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

[Riddler]

1. If you are designing a character or a faction, make sure that you could pass an “ideological Turing test” for both the character and the opposite point of view and their view of the character/faction; otherwise you won’t be able to create interesting situations/challenges/conflicts for that character/faction and the resulting narrative will be unengaging. In other words, make sure you understand the point of view of whatever you are writing about and the opposing point of view.

You are expecting the writer, a valley girl, to have enough self-awareness to pass a Turing test. That itself is folly my friend.

I wonder what there reasoning is here. "Let's save money by hiring brainlets for our most important department, that is the only reason we still are in business"?

 

[Van-d-all]

There is dziwka but no szmata? nazista but no hitlerowiec? At least you can still name yourself banderowiec.

Even with 1/5 of the list being polish, there are still hundreds of words missed

 

[Infinitron]

and Patel (same in Houston, also appears to come from affluence)

Well, she's a former Southern Baptist: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...discussion-thread.84849/page-239#post-5732358

 

[Van-d-all]

Southern Baptist:

Wtf is a Southern Baptist? Don't expect everyone to know American muggle culture(?)...

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I wonder what there reasoning is here. "Let's save money by hiring brainlets for our most important department, that is the only reason we still are in business"?

I don't think it has anything to do with money. If you look at the press this game got, people are very happy with it, so i can only assume that it's a game made by Californians for Californians, which means every character should be entirely self-absorbed without an iota of self-awareness, have their personalities determined by and large by their sexuality (the 2nd lowest form of human expression), and be emotionally incompetent/stunted. I am not being ironic. I think the writers of this game do not have a real grasp of how a fully developed human being should behave, or what range of emotions and emotional mastery they should be able to have, because they themselves have not experienced such things.

There is also this gem from a fellow codexer which i love:

I've come to the realisation that western games suck because western game devs tend to have little to no interesting life experience. They were annoying dorks in high school who then became politically correct dorks in college and then became meek robotic corporate dorks after and went on to making games without getting in a fist fight, crashing drunk or snorting a few lines between. Hence generally their attempts to write realism or seriousness fall flat.

 

[Junmarko]

Wtf is a Southern Baptist? Don't expect everyone to know American muggle culture(?)...

You aint from round here are ya fella? - that's usually the one. Always standing next to a corn field too.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

If you hate writing style and story, you can always play like this, it is very replayable as you can tell the whole story by yourself.

 

[RK47]

Ah, confirmed the skill bonus gears affecting companion boost.
That makes it really easy for you to hit those lockpicking / hacking / dialog checks.
Of course perks are not unlocked this way so you still need Sneak 40 to pickpocket etc.

 

[Prime Junta]

This is an issue for every single character and faction in the game and it makes the game’s narrative and writing thoroughly unenjoyable. It is required for practically any sort of writing: jokes, satire, social critique, drama etc. and it is missing.

This.

If you're writing a RPG, even if it's a comedic one, you need to make a world and then write characters that inhabit that world. You can't just drop in a bunch of vapid twentysomething middle-class Californians in brownface and expect it to work. They were so desperate to represent everyone they ended up representing no-one other than themselves.

 

[Quillon]

Last mission's bugs really sucked the enjoyment out of it

Spoiler

I couldn't care about the ending, nor I bothered to think about the choices with Rockwell and Akande. Every level has disguise mechanics yet the allies I helped before kept pouring in guns blazing ffs

Also the convo with Rockwell was weird that every option was about convincing him, no "attack" option while he was alone with 2 robots... or I didn't fully explore it

aah also Parvati was dead in the epilogue for some reason, she managed to die back in the ship somehow I guess

Anyway, it seemed like a definite ending for Halcyon, not suggesting any further games in this solar system

Earth's gone dark three years ago... I'm not sure about this, I liked the idea of the colonies still relying on/communicating with/ruled by Earth with Earth sending representatives to colonies etc. Guess they are making it so it'll be all about corporations in space with no bigger entity to answer to

For the future of TOW; I'm not excited with "Where the story will go?", "What it'll be about?" etc. Had enough of blandness with PoEs & this(FIRE ALL THE WRITERS REEEEE ). But it'll be interesting to see if they'll expand upon gameplay systems, specifically in simulation/NPC schedules, crime/stealth/patrol etc systems with a lot less reliance on spawns/respawns... in the bigger budget sequel. This was a game with only the absolute essential stuff developed for it for the type of game they wanted it to be; it needs to be richer in depth & quality in most ways if they wanna be a competitor in the immersive sim RPGs league in the future :D

 

[jewboy]

How does the combat compare to FNV? Even in FNV the combat was so easy that I could not travel with a companion. I found the combat challenging enough on the hardest setting when solo though especially against deathclaws and cazadores in the early game. Having a companion in FNV was like a IWIN button. They should really balance the difficulty on HARD so that going solo is really hard, but fighting with a companion is still challenging.

