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

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I'm sure there are some skilled women writers out there, but let's be real here and say the vast majority of them should stick to being a bunch of paperback dispensing romance novelists that has their work occupy racks in some airport. This is Gaming, this is a man's world you're walking into. You better have grown up with a lot of brothers or be a mind reader because all that rosey-posey shit isn't going to work here, princess!

So I want all those female Obsidian writers to first off, grow their damn hair out and restore it to a colour that doesn't look like you wandered into the gay part of the Baskin Robbins selection of ice cream. Secondly, put on A LOT of make up. Thirdly, march on down to what I can only assume is called The Josh Sawyer Sex Vault at the offices and study old school RPGs and their writing techniques until you have a good idea of what is deemed acceptable by your dick-toting counterparts.

And I know Tim Cain, I don't actually know Tim Cain but I know what sort of guy Tim Cain is. He's a good man, a big fluffy heart, he doesn't like to hurt people and these B-cup gargoyles are taking advantage of his convivial nature. They should be ashamed. Tim Cain wants to make his dream game and it is at risk for being another medium for these rug-munching Brunhilda's to push their social agenda.

You know what? I don't think there is any scenario in which this game is released and does not end up having Obsidian go bankrupt unless I am hired to shit talk the people working there behind a bulletproof glass in the shape of a giant cube for eight hours and for near six figure pay with a dental plan and company car. This may sound like I'm begging for a job, but you couldn't be more wrong. I am offering my services at a discount to not only be the wake up call for these fat and complacent cows, but to ensure Tim Cain his project is left in capable hands.

CAN I GET A BROFIST HERE? FUCK.

 

[Oracsbox]

I'm hoping the close combat is of this calibre :D

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Upon further calculations, I will also require all travel expenses paid and tickets to various sporting events due to the stress that will inevitably pile up on me. I'd also like to have my selection of secretary from a group of The Price is Right models who must sign a contract agreeing that they are not to divulge anything that happens when under my management and failure to do so will result in the death penalty.

 

[Oracsbox]

The original Outer Space World

 

[Quillon]

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.

What's with the salt? Did Tim & Leo remove per-rest abilities or something?

 

[Viata]

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

And this tells you everything about the people making this game.

 

[Roguey]

What's with the salt? Did Tim & Leo remove per-rest abilities or something?

I still haven't watched it myself (maybe by the end of this month or next) but their LP was an Avellone-playing-Arcanum-tier disaster. Made all the worse by the fact that these guys created this game.

 

[aweigh]

- Never played FO1/2

- Shit writer of high-school english class level

- SJW

Obsidian says "nothing personnel kd" :D

 

[Infinitron]

What's with the salt? Did Tim & Leo remove per-rest abilities or something?

I still haven't watched it myself (maybe by the end of this month or next) but their LP was an Avellone-playing-Arcanum-tier disaster. Made all the worse by the fact that these guys created this game.

It wasn't really that bad. They'd forgotten some esoteries of the Fallout user interface (inventory manipulation) and they weren't really taking their playthrough all that seriously since they wanted to make it to the water chip in 2 hours. Didn't really trigger me, I don't know what people were expecting.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The discussion concerning the quality of Obsidian's stable of writers reminds me of the classic essay A Reader's Manifesto: An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose by B.R. Myers from 2001:

Nothing gives me the feeling of having been born several decades too late quite like the modern "literary" best seller. Give me a time-tested masterpiece or what critics patronizingly call a fun read—Sister Carrie or just plain Carrie. Give me anything, in fact, as long as it doesn't have a recent prize jury's seal of approval on the front and a clutch of precious raves on the back. In the bookstore I'll sometimes sample what all the fuss is about, but one glance at the affected prose—"furious dabs of tulips stuttering," say, or "in the dark before the day yet was"—and I'm hightailing it to the friendly black spines of the Penguin Classics.

I realize that such a declaration must sound perversely ungrateful to the literary establishment. For years now editors, critics, and prize jurors, not to mention novelists themselves, have been telling the rest of us how lucky we are to be alive and reading in these exciting times. The absence of a dominant school of criticism, we are told, has given rise to an extraordinary variety of styles, a smorgasbord with something for every palate. As the novelist and critic David Lodge has remarked, in summing up a lecture about the coexistence of fabulation, minimalism, and other movements, "Everything is in and nothing is out." Coming from insiders to whom a term like "fabulation" actually means something, this hyperbole is excusable, even endearing; it's as if a team of hotel chefs were getting excited about their assortment of cabbages. From a reader's standpoint, however, "variety" is the last word that comes to mind, and more appears to be "out" than ever before. More than half a century ago popular storytellers like Christopher Isherwood and Somerset Maugham were ranked among the finest novelists of their time, and were considered no less literary, in their own way, than Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Today any accessible, fast-moving story written in unaffected prose is deemed to be "genre fiction"—at best an excellent "read" or a "page turner," but never literature with a capital L. An author with a track record of blockbusters may find the publication of a new work treated like a pop-culture event, but most "genre" novels are lucky to get an inch in the back pages of The New York Times Book Review.

