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

[Latelistener]

Although the "lesbian prom date" sidequest was retarded cancer.

Agreed. Parvati as such is a great character, but she isn't only a rare female mechanic, no, she is lesbian and asexual as well! And how convenient that at the first place you visit after meeting her, there is another rare female mechanic who is lesbian and asexual too. And it isn't only that! If you look at all the major NPCs, most of the females are strong independent women and most of the men are stupid failures. Or to come back to the optimal solution in Edgewater, if you follow it through, you have the constabulary occupied by two female sheriffs and a female deputy.

Those new Obsidian writers.

 

[Diggfinger]

Any news on actual sales figures?

 

[Duraframe300]

Any news on actual sales figures?

What does that even mean here?

Simple answer: None and you won't. As the game had an additional revenue stream that ate into the classic one (subscription vs hard sale) you won't get an accurate approximation unless you get hard revenue numbers. Which again, you won't.

Till then, PS4 numbers are the closest you'll get to reality.

 

[Diggfinger]

Any news on actual sales figures?

What does that even mean here?

Simple answer: None and you won't. As the game had an additional revenue stream that ate into the classic one (subscription vs hard sale) you won't get an accurate approximation unless you get hard revenue numbers. Which again, you won't.

Till then, PS4 numbers are the closest you'll get to reality.

Guess what I'm sayin' is:

Was the game a (big) fucking success or not

 

[Infinitron]

Any news on actual sales figures?

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...leonard-boyarsky.130421/page-223#post-6530900

 

[Diggfinger]

Any news on actual sales figures?

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...leonard-boyarsky.130421/page-223#post-6530900

Holy cow it sold 2 million units!!

Way to go Leon and Tim

 

[Roguey]

Holy cow it sold 2 million units!!

2 million shipped to stores, which meant that actual sales would be less than, but more than a million.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Sometimes it's just the writers writing what they know.

Let's be honest, the only thing they know is their woke social bubble where people address each other as comrade.

 

[gestalt11]

It's a common observation, made by people such as Tucker Carlson, that in the 21st century West women increasingly "have their shit together" more than men. They goof off less, they're more likely to earn a university degree, they seem more well-adapted to succeeding in bureaucratic structures where the most important thing is to follow instructions and get along to go along. Think of the stereotype of the corporate HR lady.

Not everything you see in a video game made by people from California is there to piss you off. Sometimes it's just the writers writing what they know.

Except 50% of university degrees are complete scams. Maybe the women getting medical related degrees have their shit together, but the huge number of women getting the other worthless degrees and putting themselves into massive debt to do so are actually just complete rubes who delusionaly think they have their shit together and believe they are better than the men who chose not to get scammed and are actually better off when they do something smart like go to trade school.

 

[Hellion]

PC Gamer seems to have gotten onboard the "TOW's corporate humor isn't funny" wagon, taking things up a notch by claiming that this happens because "the evil corporations that the game tries to satirize also exist in real life, so jokes about them aren't funny but depressing".

https://www.pcgamer.com/corporate-satire-in-games-isnt-funny-anymore/

Corporate satire in games isn't funny anymore
Rather than laugh, now I just feel sad.

To those who believed that videogames can't be funny, 2019 proved them wrong. The nihilistic absurdity of What the Golf! and the mischievous avian bants of PC gaming's favourite honking monster in Untitled Goose Game made up for whatever Borderlands 3 was trying to do with its scatological script.

The Outer Worlds should've been up there for me, too. I love the dark humour of Fallout, but something about Obsidian's latest effort left me cold. I stopped playing way before finishing it, despite it being relatively short for an RPG. That was the case due to various factors, but it wasn't just down to my backlog forcing me into my nightly 9 pm paralysis, which invariably leads to Skyrim.

No, it was its attempts at humour that hindered my curiosity to explore the rich and colourful Halcyon system. I'm not referring to the hilariously 'dumb' character builds you can create, but the parody of evil corporations that characterises this troubled part of the galaxy.

Early on you encounter Spacer's Choice: the faction that runs the towering Saltuna Cannery in the first major settlement, Edgewater. Here, graves are leased to the deceased and the company are paid compensation by those closest to them in the event of a suicide. Sick leave requests take weeks to process.

I quickly found the 'aren't big companies bad, haha' brand of jokes tiresome. Meanwhile, Journey to the Savage Planet's jests rubbed me up the wrong way, in precisely the same way. Like the factory workers of Edgewater, the explorers scouring the galaxy for humanity's next habitable planet on behalf of Kindred Aerospace are also treated as expendable property. After a laundry list of potential risks its staff could contract, ranging from nausea, feelings of emptiness, and death, travellers are urged in the event of an emergency to "contact your Kindred representative as soon as possible" with the caveat: "current rescue times exceed six months."

I'm fairly certain that, had I played both games a few years ago, I'd have laughed along as intended. Perhaps I'm just older now. But, at the same time, the world has changed. The richest 1 percent on Earth own more than double the wealth of 6.9 billion people. Amazon factory workers, without time for breaks, resort to relieving themselves in plastic bottles. People need their Alexas the day after they order them, after all.