 

[Van-d-all]

These "life experience" comments read like pseud bullshit.
The people who made your favorite games were fukken' NERDS who sat on their ass all day watching and reading TV/books, if they lived interesting lives they wouldn't have made video games.

This explanation might be overly simplistic, but there's certainly an issue where most modern game characters absolutely lack depth, yet general audience basks in their supposed authenticity. If writers themselves aren't representatives of people genuinely hollow inside, what else could explain such phenomena?

 

[RK47]

How does the combat compare to FNV? Even in FNV the combat was so easy that I could not travel with a companion. I found the combat challenging enough on the hardest setting when solo though especially against deathclaws and cazadores in the early game. Having a companion in FNV was like a IWIN button. They should really balance the difficulty on HARD so that going solo is really hard, but fighting with a companion is still challenging.

This game's combat is very easy due to how much resources they sprinkled for you to take.
Ammo stops being a concern after the first planet. Same with healing consumable.
Companions are durable and able to wield upgraded weapons - they also provide skill boost so you can overcome skill checks without needing to invest on the actual skill.
Supernova tries to address this by making enemies hit harder, but that ended up making you abuse long range options more since you get a guaranteed hit from long range - the only downside is your companion can go perma-squish when not being babysit.

 

[Van-d-all]

but there's certainly an issue where most modern game characters absolutely lack depth, yet general audience basks in their supposed authenticity.

I don't really know what you're referring to, I rarely see casual players remark on writing.
Do you have a specific example in mind?

Sure, from top of my head - Parvati's love quest. It's flat and boring fetch quest, tripe to a point a pre-2000 teen zine wouldn't bother to push it, yet nowadays, some people, including it's writer literally gloat about it.

https://mobile.twitter.com/keightdee/status/1187879134115926016

 

[RK47]

but there's certainly an issue where most modern game characters absolutely lack depth, yet general audience basks in their supposed authenticity.

I don't really know what you're referring to, I rarely see casual players remark on writing.
Do you have a specific example in mind?

Sure, from top of my head - Parvati's love quest. It's flat and boring fetch quest, tripe to a point a pre-2000 teen zine wouldn't bother to push it, yet nowadays, some people, including it's writer literally gloat about it.

just take the exp n space bar thru the lines.

 

[fantadomat]

I don't think it's too far fetched that a couple of nu-males over at Obsidian got together in the ballpit and came up with a pretty non-invasive and easy to implement thing that scores them brownie points with the dykes in charge.

LOL, muh Obsidian dindu nuffin'.

Big publisher who runs a lot of online services would already have that kind of word filter implemented in their games, so there is literally no reason for Obsidian to do it themselves.

So as excited as you are at the idea of Feargus going deep undercover into Portuguese gay community to find out what words offend them, it's seems rather unlikely.

Meh,you sound far too logical,i like the underground exploration of fag bars a lot more. It has a lot more flair and it is more funny.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

The people who made your favorite games were fukken' NERDS who sat on their ass all day watching and reading TV/books, if they lived interesting lives they wouldn't have made video games.

Not true. My favorite games are made by amphetaminites and slav survivalists.

 

[Prime Junta]

Sure, from top of my head - Parvati's love quest. It's flat and boring fetch quest, tripe to a point a pre-2000 teen zine wouldn't bother to push it, yet nowadays, some people, including it's writer literally gloat about it.

It's depressing really. Kate D is going LOOK! AA WLW ACE! REPRESENTATION! without it ever occurring to her that both the asexuality and the orientation are completely incidental (never even mind apparent race or ethnicity). Even Parvati's gender is incidental. You could've substituted a white middle-class nerdy teenage boy wooing a white middle-class nerdy girl, with pimples instead of asexuality, and the whole thing would have worked exactly the same. Vapid.

 

[Junmarko]

If you're writing a RPG, even if it's a comedic one, you need to make a world and then write characters that inhabit that world. You can't just drop in a bunch of vapid twentysomething middle-class Californians in brownface and expect it to work. They were so desperate to represent everyone they ended up representing no-one other than themselves.

