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

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
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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
These were the candidates: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/2019-nebula-award-finalists-announced/

Game Writing

Outer Wilds, Kelsey Beachum (Mobius Digital)

The Outer Worlds, Leonard Boyarsky, Kate Dollarhyde, Paul Kirsch, Chris L’Etoile, Daniel McPhee, Carrie Patel, Nitai Poddar, Marc Soskin, Megan Starks (Obsidian Entertainment)

The Magician’s Workshop, Kate Heartfield (Choice of Games)

Disco Elysium, Robert Kurvitz (ZA/UM)

Fate Accessibility Toolkit, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Laura Bell, C.D. “Casey” Casas, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Philippe-Antoine Ménard, Zeph Wibby, Clark Valentine, Jess Banks, Brian Engard, with Mysty Vander (Evil Hat Productions)
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Imagine comparing sales between games that have been 10 years on the market and were added for 3 dolla to boxes of cereal vs. $60 fresh IP.
 

Dishonoredbr

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Joined
Jun 13, 2019
Messages
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Imagine comparing sales between games that have been 10 years on the market and were added for 3 dolla to boxes of cereal vs. $60 fresh IP.

Anything to prove that the game you don't like didn't sell well even when the publisher itself says that sold really well and it's impresed by it's results..

For comparison sake, Resident Evil 2 Remake , a much bigger franchise (20+ year old) sold 5 million by december (launched in january 2019 btw) while The Outer worlds , a fresh IP , sold 2 million by early 2020 (came out on October). Idk about you guys , but sounds pretty good.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
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Messages
97,228
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


https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2020-the-outer-worlds-switch-port-analysis

The Outer Worlds on Switch: an ambitious effort, but the compromises cut too deep
Pared back to the bare bones.

As a platform, the Switch has managed to delight us on numerous occasions with ports that seemingly outstrip the capabilities of the console - to the point where maybe we were starting to believe that anything was possible. Can developer Virtuos pull off another miracle port with The Outer Worlds? "Off the back of our work on Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Dark Souls: Remastered, The Outer Worlds and the coming XCOM2, we now have no doubt that Switch adaptations can be worked for games on any of the current generation of console," senior product Zhang Chengwei told Nintendo Life. After checking out The Outer Worlds, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Technically, what the studio is saying is correct. When you load up The Outer Worlds for Switch, you are getting the complete game package in content terms. Indeed, Virtuos itself has a good track record in delivering decent Switch ports, but there's the sense that the team bit off more than they could chew with this one - there are genuine problems that simply can't be ignored. We're used to accepting a certain degree of compromise on these conversions, the pay-off generally being the ability to play triple-A titles on a portable device. However, The Outer Worlds is the game where the cumulative downgrades are just too impactful to the experience, and where the promise of mobile play doesn't deliver enough to make the exercise worthwhile.

On the positive side, there's little doubt that what has been accomplished here is impressive in terms of ambition - Virtuos has managed to transplant a high-end Unreal Engine 4 RPG to a portable machine. That it works at all is a remarkable feat, but once you dig in, the problems start to stack up. It kicks off with image quality. On the surface, the pixel-count numbers are reasonable but not quite in line with promises from the publisher. Based on pre-launch PR, The Outer Worlds was mooted as running at 1080p while docked and 720p in mobile mode. However, our findings suggest a typical 720p resolution while connected to your screen, with dynamic resolution dropping this lower on occasion. Meanwhile, 540p is typical and 384p seems to be the low point for portable play. There is none of the clarity and crispness you'd expect from the native resolution metrics suggested pre-launch, that's for sure.

Our pixel count results aren't uncommon on Switch ports from current-gen console titles, but it's certainly problematic in this case - especially in portable mode where it becomes difficult in some places to visually process what's going on. Part of the problem concerns the temporal anti-aliasing solution: The Outer Worlds features large open worlds with a vast draw distance and your eyes are naturally drawn to this, yet the lower resolution ensures that it's difficult to see any distant detail. What detail that is resolved is massively reduced from the current-gen versions of the game: Model complexity, texture resolution and overall density is radically altered.

Textures are the first thing you'll notice - the original PBR (physically-based rendering) materials from the initial release are gorgeous, with a lot of micro-detail evident throughout, lending the game a pseudo-realistic appearance despite the fantasy setting. The Switch port attempts to retain the basic look but asset resolution is dropped to work within the limitations of the Switch's reduced memory allocation. I think this is a case where the sheer volume and resolution of the assets is just beyond the scope of what can be done on this platform, certainly without a profound revamp. And this is an issue - the assets weren't designed artistically to be viewed in this way and as a result, the game winds up looking uglier than comparable games on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Walk up to any surface and it's clear that much is lost in terms of texture detail, and this is something that you'll see throughout the game. It technically works but it's just not attractive, and I suspect that solving this problem would require a more significant change in the art design to accommodate for the lower spec hardware. Simply reducing asset quality this much doesn't work well visually. The same is often true of the underlying geometry as well, which is radically simplified. From rock formations to pieces of your ship, to buildings and beyond, it feels as if the entire game is effectively using low or lowest quality level of detail settings compared to the other consoles.

