Development Info The Outer Worlds Panel at PAX West 2019 - Come to Halcyon Trailer

[Trashos]

It's so weird. The trailer is well made, and the decision to make fun of corporations that are like Gilded Age gone haywire is a great one. This would have made a great Fallout spinoff.... back when they made New Vegas, or when we thought we'd never get a Fallout 3.

To make this now as finally a reunited Cain-Boyarsky new IP title after Fallout has spawned a million clones and has beaten its own horse dong to death? Just so weirdly disappointing.

We agree on your first part. They should have made a game like this. They hadn't, so I think it makes sense they are doing it now. Better late than never, in this case.

Of course, there is the argument that questions such an endeavor with the amount of talent they currently have (other than Cainarsky, obviously). But for Obsidian as a company, it still makes sense. Whether it makes sense for us Codexers, it is a different matter. You may be right, and we shall see.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Me: "This game is so weirdly disappointing and has no business coming out after 2012"

Politician: YOU ARE FABULOUSLY OPTIMISTIC YOU MOTHERFUCKER YOU FUCK YOU DUMB



Do you want another carrot? That the gameplay looks like the proud heritage of Bethesda combat copy pasted 10 years late? I thought that just goes without saying.

I was using the fabulously optimistic rating in an ironic manner.

 

[Badmojo]

I am expecting this game to disappoint. I remember the gameplay trailers they showed before and it was a snore fest with cringe writing. Now I see the panel and my opinion dropped even more. This won't be the next fallout:NV, they even said that way back when, so lower expectations.

 

[Roguey]

. This would have made a great Fallout spinoff.... back when they made New Vegas, or when we thought we'd never get a Fallout 3.

To make this now as finally a reunited Cain-Boyarsky new IP title after Fallout has spawned a million clones and has beaten its own horse dong to death? Just so weirdly disappointing.

Huh, what? Where are all the New Vegas-likes?

 

[Prime Junta]

Imagine playing games from a Microsoft™ subsidiary made to sell Season Pass© on Microsoft Shop® by taking advantage of Epic exclusive.

At least the game is thematically appropriate.

 

[Tigranes]

. This would have made a great Fallout spinoff.... back when they made New Vegas, or when we thought we'd never get a Fallout 3.

To make this now as finally a reunited Cain-Boyarsky new IP title after Fallout has spawned a million clones and has beaten its own horse dong to death? Just so weirdly disappointing.

Huh, what? Where are all the New Vegas-likes?

There aren't any. There are a ton of post-apocalypse setting plunderers.

I love New Vegas THIS MUCH and personally, a reskinned New Vegas is worth the money from me. But I find it disappointing that Cain and Boyarsky's great new game seems such a reskin in every way (gameplay, setting, etc), and I am especially disappointed that the "Gilded Age of the Future" they initially seemed to promise turned into a messy mishmash of a bit of 19th century America, a bit of Fallouty 1950s, a bit of everything inbetween and all round.

I hope that it will be a stylish and clever game, and the trailer is pretty nice on that front, but I can't help but wonder if this was creatively the coolest thing they could have done. And all the gameplay innovations they've introduced seem gimmicky reskins of a formula that was already mastered pretty well with FNV, so again, it's a case of how much will this be great in its own right, if at all.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

a messy mishmash of a bit of 19th century America, a bit of Fallouty 1950s, a bit of everything inbetween and all round

The problem is that they have been pigeonholed into the whole 1950 shtick. It was just a small part of the Fallout universe aesthetics, but it was blown out the proportion over the years. Whenever I see someone obsessed over this aspect I suspect the person haven't played original games.

 

[Duraframe300]

a bit of Fallouty 1950s

Is it? In which regard?

There's obviously early sci-fi thrown in, but thats more or less the earliest, popular point they could have taken on that in terms of interpretation. Theres no real point of refrence they could have gone to for the early 20th century. Also it's more like 50/60's.

