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

[Jedi Exile]

Dialog options:

This and artstyle gives me some hope. Everything else they showed today looks meh.

 

[hexer]

Visited Toddler's twitter to see if he reacted and noticed THIS!
I can't describe how upset I am right now he had the nerve to post that

 

[Quillon]

https://www.gameinformer.com/video-...018/12/07/new-gameplay-today-the-outer-worlds

 

[Sentinel]

Visited Toddler's twitter to see if he reacted and noticed THIS!
I can't describe how upset I am right now he had the nerve to post that

that's not his twitter. He doesn't use Twitter.

 

[Infinitron]

Previews are coming in: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-outer-worlds-looks-a-lot-like-fallout-but-that/1100-6463757/

The Outer Worlds Looks A Lot Like Fallout, But That's Only Half The Story

You know how, when playing any of the 3D Fallout games, the camera will sometimes kick out during combat for a slow-motion cinematic view of a killshot? Count that as one of the many reasons why Obsidian's new game, The Outer Worlds, looks a lot like Bethesda's now contentious post-apocalyptic series. It's a sporadic and superficial detail, but if you're familiar with Fallout it's an unmistakable flourish that will immediately catch your eye and cause memories of exploring irradiated wastelands to come rushing back--especially when you catch a glimpse of the attacker's deadpan expression.

This example is merely scratching the surface. Fallout was in the air during a recent visit to Obsidian Entertainment before the announcement at The Game Awards; many of the people we met had worked on the early games in the series, and the gameplay we saw of The Outer Worlds led from one familiar moment to the next. Obsidian isn't making a game that lives under the Fallout banner, but if you look at branding as a formality, you could say Obsidian is making the most informal Fallout game to date.

At the front of the room presenting the game, Fallout co-creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky were poised, seemingly confident in what they were about to show the group. This was their first game together since their studio, Troika Games (Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines), shut down in 2005. Leonard had gone on to Blizzard to work on Diablo III; Cain spent some time at Carbine Studios before landing at Obsidian in 2011 as senior programmer on Pillars of Eternity. The duo were instrumental to the creation of the first two Fallout games before the ailing Interplay Entertainment licensed the rights for Fallout 3 to Bethesda. At the time Cain had already formulated a piece of what he wanted the next sequel to be, and he's quoted in 2002 as saying: "My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun." Is this the chance he's been waiting for?


The Outer Worlds is set in a distant solar system where corporations are king, so much so that people practically define themselves by the brand they represent--it's just a fact of life for them. Because it's second nature, the overall tone is more casual than sinister, which is the perfect canvas for Obsidian's brand of subtle humor to seep through.

Neither Cain nor Boyarsky would say why the colonists in The Outer Worlds left Earth, but with their previous games in mind it's not difficult to imagine a plausible scenario. Regardless, the jumping off point was suspiciously familiar. At the start of the game, you are woken up from a multi-year slumber in a human-sized capsule--your own personal vault, if you will. The crazed scientist who jolted you out of hypersleep has a mission for you, but we were told you could freely ignore his wishes and embark on a questline of your choosing.

The Outer Worlds is being designed around freedom of choice, which often manifests during verbal exchanges. You have free agency to lie, play dumb, betray allies, or align with would-be enemies. These concepts aren't limited to Fallout games, but it's--again--hard to deny the similarities at play when even the amount of camera zoom during dialogue brings Fallout 3 to mind.

Whether The Outer Worlds is intentionally built to remind us of Fallout is a question we'll likely never get answered by Obsidian, but odds are it's not a coincidence. Obsidian's work on Fallout: New Vegas is cited by many fans to be the best thing to happen to the series in recent years. You could argue that any similarities between The Outer Worlds and Fallout are due to the fact that there are so many ex-Fallout devs working on the game, but there are elements that go beyond mere creative tendencies.

You dictate your characters' growth by investing in a stat system with categories dictated by a six-letter acronym, not unlike Fallout's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. Despite these and the many other similarities, The Outer Worlds isn't devoid of originality. Cain smirked before saying that he couldn't tell us what the stat acronym in The Outer Worlds is, but he was amped to share the other side of character customization, which sounds like it will usher in a brand-new form of player choice.

The Outer Worlds, we're told, keeps track of your interactions, mistakes, and tendencies. When the background computations identify that you've experienced a specific event repeatedly, it will give you a chance to incorporate that experience into your character's mental state. If, for example, you are attacked five times by a specific type of wild animal, the game will ask you if you'd like to accept a phobia of said creature. This opportunity is two-fold: accepting the phobia will result in a debuff of specific stats when you come near that species in the future, but by accepting it, you will get the chance to pick up an extra advantage too.

In the example we saw, signing up for a fear of Raptidons afforded you an extra perk. While it was confirmed that you will be able to respec your character at any time, flaws are permanent. You could decide to take on a fear of the dark, fear of ledges, and a fear of fire, and wind up in an unexpectedly sticky situation further down the road. It's the sort of thing you want to think twice about before making a call, but the potential for personal playthroughs feeds into the role-playing experience and may be difficult to ignore.

Thankfully, your companions are able to support you when the going gets tough. It looks as though you'll have half a dozen companions to choose from during your adventures, but you are only allowed to explore and fight with two by your side at any time. Party members relieved of duty will reside on your spaceship, which acts like more of a small base of operations, rather than a vehicle you can actually control--it moves on fixed paths when you pick your next destination. Also on board is Ada, the ship's AI represented by a female avatar on a monitor in the control room. Ada is supposed to grow and change depending on your actions, though we didn't get a look at this firsthand.

Back on terra firma, your companions will fight according to their AI and the class you've assigned to them. Each character in your party can carry a small selection of both melee and ranged weaponry, of which we're told there's a great variety to discover during your adventures. If there's one aspect of The Outer Worlds that looks a bit underwhelming, it's combat. Enemies and allies alike lack energy, exhibiting basic and straightforward animations. I got the sense that victory has more to do with how you craft your party rather than how you handle them during a fight.


