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

Quillon

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Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Citation: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-announce-trailer.1557488/

Apparently, the development for this DLC was a big mess, probably accounts for the delay.
...
I really hope so. Apparently, the 1st DLC team (led by one of the writers Kate?) took the DLC off the rails for months, and they had to restructure it and clean up the mess once they realized the problem.

To make matters worse, word from the studio was that Obsidian lied to Private Division about Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky being involved in the DLC (they weren't), and it took their actual involvement to fix it - but "fixing" means the DLCs more like the core game, and that means your mileage may vary since I know some really loved it, and some thought it was "meh". Obsidian apparently has a bad rep of assigning devs to projects without really putting those devs on it, then charging the publisher for the "devs" involvement - they did this with Paradox, Bethesda, and Private Division, it's probably one of the reasons they don't tend to work with publishers more than once, but there might be other reasons for that and with MS, they certainly don't need that anymore.

Peter Principle Patel really feeds into my preconceived notions of her abilities. :cool:

is this true tho? a bit too same old story :/ and why she'd be proud of co-directing it if she actually lead it astray?

either case she and whoever else involved is incompetent af, only in this biz to push their agenda(her own fucking admission)
 
Joined
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Codex Year of the Donut
The writing and tone are silly and whimsical despite depicting heinous actions, yes. My point is that NONE of this is different from the main game, at all, whatsoever.
Which is just lazy. This is where it completely falls apart compared to other good works in the same "genre". Outer Worlds never has moments where you put your big boy pants on and take the situation seriously, it's just one gag that goes on for too long.
 

DalekFlay

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Which is just lazy. This is where it completely falls apart compared to other good works in the same "genre". Outer Worlds never has moments where you put your big boy pants on and take the situation seriously, it's just one gag that goes on for too long.

I agree with that pretty much. Again, my criticism is that the review (as I read it) acts like this is an issue with the DLC in particular.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Man, Im so tired of this "There is this mysterious space station where bad things happened." cliche with its friend: "Super evil corporation do some unethical BS that makes absolutely no sense even looking from the pure greed perspective." and: "There is something really bad happening here, a terrible spooky mystery but you can one shot any enemy, including bosses with ease but please pretend be afraid." also: "I will tell you the story through audio logs and, of course, I will waste your time talking about useless information that doesnt matter to the current plot at all."

I mean, System Shock 2 was good because it actually tried to challenge you and you had to actually run and hide from the mutants to not waste precious bullets so the spooky space station was actually spooky and Bioshock at least tried to spice up the cliche with the whole objectivism and Andrew Ryan angle. I mean, just doing the spooky space station + evil corporation cliche still make people remotely interested? I mean Outer Worlds idea of setting is to get all the cliches, make some dumb jokes about it then proceed like you must actually care about the cliches but this thing is as run of the mill, generic popamole as it can get.

Also finding funny that the same influencers that shit on Bethesda for clicks and hyped Outer Worlds for that are now discovering it is actually a mediocre waste of time.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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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
Citation: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-outer-worlds-peril-on-gorgon-announce-trailer.1557488/

Apparently, the development for this DLC was a big mess, probably accounts for the delay.
...
I really hope so. Apparently, the 1st DLC team (led by one of the writers Kate?) took the DLC off the rails for months, and they had to restructure it and clean up the mess once they realized the problem.

To make matters worse, word from the studio was that Obsidian lied to Private Division about Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky being involved in the DLC (they weren't), and it took their actual involvement to fix it - but "fixing" means the DLCs more like the core game, and that means your mileage may vary since I know some really loved it, and some thought it was "meh". Obsidian apparently has a bad rep of assigning devs to projects without really putting those devs on it, then charging the publisher for the "devs" involvement - they did this with Paradox, Bethesda, and Private Division, it's probably one of the reasons they don't tend to work with publishers more than once, but there might be other reasons for that and with MS, they certainly don't need that anymore.

Peter Principle Patel really feeds into my preconceived notions of her abilities. :cool:

Duraframe300 and I saw that guy's posts and have reason to believe he might be making shit up. For one thing, it's not believable that a guy who has all this inside information couldn't cite Kate Dollarhyde's full name on the spot. It's like he's trying to make himself sound like a bigshot industry insider who knows so many names that he can't remember them all, but it doesn't make sense in this context.

The part about the DLC's development being off the rails sounds like it's based on things Carrie Patel publicly said in interviews when the DLC was announced in July. The part about Obsidian assigning devs without really assigning them is a copy-paste of Avellone accusations from 2018. It seems like he's taking a few kernels of truth and constructing a narrative around them to make it sound authentic.
 
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Ol' Willy

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System Shock 2 was good because it actually tried to challenge you and you had to actually run and hide from the mutants to not waste precious bullets
1) You can't hide in SS2. Enemies sometimes receive a direct go-to to your location. I remember sitting in the elevator completely out of sight of everyone just to be greeted by a couple of Rumblers and Maiden.
2) Bullets doesn't matter because you can shank most of the stuff to death with melee weapons.

