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

Infinitron

I post news
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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
Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...r-to-fallout-new/id1039413502?i=1000441825263

The Outer Worlds Is An RPG About Controlling The Narrative

ekot2bprcqy98hdjnqtu.jpg


If you fall into the category of people who believe that 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas was the best game in the series, then The Outer Worlds might be for you. Last week at E3, I spoke to the game’s co-director, Leonard Boyarsky, for a bonus episode of Kotaku Splitscreen digging deep into this cyberpunky role-playing game.

In a behind-closed-doors session at a booth belonging to Private Division, the Take Two-owned publishing label behind The Outer Worlds, a few developers from Obsidian Entertainment gathered to show off the game. Playing through a 20-minute demo, they shot and bartered their way through a mission on a failed colony planet called Monarch. It looked great, combining sci-fi gunplay and abilities (plasma rifles! slow time!) with the massive dialogue trees and branching paths that Obsidian fans expect. The demo showed off a variety of different ways to approach each chunk of the mission, and it looked weird, quirky, and fun.

Then I spoke to Boyarsky about developing The Outer Worlds, player choice, gunplay, the scope of the game, and much more. Listen above, or read an excerpt here:

Jason Schreier: Obviously this is a game about player choice, but it’s also a game that explores some very relevant political topics: corporations, dystopia, capitalism. Is there something you’re trying to say with this game? Is there a message you’re trying to send?

Boyarsky: Ironically, when we first started this, it didn’t seem quite as prescient as it does now, cause we started it in April of 2016. It’s become a little bit more pointed than we had hoped... Even more than this being about capitalism or corporations, it’s really about people controlling narrative and stories. And if people control the story you tell yourself, then they kind of control you.

We always love making a game where the player comes from outside, and we’ve done that again here—you’re coming into this world where all these people have been indoctrinated into this way of thinking, and even the people who are rebelling against it have been brought up in that system, so the ways they think about rebelling against the system are also created by the system. So the player comes in and looks around and says, “This is insanity.” That’s really where we were at, and it seems a lot more prescient and pointed than we may have originally wanted it to be. It obviously talks a lot about corporations and how they are, so that’s not an accident, but we’re all about exploring philosophical themes while having a fun, great game experience.

We don’t ever want it to get too heavy. We don’t ever want it to feel like we’re lecturing people or that we are trying to make a very specific point. We tried really hard to make sure that no matter what character it is in the game, they feel like they’re very realistic and they have realistic motivations. When you talk to the people on the board, they have a very realistic, or at least understandable, outlook. You might not agree with it at all, but it makes sense why they think that way.

"Cyberpunky"???
 

Duraframe300

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I imagine Schreier didn't like to hear that last part, especially considering where he wanted to steer that question.
 

Duraframe300

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How does this teenage voice come out from that guy :P

*Oh, you can side with the board, what kind of narcs are playing this game *heheheheeheheheehhe**

Urge to punch rising. I mean the questions aren't bad, but Schreier is an annoying dick. You can literary hear how two-faced that guy is as a person.
 

Dishonoredbr

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Listen to this podcast make think who made the trailers because they give a total different impression if you go just by them.

Everything that they shown in the trailer put the corporations in the badlight and nothing more than ''Corporations bad'' then intreview Leonard go all in how about is more ''What if'' story about corporations controling the narative of this world, how you need to find out who's telling the true or what you belive is true , how corporations are more than evil but actually have a good points and it's make sense that to them is why is so great do what they're doing , etc..

Like how the fuck you fucked up your trailer like that? Or was intentional? Idk.
 

Tigranes

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10,350
Listen to this podcast make think who made the trailers because they give a total different impression if you go just by them.

Everything that they shown in the trailer put the corporations in the badlight and nothing more than ''Corporations bad'' then intreview Leonard go all in how about is more ''What if'' story about corporations controling the narative of this world, how you need to find out who's telling the true or what you belive is true , how corporations are more than evil but actually have a good points and it's make sense that to them is why is so great do what they're doing , etc..

Like how the fuck you fucked up your trailer like that? Or was intentional? Idk.

Trailers are trailers, and given their new position now where their PR is managed through Microsoft... I'd imagine they wanted it to be as simple as possible. And they would be right, marketing wise. It's probably by design that the second half of the trailer is where they at least get into talking about C&C as a major component of the game.

Remember the This is the new shit dragon age trailer?
 