While Fallout's V.A.T.S. system isn't replicated in an immediate and obvious fashion like other aspects of The Outer Worlds, there is a time-dilation mechanic that serves a similar purpose. Triggering this ability slows down time and lets you target specific body parts. Whether to maintain a stealthy run or slow down a hectic fight in order to gain an advantage, this system still feels like it serves a similar purpose to V.A.T.S. in the long run--just without the damage and success percentages guiding your aim.

Cain told us that he writes a post-mortem on every Fallout game, including those he had no part in. He also posited that "If people have liked our previous RPGs they're going to like this one in terms of how we make reactive worlds and especially our style of humor." After watching nearly 45 minutes of The Outer Worlds play out in front of me, I recognized both the ideals of Cain and Boyarsky and the habits of Obsidian on screen.

Regardless of what The Outer Worlds is called, the pedigree behind it and the apparent results of the team's vision feels like it's aimed squarely at the Fallout fanbase. Obsidian never could have predicted Fallout 76 nor the reaction to it, but for this game to arrive at this time feels like serendipity. Cain and Boyarsky never got their chance to make their version of Fallout 3, but more than a decade after they left their most famous work behind, they have reunited for their "dream project." For the disenchanted fans of older Fallout games, they may finally get the game they've been asking for all along.

Editor's note: GameSpot was flown to Obsidian Entertainment at Private Division's expense.

 

[Makabb]

Dialog options:

This and artstyle gives me some hope. Everything else they showed today looks meh.

It's an Obsidian game, so the mechanics should be atleast on New Vegas level, they don't show them in the trailer because it's not what normies dig.

 

[sullynathan]

like I said, looks like Borderlands, No Mans Sky, Destiny

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.shacknews.com/article/108855/the-outer-worlds-preview-flaws-in-the-system

The Outer Worlds preview: Flaws in the system
The Outer World is a single-player sci-fi RPG with flaws. And by that, I mean Obsidian Entertainment has put together some interesting ideas to push this genre forward. Shacknews gets a first look.

Seven years is a lot of time to spend in cryogenic stasis, especially while hovering over a bustling, colonized planet along the farthest reach of the cosmos. There's a lot of catching up to do upon waking up, as one would imagine. And with that wake-up call, it's time to explore The Outer Worlds, the next game from the crew at Obsidian Entertainment.

Revealed during last night's Game Awards, The Outer Worlds represents a new frontier for Obsidian. Most recently, the studio has been recognized for delving into the fantasy realm with Pillars of Eternity. They've also gone the contemporary route, with Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and South Park: The Stick of Truth among their credits. The Outer Worlds represents the developer's first jump into a modern space adventure, but with original Fallout creators Feargus Urquhart, Tim Cain, and Leonard Boyarsky spearheading this project, there are certain elements of this single-player RPG that will also look familiar.

Players venture into an alternate future, where Earth has been colonizing other planets for 100 years. Halcyon represents the farthest colony from Earth. There appeared to be two terraformable worlds in the area, but only one proved to be livable. Most of the game will be played on Terra 2 (Halcyon), which contains man-made settlements, though Obsidian does tease trips to Terra 1 (Monarch), which is filled with monsters.

Character building will be a central component in The Outer Worlds. The game will start off with the main character working to unlock their own ship. The ship will act as the game's central hub, allowing for fast travel, inventory storage, and which also acts as a home to companions. Companions are far more than passive tag-alongs here. They will have their own dialogue, speak frequently, and interject in conversations. This not only makes the party system a little more dynamic, but also offers up some freedom in regards to dialogue and character building.

One sample conversation saw the main character's companion ask their own questions and cut in whenever necessary. Dialogue options are numerous. Some selections will advance the missions, some will trigger hostility in the other person, and some will advance some of the player's character traits. There's also a new type of response usable in conversations called the Dumb response. This shows off the main character's gullibility or idiocy, at which point the companion will play the straight person and move the quest along. It essentially allows players to craft their own moronic protagonist, like a Chris Pratt type. Over the course of the game, additional dialogue choices may be made available, depending on the player's attributes and skills.

Quests are sprinkled across the world, but there's no need to worry about manually flying to certain areas to access them. ADA acts as the ship's computer assistant and takes the responsibility of flying to certain parts of the planet. Players and companions travel to the planet by using landing pads. ADA also serves an unknown narrative purpose, as the developers noted that while nothing is sentient, ADA's dialogue is enough to make one wonder.

Equipping one's self for quests is more than preparing the main character, but the key to success is also selecting the right companions. Different companions can be recruited over the course of the game, each with their own unique abilities. They'll also come with their own quests and their own goals. Players must decide whether to embark on missions with companions that complement their own skill set or companions that excel at skills that the main character does not.

One idea that Obsidian is taking to the lengths of delightful absurdity in The Outer Worlds is the concept of branding. Virtually everything in the game is branded. Every consumable item and every weapon has a corporate brand name attached to it, along with marketing buzzwords and slogans. Narratively, it shows that corporations are the ultimate master in Halcyon. Every single NPC in the game works for a company. It's a world that has progressed beyond racism and sexism, but it's a world that's entirely consumed by competition between companies. It's a story inspired by the robber barons of the late 19th century, but with the concept taken to its next level.

Outside of the narrative elements, branding represents a a chance to show off the game's quirky sense of humor. One example of branding involves exploring a colony owned by Auntie Cleo, a company that manufactures food and drugs. Among the helpful medical miracles they make is a line of products called Auntie Biotics.

(Pause for rimshot.)