Thats more a coincidence than anything else.
Or do you mean something else?

 

[Jedi Exile]

Beautiful. True to real Fallout and its humour.

 

[Tigranes]

a messy mishmash of a bit of 19th century America, a bit of Fallouty 1950s, a bit of everything inbetween and all round

The problem is that they have been pigeonholed into the whole 1950 shtick. It was just a small part of the Fallout universe aesthetics, but it was blown out the proportion over the years. Whenever I see someone obsessed over this aspect I suspect the person haven't played original games.

a bit of Fallouty 1950s

Is it? In which regard?

I'm not suggesting that the game is a 1950's thing through and through - the point is that they could have started with the Gilded Age & the C&C of FNV, and then go in a direction that sets the Outer Worlds apart artistically, gameplay wise, setting wise, tone, etc. Instead, they clearly consciously decided to keep it very close the nuFallout mix of retro-future science & Skyrim-like gameplay.

If we just look at this trailer:

You've got 'employment communities' like Edgewater, which echo most directly the paternalism of (idealised) postwar American workplaces. I suspect that at least some parts of the game will use the alien planets as the wild frontier where corporate power remains aggressive, ad hoc and dynamic, but there's plenty here that remind you a lot more of Big Corporation doing what Big Government did for Fallout. Is it the same thing as Vault-Tec? Not quite. Does it hugely remind you of Vault-Tec in how they present it? All the time.

What about the actual kinds of areas and environments in-game that such settings translate into? You've got the kind of sci-fi settler places that would fit in perfectly into New Vegas, that you could probably troll someone saying this is a great new total conversion mod:

I have mixed feelings about this game and I have since day one, but here I'm just focusing on a single point - that they seem to have very clearly chosen to do a lower-risk 'here's our I Can't Believe It's Not Fallout/Skyrim' game in terms of style, setting and gameplay, and that's a pity.

 

[Duraframe300]

Don't really get that feeling with the same intensity, but ymmv and you have a point.

And at least part of it is Leonard's and Tim's style. Arcanum was a drastically different thing and I'd still say I thought it had a lot of parallels to Fallout (well, on the narrative side. And both cain and boyarsky did say they liked Bethesda's FPS/RPG style and wanted to do their own. Before Outer Worlds was even a thing.)

I doubt you'll ever going to get that different thing from Cainarsky, at least on their own IP's. I don't think this is entirly just because they wanted to do the *safe* thing, but rather its just because its a Cainarsky setting.

I will say that rpg-systems wise they could have gotten a lot futher like they did on Arcanum. But maybe the safe part there was the focus on a bug-free game/polish.

 

[tindrli]

The game looks like a total conversion mod for New Vegas.

i was gona say a same thing.. watching it and cant stop thinking about fallout 3 and beyond bioshock and borderlands combined.. and for some reason instead for being appealing it breaks immersion completely

 

[Ibn Sina]

I never really care about graphics if at least the gameplay or narrative is good, but looking at this just brings memories about bad trips I had when I was experimenting with LSD and Esctacy when I was still in school. It looks like puke and looking at its colour palette makes me feel some sort of sea sickness, with dizziness and nausea.

 

[jewboy]

After recently trying Kenshi and Rimworld I can't complain too much about the graphics, but yes there is something cartoony and overcolored about the creatures they've shown so far. Looks like the lead artist is anti-realist and maybe not quite good enough to pull off good anti-realism. So we get bad anti-realism. Stylized graphics can be cool when they aren't pandering to preteen gamers or just trying to look like cartoon/anime but stylization is ambitious, an advanced technique, and these creatures are an over-colorized fakey mess. Looks like some special snowflake overestimated their abilities again. I would really like to see an interview with the art team and hear about what they were going for. It's possible they are inexperienced and overconfident. Overconfidence often leads to failure. Regardless of how the game does financially it already looks like a failure artistically. The fact that most of the female faces don't look particularly female and are a bit uncanny valley leads me to believe that there may be some very inexperienced game artists on the team who really don't know what they are doing. It may be that female faces are more subtle and harder to model than male ones. Maybe future game art texts will reference this game as an illustration of that.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

