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

[Riddler]

Cows are a Firefly reference.

And yes, the only corporate bias is at the beginning and coming from Phineas who is clearly an unreliable narrator. Otherwise corporate dudes are often decent folks while anti-board dudes are unlikable pricks. To say that "there's no subtlety game is based against corporations" is quite ironic, because that's the thing about subtlety, not everybody gets it.

The issue with this is that the board's plan is pants on head retarded.

If their plan had been to do something like grinding people up for fertiliser and accusing Phineas of being an idealist that is going to get everyone killed then that would have been one thing, but their plan is just incoherent retardation.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The Edge-water Boss turns to be reasonable man while the Hippie Commune is sitting there guarded by only one person who knows how to shoot gun in middle of bandit country she even admits that in dialogue and it turns out the head of commune is spiteful witch.

He's not reasonable at all, he knows what caused the diseases in the town (weird shit into the saltuna cans to make up for lack of actual saltuna) but insists it's divine retribution for not working hard enough and wants you to bring back the people who didn't want to die eating diseased green rat meat. Compared to that, Adelaide's repurposing of the cemetery is almost a non-issue.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The Edge-water Boss turns to be reasonable man while the Hippie Commune is sitting there guarded by only one person who knows how to shoot gun in middle of bandit country she even admits that in dialogue and it turns out the head of commune is spiteful witch.

He's not reasonable at all, he knows what caused the diseases in the town (weird shit into the saltuna cans to make up for lack of actual saltuna) but insists it's divine retribution for not working hard enough and wants you to bring back the people who didn't want to die eating diseased green rat meat. Compared to that, Adelaide's repurposing the cemetery is almost a non-issue.

I'm not sure if he does. He considers her idea to be "brilliant" when you tell him.
Workers getting sick reduces productivity, not something he would actually want.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The issue with this is that the board's plan is pants on head retarded.

Is it though? How much oversight do they have over one town?
Think of the average North Korean citizen, what kind of town would they run? If people started getting sick, how likely do you think it'd be that they'd assume it was just divine retribution for not serving the supreme leader well enough?
Consider Max's quest in obtaining a book with regards to banned literature.

 

[Wunderbar]

The issue with this is that the board's plan is pants on head retarded.

Is it though? How much oversight do they have over one town?

it's not about town, it's about jettisoning Hope dwellers and freezing workers.

 

[Van-d-all]

I found the Inventory UI pretty terrible.
80% unused screen space while inspecting an item. All those numbers are just small fonts across the screen.
There's no reason why the item tabs cannot be larger.

It's a mess. On one hand inventory has useful stuff like sorting by weight/value ratio, on other hand other menus (modification station or container transfer) don't. Then you have all the sub-menus for weapons and armor in tinkering or companions. It all just lacks coherence.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Rosarium Boss did cared about the consequences of his experiments to the point he shoot himself when you told him what his corporation planned to do

Do you mean Anton Crane? This dude sounded like a total bitch that only cared about his own motives to me.

 

[fantadomat]

When I came back to my ship today, I noticed some uninvited passengers that were hanging out in the storage area.

Spoiler

Ha, ha, very funny, Tim and Leonard.

Yeah,i saw it a few times while i was running toward the exit. The computer cunt kept on trying to make a joke about it,but i just ignored the whole retardation and tried to finish the game already.

Commissar Draco it is a shame that there was no "kill both sides" ending. Both sides were retarded and incompetent. By the end of the game i just went on killing any retard that annoyed me and whipped that city level. Still the ending slides were just a joke,it didn't mention my actual deads nd just spewed some generic happy ending for the colonies.

 

[LudensCogitet]

Rosarium Boss did cared about the consequences of his experiments to the point he shoot himself when you told him what his corporation planned to do

Do you mean Anton Crane? This dude sounded like a total bitch that only cared about his own motives to me.

I read some of the terminal entries in the lab...

Spoiler

and the appetite suppressant / toothpaste he was making caused blindness. It was clear from the entries back and forth that he (Anton) was continuing to try to eliminate that side effect even after the corporation told him they'd handle it with PR.

So I knew he was at least somewhat sympathetic. I didn't know he could be driven that far overboard though! I just gave him the research.

Which indicates some more variation than is apparent on the surface. That doesn't change the fact that the NPC interactions feel very flat and narrow. TOW definitely gives the impression that all roads lead to the same end and that no choice cuts off any options (which makes it not a choice).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Cows are a Firefly reference.

And yes, the only corporate bias is at the beginning and coming from Phineas who is clearly an unreliable narrator. Otherwise corporate dudes are often decent folks while anti-board dudes are unlikable pricks. To say that "there's no subtlety game is based against corporations" is quite ironic, because that's the thing about subtlety, not everybody gets it.

The issue with this is that the board's plan is pants on head retarded.

If their plan had been to do something like grinding people up for fertiliser and accusing Phineas of being an idealist that is going to get everyone killed then that would have been one thing, but their plan is just incoherent retardation.

Board's plan isn't retarded at all.