The world is filled with hostile lifeforms, many of which will pop out during quests. This is where The Outer Worlds introduces its most intriguing mechanic yet. As players take damage or hit certain setbacks, they'll be prompted to take on a "flaw." Character flaws come in many forms, such as fear of the dark, fear of robots, and fear of Raptidons (Raptiphobia). Taking the flaw will put the player at a slight disadvantage that they need to work around, but in exchange, they'll receive an additional character perk immediately. It's Obsidian's way of crafting an imperfect protagonist, in the vein of Joseph Campbell, and it should go a long way towards making quests more interesting. For example, the aforementioned raid of the Auntie Biotics facility is filled with Raptidons. Raptiphobia makes rushing in a much more difficult path, however the player can also try and sneak in through the vents and take a more stealthy route.

It's entirely possible to craft a character that can get around most combat scenarios by talking their way out of a bad situation. However, if combat does pop up, players will have an array of space-age weaponry at their disposal. They'll also have the ability to momentarily slow time, called Tactical Time Dilation. This can be used to get that perfect shot in or analyze enemy stats and come up with stragies on the fly. TTD will come with a cooldown timer and it's possible to enhance this skill over the course of the game.

Obsidian is crafting an adventure filled with narrative possibilities and replayability. The Outer Worlds looks to be a game filled with different gameplay paths and raucous humor. Yes, I heard the words "diet toothpaste" at some point during this developer demo. There's going to be much more to say about this game in the months ahead. The Outer Worlds is set to release in 2019 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamereactor.eu/previews/715893/The+Outer+Worlds/

The Outer Worlds
We flew all the way to Obsidian headquarters in California to see the studio's expansive new RPG.

What do you feel is important when playing an RPG? Is it about a convincing and well-crafted world, about diversity in locations and enemies? For experienced RPG developer Obsidian Entertainment it's all of that, but with an even bigger emphasis on the player's freedom to choose their own course of action inside the game world. At least that's our impression from our recent studio visit and preview of Obsidian's upcoming single-player sci-fi RPG, The Outer Worlds. In their latest game, Obsidian aims to provide almost complete freedom of choice to the player, something which could make it stand out among sci-fi RPGs that follow a more linear storyline.

Obsidian's largest team yet, with previous experience on Pillars of Eternity II, South Park: The Stick of Truth and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, has been working on The Outer Worlds for over two years now. Our impression of the game's atmosphere is that of general light-heartedness, with a big comical element in the dialogue. It's going to be singleplayer only, limited to a first-person view with a familiar first-person shooter GUI and your party of three in the top left of the screen. The only time a third-person view comes up is when you're idle for some time. The game has a colourful 19th-century art nouveau-inspired style with lots of clunky mechanical technology. In the words of lead designer Charles Staples:
"It takes place in an alternate future where humanity has expanded. The game takes place in a colony on the edge of known human space, [which] was founded by a corporate board of ten corporations. They sent two main colony ships to found the colony, of which along the way one made it and one did not. The player was aboard the one that did not. [After 70 years] a crazed scientist finds the player and thaws him out of hibernation and asks you to save the rest of the colonists."

Immediately after the game starts, Obsidian gives players the freedom to choose their course of action. While we were watching a gameplay preview, co-game director Tim Cain explained: "the scientist wants you to help collect more chemicals to save the other colonists. But you don't have to help him do that, you could decide I'm going to hand him in to the evil board of corporations and turn this guy in to see what happens. [If you do so] you'll get a lot of money and get to live in the city of the elite [called Byzantium]." Cain continued: "It's really important for us that players can drive the story. We want this to be as open-end for players as possible. [...] Players can drive the story, be any kind of player you want to be. You want to be an anti-hero, you want to be a hero or you want to be a psychopath?"

Throughout the game, your home is a spaceship orbiting the game's two main planets: the successfully terraformed 'Terra-2' and the much less successful, alien-ridden world nicknamed 'Monarch'. Senior producer Matthew Singh told us that "your ship is your means to move between different locations. It's not like you'll be charting your course on a map, [but] there will be a travel system from your ship itself." The whole game map will be more or less free to explore from the start, but the enemies in some parts will be too difficult to visit early on.

Both planets have been colonised by the aforementioned corporations. These corporations are all-defining in The Outer Worlds: everything from cities to factories and every man-made item you'll come across are branded by them; and the people in the game identify exclusively by the corporation they're affiliated with. Each corporation is a bit different: for example, one corporation is characterised by building cheap but low-quality products such as armour and weapons, while the Aunty Cleo corporation specialises in food and recreational drugs (players can decide to use a number of drugs). Options for weapons modification differ by corporations as well.

Shaping the story are your character's abilities and their interactions with your so-called companions. Firstly, the player chooses their own characteristics based on an elaborate skill tree. On one hand, for example, there's a tech skill branching out into science, medical and engineering skills. Furthering the engineering skill will allow you to tinker with and upgrade your weapons, while the science skill lets you build special weapons such as a shrink ray. The latter shrinks both aliens and people, reducing their strength complete with squeaky voices for shrunken people. On the other hand, there are skills such as intimidation, lying, persuasion and leadership. These skills allow you to take special actions to steer the course of the storyline in a certain direction, something that should also add to the game's replayability. Moreover, you can also choose to add faults to your character, for example a fear of heights. They are irreversible and add personality, as well as certain perks.

The player's companions are the second factor driving the storyline: you pick them up along the way and they will populate your spaceship. They will react to the player's characteristics: for example becoming more effective with strong leadership skills or frustrated if you choose to develop a dumb character (yes, Obsidian's freedom means you can also play as a dumb character). You're able to take up to two of them along on a mission at which point they will complement the player's own skill-set. During the gameplay preview we witnessed how the companions can also be drawn into the game's dialogues and respond to how you handle situations. If you choose to become very good at lying, this will open up opportunities to manipulate your way through the game world, but companions might decide they don't like it and leave you. Romance will not be in the game, though.

Besides the story, we were able to catch glimpses of what to expect walking around The Outer Worlds. According to Charles Staples, the game's look and feel is "inspired by Art Nouveau art, and Mobius has been a bit of an inspiration for us as well. We're taking a lot of inspiration from the gilded age of sci-fi and the Robber Barron's era." To us this translates to a sort of Bioshockmeets No Man's Sky aesthetic, the latter because of the very colourful palette used in The Outer Worlds' locations. On Monarch there's colourful red, green and yellow earth-like trees populated by native aliens such as Raptidons, a sort of aggressive mixture between fish and reptilians. We also spotted concept art of a big insectoid 'Mantisaur' and there's also lots of creatures genetically engineered by the corporations moving around, such as a fat snake engineered for leather production. There will not be sentient aliens however, meaning The Outer Worlds is inhabited by humans, androids and alien critters.

Among the locations you can travel to, we observed a space station with neon-lit bars and a large canteen; a rocky asteroid base overgrowing with big clusters of reddish mushrooms and there's going to be one big city for the rich called 'Byzantium'. The player's playstyle determines how you experience the locations. As Matthew Singh explained: "if you decide, I want to go here and murder everybody that's possible". This means that whether the main city Byzantium becomes your home or everyone in it your enemy is up to the player.

For the rest, The Outer Worlds has its fair share of features we know from other RPGs; Borderlands-like rifles, revolvers and handguns, as well as chargeable energy weapons. There's also laser-powered melee weapons such as axes and mauls and the game features a 'tactical time dialation'-mode that slows down time and allows you to aim for a successful headshot. When we asked about space battles, Staples replied it was "an interesting idea, but not something we're working on right now."

In our opinion, The Outer Worlds seems to have its own atmosphere and light-hearted mood that sets it apart from the usually more serious and dark tone of sci-fi RPGs, including the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. If Obsidian is to be believed, there's going to be a lot of freedom to experience the general storyline in many different ways and this could make The Outer Worlds a very entertaining experience. Further reveals will tell it will have enough gameplay diversity to draw gamers to these outer reaches of space.

 

[Oracsbox]

Any word on microtransactions ?
I don't want to be seeing shit like this

By the way this

Is now 400 credits on Fallout 4 creation club.

 

[hexer]

Art style looks like Overwatch and Fallout 4 had a baby

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidians-t...nd-fallout-into-a-bold-open-ended-sci-fi-rpg/

Obsidian's The Outer Worlds blends Firefly and Fallout into a bold, open-ended sci-fi RPG
The creators of the original Fallout have spent two years on a new first-person RPG, and it looks great.

Obsidian's new RPG The Outer Worlds is not just sci-fi: it is exuberantly sci-fi. Blood red trees pepper valleys of strange cylindrical rocks and alien shrubs. A spaceship rumbles overhead, coming in for a landing at the nearest spaceport. Rings grander than Saturn's carve an arc across the horizon, and a field of stars shine impossibly bright in the afternoon sky. It's a world I already know I want to explore: the colorful vistas of No Man's Sky, but in an RPG that looks and feels very Fallout, just a million miles away and pre-nuclear armageddon.

It's an incredibly good time to be the creators of Fallout. Not Bethesda, the studio behind Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 and now the disappointing Fallout 76: It's a badtime to be Bethesda, with new Fallout 76 problems seemingly popping up every day. But it's a great time to be Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, who designed the original Fallout and Fallout 2 in 1997/1998. From the hour of gameplay I saw in a recent demo at Obsidian's offices, The Outer Worlds looks like exactly the game anyone disappointed in Fallout 76's multiplayer focus will want to play: a first-person RPG shooter, with a focus on roleplaying above all else.

Call me the space cowboy
There are telltale signs all over that you're playing a game designed by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, if you know what to look for. One: there's never just a single path through a mission, but always the golden trifecta: fighting, talking, and sneaking. Two: a unique vibe stemming from what Boyarsky calls "the combination of my dark morbidity and Tim's silliness." Three: Bending over backwards to prioritize player choice in a world that's often silly, despite being all shades of gray.

"We can't seem to get away from it, not that we want to. That's what appeals to us," Boyarsky says. "The ability to not only make your own decisions, but also not having a clear-cut 'what is the best choice, here?' That's where players have to start really thinking, 'what do I want to do as a character, as opposed to 'I always play the good guy, so I'm always going to pick helping people.'"

After two years of secrecy, the leads were eager to show off their game. The demo started on the player's personal spaceship, which you'll acquire in the first act and then use to hop between locations on a pair of planets at the edge of humanity's settled systems. You're a bit out of place: you've been pulled out of cryosleep after what should've been a fatal amount of time on ice, and from there you'll be thrust into the midst of a bunch of corporations and outlaws vying for power.

"You were part of a ship that got lost," Boyarsky says. "You've been frozen for 70 years. If you're frozen for more than 10 years, it's a really bad thing. This guy figured out a way to save you, and he needs you to help him get more chemicals to help save the rest of the colonists. But you don't have to help him do that. You can go to the 'evil board,' the Halcyon corporate board, and turn this guy in and see what happens if you do that."

"You get a lot of money," Cain adds.

One of the two main planets has been terraformed and is kinder to human life, while the other hasn't, making it home to more (and more dangerous) alien predators. Your ship will serve as a home base for you and your companions, much like Mass Effect's Normandy. You'll be able to chat with them and pick up companion quests, as they all have their own reasons for tagging along with you.

In an hour demo of The Outer Worlds, I watched them head to a small frontier town to respond to a distress call, then take a mission from a scientist to retrieve his previous research into hunger-suppressing toothpaste. Like everyone else in Outer Worlds, he works for a corporation: Everything is branded, and the megacorporation that sells you lunch is likely also manufacturing weapons or drugs.

"The idea that the game has been built around is that there's silly stuff and there's dramatic stuff, but it's not always like this separate thing," Boyarsky says. "This seems very silly, and hopefully humorous on the surface of it. They're making diet toothpaste, but this relates to a much bigger thing that's going on in the world."

Getting that research back involved sneaking into a facility, shooting some monsters that have gotten loose, and convincing the facility's guards that you're on their side... which led to their grisly death at the hands of some bandits patrolling outside.

Of course, it didn't have to play out like that. You could shoot your way in instead of sneaking, not bother talking to the guards, or actually ally up with them instead. Or you could promise to help a captured outlaw in the facility, then betray her. Opportunities for double-crossing abound.

The art style and gunplay of The Outer Worlds had me thinking of Bioshock again and again. It's hard to say until I get my hands on it, but the animation and impact of shooting look slightly stiff and simple, in the way shooter-RPGs often do compared to a Battlefield or Rainbow Six: Siege. But that didn't stop it from looking fun, with tons of choices to make both in how you approach combat and what weapons you use.


There are weapons that use light, medium and heavy bullet ammo, as well as energy weapons and melee. I saw two of the latter, a lightsaber-esque sword with a green laser blade, and a scythe with a sick, dripping blade of red energy fit for a sci-fi grim reaper. The damage you do will be based both on the stats of that particular weapon and your character stats.

Like in BioShock, weapons are moddable to do fire damage, shock damage, and so on, but you can also upgrade them to higher damage tiers. There's a nice zipto laser weapons and all the graphical effects look great, like they're straight out of a modern pulp sci-fi serial.

While your character has stats that affect damage, this isn't RPG combat with dice rolls governing whether your perfectly aimed shots hit or miss. Line up a headshot, and it'll hit. But for players who care more about the roleplaying than the shooting, the developers came up with a "time dilation" mechanic akin to Fallout's VATS. You can slow down time to help you aim, and while time's dilated a bit of UI pops up next to the enemy you're aiming at with info like their HP. It's an easy way to target individual body parts, though aiming is still manual, unlike in VATS.


One of the last features they showed us in detail is a new system called "flaws," which Cain says he's wanted to put into a game for years. Flaws are optional character traits you can accept after something happens in the game. For example, after fighting a group of vicious space dogs called Raptidons, you might get the option to take the flaw Raptiphobia, which will make you weaker in fights against them from that point on. Flaws are permanent, and you can have up to three of them (or five on a harder difficulty), but of course there's a trade-off: you get to take an extra perk immediately.


"A flaw can be a fear of heights. There's my favorite, robophobia. We also have afraid of the dark. The game may go 'hey, you seem to catch on fire on fire a lot. Would you like to be susceptible to flame damage? If so, you can have another perk right now."

Whole new worlds

The area housing the research facility wasn't a narrow, linear path: there was definitely room to roam, with enemies and other locations to loot around the map. Outer Worlds isn't one massive contiguous world like today's open world games, but from what I've seen, that's a good thing. This is not a game made by 800 people, and the smaller environments look intimately hand-crafted, but are still big enough to hold sidequests and reward exploration.

One of the most exciting things the developers talked about was the freedom they're trying to bake into The Outer Worlds. "A lot of the map is opened up right after you get your ship, so you don't have to follow the story immediately," Boyarsky says. "There are points of no return, but we like to keep your options open for as long as possible."

There's a degree of level scaling on enemies, but within limits, which means you'll be able to travel to difficult places early, if you want, and reap the rewards--if you don't die. It looks and feels like a proper, open-ended PC RPG, but on a more conservative budget than today's blockbusters. I've only seen a small slice, so it's hard to say how unique the many paths through the game will feel, how rewarding it will be to take the "wrong" way and carve your own path.

But the setting has an invigorating freshness and personality to it for this type of game, and I think it's high time we got a campier, more sarcastic Firefly to Mass Effect's wannabe Star Trek.

Here are some other things I learned about The Outer Worlds:

• It's out in 2019
• It's an Unreal Engine 4 game
• Your protagonist isn't voiced
• There's a special class of "science weapons" that will have special, ridiculous effects, like a shrink ray
• There's a full character creator even though it's first-person only (you'll see your character in the inventory, and if you leave the game idling long)
• Your companions don't have separate inventories. Taking companions with you just gives you more inventory space to work with yourself
• If companions really dislike the decisions you make, they'll leave and go back to the ship. You can persuade them to see things your way
• No romancing companions. They considered it, but decided against it.
• Companions each have a special attack (one named Felix does a double drop kick) but you can also equip them with whatever weapons you want
• Hacking and lockpicking don't have minigames, and are simply based on your attributes
• There are six skills (strength, intelligence etc.) and for every 20 points you put into one (up until 100) you'll gain a new perk
• As in the creators' past games, you can play as a "dumb" character with stupid dialogue options. Your companions react appropriately.
• They're still not sure if it will be possible to play through the game completely pacifist (but you'll almost definitely have to at least kill some robots)
• Robots aren't sentient, but your ship's AI seems to have a strange degree of personality
• Tim Cain wants you to know there are a lot of drugs, but he's not going to pressure you to take them

 

[jf8350143]

There is a "dumb" option in the dialogue...Looks like 1 intelligence play through is back.

They really love that don't they.

 

[Curratum]

The shooting is painful to even just watch...

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.polygon.com/features/20...worlds-obsidian-entertainment-new-rpg-preview

Three things we learned about Obsidian’s new RPG, The Outer Worlds
It’s like Fallout and Mass Effect had a baby, but without the romance

Obsidian Entertainment is responsible for some extraordinary video games. Legendary titles such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Fallout: New Vegaseasily come to mind, but also popular homegrown franchises like Pillars of Eternity and smaller titles like 2016’s Tyranny. The Outer Worlds, announced last night during the Video Game Awards, is a blend of old gameplay mechanics and a new, science fiction setting.

