The Outer Worlds Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Quillon]

big iron was great, and so was johnny guitar. I still hear the "...jooohhhnee gueeetar" all the time in my head, it's stuck there but good. the one about camping under the stars was also fantastic. hell the entire song selection was great in FNV. Fuck, now I wanna re-install it again.

Even better: the integration of song names with quest names... nom nom.

 

[passerby]

Looks like a nice AA game, probably better than Alpha Protocol, will wait and see.

One thing that annoys me on visual department is very heavy postprocessing, like they're inspired by all these awful enb presets that make games look worse.
Most recent AAA games like Witcher 3, Far Cries, Assassins Creeds, GTA 5, etc had subtle postprocessing, the days of overdone HDR, brown filters, blur and bloom were gone and I thought this will be standard now, but it looks like a new cancerous trend is developing.

 

[aweigh]

gotta throw in that Vignette, then a little chromatic aberration plus of course need some TriDithering and it won't look good without heavy motion blur of course, but wait we can't forget some really overdrawn sharpening as well, and what game would be complete without some FXAA to smooth it out and then some SMAA "for the jaggies!!!" and hey, let's throw in that new thing called Gaussian blur for that soft glow-y look the kids love!

...oh, what, you want proper anti-aliasing instad of all that stuff? Go fuck yourself, nothing personnel kd

 

[Vulpes]

I still hear the "...jooohhhnee gueeetar" all the time in my head, it's stuck there but good

good

Spoiler

 

[santino27]

Not sure if this one was posted yet...

Last week's Game Awards was filled with dynamite announcements and surprise reveals from dozens of game developers and major publishers. One of the most exciting reveals came from Obsidian Entertainment, which is going from the fantasy world of Pillars of Eternity and blasting off into the farthest reaches of space with The Outer Worlds.

The Outer Worlds represents a chance for Obsidian to step into uncharted territory. And yet, a few ideas might feel familiar, coming from the creators of the original Fallout and also from the studio that put together Fallout: New Vegas. But narratively, what is Obsidian aiming for with this new outer space adventure?

To learn more about what's on the horizon, Shacknews recently sat down with Senior Narrative Designer Megan Starks. Starks brings along her experience from Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, along with a resume that includes Tyranny, WildStar, and Fallen Earth. Among the topics discussed include the Outer Worlds story, character development, "Dumb" dialogue, and branding run amok.

Spoiler

Shacknews: What made you guys want to undertake this challenge of a comprehensive action-RPG set in space?

Megan Starks, Senior Narrative Designer: I think that was something the game directors, [Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky], decided on early on based on some of the other games they've made in the past and what they thought would be fun to work on next for them. Honestly, a lot of people on the project are big sci-fi and RPG fans, so we're really excited to work on it.

Shacknews: What are some of the major inspirations behind the concept of The Outer Worlds?

Starks: Some of our inspirations for the game were the robber barons, the golden age of sci-fi like Lovecraft and Asimov. But some of our stuff is, we like the humor of Futurama, Firefly, Doctor Who, so there's really a good mix of the kind of quirky dark humor that goes into the game. And the setting is like the Gilded Age of sci-fi exploration.

Shacknews: Where the story of The Outer Worlds begin?

Starks: It begins when you're woken up from being frozen. You're one of the original colonists going out to Halcyon, which is the farthest colony away from Earth. Something happened with your ship and it got lost for 70 years. A scientist, who's actually an outlaw, wakes you up to give you a mission.

Spoiler

Shacknews: What can you tell me about the game's companions? How many different types of companions can the player recruit? And what are the various qualities that the companions possess?

Starks: I don't know how much we're going into specifics on the companions right now, but we do have a variety who will join you and fill out the crew on your ship, if you want them to. They're fully-realized people in the world, with their own backstories and motivations. They have things that they want to accomplish and will ask you to help them out with that. You can either help them with their quests or not. It's up to you.

Shacknews: Can you tell me about the dialogue options and developing characters through the various dialogue choices?