You've got 'employment communities' like Edgewater, which echo most directly the paternalism of (idealised) postwar American workplaces. I suspect that at least some parts of the game will use the alien planets as the wild frontier where corporate power remains aggressive, ad hoc and dynamic, but there's plenty here that remind you a lot more of Big Corporation doing what Big Government did for Fallout. Is it the same thing as Vault-Tec? Not quite. Does it hugely remind you of Vault-Tec in how they present it? All the time.

This shit is so late 19th century it hurts. Company towns? That echoes most directly in... the company towns of the gilded age—look up Homestead.

The frontier? No longer existed after 1890. But big business wasn’t really that dynamic in the frontier, unless by dynamic you mean willing to employ extreme violence and subvert the institutions of the state in pursuit of more money.

If this stuff reminds you of the ‘50s it’s because that was a fairly nostalgic decade—so many goddamned cowboy movies.

As for the sci-fi elements, they seem more reminiscent of the old Flash Gordon serials from the ‘30s than anything else.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Irony is the lowest form of wit. Appropriate, given the level of effort displayed by this trailer.

 

[Tigranes]

You've got 'employment communities' like Edgewater, which echo most directly the paternalism of (idealised) postwar American workplaces. I suspect that at least some parts of the game will use the alien planets as the wild frontier where corporate power remains aggressive, ad hoc and dynamic, but there's plenty here that remind you a lot more of Big Corporation doing what Big Government did for Fallout. Is it the same thing as Vault-Tec? Not quite. Does it hugely remind you of Vault-Tec in how they present it? All the time.

This shit is so late 19th century it hurts. Company towns? That echoes most directly in... the company towns of the gilded age—look up Homestead.

The frontier? No longer existed after 1890. But big business wasn’t really that dynamic in the frontier, unless by dynamic you mean willing to employ extreme violence and subvert the institutions of the state in pursuit of more money.

If this stuff reminds you of the ‘50s it’s because that was a fairly nostalgic decade—so many goddamned cowboy movies.

As for the sci-fi elements, they seem more reminiscent of the old Flash Gordon serials from the ‘30s than anything else.

I think you're getting me wrong. I never said this is all 50's. I wanted them to go all in Gilded Age / Belle Epoque in a way that sets them apart more from Fallout, whereas they seem happy for it to feel so much like 'kind of Fallout but not really, now with super-vibrant flora'.

For example, we could have gone Mucha-style belle epoque aesthetics:

instead, we went with a very American mix. I sometimes look at 19th century periodicals for fun, and a lot of the branding/ads in Outer Worlds could probably fit in there just fine. But it could also fit in Duck and Cover style Fallout just fine, too.

Company towns are another thing where you can go multiple directions. Me, I would have gone for, say, mid-late 19th century railroad companies and other places where there is, if not a literal frontier, then a sense of rapid expansion, cut-throat competition, gangs and violence in certain cases, etc. But what we get seems to draw closer to, again, a postwar paternalism (much of which can be found with Fordism, or as late as Mr Burns' nuclear company).

 

[AwesomeButton]

I love New Vegas THIS MUCH and personally, a reskinned New Vegas is worth the money from me. But I find it disappointing that Cain and Boyarsky's great new game seems such a reskin in every way (gameplay, setting, etc), and I am especially disappointed that the "Gilded Age of the Future" they initially seemed to promise turned into a messy mishmash of a bit of 19th century America, a bit of Fallouty 1950s, a bit of everything inbetween and all round.

Instead, they clearly consciously decided to keep it very close the nuFallout mix of retro-future science & Skyrim-like gameplay.

Finally, someone other than me has seen it.

To make this now as finally a reunited Cain-Boyarsky new IP title after Fallout has spawned a million clones and has beaten its own horse dong to death? Just so weirdly disappointing.