It also feels like a balm for fans of massively single-player worlds — just like the ones made famous by Obsidian’s one-time collaborator Bethesda — fans still reeling from the rocky launch of Fallout 76.

Earlier this week we sat down with the team behind the ambitious project, which includes Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, co-creators of the original Falloutgames. Here are three things about what The Outer Worlds is, and what it isn’t.

A NEW RPG, ROOTED IN THE OLD SCHOOL
Obsidian described The Outer Worlds as an alternate history future that transports the gilded age into outer space. A collection of mega-corporations have bought and paid for a new colony in a star system far from humanity’s home world. Within it are two habitable worlds, and when the game begins terraforming operations are already well underway.

As the game opens, players will find themselves on board a massive starship, freshly thawed after a much longer than expected journey.

“You are on the second colony ship,” said Leonard Boyarsky, Obsidian’s co-game director on the project. “It was going there and it mysteriously got knocked out of it’s faster-than-light travel, so it took way longer to get there than it should. About 70 years in all.”

In the fiction of The Outer Worlds, humans can’t survive hibernating for more than a decade. Somehow, an enterprising deep space scientist has found a way to keep you alive. Your quest, should you choose to accept it, is to help them find the resources they need to unfreeze the rest of the remaining settlers.

“You are not forced to work with him,” Boyarsky said. “You can betray him the first chance you get to the government, and work on their side. You can effectively play the game any way you choose. You can be the hero. You can be anti-hero. You can be a full-on mercenary. You can be psychopathic killer.”

There will be a modicum of character customization options, Boyarsky said, but players should expect a more old-school approach. For instance, you’ll rarely see your character on screen outside the inventory menus. They won’t have even have a voice. That will leave room, he said, for the developers to spend their time and treasure crafting a complex narrative adventure. Early gameplay shows branching dialogue paths with plenty of nuance, a composite of memory mechanics from games like TellTale’s The Walking Dead and stats-based rolls common in isometric RPGs.

A PARTY OF NPCS
Once they dig into the game, players will quickly be given access to their own starship, complete with a roguish crew. Just as in the Pillars of Eternity series, these non-player characters will have an opinion about what’s going on in the world.

“I liken it more to like an evolution from the things you saw in Fallout: New Vegas,” Boyarsky said, “where the characters are much more integrated. [...] I don’t want to necessarily make comparisons between the two, but they’re both from the same DNA. Let’s put it that way.”

“We’re also pushing the idea of integrating your companions into a lot more of the events that happen along the way,” said Charlie Staples, The Outer Worlds’ lead designer. “In our conversations, companions can interject. Their skills add onto your skills. If my intimidate skill isn’t high enough, but then Felix is here with me, we can push through this conversation and get a different option because he’s there with me, so it’s a lot more about them influencing things along the way.”

Of course, ever since the Mass Effect series, once you launch players into space and embed them with a group of NPCs they begin to get certain ... urges. Both Boyarsky and Staples said that, sadly, romance is not an option that they’re considering.

“We really wanted to focus on you role-playing your character,” Boyarsky said, “developing the unique personalities of your companions as fully fleshed out people.”

Romance, he said, has a tendency to funnel gameplay and temper the decisions players make in the game in unusual ways. For that reason, they opted to leave it out.

“We had to pick what we were going to put our time into,” Boyarsky said. “Other people have explored the romance angle in different ways. We felt like sometimes it kind of waters down your roleplaying for your character because it turns into this mini game of how do I seduce this companion or that companion. So it was just one of the things we felt wasn’t really what we wanted to focus our time on. [...] We’re really trying to be focused on a specific experience so that we can polish that experience and give players the best version of that experience that we can.”

GUNS BLAZING
Early teases for the game took the form of in-fiction advertisements from megacorporations like Auntie Cleo’s and Spacer’s Choice. The final game will feature 10 different brands, each with their own line of items and weapons for players to choose from. Wear and tear will be modeled, and luxury brands will last longer. Certain brands will also be more moddable than others, although the team didn’t go into much detail about what that means in practice.

What is clear, however, is that combat looks an awful lot like Bethesda’s modern Fallout games, complete with a VATS-like pausable sequence and zoomed-in vanity shots for particularly graphic kills.

Party members will also participate in combat. The team says you’ll be able to give them simple commands and standing orders, but their individual personalities will play a big role in how they fight. Additionally, your social skills will also play a role in how battles turn out.

“We have the dialogue skills which are used in conversation,” Staples said, “but also wanted to make sure that those added influence in combat as well.

“We have three dialogue skills consisting of lie, intimidate, and persuade. They also have a role in combat. [Perhaps] you kill a creature and that intimidates the rest of the creatures, and they all flee. We wanted to make sure that players who choose dialogue aren’t just focused solely on talking, but that they have advantages in combat and the other gameplay we have as well.”

One particularly innovative system that the team is working on is how the game will offer players permanent negative attributes. When something terrible happens, say a grievous wound delivered by a particular animal or an accidental fall, players will be given a choice to sidestep the immediate consequence in favor taking a flaw instead.

“It’s a typical Obsidian game,” Staples said, “so it has a lot of choice and consequence. A lot of building your own character and playing the way that you want to play.”

“Along the way,” he continued, “the game watches how you’re doing and what happens to the player and we call it a flaw. Say that I’ve been fighting a lot of robots and here’s an opportunity of where we say, ‘You can take a flaw and have robo-phobia where you’re scared of robots and all your stats will go down when you’re near robots. If you accept that, you can take a perk right now.’

“We found that it’s a way to dynamically change the player character, to make them more of an interesting hero as they’re playing through the game. It’s a more reactive play style and how they’re doing things.”

