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

[Fairfax]

Leonard: From a story standpoint, every time we do a game, we're just trying to get better. You learn way more from failure than you do from success and we've had a lot of, uh, learning experiences. But yeah, I've always strived to have characters that no matter how ridiculous the situation is or even how ridiculous their motivations might seem on the surface, that have some sort of a depth and reality to them. Even if they feel silly, there's a heart to them. So to me it's all about just finding new and better ways to tell a story.

Striven.

Tim: I started here in 2011, and worked on Stick of Truth and the first Pillars of Eternity. So I already kind of knew how things worked at Obsidian, and about a third of the people who work at Obsidian were from Black Isle, which we worked at together

A third? More like a dozen or so.

One reason we show when you're close is you could always take a drug that improved that skill. You could run back to your ship and get a companion that can improve the skill or you can say, 'wait, I'll be back.' You'd go up a level, put all the points into that skill, and come back. So you have all these options if you're really close. That's why I like it.

This has always been a dumb form of metagaming.

 

[RK47]

why not just use it from dialogue
*finds a hard lock and tries to interact*
'damn, too difficult. I think Atton can do it!'
'Want me to swap with Atton?'

Save the players trouble lah.

 

[orcinator]

Preview by monocled vidya site Daily Stormer:

https://dailystormer.name/outer-worlds-might-be-the-fallout-game-weve-been-waiting-for/

I can't believe white supremacy got taken over by plebs. Made me reconsider using this edgelord avatar. For a moment.

 

[Infinitron]

This has always been a dumb form of metagaming.

I did that with skill magazines in New Vegas all the time.

At a certain point I actually began planning my character build around the magazines, bumping my skills up to exactly 10 points below some skill check threshold in the world that I hadn't cracked yet.

 

[Quillon]

Leonard's been praising Obs' dialogue tool since he started there, I wonder how much credit MCA would like to take on the development of that tool? Or was it more of a collaboration thing that every designer requesting stuff over the years? Which reminds me when we will see that MCA interview Fairfax? :D

 

[Fairfax]

Leonard's been praising Obs' dialogue tool since he started there, I wonder how much credit MCA would like to take on the development of that tool? Or was it more of a collaboration thing that every designer requesting stuff over the years?

We got lucky at Obsidian - Dave Szymczyk authored a great dialogue tool, but we also had to do a bunch of games with the same style of dialogue in order to know what to ask him to put in the tools that would be helpful, if that makes sense. By the time we got to Pillars, we had a lot of requests, and he handled them like a pro.

Which reminds me when we will see that MCA interview Fairfax? :D

Another one?

 

[Quillon]

Another one?

Did we see it? I don't remember atm :D Haven't you posted half of it or something?

 

[Infinitron]

No matter how much of it we post, Fairfax will always be halfway through his permanent interview session with Chris Avellone.

 

[Nano]

Another one?

Did we see it? I don't remember atm :D Haven't you posted half of it or something?

Taking questions from the audience was the second part, bro.

 

[Fairfax]

Part 2 was going to be user questions, yes. I had a list from an old thread, but then the May of Rage happened, so I didn't bother. I do want to see if he wants to answer the original user questions at some point.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I got a vibe that it will have a lot in common with the original Fallout. The Dumb dialogues are so you don't have to suffer (or to some, enjoy) a low INT character to see silly and dumb dialogue responses. I get that it's better to have a character build with those options, but at least they included it at all, and I'm sure they would do more with it if they had more resources.

Just reading the answers though and I get the feeling of Fallout. They mentioned things like just trying to make combat fun but prioritizing the RPG elements over it, and just wanted combat to be "not bad" while remaining a true RPG. I think this game is going to surprise people in how RPG it really is. Think we're in for a treat here.

 

[frajaq]

Using more than 1 companion is basically cheating in my eyes, I'm kicking one of those fuckers out really fast

 

[rusty_shackleford]

people who don't like companions don't actually like rpgs

 

[FreeKaner]

Leonard Boyarsky: Obsidian asked Tim to make a new IP and Tim reached out to me, because we complement each other really well in terms of what we're good at and what we're not good at, and just kind of went from there. We knew going in that we wanted it to be a space opera-y kind of thing. We hadn't really done that before. We'd done post-apocalyptic, we did Vampire, and Arcanum, steampunk fantasy.

Boyarsky used to S-word.

I regret to announce this, but this game will be shit.

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Glenda Glenn]

people who don't like companions don't actually like rpgs

Only the people who completely disregard role-playing in a "role-playing" game could possibly claim something like that.

