Preview The Outer Worlds Gameplay Footage, Previews and Interviews

[toro]

I already played New Vegas and this looks like New Vegas with worse art direction and characters in Dragon Age: Inquisition-style hubs.

Low quality bait. You can do better than this.

 

[Jazz_]

It looks generic as fuck with popamole gameplay, what the fuck Cainarsky?

 

[Puteo]

People criticizing the art style and calling it "generic" are using the wrong word. It's not generic at all, but it is very derivative of a number of other works. It's not entirely bad though even if the laser-dripping-cyber-scythe paired with the retro stylings contrasts hard enough to give you whiplash.

There are far worse crimes, like how they have culturally-appropriated some of the worst elements of Gamebryo in that terrible frozen-body-moving-head conversation system and the hopelessly dry combat.

That said, with mediocre-to-decent writing and Microsoft's giant advertising budget I am sure this thing will sell gangbusters as long as Obsidian's tendencies towards non-binary genderfluid fish sex are kept reined in.

Here's why I find certain reactions to this video premature and a little weird.

There is a game called Fallout: New Vegas. Today, it's widely considered to be among the finest RPGs of its era.

"The most edible croissant in the dumpster"

 

[undecaf]

Everything else seems fine, but not digging the gameplay at all. Trying to find something positive to say about it and I just can't. An FPS with a slow-mo gimmick. I've never seen that before, what fun it must be.

 

[Matt van der Iver]

Here's why I find certain reactions to this video premature and a little weird.

There is a game called Fallout: New Vegas. Today, it's widely considered to be among the finest RPGs of its era.

In the early stages of New Vegas, you arrive at a generic-looking town called Primm. It's been taken over by a generic-looking gang. There's some dialogue before, but basically your mission is to go into the hotel they've occupied and kill them all.

Due to its simplicity, action-packedness and lack of spoilers, that quest would have been perfect material for say, a 14 minute gameplay preview reel released before the game's launch. A reel full of janky, terrible-looking and fairly trivial Bethesda Gamebryo corridor shooting.

How do you think you would have reacted to it? What conclusions do you think you would have drawn about the game from it?

Those are reasonable points.

While there would be no conclusions to draw in regards to reactivity, quest design, writing and so on from such a preview, the fact is that New Vegas is guilty of poor gameplay. Likewise, the gameplay footage of The Outer Worlds betrays far from promising shooting gameplay. If the writing turns out to be on par with Bloodlines or the setting having the same depth as Arcanum, then it'll be another flawed masterpiece, but the only thing we can be certain of for now is that the gameplay is closer to Borderlands than S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

I choose to look at it as Borderlands with (probably) better writing. It wouldn't take much for the gameplay to be better than Borderlands either. So even if this isn't a masterpiece, it should at least be decent.

 

[Bigg Boss]

You guys forgot that isometric turn based part I was talking about so I get to still bitch.

 

[Dexter]

A lot less "excited" after seeing the gameplay-slice in action from a part of the game they were apparently "proud" enough of to show off. They need to work on that clunky combat and gun-hand movement, it looks like it's a rigid prop stuck to the camera that moves unnaturally just up and down a bit while "walking". It needs more variety in animations, some idle stuff where the hand goes down, playing around with the weapon & whatever to seem natural and less stiff.

From the companions shown so far, they seem to indeed be very generic like in Pillars. None of them seem special or like you'd want to know something more about them. The closest to actually having a personality that they've shown is Ellie. Felix and Nyoka seem even less interesting. KOTOR 2, NWN 2: MotB or even Alpha Protocol this seems not. It seems closer to Dungeon Siege III or Pillars of Eternity in that department, they need better character designers and writers.

The bland also seems to extend to various NPCs they've shown that seem very generic as others have said. The scientist in the Trailer at least looked somewhat different, but that doesn't seem to be true for any of the rest of NPCs they've shown. Where are the merchant-type seedy characters hocking their (corporate-approved or under the counter) wares? Immediately after they revealed the setting I was thinking about Travelling Medicine Shows and or Medicine Salesmen/Quacks. Where are the Penguin-looking fellas? Where are the sexy looking characters? Where are the cybernetics-using characters or those with cybernetic eyes or mechanical improvements and similar, or the sentient robots? Where are the amputees or horribly disfigured characters in fights against alien fauna or chemical accidents? Where are any possible sentient alien species? You're in space, on the great dangerous, unknown frontier where shit can go horribly wrong, only limited by your imagination, go wild! I thought they might show at least as much creativity as "id Software" did with RAGE. Instead everyone looks like they have the same body model with the same clothing choices, accessories and personality.

The level design shown so far also doesn't fill with confidence. Overworld looks very limited and compressed with objectives very close within walking distance (in the Gameplay shown it seemed to always be about ~200m for the next objective). Indoors looks like the good old days of the uninspired level designer just making a few nondescript connected rooms and filling them with crates and some random clutter to make them seem less empty, instead of anything organic:

Not so sure about this anymore. One can only hope this is some non-descript boring fetch-quest, but if so why would they choose to present this as their first gameplay after getting everyone excited and interested instead of showing one of their main hubs like EdgeWater and some more interesting characters/quests like Cyberpunk did?