These issues apply to character models as well, which see reductions in both geometry and texture detail. This results in more angular bodies with weird clipping artefacts in some cases and generally 'smeary' looking outfits. This isn't as egregious a change as the environment detail, but it's still noticeable. Meanwhile, the lack of depth of field on character close-ups produces ugly, awkward results in the background - especially when texture assets fail to load.

This brings us to our next problem - pop-in. It's severe and it's constant. Textures and models alike are often slow to pop into existence to the point where it can take upwards of 10 seconds or more at points. When in its low detail state, it almost feels like you're running around Google Earth in Street View with partially loaded map detail. I also noticed instances where the entire game would pause to load, where the streaming system seemingly can't keep up.

Here's the thing, though. When you first boot up the game, these issues aren't too severe. At a cursory glance, initial play seems OK. However, the longer you play, the more you dig in, the worse it gets. It reminds me of the classic Rimlag issue on the PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim - the difference being it manifests a lot sooner. To ensure that this wasn't a hardware issue on my part, I tested the game on all four of my Switch consoles - using both SD card and internal NAND (which is typically a touch faster). The game behaved identically in all cases, so I'd expect the same experience elsewhere.

So, when it comes to detail and loading, the game has issues but there are plenty of other changes as well. While objects that are rendered often exhibit less detail than the original console versions, many objects are skipped altogether. This is a fair trade-off, but it's noticeable, and perhaps cuts too deep. Rocks, trees and grass will often be skipped on Switch while fields of foliage can now appear as empty, blurry textured spaces. The Outer Worlds' attractive skyboxes are also downgraded too: volumetric clouds were absent throughout my experience. Ambient occlusion is all but removed, leading to less shadowing in the nooks and crannies across the world, delivering a much flatter presentation.

That said, not everything has been stripped back to the bare bones. When speaking with characters, the developers place a light behind the head of the character to help light the scene, showcasing the sub-surface scattering used on the characters, allowing light to penetrate skin realistically. This effect remains on Switch, which is surprising, though it doesn't look quite as nice due to lower texture detail. Screen-space reflections and shadows also make their way across to Switch too.

Really though, the point is that sacrifices had to be made and made they have been - in abundance. The overall visual quality takes a significant hit compared to every other version of the game to the point where a great-looking game is simply not attractive in this state. Our recommendation here? Watch the video above. If you're OK with the cuts, perhaps the game will work for you. After all, the underlying game is still fantastic and it is playable. For me, the atmosphere of the world is critical to enjoying a game like this so the myriad downgrades really hurt the overall experience, but maybe it'll be different for you.

However, on top of the cuts, you do need to be prepared for dodgy performance. The game targets 30 frames per second, just like the other console versions, and while performance seems solid enough at first, the more you play, the more it falls apart. Basic traversal seems generally fine, as long as there isn't anything overly complex on-screen. However, combat - and especially combat in detailed environments - sees frame-rates drop to the low 20s or even to sub-20fps levels. This leads to basic playability problems and a general level of dissatisfaction with the experience. Only in the game's 'dungeon' style environments does performance hold up. Portable mode plays out much the same as docked, perhaps suggesting that The Outer Worlds has profound CPU-based limitations.

I could more easily accept the compromised visuals if the frame-rate had been steady but unfortunately, that's not the case, meaning that the port not only looks poor, but feels bad to play too and overall, the compromises cut too deeply into the quality of the experience. So, to address the Virtuos quote at the beginning of this piece: yes, this port exists - the studio responsible for its conversion did its job. The problem is that when you say you can port everything, there needs to be some kind of qualifier on the quality of the final experience. In this case, it's not good enough. It's The Outer Worlds on Switch but it's nowhere near the quality of any other version and in this case, portability isn't enough to save the day. I recognise the huge challenges facing the team on this one and I respect the effort put it into it, but the end result doesn't hold up and I can't recommend it.
 

KVVRR

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With how long they're taking it better not be CORPS BAD yet again
 

DalekFlay

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The DF video when it does side-by-sides is pretty shocking. It's barely recognizable as the same game. Yet the comments are filled with people saying that portability is all that matters.
 

TemplarGR

Dumbfuck!
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Great game. Really enjoyable start to finish, although it was more of a Mass Effect than a New Vegas clone. I don't think it is replayable too, which is a shame. I don't feel the need to replay it since there isn't much you can change with different builds, it is very easy to just level most skills to 50 and be decent in everything very quickly. Perhaps change from guns to melee, although i think melee is boring in this game. All in all, a fun ride for a single play through, but forgettable afterwards.

Still the RPG GOTY 2019. And not that trashy commie visual novel.
 

Spectacle

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8,363
Imagine comparing sales between games that have been 10 years on the market and were added for 3 dolla to boxes of cereal vs. $60 fresh IP.