Makabb

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It's a parodic clown world. It's not inhabited by downtrodden masses who are being exploited by big business, but by a bizarre subculture of people who casually greet each other with marketing slogans. And the people opposing this subculture don't appear to be some organized revolutionary cadre, but a collection of outcasts and misfits.

Sounds like Codex
 

Whipped Cream

Learned
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Listen to this podcast make think who made the trailers because they give a total different impression if you go just by them.

Everything that they shown in the trailer put the corporations in the badlight and nothing more than ''Corporations bad'' then intreview Leonard go all in how about is more ''What if'' story about corporations controling the narative of this world, how you need to find out who's telling the true or what you belive is true , how corporations are more than evil but actually have a good points and it's make sense that to them is why is so great do what they're doing , etc..

Like how the fuck you fucked up your trailer like that? Or was intentional? Idk.

Yeah, I've been worried that the theme of the game would just be "corporationz r evil m i right lolz". What Boyarsky talked about in the interview sounded way more interresting.

Honestly I think that the people in charge of the marketing campaign just aren't that good at their jobs. From the three gameplay snippets we have seen two of them had someone annoyingly talking over the gameplay all the time and the other one was just them firing up the most recent build, showing half a quest with no voice acting and then randomly killing a bunch of innocent NPCs. Not to mention the whole Epic Games Store controversy, which hurt the game quite a bit.

They really should take a page out of CD Projekt Red's marketing book. CDPR's marketing of Cyberpunk 2077 has been masterfull so far.
 
Last edited:

Infinitron

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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
A lot of common video game marketing practices seem like holdovers from a previous era that no longer make sense.

In particular, publishers seem to have a habit of treating YouTube as a stand-in for older forms of advertising, instead of recognizing it as a place where they can do whatever the hell they want.

They think of their their own YouTube channels as stand-ins for TV commercials, only good for uploading trailers. They think of the media's YouTube channels as stand-ins for magazines, so that's where they put the gameplay videos.

It's completely retarded. Every damn game developer in 2019 should be uploading lots and lots of full-length gameplay reels to their YouTube channel. There's no reason for that shit to be hidden away on IGN and GameSpot with a game journo talking over it.
 

Nano

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
Every damn game developer in 2019 should be uploading lots and lots of full-length gameplay reels to their YouTube channel. There's no reason for that shit to be hidden away on IGN and GameSpot with a game journo talking over it.
Um, no thanks. I'd rather not have such a large amount of a game's content spoiler-ed before release. Besides, how many people would actually bother watching all of them?
 
The Real Fanboy
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Oct 8, 2018
Messages
1,121
Listen to this podcast make think who made the trailers because they give a total different impression if you go just by them.

Everything that they shown in the trailer put the corporations in the badlight and nothing more than ''Corporations bad'' then intreview Leonard go all in how about is more ''What if'' story about corporations controling the narative of this world, how you need to find out who's telling the true or what you belive is true , how corporations are more than evil but actually have a good points and it's make sense that to them is why is so great do what they're doing , etc..

Like how the fuck you fucked up your trailer like that? Or was intentional? Idk.

He still said the corporations are the bad guys tho just that they have relatable motivations which is like good bad guy writing basics.
 

Whipped Cream

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There are diminishing returns to releasing too many gameplay videos. You want to be conservative with what you show off from the game, so that you still have fresh stuff to generate hype in the final marketing push of the game in the last couple of weeks before it is released. Thus you want every gameplay video you release to have maximum impact. Thats why I think CDPR's marketing strategy is clever. First they show off gameplay behind closed doors to journalists and try to make the journalists feel special. All the journalists write lots of articles where they go "zomg game looks amazing", which generates positive press and hype for the game since everyone wants to see the gameplay that the journalists keep saying is amazing, then two months later they release a superpolished version of the gameplay that people have been dying to see, which generates more hype.

Yes I personally find this strategy annoying, but I think its hard to deny that the strategy is very effective.
 

Roguey

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Ironically, when we first started this, it didn’t seem quite as prescient as it does now, cause we started it in April of 2016. It’s become a little bit more pointed than we had hoped... Even more than this being about capitalism or corporations, it’s really about people controlling narrative and stories. And if people control the story you tell yourself, then they kind of control you.
:butthurt:
So the player comes in and looks around and says, “This is insanity.” That’s really where we were at, and it seems a lot more prescient and pointed than we may have originally wanted it to be.
Or maybe not?
 

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