 

[Chippy]

Cainarsky have a proven record; they're talented, funny guys.

"Didn't show in the trailer or the gameplay video."

It had an upbeat tone that suggested humor. Your Sawyerism (NO FUN ALLOWED) radar may have had some trouble picking it up. I bet your immidiate reaction to Modoc in F2 was: "Damn, where am I gonna find a plumber for all this shit".

 

[Roguey]

It had an upbeat tone that suggested humor. Your Sawyerism (NO FUN ALLOWED) radar may have had some trouble picking it up.

hate the colors and the Summer Blockbuster Movie humor.

 

[Egosphere]

Before we judge the trailer too much, remember that VtMB's trailer looked like some seedy s&m club management simulator

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

And what a seedy S&M club management simulator it was.

 

[Roguey]

Before we judge the trailer too much, remember that VtMB's trailer looked like some seedy s&m club management simulator

That looks sick as hell though.

(it also shows off the character sheet, unlike Outer Shapes )

 

[Duraframe300]

Decent interview. I think this reply is interesting and perhaps disheartening to a certain group of Codexers:

Wes: I want to go back to something you said a minute ago. Not to twist the knife too much, but do you have any examples of things that you would consider a failure, or something that didn't turn out the way you hoped, that have informed you learning and being better at writing or designing for Outer Worlds?

Leonard: We were very, very fortunate in the original Fallout. Every time we seemed to run into a problem, the solution was better than what we had before. The way to fix this problem, or 'Oh my God, we're running out of our resources to make this' or whatever it was, we'd figured these things out. On every front that seemed to happen. Or just random inspiration of like, oh, this should be 1950s, post-apocalyptic instead of the Road Warrior rip-off game we were making like two months ago. Those things generally don't work out, so in a way we started out learning the wrong lessons because we're like, 'well, it'll just work out like that every time.' Going from there to Arcanum, we just threw everything and the kitchen sink into it, which is a sophomore curse when you're making games. 'I'm just going to make this game everything.' So that's when we learned to be more focused.

Vampire had its own challenges. I think some of the stuff in Vampire was a little bit more linear. But we looked at, 'oh, if we do some of these things, you still have choices, but if we tweak some of these things that enables us to tell deeper stories.'

Tim: For me, Fallout had great story and characters and Arcanum did too. He went to go make Vampire and I was making Temple of Elemental Evil. And I said, 'I can do that myself.' And that's when I learned I can't do story and characters. That game shipped, and it's a great D&D simulator, but the story and characters aren't very good. And that's one reason why when Feargus said 'Hey, do you want to make another IP here?' I'm like, 'yeah, but I need someone who's really good with story and character.' That's something that obviously 15 years before I didn't say. So you have to sometimes do something and learn. I think now I know a lot more about what I'm good at and what I'm bad. Where 20 years ago I'm like, 'Maybe I'm good at everything!'

Tim & Leonard: "Sorry grognards, Fallout was a fluke and we were never all that great, so we're listening to all these people at Obsidian now."

Leonard said during his SINFO 24 talk already as much. You even made the newspost for that.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey badler, you guys didn't link The Outer Worlds to your Steam developer page.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/578650/The_Outer_Worlds/

Clicking "Obsidian Entertainment" goes here: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Obsidian Entertainment

Instead of here: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/obsidian

 

[Hellion]

I'm currently playing the most recent Call of Cthulhu game, which is also using Unreal Engine 4 so I guess it's safe to say that there will be some graphical similarities between this and TOW.

It does have a certain Gamebryo/Creation vibe in the way your character moves around and interacts with the world, and the NPCs' faces are rather expressionless and Prosper-y at times. The environmental effects are nice though.

Spoiler

At least, unlike Gamebryo/Creation, UE4 will allow the game's world to be inhabited by more than 6 NPCs I guess.

 

[Sentinel]

I'm currently playing the most recent Call of Cthulhu game, which is also using Unreal Engine 4 so I guess it's safe to say that there will be some graphical similarities between this and TOW.

It does have a certain Gamebryo/Creation vibe in the way your character moves around and interacts with the world, and the NPCs' faces are rather expressionless and Prosper-y at times. The environmental effects are nice though.

Spoiler

At least, unlike Gamebryo/Creation, UE4 will allow the game's world to be inhabited by more than 6 NPCs I guess.

that has nothing to do with engine limitations. There's plenty UE4 games with good facial animations.