The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony

[Drakortha]

The setting is so fucking good that managed to be codex top 10 despite the dog shit gameplay.

It remains a mystery to me how they could go so fast from this to the utterly generic Oblivion.

Xbox 360

 

[Wunderbar]

Morrowind is a boring walking simulator. Who cares about how immersive it is when the story sucks, the combat sucks, and the "characters" are one-dimensional.

Morrowind's story, setting and exploration don't suck.

 

[Danikas]

Morrowind is a boring walking simulator. Who cares about how immersive it is when the story sucks, the combat sucks, and the "characters" are one-dimensional.

The story doesn't suck. The presentation of the story kind of sucks though.

Dialouge sucks balls ,there are no memorable characters.

 

[Hot Coldman]

Morrowind is a boring walking simulator. Who cares about how immersive it is when the story sucks, the combat sucks, and the "characters" are one-dimensional.

The story doesn't suck. The presentation of the story kind of sucks though.

Dialouge sucks balls ,there are no memorable characters.

Me dont like your game

 

[Wunderbar]

Morrowind is a boring walking simulator. Who cares about how immersive it is when the story sucks, the combat sucks, and the "characters" are one-dimensional.

there are no memorable characters.

Crassius Curio though

 

[Van-d-all]

Day 300, I still haven't found Caius Cosades.

But you could kill him and still play!

 

[Hot Coldman]

Morrowind is a boring walking simulator. Who cares about how immersive it is when the story sucks, the combat sucks, and the "characters" are one-dimensional.

The story doesn't suck. The presentation of the story kind of sucks though.

Dialouge sucks balls ,there are no memorable characters.

Everyone grasps minor flaws compared to the whole, or at worst grasp at straws to hate on Morrowind. It's a great RPG, one of the best.

 

[Hot Coldman]

It doesn't push all of the buttons to make it a perfect RPG. Which game does?
In this case, player dialogue in Morrowind is non-existant and combat is only
passable.

*BUT IT'S NOT SHIT! ,-)

 

[Shadenuat]

Morrowind characters are very believable. Sure most of them are just npc in most basic form of that word, but they're all well realised in terms of how history and culture of Morrowind shaped them. Tradition, honor, duels, slavery, ALMSIVI, scummines, backstabbing, magical prowess, disgust to Empire, etc.

 

[Van-d-all]

The setting is so fucking good that managed to be codex top 10 despite the dog shit gameplay.

This. The Morrowind setting is just fucking brilliant, and beautifully realised in the game too. There's something unique and wild and cool to discover behind every corner, and it feels like it never ends. It remains a mystery to me how they could go so fast from this to the utterly generic Oblivion.

It's quite simple really. They ran on the fumes of creativity from Daggerfall original creators, then ousted and outfucked everyone creative the ZeniMax way, and went full Todd then onward. One thing I can't fathom, is how did they pull ESO. It's shit, but technically it's playable unlike other Bethesda games.

 

[Hot Coldman]

The setting is so fucking good that managed to be codex top 10 despite the dog shit gameplay.

This. The Morrowind setting is just fucking brilliant, and beautifully realised in the game too. There's something unique and wild and cool to discover behind every corner, and it feels like it never ends. It remains a mystery to me how they could go so fast from this to the utterly generic Oblivion.

It's quite simple really. The ran on the fumes of creativity from Daggerfal original creators, then ousted and outfucked everyone creative the ZeniMax way, and went full Todd then onward. One thing I can't fathom, is how did they pull ESO. It's shit, but technically it's playable unlike other Bethesda games.

Yea Morrowind was a weird transition period. And then came a new age of big 3D RPGs. ,-)

 

[Van-d-all]

ea Morrowind was a weird transition period. And then came a new age of big 3D RPGs. ,-)

Big, empty and creatively bankrupt.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

At least Morrowind is RPG, unlike this fps trash that is still in RPG section and not in general where it belongs.

 

[Reinhardt]

ea Morrowind was a weird transition period. And then came a new age of big 3D RPGs. ,-)

Big, empty and creatively bankrupt.

Mods will fix it!

 

[Prime Junta]

The thread may soon hit 130 pages... but how many of those pages are about TOW, I wonder?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The thread may soon hit 130 pages... but how many of those pages are about TOW, I wonder?

Too many.

 

[RNGsus]

Its awesome buying this brand new computer and the only good game out there is the new Metro.

Why buy new computer when my 3 year old clunker runs everyhting that comes out on high settings thanks to console degenerates.

So that I can play unreleased gayms.

Its awesome buying this brand new computer and the only good game out there is the new Metro.