 

[Nano]

The closest to actually having a personality that they've shown is Ellie

Maybe because she's the only companion that the previews paid any amount of attention to?

 

[Tigranes]

Doesn't look terrible, doesn't look great. At least in what is shown the Gilded Age influences are minimal and it's a generic sci fi shooter that takes zero risks and recycles the bio/beth/etc 3rd person formula. I guess, if I were Obsidian (pre-acquisition), it would make sense to play it more safe with this one, but they could at least have had better art direction.

At least the planet they land on isn't brown

 

[Guy de Incognito]

I guess, if I were Obsidian (pre-acquisition), it would make sense to play it more safe with this one

Playing it safe and sticking to tried & tested is what saved Obsidian in 2012 when they ran out of money. Leave experimentation and risk to indies and let the experienced old hands do what they do best - rehash ideas from back when their dicks still worked.

 

[The_Mask]

I guess, if I were Obsidian (pre-acquisition), it would make sense to play it more safe with this one

Playing it safe and sticking to tried & tested is what saved Obsidian in 2012 when they ran out of money. Leave experimentation and risk to indies and let the experienced old hands do what they do best - rehash ideas from back when their dicks still worked.

To be 100% fair though, from Microsoft's point of view, it makes perfect sense to play the first title you release as safe as possible. This was/is/will be expected by any reasonable person.

The problem is: are we lenient in this regard or not? And if we are - is that sending a message that they can continue playing it safe, or a message that this is a 1-time pass?



As far as Obsidian goes, we've seen this pony before - question is: does it have any new/interesting tricks?

 

[DeepOcean]

Here's why I find certain reactions to this video premature and a little weird.

There is a game called Fallout: New Vegas. Today, it's widely considered to be among the finest RPGs of its era.

In the early stages of New Vegas, you arrive at a generic-looking town called Primm. It's been taken over by a generic-looking gang. There's some dialogue before, but basically your mission is to go into the hotel they've occupied and kill them all.

Due to its simplicity, action-packedness and lack of spoilers, that quest would have been perfect material for say, a 14 minute gameplay preview reel released before the game's launch. A reel full of janky, terrible-looking and fairly trivial Bethesda Gamebryo corridor shooting.

How do you think you would have reacted to it? What conclusions do you think you would have drawn about the game from it?

With these open-world action-RPGs, it's all about how it comes together. You might say that for every Chief Hanlon conversation, you need a few trips to a Ranger station. The experience of travelling the world, how your choices gradually build up, starting from the small stuff before arriving at something grand.

All will boil down to world building and the quests, from the trailer I already know that the combat will be janky and the graphix serviceable at best, not that New Vegas was any different of course. My two biggest worries are that bit with the flying numbers and the quirky humour, I hope they dont do "item fever" kind of itemization, that shit SUCKS and have no redeemable qualities beyond give autists bigger numbers so they are happy.

I hope the "quirky" sense of humour doesn't mean not dealing with interesting themes and it doesn't feel like a Saturday morning cartoon with a few drops of RPG on it, not interested on that.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Saturday morning cartoon would be really nice if it was something cheesy but cool like Bravestarr. This looks more mild like borderlands. Might be a bit more dark but at tyranny levels, I simply don't trust obsidian now.

 

[naossano]

Beside the flaw system, one big news is that all the locations aren't part of one big continuous gameworld, but that you will go to separate locations through your spaceship.
It is a big refreshing in the ocean of *open-world* games that we had during the last decade.

 

[slowtard]

Slowtard requires that you make not merely a game *objectively* as good as Fallout, for in truth there have been several of these in recent years. No, Slowtard requires a game that instills in his psyche the same feelings that Fallout did twenty years ago.

You must recreate the wonder of seemingly open-ended exploration, before we were jaded by what turned into the familiar chore of collecting quests from a multitude of benighted, whining village chieftains in a thousand other games since. You need to establish the same suspense in combat that we felt before we internalized the fact that our actions were retractable, reloadable, repeatable. We need to feel the blades of grass between our toes. The hot wind in our hair.

You cannot imagine how beautiful the world was before we joined the army, or especially before three and a half in the pen. Before we were nihilistic & spiteful enough to claim that we believe the earth is flat, and we can see the stars better in our camera phone than with a telescope. They aren't gargantuan burning balls of gas! They're just LEDs. Like everything else.

You must do nothing less than make the same thing new to us again.

 

[markec]

Here's why I find certain reactions to this video premature and a little weird.

There is a game called Fallout: New Vegas. Today, it's widely considered to be among the finest RPGs of its era.

In the early stages of New Vegas, you arrive at a generic-looking town called Primm. It's been taken over by a generic-looking gang. There's some dialogue before, but basically your mission is to go into the hotel they've occupied and kill them all.

