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

[FreeKaner]

Can't wait this to sell less than Tyranny (200k) on Epic Store™ and fizzle out like the inglorious dumpsterfire it is.

 

[CyberWhale]

Graphics and art style are okay, overabundant bloom aside. The problems are downright embarrassing VFX for science (as they call them) weapons and retarded enemy AI. And by retarded AI I don't mean the fact that enemies are strafing and not hiding behind cover, which would be an awful solution to this non-problem (although a widely accepted one, even on the Codex).

Strafing, along with rushing, jumping, crouching and hiding behind (preferably destructible) cover are all viable options and should be all ideally used in unison not for creating "believable and realistic" combat scenarios, but rather for creating deep and interesting combat encounters that fully utilize gameplay mechanics, character systems and itemization at the same time. Applies to enemy-AI cooperation as well - it shouldn't be used just for covering each other while reloading and repositioning, it should be used to complement each other based on class/ability to make the encounter more interesting and, obviously, harder than the previous one.

People who think that first-person shooters of all (or most, to be more exact) kinds should resemble realistic simulators like ARMA, or even worse, the unholy abominations like CODs which combine the worst elements of realistic and arcadey genres should be thrown into the gulags.

 

[Abu Antar]

I doubt that this will be a total flop. It won't do Skyrim or even New Vegas numbers, but it'll be a decent seller at least. Reviewers will call it Steampunk/sci-fi offline Fallout or something, and it will automatically sell on that basis alone. Even if PC version doesn't sell well, console players will probably lap it up.

 

[frajaq]

Kill all boomer game developers

 

[Revenant]

The Pozzed Worlds

 

[Reinhardt]

You don't fucking mess with Todd Howard and f76. He didn't forget his humiliation. I bet he and Bethesda gave money to Epic for this bribe so Cain and Boyarsky will be forced again to release unfinished mess of a game and Obsidian will be finished.

 

[Revenant]

here are your citations

 

[rusty_shackleford]

if she is a tomboy then there's a good chance she can still be a qt

 

[undecaf]

People who think that first-person shooters of all (or most, to be more exact) kinds should resemble realistic simulators like ARMA, or even worse, the unholy abominations like CODs which combine the worst elements of realistic and arcadey genres should be thrown into the gulags.

True.

Also, people who want RPG’s to play like first person shooters (regardless of the perspective) in the first place, only further contribute to the decline.

 

[Reinhardt]

Also, people who want RPG’s to play like first person shooters (regardless of the perspective) in the first place, only contribute to the decline.

System Shock was good game!

 

[LESS T_T]

A part of longer interview: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-outer-worlds-pax-east-obsidian-fully-playable-bugs-bloat

Why The Outer Worlds Won't Repeat the Mistakes of Past Over-Ambitious RPGs
Obsidian wanted to avoid bloat and bugs with The Outer Worlds.


Open-world RPGs these days are often an exercise in excess. Many modern RPGs boast an abundance of features, and it can sometimes lead to bloat, or worse, overextension on the part of developers. Managing that excess to deliver a feature complete experience is a main driver for Obsidian Entertainment, the developers on The Outer Worlds. So much so that Obsidian's latest RPG has been fully playable even at the early stages of development.

In an interview with The Outer Worlds directors Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky at PAX East, Cain told USG, "I don't think we've ever had a game that was fully playable from start to finish so early in development." This made it easy to introduce new members of the development team to what was expected out of The Outer Worlds, because they could just play the outline of the whole game.

"[The Outer Worlds] has been going on for so long, has been playable for so long, when anyone new comes on the team, we have them play the game now. The game can stand on its own as an example of itself," said Cain. "So that's why it's been over a year, maybe a year and a half, since we've ever had to recommend something for someone to do to get an idea of what the game's like." The current build, essentially, speaks for itself.

Cain and Boyarsky know a thing or two about how overextending on the scope of a video game project can sometimes lead to less than ideal results. Both developers formed Troika Games where they developed the first Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. While Vampire became a cult classic, it was shipped in a buggy and unfinished state due to its ambitious scale and rushed release.

When we asked Cain about the experience, he said it really changed his outlook as a game developer. "I really pay more attention to scope control. [Vampire: The Masquerade] was much bigger than the team we had making it." Cain said if you don't catch stuff like bugs early the team will "let some things go for so long that eventually the game ships those bugs, and nobody wants that."

Boyarsky added, "It's just the working with what you have and really keeping the end in sight at all times. There was a lot of stuff that was out of our control but, like Tim's saying, there were things that we probably could have done, that we did have control over, that we didn't."

Cain recalled going to the The Outer Worlds' lead designer Charles Staples early in development and telling him, "Charlie, you have to be my editor. You're allowed to say no to me, and you have to do it a lot because I'm a bad person sometimes, and I want more things than I know I should put in." Because according to Cain, "I'll put everything in a game and the kitchen sink, so I think we've done a lot better at scope control on this game."

While everything we've seen so far about The Outer Worlds makes us believe it's a world we want to spend a lot of time in, Cain and Boyarsky are eager to create an experience that's first and foremost something we can finish. Hopefully in a bug-free state with features the devs truly care about.

We'll see how successful that is when The Outer Worlds comes out sometime in 2019 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Games Store. Stay tuned for our full interview with Cain and Boyarsky from PAX East, and check out our Outer Worlds guide for more coverage.

 

[Devilkingx]

Fuck the FPS mechanics, they will be solid enough and don't have to be Gears of Outer Wars to be good enough. Stop worrying about cosmetics and focus on the meat of the game. Choice & Consequence, companions, all those juicy character stats, branching dialogues, kill every NPC and game still continues and on and on. The gunplay will be fine, what are you expecting an AA CRPG to have honestly?

The gameplay/combat is the meat of the game though, unless you want this to play like a Quantic Dream game

 

[Infinitron]

Worth posting the summary of the panel too I guess: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/outer-worlds-pax-east-panel

The Newest Outer Worlds Weapon Started as a Bug, and Other Notes From Today's Panel
Meet the Mandibular Rearranger, a weapon that functions as a facial slider gone mad.

Many of the most popular mechanics ever got their start as a bug that subsequently became a feature. In Outer Worlds, one such bug resulted in the "Mandibular Rearranger," a Science Weapon capable of doing some truly messed up things to enemy faces.

In the Outer Worlds gameplay showcased at today's PAX East panel (fast forward to around the four hour mark), we got to see the Mandibular Rearranger shrink and expand their facial featureks, like a facial slider run amok. It brought to mind the scene from Harry Potter in which a Death Eater gets their head stuck in a time jar, and winds up with a baby's head attached to an adult body (an image that makes me shudder to this day). According to the Outer Worlds devs, it started out as a bug, but proved so popular that it was incorporated into the game.


The Mandibular Rearranger started out as a bug. | Kat Bailey/USG, Obsidian

"There was a bug where the NPC faces were getting pushed to the extremes in some of the builds, and it was making us laugh. And we thought we should use this because it was making us laugh, and humor is a big part of this game," said lead designer Charles Staples.

The scene with the Mandibular Rearranger took place on Byzantium, one of the main planets in The Outer Worlds, the other being a monster planet called Monarch. Byzantium is a corporately owned world filled with propaganda posters and sales pitches, the product of an alternate future in which William McKinley survives an assassin's bullet (at least, that's the theory put forward by co-directors Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky).

While there was a brief scene in which the main character messes with a propaganda film actor, most of the quest was centered around combat. We got to see the Tactical Time Dilation, in which players get a brief window for easy headshots, as well as the aforementioned Mandibular Rearranger. At one point Felix, one of the game's main companions, wound up in a Man on the Moon hat, making them look like a character from Payday as they fired.

After the 30 minute gameplay clip, the team including took some time to answer questions. A few things that we learned:

• The team expounded a bit on Flaws, which will be unlocked depending on your actions. For instance, taking too much damage from Canids may result in Canidphoba, which increases the damage you take from Candis (but with the benefit being that you get a perk to offset it). Apparently The Outer Worlds will also let you get addicted to substances if you use them too much. "I like a flawed hero," Boyarsky said.
• You'll be able to run through areas with enemies that are way too strong for you, though you'll be warned ahead of time.
• Senior Narrative Designer Megan Starks was apparently told to watch Brazil, Terry Gilliam's famously wild sci-fi dystopia, before starting. "I was like, 'Oh my god what am I getting myself into,'" she said.
• The team elaborated a bit on mod support, explaining that because it's their first time with the engine, it's not their main focus with the initial release.
• The Outer Worlds team has faced challenges in being able to make all of the content that they want. Boyarsky told the audience, "Shaders and such don't add much to the graphics, but they do make it take longer to make content."
• The Outer Worlds community is currently up in arms about it being a launch exclusive for Epic Game Store, but the team declined to address the furor doing the panel or in the subsequent Q&A.

Outer Worlds was first announced during the Game Awards last December. Developed in part by the original creators of Fallout, it's a first-person sci-fi RPG that takes heavy inspiration from Futurama and Firefly. While it won't be a true open-world RPG, it has earned numerous comparisons to Fallout: New Vegas, not the least because it's being developed by Obsidian.

The Outer Worlds is currently slated for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. It'll be out later this year.

 

[Devilkingx]

I think that this game looks amazing in two contexts:

1. As an oblivion competitor/inspired game

2. As a $20 indie RPG on steam

The primary problem is that it's most likely going to be a $60 game released in 2019/2020 and it's not even solidly better than games from the mid 2000s

The combat/AI looks really bad, and unless this is a game where you're not even supposed to be fighting people much in the first place (Like mirrors edge or designed around a pacifist run or a quantic dream movie) that's a game-killer. The game looks so easy and all the enemies are almost target dummies that give a token resistance. Why do the NPCs not run away, call for help or fight back?

On the other side, while the graphics look like late PS3 tier, the art style is great, loving the bioshock in space look with a dash of fallout. And that quest looks great, very reminiscent of the best kinds of quests in an elder scrolls game where there's tons of ways to do it that each give a slightly different story.

 

[Infinitron]

1. As an oblivion competitor/inspired game

https://youtu.be/KgPD-ThCwZM?t=39

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Just posting to show off my cute Ellie avatar

 

[RepHope]

Looks like the combat will be the weak point, same as New Vegas. I’m interested to know if the game still offers a wide variety of ways to approach problems. I do like seeing the Skill checks in dialogue.

Also I have been laughing at the total 180 people have done outside of Codex. Gone from praising Obsidian to shitting on them. Looks like Feargus isn’t going to be able to escape with his fat ass intact this time. Hope that moron gets the boot soon, him and Parker.

 

[FreeKaner]

This is a disaster in the making heading towards its inevitable crash

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

The gameplay/combat is the meat of the game though, unless you want this to play like a Quantic Dream game

And as I said, the gunplay will be sufficient enough to be fun and carry the game forward. It's not like it's going to be some terrible thing, and probably won't be *insert epic!!11 shooter here* either. But it will be enough. The meat of the game to me is the total RPG experience outside of combat. Combat is included in that but just a minor part of my overall enjoyment.

 

[HoboForEternity]

The gameplay/combat is the meat of the game though, unless you want this to play like a Quantic Dream game

And as I said, the gunplay will be sufficient enough to be fun and carry the game forward. It's not like it's going to be some terrible thing, and probably won't be *insert epic!!11 shooter here* either. But it will be enough. The meat of the game to me is the total RPG experience outside of combat. Combat is included in that but just a minor part of my overall enjoyment.

it's the opposite for me. at least what i feel. the gunplay will be utter shite. maybe just above new vegas. but the RPG aspect at least will be emjoyable. the movie audience quest seem fun and like infinitron said, very reno-y. assuming it is a minor quest, the lack of options or branching dialogue are understandable, and in fact it still still look above most RPG quest in term of context and choices.

writing is really fallout 2 ish which most of codex hate, but i don't mind (prefer f1 over 2 style of writing but i don't mind either). facial animation looks abysmal but it is WIP. vampire bloodlines did facial animation better than the demo.

overall it doesn't look THAT good or THAT bad (mostly by edgy codexer or butthurt steam fanbois). maybe it will end up as above average RPG you will get on a sale for at least 30% off or it will be really good RPG with shit gameplay like new vegas. ( i really have no confidence it will have decent gunplay or combat AI )

 

[ZVERMIX]

Also I have been laughing at the total 180 people have done outside of Codex. Gone from praising Obsidian to shitting on them. Looks like Feargus isn’t going to be able to escape with his fat ass intact this time. Hope that moron gets the boot soon, him and Parker.

At this point it's pretty clear that Obsidian had nothing (or next to nothing) to do with the Epic exclusivity. It's all on Private Division (Take Two), who are taking most of their games there.

 

[vortex]

Just posting to show off my cute Ellie avatar

You went full fanboy, sis. Never go full fanboy.

 

[Reinhardt]

Friendship ended with Deadfire. Now The Outer Worlds is my best friend!

 

[Sòren]

don't really like the art, it's far from unique and the areas outside settlements look too sterile. and leveled equipment is always shit.
but overall the game doesn't look that bad to me, at least it's no pretentious drivel like the Pillars games. so i guess it's going to be at least decent.

 

[Haplo]

Leveled equipment? Really? If true that's just... sad.