How do you know it's good, I couldn't get past the 3 hours of hand holding and story faggotry the game threw at me

ur mom

 

[Reinhardt]

So it's shit after all?

 

[The Village Loon]

Hi I'm back. Sorry for coming back. The game has been on my mind a lot the past few days. I was so disappointed by the game that I'm trying to somehow analyze why the game doesn't work for me. Rarely, very rarely I quit a game before finishing it, and never have I quit a RPG so shortly into it, and I've been playing these things since the 80's. So here is part two of my blog post shitposting rant.

How did this game came to be anyway? Was the game planned by Cain who took it to Feargus? Did someone brew this game in their head for years before pre-production started? Was this game the obsession and work of love of someone? I'm gonna wager my left nutsack that Feargus and "the execs" saw an opportunity, a market, for this game and it went into pre-production with a clean slate. No one had any characters, companions, locations, anything concrete in their head before hand. So the game came to life by committee (Feargus). Thank you uncle Feargus, you'll be getting a christmas card again this season. And yes, I still have my right nutsack too, I haven't lost that in a bet yet, thank you.

Actually, since we are on the codex and people love to talk about nutsacks (Hi Cleve!), I'll bet my other nutsack that when pre-production started, they studied all the metrics and went "by the book" to give the player the "most enjoyable gaming experience" as proven by studies. The game throws so much loot at you it is just silly, but it is what metrics (Blizzard) show people like. It does not matter how easy or difficult the game is, you should not get 81 stimpacks as loot from the starting zone. I guess no one told them they aren't making an MMO or Diablo. Soon I might be a nutsackless man, but I doubt it.

They wanted to add perks but had no vision or creativity on how to actually make them fun. I am outright baffled if Tim Cain played through the game 20 times and didn't call out a meeting saying they are gonna scrap the gameplay, rework everything. Is THIS gameplay that Tim Cain likes?! I cannot see Mr. Cain smiling and being thrilled by choosing these perks, using these weapons, playing this gunplay. I tried WildStar for like a week at some point, and Cain worked on it for years. This game feels oddly like WildStar. Sad thing is, I would take Wildstar's combat, zones, items, char development, skills, basic gameplay, UI, even fucking writing over this. I'm shocking myself thinking about that, but it's true. WildStar was a better game than this. What am I saying?! I must've lost it. /wrist

And yes, the writing. Oh the writing. I don't want to post a novel here so I'll just skip everything else and get back to everyone's favorite asexual engineer, Parvati. Like I mentioned before, I felt Parvati was penned by at least two different writers. The character starts off ok and I was looking forward to her development. Reading the stuff in her place mentioned her mother. Who here thought she'd have a storyline about her mother? Oh, right, everyone. You can put your hands down now. It was the obvious storyline and made all the senses in the world.

This storyline popped right into my head the moment I read those notes: Her mother was called back to earth by the company, she as a little child was sent back to her father, never to see or hear from her mother again. Now it is almost 30 years later, her father is dead and she gets to leave the small shithole of a place she has lived in all her life. We get to know her mother has risen to a high rank in the company and is making tough choices to make the numbers match, and has a hand on how resources come to the town. We somehow get in touch with her, videolink, something. Parvati finds out, partly blames her for the death of her father. So Hollywood, so predictable, so basic, but also so workable. I was looking forward to it. If written well, it would work fine. What did we get instead? Dear lord. -_-

Parvati is a femme engineer, nice, good for you. She is asexual, great, I'm supportive, I'll buy you a drink. But it isn't enough for the writer to double, triple, quadruple on the minority stuff. It gets into the surreal, the comical, the outright absurd. How about we swap the sex roles? How about we make Parvati a male nurse from a small town who is asexual. He has never left his small town but now gets a cab ride to explore the world. They stop for gas and he meets another sexual minority male nurse at the first gas station after leaving home. He asks the cab driver to get them some cake and deodorant. That sounds ridiculous right? Although I would watch it if it would be directed by David Lynch. Oh and remember to write it so that the 2nd male nurse runs a hospital too.

No, I'm not a writer by any standards, I'm just a random shitposter. If I'd be a competent writer with some talent, I'd go to bed at night reading the Chris Avellone Appreciation Station thread and sobbing why the codex doesn't appreciate my talents. Now I go to bed reading general and touching myself. Not that I'm complaining.