The Outer Worlds is expected to release some time in 2019 for PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One. The title will be published by Private Division, a new independent label from Take-Two Interactive Software.

 

[Oracsbox]

Visited Toddler's twitter to see if he reacted and noticed THIS!
I can't describe how upset I am right now he had the nerve to post that

I fucking hate Todd Howard

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rpgsite.net/preview/806...breaking-new-ground-at-the-edge-of-the-galaxy

The Outer Worlds Preview: Breaking new ground at the edge of the galaxy
by Bryan Vitale, 07 December, 2018

Revealed yesterday during The Game Awards 2018, The Outer Worlds is Obsidian Entertainment's newest single-player first-person RPG. While rumors had persisted that Obsidian's then-unannounced new title was a third-person game in the vein of Mass Effect, the studio revealed yesterday the project is actually entirely first-person, surprising many in a manner not entirely dissimilar to the showcase of gameplay of Cyberpunk 2077 from earlier this year. Helmed by original Fallout creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, there are lots of reasons to be excited about the studio's newest IP after several years of working on smaller-scale and often-crowdsourced CRPG titles such as Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny.

RPG Site had the opportunity to visit Obsidian's studio in Irvine, California to get a first-hand look at the development of The Outer Worlds, as well as talk to the developers behind the new spacefaring RPG. What we encountered was an enthusiastic team of developers who, frankly, couldn't wait to show off their new game for the world to see.






From Fallout to The Outer Worlds - How it came to be
Obsidian Entertainment's roots are well documented -- during the rocky closing of Interplay's Black Isle Studios division and the canceled Baldur's Gate III, Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, and a handful of other ex-employees founded the studio in the wake of their former employer's end. From there, the team went on to develop several critically and commercially acclaimed titles across several IPs over the next 15 years as an independent studio. Microsoft recently acquired Obsidian last month alongside inXile entertainment -- another studio also founded by ex-Interplay developers.

The prequel to the story of The Outer Worlds begins separately from Obsidian's founding, though. In the late 90s, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky left Interplay to found Troika Games and work on titles such as Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. After career detours took Cain and Boyarsky to Carbine and Blizzard respectively, the pair found themselves back under the same roof in 2016 at Obsidian. It was then that they approached CTO Chris Jones about working together on a new RPG.

Jones is another alumnus of Interplay and Troika games -- you can see there's a bit of a trend here. Cain had been reenergized after working on Pillars and wanted to have another go at being a game director again, and Boyarsky wanted to have another chance at designing a new world and setting after working on several Diablo projects. Needless to say, everything fell into place and production on The Outer Worlds had begun.






A New Alternate Future Corrupted by Corporate Greed
Our first look at The Outer Worlds matched what the world saw last night, with a look at the player-character waking up from some unknown stasis of sorts and ending up on an Autumnal-styled distant world to the tune of Iggy Pop's 'The Passenger'. Our presentation group was similarly surprised at the reveal of the title's first-person perspective, as well as the striking art direction evoking components of retro-futurism not entirely dissimilar from Bethesda's Fallout titles or something along the lines of Bioshock, though clearly distinct from both. I was skeptical at first, potentially feeling a bit saturated of the general style over the last handful of years, but the unique setting and circumstances of the presented narrative quickly won me over.

The Outer Worlds takes place in an alternate far future -- the Earth has been colonizing distance worlds in the galaxy for about 100 years. The player wakes up after about 70 years of cryosleep at the hands of a wanted scientist near 'the edge of the galaxy' at the colony of Halcyon. The player is told that they were abandoned on a ship full of other settlers that were intended to be some of the first colonists in the area, but obviously, something mysteriously catastrophic happened, causing the plan to ultimately be abandoned and the colonists to remain frozen for decades.

The Doc Brown-resembling figure needs the player's help to rescue the rest of the colonists, but lingering mysteries about Halcyon's enigmatic corporate board leaves questions about the true motive of the player's savior, alongside what happened to the original colony ship several decades ago, and how the colony of Halcyon on Terra 2 ended up becoming such a capitalist dystopia.

Even with this general premise quickly detailed, I found myself already seeking answers to the presented questions: why did this colony ship get abandoned, why was the player selected by this doctor to be awoken, and why is he wanted by the company board? There are enough potential narrative threads present immediately from the outset that I found myself eager to learn more.






Everything in The Outer Worlds is branded by a different company, ranging from gear to weapons to food to the areas people live and work in. Each company in the game essentially has carte blanche to run people's lives. This future society no longer witnesses any degrees of racism or sexism, instead focusing entirely on which company's sphere each person ends up associating with. Halcyon itself is comprised of two Earth-like worlds, aptly named Terra 1 and Terra 2, with the former becoming something of a den of monsters, bandits, and anarchists while the later acted a planet-sized slab of real estate to be bought and companies such as Spacer's Choice and Auntie Cleo's.

It's definitely an interesting twist on a typical dystopian dynamic. The future presented in The Outer Worlds is described as being post-racial at the expense of being occupationally discriminatory to an almost absurd degree. Instead of a faux-utopian society being corrupted by some sort of tyrannical government entity, we instead seemingly have a corporate board playing the role instead. It may end up being functionally identical, but it's an interesting spin on the concept, all the same.

While many other story details were not shared beyond this general premise, we do know that the opening act of the game involves the player gaining access to a spaceship of their own in order to be able to go wherever they want on the colony -- with a few limitations. Completing favors for the colony's various factions, undertaking quests, and even buying passes outright will expand which areas of the colony the player will be able to explore. It definitely seems to play strongly into the core idea that the world should be reactive to the player's decisions, so it's neither a wide-open sandbox nor a linear, guided experience.