Starks: Like all of our games, we really like to support various play styles. How you want to play is available to you. Specifically with dialogue, you can choose to be good, evil, a little bit of both. You have Intimidate, Persuade, and Lie options, as well as straightforward asking questions, telling the truth, things like that.

We like to present a lot of "This character has a certain thing they ask you to do." And you can either decide that you're going to do that for them or maybe there's a secondary character who wants you to do the exact opposite. You can do something for both of them, you can do neither, or you can tell the guy that you'll find that thing for them and then just keep it for yourself.

Shacknews: What went behind the "Dumb" dialogue option? Is this out of a particular love for the Chris Pratt style of leading character who's not too bright?

Starks: That's a really good question! I should ask Tim and Leonard where the inspiration for that came from. But it's something that when they told us that they wanted to do this for the game, everybody thought it was hilarious and we just ran with it.

Shacknews: I'm intrigued by the idea of flaws. How does the system work, both in terms of influencing the character and how it shapes the overall story?

Starks: The interesting thing about flaws is, it does make it feel like it's a unique journey to you. Like if you're taking a lot of damage from Raptidons, maybe you become afraid of them, because they hurt you a lot. And then that affects your combat stats when you're around Raptidons, specifically. You can develop a phobia for different creatures in the game. You can also have a fear of the dark, a fear of heights. One of the things I thought was really funny. It was something like, "I'm not going to take this flaw, but..." If you get crippled in the leg a lot, you can choose to take that as a permanent injury. Then you'll limp around for the rest of the game.

If you do that, then you do get an extra perk in exchange. So it really just depends on how you want to spend your ability points and make your character unique to you.

Spoiler

Shacknews: Do certain flaws close off any part of the game to you? For example, if you choose to take on a fear of robots, do you get paralyzed with fear when you're confronted by a giant robot boss?

Starks: No, they won't lock you out of gameplay.

Shacknews: I did notice a day/night cycle. Are there certain quests that are only available during a certain time of the day?

Starks: We do have certain creatures that will come out at night. There can be some advantages if you want to sneak in during the cover of darkness. But we won't limit you.

Shacknews: I do feel the need to ask, just because seeing this game does remind me of some of the best elements of Mass Effect, but are there romance options?

Starks: At this time, in the base game, I don't think we're including romances. It's something that we've talked about exploring, possibly in the sequels, especially if it's something that our community is really interested in.

Shacknews: Lastly, on a lighter note, because this game is all about branding. Everything is branded! What's one of your favorite examples of some truly absurd branding in this game?

Starks: One of the areas I worked on is the factory where they make Borst Wurst. They're the cyst-y pigs, the genetically modified pigs that grow tumors on them and then they cut the tumors off and use those for food. And the slogan, I think is, "It's not the worst, unless it's Borst Wurst." I just find it so disgusting and wonderful.

Not a lot of new info, but does she really not know where the dumb option comes from?

 

[Quillon]

One of the things I thought was really funny. It was something like, "I'm not going to take this flaw, but..." If you get crippled in the leg a lot, you can choose to take that as a permanent injury. Then you'll limp around for the rest of the game.

lol, now that's a flaw :D

 

[aweigh]

#CrippleShaming

IT'S A CHOICE, NOT A FLAW!

 

[Agame]

Not a lot of new info, but does she really not know where the dumb option comes from?

She loves Fallout 3, that should explain everything.

 

[Deadass]

Shacknews: What went behind the "Dumb" dialogue option? Is this out of a particular love for the Chris Pratt style of leading character who's not too bright?
Starks: That's a really good question! I should ask Tim and Leonard where the inspiration for that came from.

stupid cunt hasn't event played Fallout 1

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

How would you gentlemen feel about evocative and in some cases impressionistic writing like this:

Spoiler

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.

....

“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think…Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway.”

“The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never. ”

....

...