Due to its simplicity, action-packedness and lack of spoilers, that quest would have been perfect material for say, a 14 minute gameplay preview reel released before the game's launch. A reel full of janky, terrible-looking and fairly trivial Bethesda Gamebryo corridor shooting.

How do you think you would have reacted to it? What conclusions do you think you would have drawn about the game from it?

With these open-world action-RPGs, it's all about how it comes together. You might say that for every Chief Hanlon conversation, you need a few trips to a Ranger station. The experience of travelling the world, how your choices gradually build up, starting from the small stuff before arriving at something grand.

New Vegas did have poor gameplay due Bethesdas shit engine, what pulled the game above mediocrity was the writing and world building which I agree you cant compress into a trailer.

But the problem is that nuObsidian has proven that they dont have the talent for anything close to good writing.

So at best we could get open world game with poor gameplay, mediocre at best writing and good world building and I dont see any reason to get excited for it.

 

[Zeriel]

The game itself looks like it could be pretty fun, but the coverage of it seems like it has been specifically designed to induce projectile vomiting. If I went to a cave today and returned to society on my 90th birthday, it would still be too soon to hear "is basically Fallout in space" again. It's really funny to see all these journalists treating "first person perspective" as a core part of the Fallout DNA, too. It's fucking bizarre. In the same sentence that they acknowledge Cain and Boyarsky are the original creators of Fallout they also ascribe all Fallout-y things to Bethesda.

How can the art direction be this bad? That's the one thing I took for granted from Boyarsky, a solid art direction.

One guy in a senior role does not create all the art for a game. If I had to guess from the outside looking in, I'd say Boyarsky is responsible for all the neat concept art related to corporations, while all the ingame art and assets are created by artists with not one tenth his talent or creativity. It's unfortunate but this is kind of what I expected, Cain and Boyarsky in a supervisory role alone cannot make this game brilliant in every facet, it still has to be made and assembled by modern game developers. It's why I've kept my expectations pretty low.

 

[Shilandra]

No romances for low int speech is a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Really though fuck this bullshit.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Then again did one of the article's said Tim wouldn't tell them something? I forgot what it was

Oh it's the acronym he wouldn't say(gamespot dude asked also) hmn.

Maybe he renamed the attributes for the acronym to be letter-elly "S.H.A.P.E.S" :D

I said it in the other thread and I'll say it here.

F
A
G
G
O
T

 

[Molzey75]

Looks cool. Codex is as always Special Olympics for Edgelords.

 

[toro]

https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidians-t...nd-fallout-into-a-bold-open-ended-sci-fi-rpg/

"You were part of a ship that got lost," Boyarsky says. "You've been frozen for 70 years. If you're frozen for more than 10 years, it's a really bad thing. This guy figured out a way to save you, and he needs you to help him get more chemicals to help save the rest of the colonists. But you don't have to help him do that. You can go to the 'evil board,' the Halcyon corporate board, and turn this guy in and see what happens if you do that."

"You get a lot of money," Cain adds.

 

[Quillon]

Then again did one of the article's said Tim wouldn't tell them something? I forgot what it was

Oh it's the acronym he wouldn't say(gamespot dude asked also) hmn.

Maybe he renamed the attributes for the acronym to be letter-elly "S.H.A.P.E.S" :D

I said it in the other thread and I'll say it here.

F
A
G
G
O
T

 

[Quillon]

https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidians-t...nd-fallout-into-a-bold-open-ended-sci-fi-rpg/

"You were part of a ship that got lost," Boyarsky says. "You've been frozen for 70 years. If you're frozen for more than 10 years, it's a really bad thing. This guy figured out a way to save you, and he needs you to help him get more chemicals to help save the rest of the colonists. But you don't have to help him do that. You can go to the 'evil board,' the Halcyon corporate board, and turn this guy in and see what happens if you do that."

"You get a lot of money," Cain adds.

and as usual:

RPG Site: So are there certain characters or quest-specific NPCs you're just not allowed to kill or have die?

Megan Starks: As a designer, I'm always tempted to just have it made so that you can't kill this person or that person! But we have a philosophy where we feel like it makes for a better gameplay experience to allow the player to do these sorts of things. You can even kill the scientist if you want.

 

[Sprout]

That said, with mediocre-to-decent writing and Microsoft's giant advertising budget I am sure this thing will sell gangbusters as long as Obsidian's tendencies towards non-binary genderfluid fish sex are kept reined in.

The publisher is Take Two's private division (their new indie arm), no microsoft money involved. In fact it seems the game has mid-tier budget of old; more than indie but less than modern AAA.

As for me, the only aspects I care about are the writing and skills/stats and maybe exploration. To me the gameplay has always been a vehicle to experience those in an RPG, meaning I can live with it no matter how sucky. In fact, I was straight up relieved seeing the jankiness of new vegas in this one. Believe it or not, if Obsidian wasn't aping bethesda's fallout they'd have come up with something far more abysmal.