The late-capitalist hellscapes that The Outer Worlds and Journey to the Savage Planet try to ridicule are not hypothetical situations lurking in the future. They exist today. As a result this satire just bounces harmlessly off its targets; it no longer has bite, and therefore, it isn't funny.

Corporate satire in videogames is missing something: hope. Satire needn't be throwaway slapstick like 2019's not-golf game, and the anti-social goose game. It can be constructive; created with the idea that a better future is possible.

If you're anything like me, you'll feel the world is pulling you, unwittingly and inexorably, in the wrong direction. Most jokes designed to undermine the powers that make that possible merely remind me of that situation. At best, I just roll my eyes whenever videogames cheerfully present their working characters as company property or make light of inequality and injustice. Mostly, I just feel sad.

 

[DalekFlay]

"Megacorps" like Disney do exist, but they are in constant competition with other companies. The Outer Worlds presents a dictatorship-like future where one corporation rules in authoritarian fashion, which is quite different. As discussed a ton when the game came out, it feels almost more like communism than capitalism run amuck, because of how it's presented. Though lobbyists for corporations like Disney do allow for substantial government control on issues of mutual interest to all corporations, which could be seen as similar.

 

[fantadomat]

"Megacorps" like Disney do exist, but they are in constant competition with other companies. The Outer Worlds presents a dictatorship-like future where one corporation rules in authoritarian fashion, which is quite different. As discussed a ton when the game came out, it feels almost more like communism than capitalism run amuck, because of how it's presented. Though lobbyists for corporations like Disney do allow for substantial government control on issues of mutual interest to all corporations, which could be seen as similar.

And who are those mythical "competitions"? Amazon,Goggle and Disney are monopolies lol.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Posting Megan Starks's updated resume for posterity. https://www.fictivate.com/games.html

The Outer Worlds / Obsidian Entertainment
Senior Narrative Designer (Team Lead)

Shipped titles: The Outer Worlds (PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One | Single-Player Sci-Fi RPG)
Rated 86 on Metacritic
Awards: to be added

Work experience:

• managed a team of game designers and writers to implement core features such as:
  • the critical path/main storyline content
  • companions
    • recruitment, character quest, main conversations, banter, POI barks, interjections, voice sets
  • player ship
    • ADA, the crew meeting, ship events, companion decor, player mementos
  • Phineas' orbital lab
  • voice sets
    • combat and ambient chatter for all factions and speaking creatures in the game, including companions
• designed and wrote
  • companions
    • SAM
    • Vicar Max (co-wrote with Leonard Boyarsky)
  • iconic, main characters
    • ADA, the Unreliable's Autonomous Digital Astrogator
    • Hiram Blythe, the Information Broker
    • Catherine Malin, a SubLight boss
    • Slaughterhouse Clive, the self-proclaimed Boarst King of Monarch
    • The Corporate Compliance Crew (also known as the C3s): Berthold, Donald, Addie, Hudson, Joy, and Lance
    • Also, some minor but memorable characters including but not limited to: Nelson Mayson, Agnes & Tucker Needham, Jesse Doyle, Ellen Chawla, Edna Ingmire
  • area content and regional storylines
    • Monarch: Fallbrook, C&P Factory, Stellar Bay
    • The Groundbreaker
  • factional characters (establishing a voice unique to the faction)
    • SubLight (the game's organized crime outfit)
    • Automechanicals (the game's robots)
  • quests, computer terminals, examinables / journals, items, and decor descriptions
• oversaw voice recording and character casting
• created marketing materials, ad copy, and trailer scripts including:
  • Gameplay trailer: "Come to Halcyon"
    • provided narrative direction, co-wrote trailer script
  • Taco Bell Commercial: "A Taste of Power"
    • assisted final script, co-wrote early script "Play It Your Way"
• participated in pr and community outreach

Heh, if that twat managed to change a light bulb she'd be "Responsible for single-handedly managing an overwhelmingly successful upgrade of advanced environmental illumination system with zero additional costs and no security incidents." :D

 

[Infinitron]

As discussed a ton when the game came out, it feels almost more like communism than capitalism run amuck, because of how it's presented.

I've thought about that but it's actually neither. The Board really seems to have been designed to be a plausible stand-in for any sort of bad government.

When the story requires it, the Board is fractious and weak, because the different corporations who make it up are in competition with each other and can't cooperate to improve the colony. Yet at other times, it might be totalitarian and overbearing.

The inconsistency is part of the deal. The corporations think they have a plan, but they're incompetent and falling apart. That's the real overarching theme of the game.

 

[DalekFlay]

I've thought about that but it's actually neither. The Board really seems to have been designed to be a plausible stand-in for any sort of bad government.

When the story requires it, the Board is fractious and weak, because the different corporations who make it up are in competition with each other and can't cooperate to improve the colony. Yet at other times, it might be totalitarian and overbearing.

The inconsistency is part of the deal. The corporations think they have a plan, but they're incompetent and falling apart. That's the real overarching theme of the game.