Whatever may have been the forebodings inspired by t-d Number 1's attitude, they were completely annihilated by the thrilling joy which I experienced on losing sight of the accursed section and its asinine inhabitants—by the indisputable and authentic thrill of going somewhere and nowhere, under the miraculous auspices of someone and no one—of being yanked from the putrescent banalities of an official non-existence into a high and clear adventure, by a deus ex machina in a grey-blue uniform, and a couple of tin derbies. I whistled and sang and cried to my vis-à-vis: "By the way, who is yonder distinguished gentleman who has been so good as to take my friend and me on this little promenade?"—to which, between lurches of the groaning F.I.A.T., t-d replied awesomely, clutching at the window for the benefit of his equilibrium: "Monsieur le Ministre de Sureté de Noyon."

Not in the least realizing what this might mean, I grinned. A responsive grin, visiting informally the tired cheeks of my confrère, ended by frankly connecting his worthy and enormous ears which were squeezed into oblivion by the oversize casque. My eyes, jumping from those ears, lit on that helmet and noticed for the first time an emblem, a sort of flowering little explosion, or hair-switch rampant. It seemed to me very jovial and a little absurd.

...same author as above

After a few minutes we reached the station, which I failed to recognize. The yellow flares of lamps, huge and formless in the night mist, some figures moving to and fro on a little platform, a rustle of conversation: everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully abnormal, deliciously insane. Every figure was wrapped with its individual ghostliness; a number of ghosts each out on his own promenade, yet each for some reason selecting this unearthly patch of the world, this putrescent and uneasy gloom. Even my guards talked in whispers. "Watch him, I'll see about the train." So one went off into the mist. I leaned dizzily against the wall nearest me (having plumped down my baggage) and stared into the darkness at my elbow, filled with talking shadows. I recognized officiers anglais wandering helplessly up and down, supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to each other here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station master at a distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a goblin; knots of permissionaires cursing wearily or joking hopelessly with one another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory gesticulations. "It's a joke, too, you know, there are no more trains?"—"The conductor is dead. I know his sister."—"Old chap, I am all in."—"Say, we are all lost."—"What time is it?"—"My dear fellow, there is no more time, the French Government forbids it." Suddenly burst out of the loquacious opacity a dozen handfuls of Algeriens, their feet swaggering with fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by themselves—faceless in the equally black mist. By threes and fives they assaulted the goblin who wailed and shook his withered fist in their faces. There was no train. It had been taken away by the French Government. "How do I know how the poilus can get back to their regiments on time? Of course you'll all of you be deserters, but is it my fault?" (I thought of my friend, the Belgian, at this moment lying in a pen at the prison which I had just quitted by some miracle.) … One of these fine people from uncivilized, ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was drunk and knew it, as did two of his very fine friends who announced that as there was no train he should have a good sleep at a farmhouse hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to espy through the impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted into the dark, his friends' abrupt steps correcting his own large slovenly procedure out of earshot…. Some of the Black People sat down near me and smoked. Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned with fatigue. Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.

...same author

Facing me at a table stood a man of about my own height, and, as I should judge, about forty years old. His face was seedy sallow and long. He had bushy semi-circular eyebrows which drooped so much as to reduce his eyes to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed that they leaned inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin. His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse, from which hung a croix de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks culminated in bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of Ichabod Crane. His neck was exactly like a hen's: I felt sure that when he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background of his consciousness.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Megan Starks is the least qualified writer at Obsidian

 

[Terenty]

Shacknews: What went behind the "Dumb" dialogue option? Is this out of a particular love for the Chris Pratt style of leading character who's not too bright?
Starks: That's a really good question! I should ask Tim and Leonard where the inspiration for that came from.

stupid cunt hasn't event played Fallout 1

Im afraid the only people who played fallout 1 on their team is Tim and Leo

 

[Thonius]

Are you guys ready?

I just realized. Obsidian are bigots! Where's that black fella now? Not in obsidian team for sure!

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Not sure if this one was posted yet...