Everything written in self-conscious, writerly prose, on the other hand, is now considered to be "literary fiction"—not necessarily good literary fiction, mind you, but always worthier of respectful attention than even the best-written thriller or romance. It is these works that receive full-page critiques, often one in the Sunday book-review section and another in the same newspaper during the week. It is these works, and these works only, that make the annual short lists of award committees. The "literary" writer need not be an intellectual one. Jeering at status-conscious consumers, bandying about words like "ontological" and "nominalism," chanting Red River hokum as if it were from a lost book of the Old Testament: this is what passes for profundity in novels these days. Even the most obvious triteness is acceptable, provided it comes with a postmodern wink. What is not tolerated is a strong element of action—unless, of course, the idiom is obtrusive enough to keep suspense to a minimum. Conversely, a natural prose style can be pardoned if a novel's pace is slow enough, as was the case with Ha Jin's aptly titled Waiting, which won the National Book Award (1999) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (2000).
...
"Evocative" Prose
It has become fashionable, especially among female novelists, to exploit the license of poetry while claiming exemption from poetry's rigorous standards of precision and polish. Edna O'Brien is one of the writers who do this, but Annie Proulx is better known, thanks in large part to her best seller The Shipping News (1993). In 1999 Proulx wrapped up the acknowledgments in a short-story anthology titled Close Range by thanking her children, in characteristic prose, "for putting up with my strangled, work-driven ways."

That's right: "strangled, work-driven ways." Work-driven is fine, of course, except for its note of self-approval, but strangled ways makes no sense on any level. Besides, how can anything, no matter how abstract, be strangled and work-driven at the same time? Maybe the author was referring to something along the lines of a nightly smackdown with the Muse, but only she knows for sure. Luckily for Proulx, many readers today expect literary language to be so remote from normal speech as to be routinely incomprehensible. "Strangled ways," they murmur to themselves in baffled admiration. "Now who but a Writer would think of that!"
...
Whatever happens, the old American scorn for pretension is bound to reassert itself someday, and dear God, let it be soon. In the meantime, I'll be reading the kinds of books that Cormac McCarthy doesn't understand.

 

[Quillon]

What's with the salt? Did Tim & Leo remove per-rest abilities or something?

I still haven't watched it myself (maybe by the end of this month or next) but their LP was an Avellone-playing-Arcanum-tier disaster. Made all the worse by the fact that these guys created this game.

It wasn't really that bad. They'd forgotten some esoteries of the Fallout user interface (inventory manipulation) and they weren't really taking their playthrough all that seriously since they wanted to make it to the water chip in 2 hours. Didn't really trigger me, I don't know what people were expecting.

Which they did manage to finish the game in 2 hours. Tho I don't get why their retro-gaming performance is that important :D

 

[Moink]

I wonder what % of the staff played Fallout NV let alone Fallout 1/2.

 

[Quillon]

I wonder what % of the staff played Fallout NV let alone Fallout 1/2.

We know for a fact Feargus played it :D

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Two guys in their 50s don't know how to make an interesting gaming stream. I am shocked. Shocked.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

I'm hoping the close combat is of this calibre :D

WTH. I just watched that movie today. That is Caroline Munro in Star Crash.

 

[fantadomat]

and does not end up having Obsidian go bankrupt

Getting bought by Microsoft .

 

[Urthor]

Ah I see we've arrived at the inevitable "bitch about millennial female writers" part of this game's lifecycle. Might as well get it over with.

But look, this isn't a thing that's going to go away. In fact it's going to get worse. And it's not really about California. Look at the demographics. Which of the two sexes reads more books today? Which one earns more college degrees, especially in literature and the humanities?

We're not going to return to the era where most of an Obsidian RPG's writers were overeducated dudes who were born in the 1970s and played Planescape: Torment in college. That generation has moved on. You should actually expect majority-female or even all-female RPG writing teams to be the norm in the future.

