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

[Orma]

There is no Caesar in The Outer Worlds - no real villainous figurehead. You see those posters of Chairman Rockwell here and there, but nobody seems to give a fuck about him. In a game inspired by the movie Brazil - a satirical take on 1984 with no Big Brother - that may be intentional.

This is also why people shouldn't be taking the game's politics very seriously.

Isn't that the point though?

There's no need for a VILLAIN In outer worlds, capitalism working as intended is already worse than any villainous figurehead.

 

[vortex]

The irony is real. :D


Also, I didn't know Megan is surnamed Starkes. Updating my journal.

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

"Specialized narrative team."

 

[fantadomat]

I really want to play a game where capitalism is the hero, not the villain.

It is really good game,would recommend it .

Is it even possible to finish the quest? Making money is so damn hard (like real life I guess )

Oh yes,after you fail you keep all your items. So the trick is to use all the money to buy expensive items. In a few rebirths you will be able to pay everything.

 

[Starwars]

I just watched that latest clip of the documentary. It's always weird to watch something sort of self-congratulatory where you pretty much agree with a lot of things that the developers *wanted* to accomplish you but feel that they failed to do so.

The companions in the game are just not good, especially not when keeping in mind how much of the game they make up. Parvati is likeable in my opinion but then you have the god awful questline they attached to her. And ironically, they bring that up in the documentary clip that they feared that it was exactly that, boring shit. But then they felt that they voiceactress "saved it". Wrong move.
Then you have someone like Vicar Max where there are interesting ideas but the character just comes off as... shallow. A character that could've brought some experience and depth to a group of characters that are otherwise young. But no, he ends up feeling like a philosophy student or something.

Some of the bigger NPCs are the ones that were the most succesful. They bring up Sanjar which I thought was a pretty nice character. But whenever there is something interesting going on, you still only feel like you are scratching the very surface and then... there's nothing more to be found. Same with the Spacer's Choice town leader guy in the first town, or the scientist in Roseway. They could've been way more interesting than they actually turned out to be.

Too bad.

 

[Zibniyat]

So I'm playing this game. It does not bore me for some inexplicable reason (decline-love surfacing within me again?), and I can play it for hours, and even think later on about what choices should I make.

Yes, it mostly looks hideous, with unreasonably high colour saturation, and the choice of colour palette itself is nothing short of barbaric. Most of the characters are ugly, my God how did they fucking achieve that, even if it was intentional? The environment design and architecture aren't ugly by themselves, but the problem is that the colour palette, saturation and all sorts of other colour-related "effects" ruin it. I do like how the more I find out about the town of Edgewater, the more I want to literally nuke it from the face of the... erm... Terra II. Even though I am really not partial to "alternative" nature-loving settlers (i.e. "Deserters").

I think "futuristic/scifi corporate dystopia" nicely describes the game, and it is like my mind desires to see with just how much absurdity and evil can that potential dystopia can be presented with, hence why I continue to play this game for hours every day.

So far I have Parvati as a companion, I've just completed the Emerald Vale part and she is not really bad. How am I to put it, she is nothing special or interesting (thus far), but still somehow fits in as a pretty normal woman. Vicar Max, on the other hand, was a disgustingly corrupted "religious" person, and as someone somewhat sensitive on such matters I decided not to allow him to become my companion; it is one thing to be a pagan, but to unironically try and tell people how being slaves to corporations is a "Law" is unacceptabe, basically fuck him

 

[FreeKaner]

This game and the game world is more fun if you see it like this:

 

[Delterius]

Oh yes,after you fail you keep all your items. So the trick is to use all the money to buy expensive items. In a few rebirths you will be able to pay everything.

So it's about gaming inheritance laws.

Interesting.

 

[FreeKaner]

Free market, private property rights, and personal responsibility are awesome.
Words like "Capitalism" and "capitalist" are used mostly by left-leaning speakers in a pejorative sense. They have one thing in common - they don't seem to like personal responsibility all that much, and want access to other people's property without said people's consent, usually under a benign pretense - the interests of "the people", "the nation", whatever.

Capitalism is more than free market, private property rights and personality responsibilities. This is the opposite end of people which basically imply that capitalism is exchange of goods and services for currency, hint it isn't. Private ownership and free flow of goods and services in market existed before what we now call capitalism did. Personal responsibility is a nebulous term and doesn't mean anything tangible aside from to imply that this particular thing everyone can agree is good (I.E people should be accountable) is part of an economic system that isn't at all advocating for any such thing. Is it personal responsibility for bunch of bank executives to cause a crash like 2008 one by exploiting the loopholes of the economic system to reap undue profit, then be bailed out and go scot-free because they were already rich or important enough? Yet it is exactly the finance sector and stock market that are the pillars of capitalism that have been enforced by US to whole world that also caused such a crash whose perpetrators were unharmed aside from capital loss (except in Iceland) while global taxpayers and workers paid the bill.

Capitalism is then a system where by the capital ownership and flow is the deciding factor of employment and production. In its current mode and the dominance of public company and finance sector, by the means of duality of shareholding and bank bondage. Capitalism-Communism dichotomy is a false one as well. I am in favour of free trade and private property, which has existed for a long time. Do read Braudel's work on capital and capitalism, he has excellent arguments for rather than being for free market, capitalism trends towards monopoly and elimination of competition. He is different than usual Marxist critique. His work is wide reaching though and as such has some holes but Braudel is great and I would say necessary read for anyone studying structural history.

Nevertheless this is not an appropriate thread for this discussion.