That.......does not bode well.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

How would you gentlemen feel about evocative and in some cases impressionistic writing like this:

jezus christ, they better not fuck up the FPS mechanics

 

[Nano]

Even if she hasn't played them, how could it be that as one of the writers on the staff, she hasn't heard any talking in the office about how low-INT dialogue is something that was done in the original Fallouts?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

How would you gentlemen feel about evocative and in some cases impressionistic writing like this:

jezus christ, they better not fuck up the FPS mechanics

none of these author's are alive, let alone writing for the game. they are Stephen Crane, Samuel Beckett, and E.E. Cummings. if the pictures loaded, they're from a Roger Zelazny novel.

Edit: as for the dumb option thing, it's different from Fallout where the dumb option was exclusively available to characters with low INT builds. sounds like everyone will be able to at least play dumb in TOW. But, yes, that was not a confidence inspiring moment.

 

[Funposter]

writers used to be people that knew that KJV bible verse for verse and had read the illiad in its original greek. today's "writers" are 103 IQ milquetoasts that read harry potter when they were 23.

I have an IQ of 83

prove to me that wolfram von eschenbach wasn't a member of #83IQGang i dare you

 

[Agame]

How would you gentlemen feel about evocative and in some cases impressionistic writing like this:

jezus christ, they better not fuck up the FPS mechanics

Well played sir.

 

[AwesomeButton]

There willl never be a video game song as iconic as Big Iron, ever again. Trust me on this.

The lack of luxuries like licensed music is probably one of the things that will set this game apart from a "true AAA". Although I guess if they go back to the late 19th century that stuff isn't copyrighted anymore.

The music would not be copyrighted but the recordings made by modern bands/orchestras will still be copyrighted I guess.
You should both check my custom OST for New Vegas. No copyright issues, and I can listen to fitting music which could never have all been copyrighted: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/new-vegas-custom-music.110861/ There are just as iconic songs as Big Iron.

The aesthetic of the guns alone in New Vegas is a more enjoyable experience above the whole of Fallout 3.

Especially with the right mods installed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNOY2duwaK4 Seriously, I think FNV is underestimated here on the Codex, compared to the rest of the world. Probably because of the engine and because it's 3D.

Megan Starks is the least qualified writer at Obsidian

Which means she has fierce competition for this hard-earned title.

 

[Strange Fellow]

none of these author's are alive, let alone writing for the game. they are Stephen Crane, Samuel Beckett, and E.E. Cummings. if the pictures loaded, they're from a Roger Zelazny novel.

I think we all realized what you were doing.

Well, not all of us, apparently.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

none of these author's are alive, let alone writing for the game.

thank god, that shit gave me the pukey shivers

 

[Agame]

How would you gentlemen feel about evocative and in some cases impressionistic writing like this:

jezus christ, they better not fuck up the FPS mechanics

none of these author's are alive, let alone writing for the game. they are Stephen Crane, Samuel Beckett, and E.E. Cummings. if the pictures loaded, they're from a Roger Zelazny novel.

Not sure why you have this desperate need to defend Obsidian writers? FYI quoting classic authors of skill and experience is not doing them any favors.

The real problem here is that writing for a VIDEO GAME requires a completely different approach to writing a book, and as we have discovered POE is a "text book" example of how badly you can do this. Dropping walls of descriptive text into a game is just terrible, and Obsidian pushed this to an awful extreme.

Rather than giving us text dumps of random authors, howabout actually explaining what you think is quality RPG writing? Stephen Crane is great but what the hell does he have to do with CRPGs?

 

[Grotesque]

As JES put it years ago, combat with high lethality means that the only viable playstyle is a stealthy ranged weapons user

that because Josh is a robot with no imagination

 

[Roguey]

Wow, so I guess Starks really is the narrative lead if she's the one doing all the interviews. I suppose that's one of the perks of being Tim's fag hag from Carbine. Another nepotistic Obsidian promotion.

Does it mean you’re an upstart writer yourself?

Over ten years ago.

Im afraid the only people who played fallout 1 on their team is Tim and Leo

And even they can't play it.