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

Feyd Rautha

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
What about all them female writers, didn't they worsen the game? Would Cain and Boyarsky be able to call them on uninteresting writing without being called privileged old white men? I've read somewhere that some dialogue is chatty and not brief. Does men write like that?
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Yeah the dialogue is short and to the point, if anything it's too concise which was probably dictated by voiceover costs.

As for female writers, Megan Starks wrote the only memorable parts of the game, the others have done nothing of note and the one who self-inserted herself into a companion needs to be flogged.
 

TemplarGR

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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.

This is typical for Switch ports. Every game ported is downgraded to an absurd degree and has framerate issues. The Switch is a garbage last gen console with inferior ports, and overpriced as fuck, but the Nintendo lemmings keep buying this shit. The typical excuse is "portability" but no one is playing the Switch outside of their homes, so it is pointless.
 

DalekFlay

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This is typical for Switch ports. Every game ported is downgraded to an absurd degree and has framerate issues. The Switch is a garbage last gen console with inferior ports, and overpriced as fuck, but the Nintendo lemmings keep buying this shit. The typical excuse is "portability" but no one is playing the Switch outside of their homes, so it is pointless.

Sure, but I watch a lot of Switch comparison videos for funsies and I think Outer Worlds is well beyond the normal downgrade. Stuff like Doom and Alien Isolation run at much lower resolution with things like SSAO removed, but they mostly look like the same game at least. Outer Worlds looks fucking awful.
 

Roguey

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Kate Dollarhyde. Sadly she seems to be Sawyers favourite.

Didn't the Bioguy establish Parvati as an asexual lesbian first? If anyone's a self-insert I'd say it's Ellie for Patel; narcissistic rebels against their wealthy parents.
 

Duraframe300

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Kate Dollarhyde. Sadly she seems to be Sawyers favourite.

Didn't the Bioguy establish Parvati as an asexual lesbian first? If anyone's a self-insert I'd say it's Ellie for Patel; narcissistic rebels against their wealthy parents.

Yep, but then Dollarhyde redid that part according to her own *experience* and removed any option dialog options that were slightly *bigoted* so she doesn't get her feelings hurt.
So, its not a full self-insert, but that part of Parvati definitly is.
 

Infinitron

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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
She actually said that she refused to add a negative dialogue option in one particular conversation node (when Parvati confesses to you about her feelings towards the Groundbreaker boss lady). Wasn't really specifically about being bigoted, you just don't have the option to cruelly mock her at that moment.

Otherwise you can definitely hurt some feelings, including shooting her lover in the face right in front her.
 
Last edited:

Dishonoredbr

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She actually said that she refused to add a negative dialogue option in one particular conversation node (when Parvati confesses to you about her feelings towards the Groundbreaker boss lady). Wasn't really specifically about being bigoted, you just don't have the option to cruelly mock her at that moment.

Otherwise you can definitely hurt some feelings, including shooting her lover in the face right in front her.

Thats kinda lame and weak from her part. Why not dialogue being a total asshole vs Parvati. Maybe even reflect that with her leaving and negative impacting your crew, showing that you're a total trash.

I wouldnt do , probably , but shouldve be a option.
 

Nano

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
Yep, but then Dollarhyde redid that part according to her own *experience* and removed any option dialog options that were slightly *bigoted* so she doesn't get her feelings hurt.
Did none of her leads explain to her roleplaying =/= playing as yourself?
 

Roguey

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Thats kinda lame and weak from her part. Why not dialogue being a total asshole vs Parvati. Maybe even reflect that with her leaving and negative impacting your crew, showing that you're a total trash.

I wouldnt do , probably , but shouldve be a option.

As a Millennial writer, she refuses to give players the choice to say bigoted dialogue.
 

DalekFlay

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She actually said that she refused to add a negative dialogue option in one particular conversation node (when Parvati confesses to you about her feelings towards the Groundbreaker boss lady). Wasn't really specifically about being bigoted, you just don't have the option to cruelly mock her at that moment.