Yes, let's discuss SS2 instead of THIS game
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
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May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
10 months to make a 6 hour DLC? What took so long?
The fact that TES Construction Kit was the best content creation tool Obsidian has ever the experience with.
Good tools are a benefit, but even Dungeon Siege III had a DLC released four months later, Pillars of Eternity five months later, Deadfire three months later. There was dev hell here.
 

Zer0wing

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Mar 22, 2017
Messages
2,607
Good tools are a benefit, but even Dungeon Siege III had a DLC released four months later, Pillars of Eternity five months later, Deadfire three months later. There was dev hell here.
ToW is made and supported by getting old and lazy boomer hasbeen sector of Obsidian, not Saywer domain.
 

Wesp5

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Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
1,755
1) You can't hide in SS2. Enemies sometimes receive a direct go-to to your location. I remember sitting in the elevator completely out of sight of everyone just to be greeted by a couple of Rumblers and Maiden.

Yes, and enemies spawned in empty rooms with no doors behind you infinitely and you had to kill them with a wrench, endlessly backtracking through mazelike maps. That was annoying and not scary! From a gameplay point of view it is a similar mess to TOW, only into the other direction, like you have too little resources where in TOW you have much too many. And indeed it seemed to have started the whole "read this log because all NPCs are already dead when you arrive" cliche, except if SS1 did this beforehand, which I never played...
 

Ol' Willy

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And indeed it seemed to have started the whole "read this log because all NPCs are already dead when you arrive" cliche, except if SS1 did this beforehand, which I never played...
Some logs in SS2 were genuinely good. Like, the scientist who ended up in the Body of the Many and kept his scientific work until the end. Or descend to the madness of Von Braun's captain. The couple who were talking about escape and indeed managed to do it in the last pod right before your eyes. I dunno if any of the TOW logs are of same quality.
 

KVVRR

Learned
Joined
Apr 28, 2020
Messages
594
The writing and tone are silly and whimsical despite depicting heinous actions, yes. My point is that NONE of this is different from the main game, at all, whatsoever.
Which is just lazy. This is where it completely falls apart compared to other good works in the same "genre". Outer Worlds never has moments where you put your big boy pants on and take the situation seriously, it's just one gag that goes on for too long.
I think the mission where you went to the Hope and the part where you're revealed that everyone's about to starve were supposed to be those parts, it's just that it falls kinda flat. I remember a lot of people were confused as to how does a civilization with these sort of tech have problems growing food, so I bet that has something to do with it.
 
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DalekFlay

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Man, Im so tired of this "There is this mysterious space station where bad things happened." cliche with its friend: "Super evil corporation do some unethical BS that makes absolutely no sense even looking from the pure greed perspective." and: "There is something really bad happening here, a terrible spooky mystery but you can one shot any enemy, including bosses with ease but please pretend be afraid." also: "I will tell you the story through audio logs and, of course, I will waste your time talking about useless information that doesnt matter to the current plot at all."

This is 100% fair, but in a genre dominated by endless, endless Tolkien copying and pasting I don't think Outer Worlds stands out as particularly egregious. At least its weird, whimsical corporate authoritarianism vibe is somewhat unique.
 

cvv

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This is 100% fair, but in a genre dominated by endless, endless Tolkien copying and pasting I don't think Outer Worlds stands out as particularly egregious. At least its weird, whimsical corporate authoritarianism vibe is somewhat unique.

It's unique in its utter lack of imagination. This is not a corporate dictatorship, they just copied standard totalitarian tropes, took the "socialism" label down and wrote "korpret" with crayons instead.

I'd love to play a game portraying a society controlled fully by a corporation, without any standard gubermint laws or regulation, in a smart, rational and credible way. ToW doesn't even come close to it.
 

Quillon

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Dec 15, 2016
Messages
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Tim & Leo/Obs need to realize this is a failed setting, they either have to abandone it or revamp it completely somehow and make the sequel with as little ties to first game as possible(and fire the dykes), otherwise they'll suffer the same fate as they did with Deadfire, albeit to a lesser extent since this isn't a very niche type of game.
 

KVVRR

Learned
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Messages
594
Tim & Leo/Obs need to realize this is a failed setting, they either have to abandone it or revamp it completely somehow and make the sequel with as little ties to first game as possible(and fire the dykes), otherwise they'll suffer the same fate as they did with Deadfire, albeit to a lesser extent since this isn't a very niche type of game.
well it's a good thing they revealed that Earth went dark within the last 5 minutes of the game then, supposedly things are a bit more normal there so they can just leave this star system and make a secuel discovering just what happened there.
 

RepHope

Savant
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Apr 27, 2017
Messages
400
You can go to another solar system outside Halcyon and totally shake things up, so that’s not a problem. The problem is the writers.
 

Flying Dutchman

Learned
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I don't know, I thought Epic Store shackles fell off after a year, so that would make sense.

(Plus, if they bundle the DLCs, they can charge an Ultimate Choice! price, I guess.) I'm pretty curious how they intend to sell it or parse out the content for sale on Steam or if they'll just dump it all up on Steam at full price and pray no one has heard of Gamepass.
 
Possibly Retarded The Real Fanboy
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Gamepass is okay but games dissapear from it so you can play them only for limited time, at first its okay but after longer consideration it won't work for crpgs or other titles with high replay value.
 

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