You're right that it's more complicated, I think it takes influences from a lot of sources. I keep trying to sum it up and it doesn't work. There's lots of stuff about an overbearing bureaucracy and living just to work and honor the state (or corporation here), which reminds me of communism. However there's also tons of stuff in it reference traditional "extreme capitalism" tropes as well. The core message as you say is an inept controlling elite who after screwing up focus on saving themselves, which can apply to either.

 

[Infinitron]

One thing the game vaguely gestures at is tying its main plot into the ideas of the Scientism and Philosophism ingame philosophies. So the Board's plan to just give up and put everybody back into cold storage is analogous to a kind of twisted reading of the Order of Scientific Inquiry's doctrine of predestination. "We're destined to be in control and there is no other way."

Philosophism's portrayal in the game is a bit murkier but it seems to prize "organic growth" over planning and predestination. Such is Phineas' plan to just wake up thousands of scientists from The Hope and hope they can come up with solutions to the colony's problems.

But that said the game doesn't really do enough to emphasize this stuff.

* * *

Another thing I'd note is that it's quite rare to see a game explicitly take sides like this between two in-game ideological systems. I was a bit shocked that the unambiguously "good" outcome for Vicar Max was for him to essentially become a heretic. It's the most actually political thing the game does.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I took the plot more as a reference to the novel Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where earth was populated by the 'useless' members of another society. All the smart people were on the derelict ship, the rest of the colony was populated by shoe salesmen and hairdressers. Har har!

The concept of enlightened rule by scientists is pretty Lockian/Enlightenment derived, though I suppose a reactionary reading could be made as well. Phineas seems like a clear libertarian character.

 

[Jackpot]

I don't mind the critique of corporate culture, but if you want me to take the game seriously you need to be a bit more subtle than "not at all".
This game is like borderlands not just in its visuals and theming, but in that every point it tries to make is spelled out to the player 10 times like we're children.

 

[FreeKaner]

Direct sequel also lowered the quality of dumpsterfire and definitely caused it to lose a lot of sales beyond its plenty faults.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Never realized I hated the colorblind until I suffered The Outer Worlds for 10 minutes while trying not to puke. Thanks for the wokeness Obsidian.

 

[BlackGoat]

Colorblind friendly? lol no shit. Of course it's less friendly for those of us who can see color

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't mind the critique of corporate culture, but if you want me to take the game seriously you need to be a bit more subtle than "not at all".
This game is like borderlands not just in its visuals and theming, but in that every point it tries to make is spelled out to the player 10 times like we're children.

Yeah, even though they try to give the corporate side some better justification with the "twist" about the colony, it all means nothing when the ending slides clearly state corporate = bad. This all reminds me of a good article I read not long ago about the left vs. right political dynamic crumbling, and the true division because "faith in pro-corporate elites vs. non-corporate revolution." Not gonna address that political question, but Outer Worlds in many way feels like it's all about that divide and being against corporations, without easily fitting into standard "conservative versus liberal" concepts.

 

[Quillon]

I noticed that even in pillars & deadfire; whenever there is a reactivity or something, its way too deliberate, screaming: "HEY I AM REACTIVITY, I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU DID THIS REMEMBER, HOW REACTIVE THIS GAME IS! RIGHT? WINK WINK", subtlety goes out the window, a different version of Kojima-exposition/revelation dump but more often + repeated same expositions through different NPCs so dumbfuckest of us all shouldn't miss a thing. In the end it feels cringeworthy and that we're being treated like children yeah.

They need to shift-del their RPG writing guideline doc that has accumulated over the years; they may be thinking its sophisticated but its too stale and predictable at this point and didn't evolve for the better over the last 10 years. Quests in TOW plays out exactly the same as in pillarses, in terms of structure, I can recognize an Obs quest from a mile away

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I noticed that even in pillars & deadfire; whenever there is a reactivity or something, its way too deliberate, screaming: "HEY I AM REACTIVITY, I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU DID THIS REMEMBER, HOW REACTIVE THIS GAME IS! RIGHT? WINK WINK", subtlety goes out the window, a different version of Kojima-exposition/revelation dump but more often + repeated same expositions through different NPCs so dumbfuckest of us all shouldn't miss a thing. In the end it feels cringeworthy and that we're being treated like children yeah.

Not to mention that it's very schizophrenic and feels like it was added as an afterthought - having background reactivity with minor NPCs when there isn't enough of it for major ones.

I am particularly annoyed that Lucia Rivan doesn't acknowledge the fact that you are a Darcozzi Paladin in Deadfire.

 

[Quillon]

Not to mention that it's very schizophrenic and feels like it was added as an afterthought

Because it is afterthought by design. We have seen Sawya's tweets like "I still have 80 reactivity lines to write for Pallegina" towards the end of production. Which means they have a very "creative" process that in the end it comes down to ticking checkboxes, then ofc my death godlilke watcher will say to pallegina "omg you are one of the godlikes, aren't you!?" lol but there'll still be minor reactivity for most everything but occasionally not for the one that is most important.