You can definitely tell her sex is important though, and then say "whatever" when she disagrees, which I think is more or less good enough.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

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Game drops frames constantly when running around outside open field areas. Makes it unplayable for me.

Even after upgrading cpu and gpu (now on an rtx 2070), and with the game installed on an NVMe SSD with average 1.5gbps sequential read, it still drops frames when running around outside in any open area.

Doesn't matter what the settings are, even with the render resolution set to 33%, where it is basically using less than 20% of the GPU and less than 30% of the CPU, it will still have frame drops when running around outside.

Fuck this, uninstalled.
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Game drops frames constantly when running around outside open field areas. Makes it unplayable for me.

Even after upgrading cpu and gpu (now on an rtx 2070), and with the game installed on an NVMe SSD with average 1.5gbps sequential read, it still drops frames when running around outside in any open area.

Doesn't matter what the settings are, even with the render resolution set to 33%, where it is basically using less than 20% of the GPU and less than 30% of the CPU, it will still have frame drops when running around outside.

Fuck this, uninstalled.
i have worse build but mine ran well. weird. did you test with other games?
 

DalekFlay

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Fuck this, uninstalled.

I didn't have that problem at all and I have a 2070. Unless you have an ancient processor I'd guess there was another issue somewhere. On ultra I saw drops in cities so I used some high settings and I think one medium setting, but after that I had a solid high framerate experience around 100 or so frames a second at 1440p.
 

soulburner

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It stuttered constantly on my toaster laptop with eGPU (two core i5 3220m + RX570, PCI-Express 2.0 1x). However, after upgrading to a desktop (six core Ryzen 3600 + RX570, x16) it was smooth with just an occasional dropped frame here and there.

Awaiting DLC info.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

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I managed to make it run better by increasing the view distance and foliage distance, and increasing the texture pool size in the Engine.ini:

[SystemSettings]
r.ViewDistanceScale=4
foliage.LODDistanceScale=4
r.MipMapLODBias=0
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.25
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.Streaming.PoolSize=4096
r.ScreenPercentage=110

default DistanceScales are "1", and the default Streaming.PoolSize is "1000" I believe. Raising these makes the game load more of the areas around u in bigger chunks which makes the frame drops while walking around outside less frequent. Obviously raising these variables is a huge performance hog so i had to lower my ScreenPercentage a bit to compensate, but well worth it.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

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Finally reached Monarch for the first time... very ugly place. Weird that they'd make the game's biggest area so aesthetically unappealing.

I thought Scylla and Roseway looked great, comparatively, but Monarch so far is an ugly mess. Everything has an ugly piss-yellow tint that looks like puke.

Don't know if I want to spend the next 20 hours roaming around the place, tbh. Fighting those animals that spit green go is really boring.
 

Infinitron

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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
DLC announcement on July 23rd?



https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...mical-challenge-of-recording-the-outer-worlds

The astronomical challenge of recording The Outer Worlds
How did Obsidian handle voice work for a game with almost 350 characters, 40 voice actors, and recording studios in different countries?

The work that goes into building a grand scale, AAA-caliber RPG like Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds is enormous. Thousands of production variables must be woven together in a way that adheres to some semblance of logic and credibility. That's true enough for the entire game, but even a single aspect of it -- like the voiceover work, for example -- is a daunting task of incredible complexity.

Justin Bell is the in-house audio director at Obsidian Entertainment, which means he's one of the people that critics and fans can thank for the voice acting in The Outer Worlds.

"There are 346 distinct characters in The Outer Worlds," says Bell. "This was a fulltime undertaking, to say the least."

And not just for him. Bell says that there were five producers on staff at Obsidian who contributed to The Outer Worlds' voiceover recording. "[Those producers were there] to ensure that everything was going smoothly, that everything was being communicated in a timely and accurate way," he says.

Before a single line could be recorded, Bell needed to have a sophisticated infrastructure in place, and he credits producer Matt Singh for much of that. Singh coordinated casting, scripts, and recording sessions across the sites where voiceover work was taped.

"We recognized early on that it would be impossible for us to cast as many actors as we had characters," Bell adds.