This is what I've been saying for months and have been called crazy. To have your retirement project be so unoriginal and uninspired, it's just a sad way to end for the two guys who pretty much invented the cRPG as we've known it for decades.

 

[Elhoim]

What I really dislike is the coloring post-effect. Looks... bad. I can't pinpoint it, but what they went for doesn't create a nice looking picture, but a mix of over-saturation and high contrast that pushes me away visually.

 

[Diggfinger]

Looks pretty fine to me. Like FNW fucked Bioshock, with a good dose of Fallout 2 humor.

AWESOME trailer - AWESOME game cant wait

 

[Roguey]

instead, we went with a very American mix. I sometimes look at 19th century periodicals for fun, and a lot of the branding/ads in Outer Worlds could probably fit in there just fine. But it could also fit in Duck and Cover style Fallout just fine, too.

Moonface is certainly reminiscent of A Trip to the Moon

 

[Infinitron]

It's probably a bit challenging to create any sort of non-contrived "early modern-themed" science fiction setting that doesn't feel at least a bit 1950s-ish because there are crucial elements of modern mass society that don't really exist before that period. For example, how do you do a late 19th century-themed television advertisement? It doesn't make sense for BioShock Infinite-style 30 second kinetoscope animations to still be in use in the actual far future.

 

[Morality Games]

a messy mishmash of a bit of 19th century America, a bit of Fallouty 1950s, a bit of everything inbetween and all round

The problem is that they have been pigeonholed into the whole 1950 shtick. It was just a small part of the Fallout universe aesthetics, but it was blown out the proportion over the years. Whenever I see someone obsessed over this aspect I suspect the person haven't played original games.

a bit of Fallouty 1950s

Is it? In which regard?

I'm not suggesting that the game is a 1950's thing through and through - the point is that they could have started with the Gilded Age & the C&C of FNV, and then go in a direction that sets the Outer Worlds apart artistically, gameplay wise, setting wise, tone, etc. Instead, they clearly consciously decided to keep it very close the nuFallout mix of retro-future science & Skyrim-like gameplay.

If we just look at this trailer:

You've got 'employment communities' like Edgewater, which echo most directly the paternalism of (idealised) postwar American workplaces. I suspect that at least some parts of the game will use the alien planets as the wild frontier where corporate power remains aggressive, ad hoc and dynamic, but there's plenty here that remind you a lot more of Big Corporation doing what Big Government did for Fallout. Is it the same thing as Vault-Tec? Not quite. Does it hugely remind you of Vault-Tec in how they present it? All the time.

What about the actual kinds of areas and environments in-game that such settings translate into? You've got the kind of sci-fi settler places that would fit in perfectly into New Vegas, that you could probably troll someone saying this is a great new total conversion mod:

I have mixed feelings about this game and I have since day one, but here I'm just focusing on a single point - that they seem to have very clearly chosen to do a lower-risk 'here's our I Can't Believe It's Not Fallout/Skyrim' game in terms of style, setting and gameplay, and that's a pity.

Problem is that "I can't believe it's Not Fallout/Skyrim" is what AAA RPGs are now and Cainarsky are ultimately mainstream AAA game developers. So they're just going to pursue their old creative interests in terms of the new AAA structures of the genre.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and I am especially disappointed that the "Gilded Age of the Future" they initially seemed to promise turned into a messy mishmash of a bit of 19th century America, a bit of Fallouty 1950s, a bit of everything inbetween and all round.

How could you be disappointed by this?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Problem is that "I can't believe it's Not Fallout/Skyrim" is what AAA RPGs are now and Cainarsky are ultimately mainstream AAA game developers. So they're just going to pursue their old creative interests in terms of the new AAA structures of the genre.

For me the lesson is that developers who did an interesting and innovative game when they did it for fun will not be "the same developers" when they are working to make the maximum amount of bucks.