Anything to prove that the game you don't like didn't sell well even when the publisher itself says that sold really well and it's impresed by it's results..

For comparison sake, Resident Evil 2 Remake , a much bigger franchise (20+ year old) sold 5 million by december (launched in january 2019 btw) while The Outer worlds , a fresh IP , sold 2 million by early 2020 (came out on October). Idk about you guys , but sounds pretty good.
You can be sure that if TOW had sold 10+ million the same people would be touting that as proof that the game is irredeemable mass-market garbage.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
BTW did we ever get to know what went wrong with Cain and Boyarsky [failing so sadly]?
I have some predictions:

Internally:
- out of touch after years working on non crpg project
- overall probably more jaded and less willing to experiment and innovate. They aren't really young anymore
- taste have evolved personally. They did Express the original arcanum was too complex. Usually when people get older they have less time to spend on games therefore prefer more casual games with less commitment.

Externally:
- it's obsidian's second do or die moment (iirc this project began before Microsoft acquisition) they have to reach a wide audience.
 

Jarpie

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Codex 2012 MCA
BTW did we ever get to know what went wrong with Cain and Boyarsky [failing so sadly]?
I have some predictions:

Internally:
- out of touch after years working on non crpg project
- overall probably more jaded and less willing to experiment and innovate. They aren't really young anymore
- taste have devolved personally. They did Express the original arcanum was too complex. Usually when people get older they have less time to spend on games therefore prefer more casual games with less commitment.

Externally:
- it's obsidian's second do or die moment (iirc this project began before Microsoft acquisition) they have to reach a wide audience.

Bolded fixed for you.
 

RepHope

Savant
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Messages
400
BTW did we ever get to know what went wrong with Cain and Boyarsky [failing so sadly]?
A lot of it probably had to do with them simply not having the budget to do everything they wanted, while also having to keep it as simple as possible to not confuse console kiddies. Will be very interesting to see how the DLC comes out since that’s typically where companies get more experimental. Oblivion was shit but Shivering Isles was great. Hearts of Stone had a more interesting main story & Blood and Wine had an area that was more fun to explore.
 

DalekFlay

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They said from the start it was a smaller project. It was basically treated as the "indie" version of a Bethesda game, so the scope is to be expected. It's the shit like 300 lockpicks they fucked up in my opinion, the scale is what it is.

Also you really can't judge the sales success when the game was given away for $1 to anyone with an Xbox or PC.
 

GarfunkeL

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Insert clever insult here
Fallout 1st was announced 2 days before Outer Worlds released you fucking retard.
The Fallout 76 fiasco which was 1000x bigger than Fallout 1st thing happened just before Outer Worlds was announced. I know it's difficult for you to accept that you're not the biggest brain in the galaxy, but do try. Outer Worlds subreddit, for example, was a ghost town between two weeks after the announcement and just before the release.

Imagine comparing sales between games that have been 10 years on the market and were added for 3 dolla to boxes of cereal vs. $60 fresh IP.
Also this. Retards gotta retard, they can't even make an honest comparison.

I didn't like TOW, I never finished it but if you're going to attack it, attack it for its real flaws, not bullshit made up crap.
 

Pegultagol

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Messages
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General Gaming
Maybe they should've gone for some cell shaded look and forego things like shadows and ambient occlusion to save some fps on the Switch ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And 'release' the same look on the rest of the platforms as something new
 

AW8

Arcane
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Mar 1, 2013
Messages
1,852
Location
North of Poland
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Neither does the claim that TOW came at the perfect time as the anti-Bethesda storm was happening hold water because that was when TOW was announced. The anti-Bethesda storm was long gone by the time TOW actually came out.
Nonsense - the anti-Bethesda storm has been raging on for a year and a half now, and only started to subside with the release of Wastelanders. Both critics and fans constantly use Fallout 76 as the go-to example of a bad, disappointing thing.

The Fallout 76 fiasco which was 1000x bigger than Fallout 1st thing happened just before Outer Worlds was announced.
Fallout 1st was part of the fiasco, it wasn't some small bump they hit after a period of critical acclaim, it was another log into the fire of bad publicity. Releasing a not-Fallout Bethesda-like singleplayer game between the launch of Fallout 76 and the release of the Wastelanders update was the perfect spot. It delivered what angry Fallout 76 players wanted, and if it had been released a few years ago it would have competed with Fallout 4, while in a few years it would have competed with an engoodened Fallout 76 as well as Starfield.
 

DalekFlay

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I'll give them credit for the new Switch advertisements using actual Switch footage (which looks like ass). They're not trying to hide how it looks via PC footage or anything. Maybe that's illegal now, I dunno. Either way... honest advertising.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
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Location
Grand Chien
I'll give them credit for the new Switch advertisements using actual Switch footage (which looks like ass). They're not trying to hide how it looks via PC footage or anything. Maybe that's illegal now, I dunno. Either way... honest advertising.
This is the world we live in now, where we give credit to developers for using the actual correct footage for game advertising instead of fucking lying to our faces
 

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