For the 346 main characters in The Outer Worlds, Obsidian hired 40 actors in total. Bell says the team tried to keep the cast as small as possible to ensure consistent quality of performances throughout the game. But doing so created other challenges.

"We gathered character traits for all characters, like age, gender, ethnicity, archetype, world location, quest location, and we did some analysis to determine how we could cluster them together into groups that would be assigned to a single actor," Bell explains. "After that, it became a balancing act of ensuring we had enough actor variety per group so that we didn't hear the same actor over and over again, which would be immersion-breaking for the player."
Never underestimate the power of a spreadsheet
During development, Bell and his team cooked up a concept called Character Groupings. "Rather than cast for individual characters, we would cast for their suitability for one of these groupings," he says. On the highest level, The Outer Worlds' characters were divided into two general categories: Townies and Guards. Guards had complex combat AI routines, while Townies had simpler AI routines.

"From a narrative perspective, each corporation in the Halcyon Colony employs their own paramilitary 'police force' to ensure corporate policies are enforced and protected," he adds. "So we called all of them Guards. Every other civilian in this world is what we call a Townie -- these are people who are simply living their lives, trying to make do. Though some are obviously 'making do' better than others [are]."


The game's many non-player characters were divided into Townies and Guards

Bell says that the audio team also recognized a subgroup that they called Factions.

"The Factions in The Outer Worlds are groups of characters that are aligned with one another," he explains. "They're either at odds with, or in collaboration with, other Factions. That's how we represent the internal politics of our game. And so, within the Guard grouping we had a subgrouping for the various Factions."

Sorting characters by Type, especially when you have hundreds of characters, made this impossible undertaking manageable, Bell says.

"To give you a picture of what that looked like, I had a really big spreadsheet with every single [character] attribute on it. That included Gender, Faction, Ethnicity, and every Location in the game. I looked for commonalities to figure out where the so-called 'hot spots' were, to determine how many of a given type of actor we needed."

He adds: "If we tried to go bespoke across the board? That would have been untenable. The amount of effort that would require... I don't know. It's probably possible, but it's just unrealistic."

It took seven narrative designers, three area designers (who were tasked primarily with ensuring that casting assignments didn't lead to actors talking to themselves in the game), and three audio producers to pull this off.

"Then there was also 'script prep' and additional casting support from the writers and area designers," Bell adds, "of which there were about ten altogether. So, in all, there was a ton of prep...to get ready for recording. It involved many people."

For help, Bell and Obsidian leaned on Game On in Montreal, a boutique production house specializing in motion capture and audio recording. Game On managed the voice-recording workload, mitigating some of that work. "We'd send scripts to Game On in Montreal," Bell says. "Then Game On would send back auditions for us for review, and they'd schedule actors and directors for recording sessions."

Embrace the cheese
One of the people who directed the Montreal-based voice actors at Game On is Simon Peacock, a voice actor and voice director based in Montreal. He's originally from New Zealand, and still wields a fairly pronounced accent. Peacock directed a large swath of the voice acting in The Outer Worlds at Game On, most prominently for the Ellie Fenhill character, played by actor Victoria Sanchez, and Felix Millstone, played by Jonathan Maxwell Silver.

Peacock either takes the Metro in Montreal, or rides his bike to the studio. As a director, he likes likes to make sure that he arrives before the talent does. He does voice work as well, and says he doesn't like it when he's there first and the director "just breezes in five minutes before we start."

"I'm old school that way," he says, "and I think that me being there first helps set the tone... For Outer Worlds, my mornings also meant making sure our [internet] connection to Obsidian was working properly, and that we had the correct writers lined up for each character."


The Outer Worlds has a ridiculous streak, which calls for ridiculous acting

Obsidian is known for its narrative emphasis and deep, complicated characters, and Peacock says The Outer Worlds script was no different. The intelligence of the work was obvious to Peacock, while he says the script had a unique sense of self-awareness about it that felt refreshing.

"Games simply haven't quite evolved to that level yet, which is something you see most commonly in film and TV," he says. "There's humor in [The Outer Worlds] which, to me, is so essential to the human condition. In the darkest moments, that's usually when people turn to humor. Yet in games, when we're playing in these incredibly dark situations, where developers become obsessed with creating that environment and feeling, often there's nothing there to try and break that darkness."

Peacock says that bringing in writers from outside of games certainly helps facilitate this.

"I think it's going to be interesting in the next few years to see how much of that gets incorporated into games," he says. "Like I said, it's harder to do humor in a game."

Not only does The Outer Worlds boldly attempt humor, Peacock says, but it also attempts a particular type of humor: "It's not just jokes for the sake of jokes. The jokes all have a point, and the game is very much a satire. Which is, quite possibly, an even harder form of humor to nail in games."

Peacock has a simple benchmark for comedy that he tries to adhere to when recording voice work for a game.

"If it's not entertaining for us while we're recording it, then it's unlikely to be entertaining for everybody else. The humor has to resonate the first time it's read. Right there in the recording booth."

Peacock also agrees that the actors hired to do the voice work have to be diverse, even eccentric.

"One of the most important things in casting is finding a group of people who all come from different perspectives," he says. "So it doesn't become just one homogeneous voice throughout the game. I think that's something we did a good job of [in The Outer Worlds]. We had a lot of really good actors. Actors with a sense of humor almost always do a better job, because we are making them do ridiculous things. And actors who take those things too seriously, who don't have that sense of humor, often struggle to get to the energy level we need for video game performance."

As a voice director who has worked on many games in Montreal and around the world, Peacock has a phrase that he reliably uses in studio: Embrace the cheese.

"Because it really is part of video games," he adds. "There are some lines in [the script] which, when you read them on a page, they look incredibly cheesy -- just, no one could ever actually say this. But if the actor has that sense of fun about it, and commits entirely to it... then it will work in the context of the game. What you want are actors that have an understanding of games... or actors with enough trust in their director and their writers to just embrace it and go for it."

Characters With character
Veteran actor Ashly Burch plays Parvati Holcomb. Parvati is a smart, savvy character who serves as a skilled engineer.

"When I auditioned for the game, I wasn't familiar with the larger game at all," Burch says. "I had what are called 'sides,' which are vertical slices of scenes. Sides give you a little backstory, some lines, a character arc -- that's it.

"You could tell that it was a very harsh world, but that [Parvati] was not affected by that [harshness] in the way that you imagine other people would be. Parvati insulated herself, or maintained a sort of moral center, or a sense of hope that other characters had allowed to erode in themselves."

Pavarti is tough, sure, but Burch saw a sweetness in her, too. "I really wanted there to be a sweetness, and also a bit of an anxiousness in her," she says. "Because she is this very endearing, sweet person."


Parvati is a fan-favorite character in The Outer Worlds

Burch has extensive experience doing voice work for indie and AAA games, and by this point feels that she can usually infer how good the game will be from the quality of the writing on her first sides.

"When they described the plot for me, I could see this was a compelling landscape. Then, as you get into it, and you listen to the conversations that other characters are having, you become more involved in the lore and the world building through these lines of dialogue."

Burch says that The Outer Worlds script also revealed something raw and real about the characters.

"Parvati's story is so personal and so intimate," she says. "That's a really rare thing for games. You're used to large stakes, where life and death are on the line. That's not to say that isn't present in The Outer Worlds -- because it is -- but Parvati's main quest line is getting her confidence up enough to ask someone out on a date, then taking that person out on that date... So it's very personal, and it's very intimate."

But Burch says that Pavarti is a fan favorite for other reasons, too. "People respond to Parvati so much because of her representation, too," she adds. "I don't think I've ever seen this kind of representation in anything before. Because Parvati is a biromantic asexual, and it's such a unique story. Also, just look at the way that people responded to [Parvati]. Her story is one that I think people desperately needed to have represented."

As for the cross-continental nature of the production with recording in Los Angeles and Montreal, Burch wasn't bothered by it.

"Games are increasingly international productions. I think it's good to have that international influence. It's good to have more diverse groups of people from different places. I think that can only add more depth to the game that you're creating. The game world in The Outer Worlds is already rich and intriguing, and the fact that it is being brought to life by people from so many different places? I think that creates the sense that this is a very different world that you're stepping into."

Be informed
Amanda Wyatt is in a car driving down the freeway in the middle of the night, on her way from the airport back to her Los Angeles home. She's worn out from the day, but happy to talk about her involvement in The Outer Worlds. Wyatt is Peacock's counterpart in Los Angeles. She handles casting and directing duties at the Los Angeles-based voiceover studio Talkback, working with Burch and handling sessions for most of the game's companion characters.

Like Burch, Wyatt knew right from the start that the project was special because of the writing. Strong writing, Wyatt says, has its advantages, and she was "literally praying" that the gameplay for The Outer Worlds was as strong as the writing.


The Outer Worlds' writers helped actors better understand their characters

"Because I've been on titles where the writing was great, character development was great, the story is there, but the gameplay is not," she says. "So, unfortunately, it doesn't do well. But Obsidian just had the trifecta with this. Which is awesome."

The big difference, Wyatt says, is how invested the writers were in development. Every companion character in the game had his or her own personal writer.

"That writer got to know [the character] in a way that was so informed. The writer literally lived with the character for a long while. Any question that we had... they had an answer. Always."

Wyatt calls The Outer Worlds a well-informed production, "and all that information from Obsidian, through the writers, trickled down to me and to the actor." This kind of infrastructure, Wyatt says, is an exception.

"I can't tell you how many games I've done where sometimes the writer is not even involved in the project anymore [by the time we get to the recording of the voiceover]," Wyatt says. "So we don't get those answers to questions like, 'Well, why would she say that in this situation?'"

Wyatt says that the biggest challenge for her was knowing what the player is responding to.

"Branching dialogue gives players a choice. You need to record dialogue to accommodate all responses. It's incredibly complicated. But, again, I give props to Obsidian for formatting and constructing the script in such a way that kept us informed during V.O."

Wyatt describes voiceover production on The Outer Worlds as "buttoned up," with everything on the production side kept as tight and efficient as possible.

"Having everything organized like that allowed the actors to stay immersed in the characters," she says. "The actor could come in, and they were able to live and breathe in that character for the four hours that we recorded. That's pretty infrequent that that happens."

Wyatt admits that she was "really nervous" about the complexity of The Outer Worlds' audio process, but says it all came together in an elegant way despite her concerns.

"Especially since we were doing bicoastal recording, I didn't even have time to get to know what the other characters were doing. I know they recorded the Ellie character in Montreal. Again, Obsidian was always present, on all of the recording sessions. Either there was someone on Skype in Montreal, or someone on Skype in LA, with us, ensuring that that continuity was there."

Wyatt admits that it's not always easy to have faith in other people, and had high praise for her collaborators at Obsidian and Game On.

"We had to trust," she says. "We had to stay in our lane. We had to know that whatever was being done [3,000 miles away] in Montreal was going to be as good if not better than what was being done in LA. Again, I give Obsidian credit for trusting that could happen in both locations simultaneously."


The Outer Worlds has sold more than 2.5 million copies

The Outer Worlds is a big, brassy gaming experience. The production broke new ground in programming, writing, and voiceover, and it wound up a critical and commercial success.

Production was complicated, to say the least. An independently developed game? -- Microsoft only acquired the studio in the last year of production -- With hundreds of characters? It seemed like a recipe for disaster. Making matters worse, production literally stretched across North America, from Los Angeles to Montreal.

Part of the inherent joy of playing The Outer Worlds is the optimism that feels sewn into the very fabric of the experience. It's generated by those long-distance production teams, working in tandem, doing right by one another -- and being amazed by one another.

Long odds aren't always a bad thing for a production team. Sometimes, a bit of absurdity and surreality helps. Despite geographical distance and overwhelming complexity, Obsidian got it done, in a very big way.
 

Roguey

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It's been nine months, are they just going to wait until they can bundle the DLC with the Steam release? :lol:
 

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