However I do think this game could have done a much more interesting and fun exploration of theme of private property as well, since the corporate dystopia aesthetic sci-fi has a lot of potential much like medieval feudal fantasy does, even and especially if done in a flippant manner. Unfortunately the obsidian writers lack the finesse and subtlety to do such a thing and seem to be good only at making interpersonal and faction stories, which is something I like but it becomes immediately obvious how they are lacking depth whenever they try to move to more theoretical and abstract matters. Which is why I think they shouldn't and it was a mistake and ruinous for poe1/poe2 and (to a lesser extent) Outer Worlds. Ironically Tyranny is the game that suffered least from this despite being advertised as most theoretical/philosophical one precisely because they didn't do much of theory or abstracts instead just presented personal and faction stories under a particular system.

 

[Delterius]

Wealthy people are bailed out every 10 years and why that's a good thing - the libertard cope news network.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Capitalism is more than free market, private property rights and personality responsibilities

Thanks for the essay, but I never said this was the definition of capitalism.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

The Outer Worlds was one of the better games to come out lately.

 

[Quillon]

The Outer Worlds was one of the better games to come out lately.

Wrong thread.

Post it here: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/trigger-the-codex-with-a-statement.112015/page-79

 

[Infinitron]

Oh it's out early:

In the third video exploring the design of The Outer Worlds, we talk to the level design and writing team about how they crafted some of the game's most complex quests & areas.

 

[fantadomat]

Infinitron ,do you honestly like this tripe and mediocre game?

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Infinitron ,do you honestly like this tripe and mediocre game?

He doesn't like games. He likes shilling.

 

[DalekFlay]

The Outer Worlds was one of the better games to come out lately.

This is actually true, which is sad.

 

[RNGsus]

In a few rebirths you will be able to pay everything.

Wow, it even dumps the consequences on succeeding generations.

 

[Zibniyat]

After some 29 hours of playtime I have finished this game. I've played on the "Hard" difficulty, which is the second-highest one. The highest difficulty has stuff I find bothersome: the player character has to satisfy their physiological needs (eat, drink, sleep) and companions die when they reach 0 health points (HP), which is pretty often in this game; sure it's more "realistic", not that I necessarily care, and whilst most encounters I could easily have done successfully alone, it still bothers me to lose my companions in a game as a rule.

Now that's out of the way, and with some very minor spoilers, a few thoughts on this game. Since I don't want to drown everyone with a huge tl;dr, I will for now only mention what I think of:

Companions

Companions are mostly designed according to some archetype. So we have Felix who is a "shoot first, ask questions later" type of guy, Ellie who is some bored high-status girl thirsty for some "real action", Parvati who is just a confused person all around and a nerd good with fiddling with mechanical and electrical things, Nyoka whom I did not care much to get to know her so whatever, an S.A.M. robot with the expected/usual humorous "personality streak" (same with ADA - the Unreliable's AI; the Unreliable is the name of the ship the player uses) but who also employs deadly weaponry, and Vicar Max who is - I presume - supposed to be the usual theologian-philosopher type (and he fails at that). However, and this is good, these companions feel as actual real persons; yes, there's a lesbian and who knows what else in there, but despite that they feel real and are sort of endearing (except Vicar Max, fuck him).

The game is a futuristic/sci-fi corporate dystopia and has a lot of... not quite realistic things going on, although seeing our clown-world of today, they don't seem quite as implausible as they might have been seen before. Now, whilst whatever the player character does in companion-related quests does not bear any real consequence, and whilst there really isn't much depth to interacting with them (for example, you can't make them dislike you so much that they will betray you and leave you, at least not that I have seen, but then again I was trying not to be a total asshole so that may have had some significance, I don't know), traveling with them was sufficiently fulfilling, and dare I say realistic, that these issues did not bother me. They were my crew, they were there with me out of their free will and choice, and it felt like they didn't try to influence or change me in order to satisfy some agenda of theirs, which actually felt refreshing because it felt like there's some mutual understanding and pretty normal and realistic relationship between persons who are both friendly but also tied together by some concrete work.

I feel as if too many RPGs force some types of characters to obviously influence the player character and to make their relationship "bigger than life" or similar. Here, we have pretty normal-behaving persons traveling together for their common benefit, and that is almost all; I say "almost", because there is still some room for relationship growth, but not too much, which considering the scope and length of the game felt realistic and proper. Proportionate I may say as well. Some companions may not be "normal-behaving" though, I do not view lesbianism as "normal", just as I view hot temperament as a kind of affliction, but at the same time I see these things as normal in the sense that they exist and some people are like that, and since these things weren't "in your face" and there was a sense of (ironically) normalcy and composure to these characters which went beyond what they "identify as", I found them mostly likeable. Good, in fact.

So, congratulations to Obsidian for making realistic-behaving companions who have sufficient dignity and composure despite whatever affliction (or "orientation" or whatever word you would like to use here) they may have. A big plus in my book.

 

[Infinitron]

Short:

In the forth video exploring the design of The Outer Worlds, we talk to studio audio director Justin Bell about the process of writing the score, voicing the characters and making every sound trigger at the correct time.

 

[welly321]

Whats the verdict on Outer Worlds? Is it worth buying when it comes out on steam? I dont feel like reading through 238 pages.

 

[Duralux for Durabux]

How to design Outer World's music.

 

[DalekFlay]

Whats the verdict on Outer Worlds? Is it worth buying when it comes out on steam? I dont feel like reading through 238 pages.

New Vegas with dramatically reduced scope and budget and kitschy Whedonesque writing, that is way too easy due to horrible balancing.

 

[jf8350143]

It won't be on steam for another half a year, and with the DLC coming, it's too early to say whether you should buy it on steam or not. You might want just buy the XGP instead.

 

[Wesp5]

A DLC is coming? Who said that?