Brownface. Sounds like some vapid word, a twenty something from California would be using Junta.

Parvati the character that's unremarkable, really the typical "Labrador" companion you're given first in most crpgs. Chaotic Good, blindly trusts you and wants to be best buds etc...

Happens to be half-indian - this makes her a white supremecist to Junta.

 

[Van-d-all]

Sure, from top of my head - Parvati's love quest. It's flat and boring fetch quest, tripe to a point a pre-2000 teen zine wouldn't bother to push it, yet nowadays, some people, including it's writer literally gloat about it.

It's depressing really. Kate D is going LOOK! AA WLW ACE! REPRESENTATION! without it ever occurring to her that both the asexuality and the orientation are completely incidental (never even mind apparent race or ethnicity). Even Parvati's gender is incidental. You could've substituted a white middle-class nerdy teenage boy wooing a white middle-class nerdy girl, with pimples instead of asexuality, and the whole thing would have worked exactly the same. Vapid.

IKR. But I'm genuinely intrigued where does it come from? I honestly can't believe general majority of people actually hosts such trivial psyche. Someone (Roguey?) said it's not like they lack it, it's just that they're not self aware enough, but even so, they should still at least feel a major discrepancy between the game depictions and how shit plays out IRL. I mean, you can botch psychologically being unable to describe the feels, but the empirical part will still remain the same...

 

[Jenkem]

I finished it. It's okay.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Brownface. Sounds like some vapid word, a twenty something from California would be using Junta.

Parvati the character that's unremarkable, really the typical "Labrador" companion you're given first in most crpgs. Chaotic Good, blindly trusts you and wants to be best buds etc...

Happens to be half-indian - this makes her a white supremecist to Junta.

I think you guys are missing the point entirely. Nobody cares about her skin color, and while I personally don't enjoy hanging out with 28 year old teenagers, i would be willing to giver her the light of day, had the writing had enough internal consistency to not completely invalidate itself. I've provided examples several pages back, but just consider how Privati is willing to lock herself inside a metal prison with you, in fucking space no less, after calling you a "psychopath with a violent streak" because you killed her boss. This thing happens over and over again throughout a lot of her interactions. That's bad writing, and it has nothing to do with her sexuality or skin color.

 

[Prime Junta]

Happens to be half-indian - this makes her a white supremecist to Junta.

Nah just vapid. Thing with the wokenet is that it's mostly populated by white straight cis middle-class twentysomethings falling over each other to be inclusive. Most of them have extremely limited experience actually dealing with anyone different from them, and they build up this naive idealised picture that they're just like them only wronged and better. And because they're so completely clueless about it, when they try to represent them in whatever fanfic they're writing, they end up with a self-insert in blackface (or, in this case, brownface).

(And also if they ever encounter an actual minority or <gasp> working-class person who doesn't conform to their idealised stereotype, there's a gigantic burst of cognitive dissonance followed by furious hammering of the block button.)

TOW attempts to justify this by explicitly stating that the setting is a post-racial one. What it doesn't justify is that everybody in that post-racial world acts, thinks, and even talks completely wonderbread*, occasional token vaguely-Desi accents aside. It's not that Parvati is a coconut, it's that there are no non-white people in the entire game, just whites inhabiting a broad range of character models. (No fatties though, apparently body positivity is not a thing in The Outer Worlds. Surprised nobody's complained about it yet.)

*not on the forbidden names list, highly recommend

 

[jewboy]

This game's combat is very easy due to how much resources they sprinkled for you to take.
Ammo stops being a concern after the first planet. Same with healing consumable.
Companions are durable and able to wield upgraded weapons - they also provide skill boost so you can overcome skill checks without needing to invest on the actual skill.
Supernova tries to address this by making enemies hit harder, but that ended up making you abuse long range options more since you get a guaranteed hit from long range - the only downside is your companion can go perma-squish when not being babysit.

Ok so companions are out then. Even in FNV they made fighting too easy. It's not like we have MCA doing the writing here so I assume companions are probably not that worth taking anyway. What about solo fights though? Is there an equivalent to fighting cazadores solo at low level here? Maybe there is a way to make the combat more fun with metagaming.

 

[Van-d-all]

(No fatties though, apparently body positivity is not a thing in The Outer Worlds. Surprised nobody's complained about it yet.)

That's probably because of limited body models though.