Maybe I'm expecting too much from my RPGs. I'm expecting more adult themes (which doesn't mean immaturity), more depth, more substance, but all TOW offers is content that feels like it is aimed at high-schoolers, or under matured late teenagers. It feels like the game is aimed at the character of Parvati. If I would have to critique the game face-to-face to Cain and Boyarsky, I would be ashamed. I'd have a hard time laying it straight to them. I really do not want to shit on other people's work, but damn. Guys. Really. I feel bad for disliking the game so much. Really bad.

Simply put, the game has no hooks. Nothing. There isn't a single thing that makes me want to start the game up. Not a single thing I look forward to in the game. No need to over analyze the complexities of how the game portrays corporations in a futuristic setting. Does not matter. A game just has to do something well. Combat can suck but story work. Story can suck but gameplay be awesome. Atmosphere, the ambience be off the charts. Companions who I find interesting. Character development and interesting loot. Something. Give me something! TOW doesn't give you anything. Absolutely nothing. And that is why I can't muster to finish it, let alone play it past the 2nd zone. One word used a lot here lately sums up the whole game well, vapid.

 

[Hot Coldman]

Streak ruined.. there's TOW talk again.

 

[Van-d-all]

So it's shit after all?

On supernova + save anywhere patch + de-saturation with reShade + music from Rebel Galaxy squeezed it from 4 to 5/10 for me. Bored me in ~5h.

 

[the mole]

ea Morrowind was a weird transition period. And then came a new age of big 3D RPGs. ,-)

Big, empty and creatively bankrupt.

Like daggerfall right

Maybe the older crowd secretly loved dice rolls and unresponsive clunky controls we will never know

I would say many of the quests in oblivion were creative

 

[DeepOcean]

Morrowind combat is shit, Fallout 2 combat is shit. Everything is shit. Still two good PC RPGs though.

Spoiler

Morrowind:
+ You have spell maker
+ Guilds require you to be qualified.
+ There are tons of guilds and many of those hate each other.
+ The whole story is about a big religion fight with two completely different accounts about the same facts.
+ The setting is about the butthurt natives have about being conquered
+ Unique setting with recognizeble art style to this day and it isn't another Tolkien carbon copy.
+ Unique items that actually feel unique.
+ Tons of skills
+ different ways to solve quests
- Combat sucks.
- Streamlined from Daggerfall

Skyrim:
- no spell maker
- You can be an archmage without knowing any magic
- Only 4 guilds and you can be grandmaster of all of them
- The whole story is about dragons, generic fantasy of the lowest quality.
- Art style while not complete awful as Oblivion and its potatofaces, it isnt as creative.
- Static, unresponsive world, You can kill the emperor on one quest and still be on the side of the Empire on the civil war.
- Unique items are complete garbage, the loot is complete garbage.
- combat still sucks.
- Fetch quests galore.
- No attributes
- level scaling
- Streamlined is an understatement. a Down's Syndrome kid can play Skyrim.

Morrowing is a good but flawed game, Skyrim is everything is shiet, that is the difference. All the shit that turned Bethesda games into utter shit are starting showing their ugly heads on this game like bland loot, shit setting, shit writing, pointless exploration (what there is to explore if the loot is bland and the setting is shiet?), combat where you are profecient despite zero skill, being the master of everything, combat so easy that turns the whole stat system kind of pointless. I wouldn't say Obsidian did fallen on the same level of cynical imcompetency of Bethesda but it is getting close, they only need to streamline the two positives left, multiple choice in quests and C&C to get on a properly Everything is shiet level. Everything is shiet level is when companies reach the MVP level of product release and Obsidian is almost there.

I wouldn't be surprised seeing some lecture from Tim or Sawyer on the future claiming that streamlining C&C and multiple choice is actually a great thing like that lecture where Tim praised Fifa's player stat sheet and said how RPGs would be better streamlined.

 

[Van-d-all]

ea Morrowind was a weird transition period. And then came a new age of big 3D RPGs. ,-)

Big, empty and creatively bankrupt.

Like daggerfall right

Maybe the older crowd secretly loved dice rolls and unresponsive clunky controls we will never know

I would say many of the quests in oblivion were creative

Daggerfall was more a proof of concept than a proper game.

 

[Hot Coldman]

ea Morrowind was a weird transition period. And then came a new age of big 3D RPGs. ,-)

Big, empty and creatively bankrupt.

Like daggerfall right

Maybe the older crowd secretly loved dice rolls and unresponsive clunky controls we will never know

I would say many of the quests in oblivion were creative

The older crowd should love dice rolls. I especially like the 3D6 system is better though over D20, because: -

More predictable results
Critical results are more rare
Modifications to the result matters more

Also, the world is far superior in Morrowind compared to Daggerfall.