be fine, expected.

It's just hard to imagine Tim and Leonard sitting down and being like, hey wanna do another New Vegas? It feels wrong.

Is it? Whats so different from the usual Cainarsky games, at least on a high level?
I mean seriously, I'm running the Fallout/Arcanum checklist through my head and it checks pretty much all the boxes.
 
Last edited:

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,428
Location
Grand Chien
After the initial response to the first video released, I think my thoughts have matured enough for me to say, the main disappointment is that I've expected something new and different, along the lines of Fallout, Arcanum or VTBM, but got served with New Vegas in No Man's Sky world. If Sawyer was the lead, it would be fine, expected.

It's just hard to imagine Tim and Leonard sitting down and being like, hey wanna do another New Vegas? It feels wrong.
What's wrong with another New Vegas? Sounds great to me
 

ScrotumBroth

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2018
Messages
1,288
Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
After the initial response to the first video released, I think my thoughts have matured enough for me to say, the main disappointment is that I've expected something new and different, along the lines of Fallout, Arcanum or VTBM, but got served with New Vegas in No Man's Sky world. If Sawyer was the lead, it would be fine, expected.

It's just hard to imagine Tim and Leonard sitting down and being like, hey wanna do another New Vegas? It feels wrong.

Is it? Whats so different from the usual Cainarsky games, at least on a high level?
I mean seriously, I'm running the Fallout/Arcanum checklist through my head and it checks pretty much all the boxes.
There are far more educated people here than me who may bother explaining the differences, if you're lucky.

I'll just stick with my original statement
I've expected something new and different
New Vegas clone is neither.

They are known for making fresh cRPGs, the kind other people then try to recreate. It's not unreasonable to have thought that they've come together to do it again.
 

Barbalos

Savant
Joined
Jun 14, 2018
Messages
200
Two of these companions sound like cookie-cutter SJWs

Felix -
"He’s a young, impetuous, brash kid who really loves fighting ‘the man.’ He doesn’t have a stable political philosophy beyond ‘smash the system,’"

Parvati -
“She doesn’t really fit in with the community, because it’s all about conforming and putting the corporations first."

And both women look so androgynous they could easily pass for men.

Tbh this reveal killed a bit of my excitement for the Outer Worlds.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
After the initial response to the first video released, I think my thoughts have matured enough for me to say, the main disappointment is that I've expected something new and different, along the lines of Fallout, Arcanum or VTBM, but got served with New Vegas in No Man's Sky world. If Sawyer was the lead, it would be fine, expected.

It's just hard to imagine Tim and Leonard sitting down and being like, hey wanna do another New Vegas? It feels wrong.

Is it? Whats so different from the usual Cainarsky games, at least on a high level?
I mean seriously, I'm running the Fallout/Arcanum checklist through my head and it checks pretty much all the boxes.
There are far more educated people here than me who may bother explaining the differences, if you're lucky.

I'll just stick with my original statement

They are known for making fresh cRPGs, the kind other people then try to recreate. It's not unreasonable to have thought that they've come together to do it again.

Hah

Also again are they? In my opinion they've adhered to similiar design principles since Fallout which at least at a high level are all here.
The footage so far hasn't exactly shown it, but the concept art and their interviews certainly did.

From the alternate history mix with focus on internal consicentcy (with exceptions), over the choice focused quests and system design to a more hub based worldspace.
Sure seems like a Troika RPG to me.
The only major difference I see so far is the higher focus on followers/companions. On that note btw. its not like the Troika was known for *out there/crazy* followers either.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom