Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

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

Cohesion

Codex made me an elephant hater.
Patron
Joined
May 14, 2015
Messages
1,462
Location
Moscow, Russia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
Is it me or is Tim Cain just a little bitch. He slobbers all over Amazon's balls saying how good the Fallout show is, and now I'm hearing how Feargus rode him like a bitch over TOW's development... At some point, you're just a little bitch and you need to stand up for yourself and your creative products, sorry.
Dude is GAY BOTTOM. Come on guys. COME ON BROES! Do you REALLY think that doesn't, his design and programming genius aside, spill over into his character?! 200% serious here

Are you surprised? Are you all REALLY surprised??

:codexisfor::neveraskedforthis:
Maybe he is a top gay? Citation needed.
 

Ryzer

Arcane
Joined
May 1, 2020
Messages
8,150
I would agree that the general premise and setup for ToW was pretty good - I mean, that's why I tried the game, because the setting looked cool. I even liked the graphics, with the garish alien life, etc.

I imagine that Tim and Leonard came up with the premise and general plot and the junior writers messed it up, because Tim often said that he can't write and I never heard that Leonard wrote something either. I bet with Bloodlines it was the same at first, either them or Jason came up with the main story, but they were lucky that Mitsoda came along later to make it and the characters work.
Who wrote Arcanum? I refuse to believe that Edward R.G. Mortimer is a real person.
GB: An individual by the name of Edward R. G. Mortimer is credited as the game’s main writer. From what I can tell, he was an editor and contributor to Judges Guild, a pen and paper RPG publisher from way back in the day, but very little is known about him. Can you shed some light on who Mr. Mortimer really was and what he did for Arcanum?

CM: My memory on this was pretty fuzzy, so I had to go straight to the source: Tim Cain. Tim told me that Edward G. Mortimer was a designer from the Judges Guild - a company that made modules for D&D and AD&D back in the 70’s and early 80’s. Mortimer wrote some really good modules for them, so Tim contracted him to do some additional writing for Arcanum. Back then it was much more difficult to coordinate with employees remotely, so most of what he wrote was additional material for our generated dialog system. Although he didn’t end up being a major contributor over the long term, Tim was happy to have worked with (and hired, in fact!) one of his favorite JG designers.

For my part, the one thing I remember about Edward R. G. Mortimer was that he had the snazziest pair of rainbow suspenders I have ever seen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GameBanshee/comments/jqifx1/chad_moore_interview/
His books are on amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Books-Edward-R-G-Mortimer/s?rh=n:283155,p_27:Edward+R.G.+Mortimer
s-l1200.jpg
 

Old Hans

Arcane
Joined
Oct 10, 2011
Messages
2,198
That is one of the biggest problems in TOW for me. And it's not just money and weapons, illegal stuff like the lockpicking and hacking tools are found all over the place as well! Also it basically removes the need to use vendors except for selling all the loot you find...
It's insane how much generic loot you get in that game. End up with 20-25k ammo of all 3 types by the of the game. In first few hours of gameplay you amass enough ammo for it not to be a concern and it only goes up from there.
it's a total red flag in the Obsidian design philosophy. a 20 hour rpg, but the devs treat the looting like it's fallout 76, because they're worried people will get bored if they're not picking up random junk every 10 seconds
 

Infinitron

I post news
Patron
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
100,095
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. 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
Loot in The Outer Worlds is fundamentally different from classic open world RPGs, in that weapon types aren't area-gated in any way. Gain enough levels while you're in Edgewater and you will come out of there wielding a big-ass Plasma Launcher. It's part of what makes TOW feel like a DLC mission for a Bethesda RPG, where you lose all your items but are given replacements very quickly to suit your already high-level character.
 
Last edited:

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,915
Especially funny when they all contradict each other. Feargus supposedly forced everybody to make overly sexualized model of Katarina in Dungeon Siege, but somehow on TOW the same Feargus forced everbody to make every NPC into ugly butch lesbians.

Like, at least pick a story and stick to it.
To my knowledge, no one's ever blamed the art style on Feargus. That would be Boyarsky and Daniel Alpert.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,891
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Thank you for the reasoned response, this was the impression I got in both cases. Temper your expectations, Codex, lol. There are countless great RPGs out there, one that is sufficiently "good" or "solid" is fine.
Brought to the correct thread.

Spike Obviously if you want to go ahead and try Outer Worlds, go ahead and try it and I hope you get something out of it. It's possible that you will find it "sufficiently good". But you are on the Codex for critical thinking and honest opinions. Sure there are a lot of dumb haters but look at the posters who are thoughtful and constructive in their opinions (not just that one guy who registered 2 weeks ago), and you'll find they don't like Outer Worlds either. It's absolutely not "solid" and I struggle to recommend it even as "good". At its best it is mediocre and at its worst it is a big disappointment. I tried hard to like it (I even paid for it), but in the end there are much better games to play out there.

OK, I'm done.
 

Spike

Learned
Joined
Apr 6, 2023
Messages
1,093
Thank you for the reasoned response, this was the impression I got in both cases. Temper your expectations, Codex, lol. There are countless great RPGs out there, one that is sufficiently "good" or "solid" is fine.
Brought to the correct thread.

Spike Obviously if you want to go ahead and try Outer Worlds, go ahead and try it and I hope you get something out of it. It's possible that you will find it "sufficiently good". But you are on the Codex for critical thinking and honest opinions. Sure there are a lot of dumb haters but look at the posters who are thoughtful and constructive in their opinions (not just that one guy who registered 2 weeks ago), and you'll find they don't like Outer Worlds either. It's absolutely not "solid" and I struggle to recommend it even as "good". At its best it is mediocre and at its worst it is a big disappointment. I tried hard to like it (I even paid for it), but in the end there are much better games to play out there.

OK, I'm done.
I understand completely, my IRL friend who I've known since I was 8 also finds it middling. That "new game" feeling must wear off really fast.
 

heightfax

Literate
Joined
May 7, 2024
Messages
8
Loot in The Outer Worlds is fundamentally different from classic open world RPGs,
Not so much, it sucks ass like classic open-world RPGs
I don't know about that one. I had almost no useful loot from any of the late game worlds and DLCs for the most part. Even buying from the venders sucked they would always bug out for me and let me buy from them once a run so I would have to wait till I really needed to hit a vender up to use one.
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
2,040
I dropped it just before the visit to Monarch.
The game is just plain boring. Nothing stands out, and the gameplay consist of looting containers and shooting conveniently placed marauder's outposts on your way between point A, the immovable quest giver, and point B - the immovable quest location.
I must admit, there were some genuine amusing moments inbetween the constant stream of bad jokes, but otherwise the game is so mediocre that it hurts.
The exploration is boring, the maps are tiny, the quests were also boring and worst of all - it's sci-fi, but the worlds are not alien at all. This game is a theme park with a different paint here and there.

A pity, because nothing is really bad, it just doesn't have one spark of creative brilliance in it.
 
Last edited:

ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,421
When they put a bunch of high ceiling support beams or something to "explore", but there is only just enough allowed pathing for you to walk directly to the "secret" loot container and back... bruh...
 

orcinator

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Messages
1,797
Location
Republic of Kongou
I've played through my share of mediocre games in a drought but not bad ones. Two suggestions: replace all the butt ugly broads and drop it to 10 bucks GOTY edition. Easy peasy.
Someone figured out how to change the Bobby Hill texture the ship AI uses so you can have a grand total of 1 attractive female now.
 

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
8,039
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
When they put a bunch of high ceiling support beams or something to "explore", but there is only just enough allowed pathing for you to walk directly to the "secret" loot container and back... bruh...

That's one of the things that annoyed me intensely about the game, the sort of cynically (or perhaps lazily) Pavloviani nature of the area design. The game is full of hand-holding towards points of interest, you seldom feel like you're actually discovering anything for yourself. Ofc in games you rarely are and a lot of it has always been leading and guiding, but in most of the great games it's done more subtly, and you can miss things.
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
2,040
I've played through my share of mediocre games in a drought but not bad ones. Two suggestions: replace all the butt ugly broads and drop it to 10 bucks GOTY edition. Easy peasy.
Someone figured out how to change the Bobby Hill texture the ship AI uses so you can have a grand total of 1 attractive female now.
There's a couple of mods on nexus doing just that.
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
19,131
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
the game is so mediocre that it hurts.
The classic "9-5 Patel" experience
Who cares what gamers think about games today, the important thing is many more women are now making them than before.

Btw we're still analysing why are games flopping left and right and why thousands of devs lose their job every year. So far it's a genuine mystery but two most likely theories are bad feng shui and hatetubers.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom