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

[Duraframe300]

Informative interview from RPGSite: https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/8...interview-with-game-director-leonard-boyarsky

Good interview.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

RPG Site: In the demo we saw today, you showed off the disguise system in your game, I was wondering if there was also any system like Fallout: New Vegas, where certain gear could act as a disguise for entering places owned by different factions?

Leonard Boyarsky: The way the Holographic Shroud works is that once you get an ID cartridge for a certain faction, you can plug it into this device in order to mask your identity temporarily by creating this sort of 3D hologram around you. It works as a sort of timed meter which will slowly drain, but the disguise is lost faster if you run, or shoot at people, things like that. It plays also into the dialogue system as well, you'll have checks you'll need to pass one someone spots you once the meter is out, and I think on the final check you have to actually have two different buffed up dialogue skills in order to maintain the disguise.

RPG Site: So is having that item or ability available to everyone? Or is it like a quest reward or how does that work?

Leonard Boyarsky: Every player will always have it, but the challenge is being able to find the ID cartridges that will work for it, and then of course players with specific builds will be able to make better use of it once they have it. If you enter an area without it, you'll get a notification showing that it's restricted.

RPG Site: And then the player will have to think about where or what quest line might lead to getting an ID card for that area.

Leonard Boyarsky: Exactly.

That's sounds a really good way to make Charisma/Spech based builds present into actual gameplay other than ''normal'' dialogue and their skill checks more frequent so you feel more reward about your choice of build , also make stealth/sneak skills something that isn't as needed, unlike FNV , for no-Kill/pacifist playthougths. But not dumb and unreliable as Fallout 4's Wasteland Whisperer and the Intimidation perks.

 

[Whipped Cream]

Very disappointed by the lack of a physical PC version. Guess I'll buy this game a bunch of years down the line when it reaches GOG.

One possibility is to sign up for one month of Xbox Game Pass for PC on November 1st (only costs 5 dollars), play the game for a month, forget about the game for a year and then buy it when it comes to GOG with bugfixes and DLCs.

The downside is that you have to use the shitty Microsoft Store when the game first comes out.

The upside is that in theory it should be easy to migrate save files from Microsoft Store to GOG/Steam, although that is not a 100% certainty obviously.

 

[Nano]

I don't think you understand. I'm disappointed because I refuse to install any game clients whatsoever on my PC (whether it's Steam/Epic/etc), so the only way I have to legally buy games is through retail or GOG.

 

[Duraframe300]

Very disappointed by the lack of a physical PC version. Guess I'll buy this game a bunch of years down the line when it reaches GOG.

One possibility is to sign up for one month of Xbox Game Pass for PC on November 1st (only costs 5 dollars), play the game for a month, forget about the game for a year and then buy it when it comes to GOG on October 25th 2020, with bugfixes and DLCs.

The downside is that you have to use the shitty Microsoft Store when the game first comes out.

The upside is that in theory it should be easy to migrate save files from Microsoft Store to GOG/Steam, although that is not a 100% certainty obviously.

The new XBOX app is hopefully out of beta by then, or use the GOG Galaxy 2.0 client if its out by then. (Doubt)

 

[Infinitron]

Unless I missed something, afaik it's not guaranteed that this game will ever come out on GOG. Don't wait a year expecting it to show up there unless we hear otherwise.

I sent Private Division an email asking if their store offers an offline installer similar to what GOG has.

 

[Nano]

It's not guaranteed that this game will ever come out on GOG. Don't wait a year expecting it to show up there unless we hear otherwise.

Absolutely. I was thinking more along the lines of New Vegas where it was put on GOG nearly a decade after release.

 

[Whipped Cream]

Unless I missed something, afaik It's not guaranteed that this game will ever come out on GOG. Don't wait a year expecting it to show up there.

Yeah, I realised this right after I wrote my post.

I don't think you understand. I'm disappointed because I refuse to install any game clients whatsoever on my PC (whether it's Steam/Epic/etc), so the only way I have to legally buy games is through retail or GOG.

I think thats a policy that is going to be hard for you to maintain in the long run. Physical distribution is dying. In a couple of years time I suspect that the only physical versions of most PC games that will be available will be collectors editions.

 

[Egosphere]

Don't know what to think of this, anymore. Was excited when I saw the first trailer, until the first gameplay preview came out. Then the new gameplay stuff appeared and it looked much better, but the trailers started looking awful. I hope the writing is good. That and the quest design can salvage the technical shortcomings. But it's not the team that worked on new vegas, so how high can your hopes get?

 

[cvv]

Yeah, I'm mighty confuse too about this. I love the idea, the world and the names behind the game. But I fucking loathe this stupid cartoony ghastly art style and cheapo vibe, it's like if Borderlands and Fallout 3 had clumsy drunk sex in a dirty slum alley. Plus those braindead dialogues in the trailers with dumbfuck Marvel grade teenage humor don't feel hopeful either. I seriously suspect it's gonna be an embarrassing blowout but I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

[Tigranes]

I've said several times how shit the game looks. Now that we begin to hear a few more things about the mechanics, I do like stuff like the disguise system they're talking about.

RPG Site: In the demo we saw today, you showed off the disguise system in your game, I was wondering if there was also any system like Fallout: New Vegas, where certain gear could act as a disguise for entering places owned by different factions?

Leonard Boyarsky: The way the Holographic Shroud works is that once you get an ID cartridge for a certain faction, you can plug it into this device in order to mask your identity temporarily by creating this sort of 3D hologram around you. It works as a sort of timed meter which will slowly drain, but the disguise is lost faster if you run, or shoot at people, things like that. It plays also into the dialogue system as well, you'll have checks you'll need to pass one someone spots you once the meter is out, and I think on the final check you have to actually have two different buffed up dialogue skills in order to maintain the disguise.

RPG Site: So is having that item or ability available to everyone? Or is it like a quest reward or how does that work?

Leonard Boyarsky: Every player will always have it, but the challenge is being able to find the ID cartridges that will work for it, and then of course players with specific builds will be able to make better use of it once they have it. If you enter an area without it, you'll get a notification showing that it's restricted.

RPG Site: And then the player will have to think about where or what quest line might lead to getting an ID card for that area.

Leonard Boyarsky: Exactly.

That's sounds a really good way to make Charisma/Spech based builds present into actual gameplay other than ''normal'' dialogue and their skill checks more frequent so you feel more reward about your choice of build , also make stealth/sneak skills something that isn't as needed, unlike FNV , for no-Kill/pacifist playthougths. But not dumb and unreliable as Fallout 4's Wasteland Whisperer and the Intimidation perks.

Disguises in RPGs so often seem to work in a pretty one-off way, and mechanically shoehorned in. I wonder if having a properly dedicated system here indicates that it's going to play a more consistent part in the gameplay.

It's also an instance where the whole conceit of sci-fi setting in the outer worlds gives us something marginally more original than yet more slow-mo.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

I've said several times how shit the game looks. Now that we begin to hear a few more things about the mechanics, I do like stuff like the disguise system they're talking about.

RPG Site: In the demo we saw today, you showed off the disguise system in your game, I was wondering if there was also any system like Fallout: New Vegas, where certain gear could act as a disguise for entering places owned by different factions?

Leonard Boyarsky: The way the Holographic Shroud works is that once you get an ID cartridge for a certain faction, you can plug it into this device in order to mask your identity temporarily by creating this sort of 3D hologram around you. It works as a sort of timed meter which will slowly drain, but the disguise is lost faster if you run, or shoot at people, things like that. It plays also into the dialogue system as well, you'll have checks you'll need to pass one someone spots you once the meter is out, and I think on the final check you have to actually have two different buffed up dialogue skills in order to maintain the disguise.

RPG Site: So is having that item or ability available to everyone? Or is it like a quest reward or how does that work?

Leonard Boyarsky: Every player will always have it, but the challenge is being able to find the ID cartridges that will work for it, and then of course players with specific builds will be able to make better use of it once they have it. If you enter an area without it, you'll get a notification showing that it's restricted.

RPG Site: And then the player will have to think about where or what quest line might lead to getting an ID card for that area.

Leonard Boyarsky: Exactly.

That's sounds a really good way to make Charisma/Spech based builds present into actual gameplay other than ''normal'' dialogue and their skill checks more frequent so you feel more reward about your choice of build , also make stealth/sneak skills something that isn't as needed, unlike FNV , for no-Kill/pacifist playthougths. But not dumb and unreliable as Fallout 4's Wasteland Whisperer and the Intimidation perks.

Disguises in RPGs so often seem to work in a pretty one-off way, and mechanically shoehorned in. I wonder if having a properly dedicated system here indicates that it's going to play a more consistent part in the gameplay.

It's also an instance where the whole conceit of sci-fi setting in the outer worlds gives us something marginally more original than yet more slow-mo.

For what they shown and said, it seems that a good ammount of thought was put behind the disguise system.

It seems a good tool to infiltrate without being unbalancead or stupid , and it's really limited , depletes fairly quick , so you still need try avoid being on enemies vision even if your in disguise so you don't waste all your skill checks tries in one room, also it's seems that your only able to use in restricted areas.

That's a step up from Fallout New Vegas, not that the bar was ever high.. But still, i think is neat way to avoid the typical slowly move crounched around everywhere to play stealth like most First person RPGs.

 

[DalekFlay]

We need a graphics whore tag. Let the shame be known.

 

[Roguey]

We need a graphics whore tag. Let the shame be known.

Art style complaints are valid, complaining about tire textures isn't.

 

[Quillon]

It's strange that people either love or hate the style.

I'll need to play it to decide. One thing I hate atm is how powerful lighting is on people's faces, complete complexion change under different lighting. They apparently fixed the NPC transparency we saw in PAX, hope they plan to fix this too, first they'd have to see it as a problem tho.

 

[RaptorRex888]

I don't particularly like the art style but I can get over it. Those atrocious animations are another thing entirely however. That running animation is just

 

[Commissar Draco]

I like the art style its colorful and not taking itself too seriously but those ugly female NPCs... Well seems you can't escape from current year onto the realm of games anymore. Will skip it anyways until 2020 when I will get patched game on Steam and will be able to make informed decision wherever its worth buying.

 

[Jenkem]

Looks like PC pre-orders are officially up now: https://store.privatedivision.com/the-outer-worlds/order

Private Division: https://store.privatedivision.com/en_US/product/560548/the-outer-worlds-pc-download
Epic: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/the-outer-worlds/home

Love how it just says "PC Download" and has no indication anywhere that the game is an EGS exclusive. Most places that just say PC Download will say "Requires the Steam Client" for instance somewhere, here is there is absolutely nothing...

So I must assume it will be DRM free.

 

[cvv]

Love how it just says "PC Download" and has no indication anywhere that the game is an EGS exclusive. Most places that just say PC Download will say "Requires the Steam Client" for instance somewhere, here is there is absolutely nothing...

So I must assume it will be DRM free.

There are loads of DRM-free games on EGS altho they tend to be on the indie side. And TOW is published by Take Two so that's a no go with DRM-free.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Looks like PC pre-orders are officially up now: https://store.privatedivision.com/the-outer-worlds/order

Private Division: https://store.privatedivision.com/en_US/product/560548/the-outer-worlds-pc-download
Epic: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/the-outer-worlds/home

You can get some cute av's if you pre-order on the ps4 store : https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP4581-CUSA16285_00-THEOUTERWORLDS01

 

[Terenty]

Maybe if Boyarsky and Cain worked with another developer team, more talented than Obsidian the game could become a classic. But the uninteresting writing and absolutely shameful artstyle, models, animation etc will ruin it

The mechanics sound nice and in line with Troika design philosophy, but the actual people working to flash it out are not capable of making something exciting

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Love how it just says "PC Download" and has no indication anywhere that the game is an EGS exclusive. Most places that just say PC Download will say "Requires the Steam Client" for instance somewhere, here is there is absolutely nothing...

So I must assume it will be DRM free.

There are loads of DRM-free games on EGS altho they tend to be on the indie side. And TOW is published by Take Two so that's a no go with DRM-free.

My copy will be drm free

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/06/17/the-outer-worlds-preview/

Disguises and slow-mo combat have me itching to visit The Outer Worlds

I’ve just seen a game that reminds me of Deus Ex. It’s set in a dystopia where corporations call the shots, and you can approach situations how you see fit. Guards can be persuaded, tricked, intimated or shot. Robots can be hacked. Sewers can be snuck through, if you can first lockpick the entrance.

There are no punks in sight. I’m talking about The Outer Worlds, a first person sci-fi RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. I only got a hands off peek at E3, and one carefully curated slice might not represent the whole cake. But gosh, that slice looked delicious.

We’re in the wild west, but we’re also underground, and also on an alien planet. We’re in the town of Fallbrick and the world of Monarch. It immediately feels very Firefly, an inspiration narrative designer Dan McPhee was quick to point to in our later interview. Fallbrick is yer classic hive of scum and villainy, the E3 presenter tells us, and we’re shopping for a job.



He then immediately dives into how “entire branches of quests might only be available if you have the skills to unlock them”. In the demo, we only manage to pick up a quest by convincing a ‘business’ owner that we’re trustworthy. We could also have threatened to beat her up.

She wants us to deal with a rival’s factory, and she doesn’t care how we do it; we might want to sabotage the factory, or just kill the poor fella. We resolve to decide when we get there.

As we walk, the presenter proffers some lore. We get a bit of background on this particular planet, which was once intended as an earth-like colony. The terraforming went awry, and turned the wildlife bigger and nastier than it has any right to be. Giant mushrooms dot the yellow-specked countryside, and overgrown mantises skirt around the edges of town.



Some entrepreneur managed to buy the whole planet, which lead to the corps not letting anyone on the planet trade. I’m aware that in real life I also ultimately work for a modern day megacorp, but I still enjoyed seeing a company like Microsoft-acquired Obsidian explore the pitfalls of big companies gaining too much power – and couldn’t resist bringing that up with McPhee.

“To be fair, we do try to provide both viewpoints,” he said. “At the start you’re rescued by someone who’s very anti-corporate, but then you go through a town that’s still owned by a corporation. Those people talk about the benefits of that and how cool life is, and you can flip sides and start supporting them instead.”

But there’s no time to dwell on that. We left town, and immediately bumped into some marauders. Our companion vaporises one of them with her special ability, and we shoot the rest. This is our first taste of time-dilation, an ability that lets you slow down time. McPhee describes it as a more active version of VATS shooting from the Fallout games. You can take out people’s limbs to make them crawl or drop their guns. I’d be surprised if I don’t still always end up just shooting at heads, but it’s nice to know I’ll have more options if I get bored.

I’m hoping I won’t. Every gun demonstrated comes in some flavour of laser, plasma or electro-enhanced-bullet. I particularly like the look of a charge up rifle that eliminates most enemies in one hit.

Even better, though, are the situations where you can avoid combat entirely. We approach the factory we’re supposed to dismantle, and look about for the sewers. They’re behind a waterfall, but we can’t pick the entrance’s lock. We head to the front entrance — but we don’t go in guns blazing. Instead, we use our automatic disguise kit to cross into the restricted area. The guards are still suspicious, but they’ll give us a chance to explain ourselves.

One wants to see our papers, but we’re good enough at lying that she buys our story about it being our first day on the job. It crossed my mind that when I play the full game I might run into the Deus Ex problem, where I wind up going back, killing everyone, and hacking everything in order to max out XP. McPhee reassured me that they hand out XP every time you use a skill, so in the demo we could have levelled up by running our mouth.

Disguises have limits, it turns out. Our disguise will run out if we loiter too long, or get interrogated three times, and it’ll get harder to talk out way out of trouble with each encounter. It’s a blend of sneaking and blustering I can get behind, especially when it dovetails with some hacking. We reach a terminal that lets us turn the robo-guards on their human overseers, then fight our way through the ensuing chaos.



At one point, we take enough damage from robots that we get the option to become scared of them. This is the fear system, which lets us choose to make certain enemies permanently tougher to fight, in exchange for a perk point. We weren’t told exactly what perk points do, but I know I’m a sucker for that kind of devil’s bargain. I’ll probably be a gibbering wreck by the end of the game.

When we finally find the man we’re after, he tries to get us to turn on our employer. Though not before first telling us, for some reason, about how much he likes to tuck into more than pork from the “Cysty-pigs” his factory has been farming. Those are pigs that have been engineered to grow bacon-flavoured tumours, and we’re being offered a lifetime supply of the stuff. We could also try to broker a peace between them – though the demo ends before the presenter makes his choice.

I’m in two minds about the humour. It’s a constant presence, and almost every line is tinged with glibness. The dialogue often made me smile, never made me laugh, and sometimes felt awkward when a joke didn’t land. I’m a tad suspicious I’ll find it tiring after longer than a half hour peek, but I’m also hopeful that worry will prove unfounded. If my half hour on Monarch was even vaguely representative of the other Outer Worlds, I know I’ll enjoy exploring them, whether I’m laughing or not.

More previews:

https://kotaku.com/the-outer-worlds-e3-demo-featured-flexible-combat-and-s-1835506991
https://techraptor.net/content/the-outer-worlds-e3-2019-preview
https://www.gamesradar.com/the-outer-worlds-preview-e3-2019/
https://www.keengamer.com/articles/previews/the-outer-worlds-preview-no-laughing-matter/
https://www.gameskinny.com/7llsm/the-outer-worlds-preview-strange-worlds-in-strange-times
https://www.newgamenetwork.com/article/2135/the-outer-worlds-preview-e3-2019/
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/fea...l-ruled-by-choice-and-consequence-1203243415/
https://monstervine.com/2019/06/the...a-familiar-and-far-out-experience-at-e3-2019/

 

[Dishonoredbr]

A new intreview with Leonard, now by Kotaku.

https://kotaku.com/the-outer-worlds-is-an-rpg-about-controlling-the-narrat-1835586595

 

[Infinitron]

Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...r-to-fallout-new/id1039413502?i=1000441825263

The Outer Worlds Is An RPG About Controlling The Narrative

If you fall into the category of people who believe that 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas was the best game in the series, then The Outer Worlds might be for you. Last week at E3, I spoke to the game’s co-director, Leonard Boyarsky, for a bonus episode of Kotaku Splitscreen digging deep into this cyberpunky role-playing game.

In a behind-closed-doors session at a booth belonging to Private Division, the Take Two-owned publishing label behind The Outer Worlds, a few developers from Obsidian Entertainment gathered to show off the game. Playing through a 20-minute demo, they shot and bartered their way through a mission on a failed colony planet called Monarch. It looked great, combining sci-fi gunplay and abilities (plasma rifles! slow time!) with the massive dialogue trees and branching paths that Obsidian fans expect. The demo showed off a variety of different ways to approach each chunk of the mission, and it looked weird, quirky, and fun.

Then I spoke to Boyarsky about developing The Outer Worlds, player choice, gunplay, the scope of the game, and much more. Listen above, or read an excerpt here:

Jason Schreier: Obviously this is a game about player choice, but it’s also a game that explores some very relevant political topics: corporations, dystopia, capitalism. Is there something you’re trying to say with this game? Is there a message you’re trying to send?

Boyarsky: Ironically, when we first started this, it didn’t seem quite as prescient as it does now, cause we started it in April of 2016. It’s become a little bit more pointed than we had hoped... Even more than this being about capitalism or corporations, it’s really about people controlling narrative and stories. And if people control the story you tell yourself, then they kind of control you.

We always love making a game where the player comes from outside, and we’ve done that again here—you’re coming into this world where all these people have been indoctrinated into this way of thinking, and even the people who are rebelling against it have been brought up in that system, so the ways they think about rebelling against the system are also created by the system. So the player comes in and looks around and says, “This is insanity.” That’s really where we were at, and it seems a lot more prescient and pointed than we may have originally wanted it to be. It obviously talks a lot about corporations and how they are, so that’s not an accident, but we’re all about exploring philosophical themes while having a fun, great game experience.

We don’t ever want it to get too heavy. We don’t ever want it to feel like we’re lecturing people or that we are trying to make a very specific point. We tried really hard to make sure that no matter what character it is in the game, they feel like they’re very realistic and they have realistic motivations. When you talk to the people on the board, they have a very realistic, or at least understandable, outlook. You might not agree with it at all, but it makes sense why they think that way.

"Cyberpunky"???