Controversial opinion

There are plenty of talented millennial female writers who are talented enough not to shoehorn in progressive characters for the sake of having icons

Unfortunately when you hire your female writers under an agenda of inclusion guess what they bring with them? Also when your lead writers leaving you is an annual ritual it's hard to have someone give them direction on when something is too much

 

[Yosharian]

Hopefully Obsidian will take into account just how difficult videogames can be for new players, and make all the game systems clear and easy to understand. For example, here's an old Forbes article explaining just how difficult it is to play Fallout 4 if you're new to the series:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insert...allout-4-hides-from-new-players/#5dc0bb2a7ed7

Summary:

• V.A.T.S. is too hard to figure out on your own, the game should explain how and why V.A.T.S. should be used. It's just too difficult to understand by yourself!
• When navigating the perk tree, players must be shown that the tree goes UP AND DOWN, not simply across! Otherwise, they might not understand how to select perks!
• The workshop crafting system is just too difficult to understand, because objects that you are about to place can be hidden behind walls!
• What are map symbols?! Players cannot be expected to understand how a map works - surely that Minuteman icon represents an actual man?!
• What is fast travel, because apparently some players never clicked on a map icon before.
• Healing/rad recovery by sleeping is just too unintuitive to figure out by yourself, apparently. I guess the game should scream at you HAVE YOU TRIED SLEEPING YET, RETARD?
• Why isn't my broken leg healing by itself? What do you mean I need to see a doctor?

Pretty soon we'll be making videogames so fucking simple all you do is show up to the couch and the game will do the rest. I fucking weep for this industry.

 

[Flou]

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

The team has actually two black people working on it. They are multiplying!

 

[Flou]

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.

Or she is actually the most qualified for the job, especially since Patel probably had her hands full with Deadfire. Rest of the writing staff aside from Chris L'Etoile have less experience with writing.

 

[Nano]

Or she is actually the most qualified for the job,

Jesus.

 

[DayofBlow]

Or she is actually the most qualified for the job,

Jesus.

Not so much writer, more written about.

 

[Jenkem]

Pretty soon we'll be making videogames so fucking simple all you do is show up to the couch and the game will do the rest. I fucking weep for this industry.

Yeah.. pretty soon...

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I said it before, older gamers are slowly being phased out so the new generation can move in and allow their ignorance of the world to guide them to such trashy design practices. These are kids that have no idea what a good game is because they were raised during the PS3 era and have immersed themselves into mobile gaming. Concepts such as secrets, cheat codes, unlockables, deep gameplay, fun mechanics and decent storytelling will become mere folklore.

Just think, kids born in the year 2000 are now 18. They grew up pressing "X" to go through a cutscene that played the game for you. Terrible game design, predatory business practices and lackluster results is their norm. They cannot help their retardation.

 

[Luckmann]

I really would like to know how anyone could defend those writing examples provided in the previous page. It is depressing that this person has been hired to write. I see a lot of moaning about SJWs and not enough picking her text apart.

It's blog-level shit. Has nothing to do with her gender, but rather the poor quality of her education probably as I can't see any teacher stamping her shit with an approval.

Using "big" words doesnt mean you have a good grasp of language either. Maybe in cassandra khaw's it is to reflect the character's personality, or whatever it is the intention, but that kind of drivel is pretty achievable using reddit's thesaurus bot.

Of course, this isnt a female writers problem. There are alot of talented female writers, for example in the games industry, we have amy hennig or jane jensen (amy wrote much of legacy of kain series, later uncharted, jane jensen wrote gabriel knight, and several other adventure games)

in the literary world itself, countless of talented female writers graced society.

This is not a problen about gender, more like some of the talents think long prosaic paragraphs that vaguely convey meaning if any, is a sign of a mastery of language.

In terms of shitty writing, I agree, it has nothing to do with her gender, and some of my favorite writers/co-writers are actually women. However, I find it hard to agree that the relevant aspect of this - the situation, the fact that these people are writing for Obsidian, inXile, etc. - has nothing to do with their gender and the ongoing social and political issues of cultural jewry.

I just have a very hard time seeing this level of writing being accepted, let alone defended and even lauded, had it come from a man.

To be fair to the Patel & co, their prose doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of their writing on The Outer Worlds as they will be limited on it being 3D/first person, so the writing will mostly be dialogue. I still don't really trust them given how Eternity 1 and 2 turned out, but we will see.

I think it's actually worse, because characterization in a limited space gets amplified by the writing done. They will probably be working less on an actual writing level, and more on a conceptual level, which is really bad news unless other writing staff and voice recordings will pretty much just ignore whatever they write and just do things that makes sense, rather than trying to make shitty points or establish some horrible Original Character Donut Steel.