Spoiler

They are struggling for resources, so they use technology available to them to scale down the colony until they can find a solution. Meanwhile Phineas wants to unfreeze 90,000 people and add them to already overstretched and starving population, on a hunch that maybe one of the scientists can find a solution. Board's plan is ruthless but reasonable, Phineas' plan is an idealistic gamble.

 

[Wunderbar]

IHaveHugeNick phineas wanted to unfreeze scientists only (he can see who is who as it shown during character creation).

 

[Wesp5]

I'm not sure if he does. He considers her idea to be "brilliant" when you tell him.
Workers getting sick reduces productivity, not something he would actually want.

Exactly, he isn't outright evil, he is just an idiot! Like the majority of important males or board people, while the anti-board people are more or less all strong females and much less idiotic...

 

[Prime Junta]

Like the majority of important males or board people, while the anti-board people are more or less all strong females and much less idiotic...

To be fair, this matches my RL experience of important males or board people.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

He is ignoring that

Spoiler

unfreezing more people means more mouths to feed and doesn't seem to care that board is already investing considerable resources into scientists who are working on the problem. At no point he pauses to consider the downsides, his entire plan isn't based on reason, just on sticking it to the board.

 

[Wunderbar]

Anyway, the ending slides show that eventually Phineas was good and the Board was bad.

 

[fantadomat]

He is ignoring that unfreezing more people means more mouths to feed and doesn't seem to care that board is already investing considerable resources into scientists who are working on the problem. At no point he pauses to consider the downsides, his entire plan isn't based on reason, just on sticking it to the board.

Both sides are shit,i killed all the scientist because they were trying to make humans in to aliens or some shit. Both side wanted find a magical solution to problem made by years of retarded rule by incompetent bureaucrats. If i had the choice i would have killed the scientist after he woke the sleeping and let the whole colony just starve. That way the human resilience and adaptability would have kicked in and everything would have ended up as monarch.

 

[Liz]

Rosarium Boss did cared about the consequences of his experiments to the point he shoot himself when you told him what his corporation planned to do

Do you mean Anton Crane? This dude sounded like a total bitch that only cared about his own motives to me.

On his computer in the covert lab you can find that he wanted to keep working on his toothpaste to solve a few "issues" like external hemorrhaging or whatever. But his higher ups said something along the lines of "We'll have the marketing guys fix that".

So yea he wanted to move up but wasn't a TOTAL bitch...

Seriously tho, relegating character building to terminals and/or notes is such a goddamn lazy thing to do.

 

[biggestboss]

I just perused the Screenshots thread where someone posted Outer Worlds images and some of the environments in the later areas of this game look so fucking cool. Unforunately, I'm not sure I'll ever get past how boring Emerald Vale is to get to these locations.

 

[fantadomat]

look so fucking cool. Unforunately, I'm not sure I'll ever get past how boring Emerald Vale is to get to these locations.

Yeah,they do look cool,but the level design is as boring as emerald vale.

 

[Theldaran]

Emerald Vale sounds like a freaking Sonic the Hedgehog screen.

 

[Wesp5]

So yea he wanted to move up but wasn't a TOTAL bitch...

Most of the others weren't either, e.g. the Edgewater guy just left peacefully if you persuaded him. But as I already wrote here before, sometimes a story needs a good villain and I haven't seen one in TOW yet! Compare that to e.g Bloodlines. A lot of people were grey, but some were outright evil and deserved to be killed...

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Seriously tho, relegating character building to terminals and/or notes is such a goddamn lazy thing to do.

I have many issues with the writing, but the way it is structured I genuinely enjoyed. They often avoid laying out lore dumps and important plot points right in your face, instead they leave breadcrumbs for you to find in terminals and personal anecdotes told by NPCs. In a way it's written like a text-based game instead of popamole story with voice acting where plot is fed through cut scenes.

 

[Liz]

So yea he wanted to move up but wasn't a TOTAL bitch...

Most of the others weren't either, e.g. the Edgewater guy just left peacefully if you persuaded him. But as I already wrote here before, sometimes a story needs a good villain and I haven't seen one in TOW yet! Compare that to e.g Bloodlines. A lot of people were grey, but some were outright evil and deserved to be killed...

It's such a shame there's no equivalent to Ceasar's Legion in this game. Though looking at standard of writing in TOW, I can't imagine them writing a similair faction without completely mucking it up and making them just stupid evil.

 

[Daidre]

I just perused the Screenshots thread where someone posted Outer Worlds images and some of the environments in the later areas of this game look so fucking cool. Unforunately, I'm not sure I'll ever get past how boring Emerald Vale is to get to these locations.

I'd dare to say that among the all Obsidian personnel who made TOW only environment artists earned my true respect. Even with their work often hamstrung by actual area-layouts and eye-bleeding post-processing places like Scylla is nothing less than beautiful.

It aligns rather well with my opinion Deadfire's locations being best-looking in the isometric subgenre.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

He is ignoring that unfreezing more people means more mouths to feed

only on supernova difficulty.