Taking Companions to the Next Level, Without Romance
The spaceship, which remained unnamed during our demo, acts as the player's flying home in The Outer Worlds. Companions that are recruited in the game will each take up residence in the ship, and each will even pick up various memorabilia throughout the game to decorate their individual quarters as you complete quests and take them out on expeditions -- the player will get similar opportunities as well for their own residence. While Obsidian wouldn't comment on the final number of companions available in the game, a screen presented during the gameplay demo showcased six silhouettes, with two occupied by Felix and Ellie, the first pair of companions introduced during our preview.






It's honestly hard to not be at least a tad skeptical about the claims of greater companion interactivity -- similar pledges were made for the companions of Deadfire during the CRPG sequel's Fig campaign, only to result in short linear questlines that ended too quickly more often than not, and without a lot of far-reaching consequences. Frankly, most any game with this sort of feature is similarly marketed, so the verdict on how well Obsidian is able to reach this goal of having meaningful narrative interaction from the title's party members will have to wait until we're able to spend more time than what's logistically possible in a preview demo session. Though a few neat ideas were shared to at least show that the potential is there.

While companions join the player pair-wise, there's always the option to go it alone as well. Each ally will bring with them a special set of abilities. These can range from being able to support the player with specific skill checks (not unlike the system present in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire) to being able to unleash a powerful combat maneuver at various intervals with increasing effectiveness as the game goes on. While these specific sorts of mechanics are well-worn, the possibility for an increased degree of permanence, starting with the memorabilia for their rooms on board your ship, allows for a potential new layer of decision making when deciding who should accompany whom on any given expedition.

Interestingly enough, it was stated that companions will not be able to be romanced in The Outer Worlds. Boyarsky stated that Obsidian wanted to put their focus and intention on writing deep, fully fleshed out characters without conflating the player's role-playing sensibilities by introducing a sort of minigame where they're encouraged to collect as much party member affection as possible by bending to each character's every whim. It's a reasonable omission to be sure, but one that's also sure to disappoint a portion of the player base that highly values this sort of interactivity. Deadfire had companion romances for every party member and still had characters that felt somewhat flat with thin backstories, so it'll be interesting to see if Obsidian can truly bolster their new RPG on this front with that component removed.






In order to drive home the message that companions were set out as a design focal point upon The Outer World's inception, Tim elaborated on a unique playstyle titled "Leader" to accompany the more standard trio of "Combat", "Stealth", and "Dialogue". A Leader character is one that's clearly differentiated based on the companions he chooses to bring with them, and makes concessions to their own individual abilities in order to bolster whichever team members they decide to ally with, who in turn can support the player's skills with their own, and do such to a higher extent depending on how good a Leader the player is.

In this way, a Leader can potentially be highly skilled in multiple ways -- depending on which party members they bring along for the ride.

Combat and Stealth styled characters are pretty self-explanatory, while Dialogue style gameplay consists of trying to avoid physical conflict through lies or intimidation or even by debuffing enemy attributes with certain conversation choices before engaging in an unavoidable combat situation.






While these four branches of play were initially described as general playstyles, certain aspects of each style are actually hardcoded into The Outer World's skill system, at least to a degree. For instance, the Leader style character will have access to two skills, Inspiration and Determination, which increase your allied companions combat effectiveness and resilience to damage respectively.

There's also, of course, a whole slew of characters outside of the game's bespoke companions. For instance, the previous owner of the player's spaceship had outfitted the craft with an AI named “ADA”. Tim described ADA as being mysteriously unique when compared to other similar computers found in the game, teased as another loose hanging thread that players are encouraged to piece together as they unravel their way through their unique circumstance. Because ADA is effectively the pilot of the ship, this ties into how The Outer Worlds does provide a set of limitations on where the player can travel at any given point in time -- you're only able to land on specific landing pads which you have access to. Access can be earned through completing quests in some cases, or through purchasing expenses passes in others.

Integrating Dark Humor and a Deep Mechanical Core
It was immediately obvious during the demo that The Outer Worlds puts a high focus on telling a tale with a humorous twist. From the opening distress call placing "the unemployed" at the same threat level as "gunfire", to a quest revolving around the production of diet toothpaste, to having explicit [Dumb] options during dialogue where you can play as a complete buffoon if so desired, it's clear that a degree of whimsy has been incorporated into the title's general tone.

It's also evident, however, that this is a tried and true Obsidian RPG at its core, with dialogue options and exploration paths locked behind skill checks, party composition, and previous quest outcomes, at least as it was presented. As for the narrative, Tim and Leonard made it clear that while the player is nudged in certain directions regarding the circumstances of their awakening, options ranging from being the hero to the anti-hero to the complete psychopath are always made possible. The player character is not voiced, so dialogue selections are understood immediately by the game's characters in a matter similar to Fallouts 3 and New Vegas.



Breaking into a very conspicuous 'secret lab' is the sort of humor contained within The Outer Worlds.


Combat gameplay also seems mechanically dense in a similar way. The Outer Worlds has a strong focus on aligning your character's gear in a way that compliments their skills and abilities. Being proficient in certain skills will also help players outfit their gear to suit their situation. For instance, the three technological skills available, Science, Engineering, and Medicine, will affect the effectiveness of certain gear, or the ability to efficiently modify them.

Tying into this is the game's premise of corporate ownership. Every weapon in The Outer Worlds is owned or manufactured by a specific company -- some are cheap weapons meant to be sold abundantly, others are heavily configurable with specific mods, and others are high-grade weapons with the literal cost of being incredibly expensive. So the theme of heavy corporate branding transcends being purely a narrative component or a way to implement a faction system, but it ties into gear as well, which is admittedly pretty neat. What if you're playing a sort of hero character, but the best gear dangled in front of your face is owned by a bunch of amoral schmucks?

Gating unique equipment behind morally grey questlines or allegiances isn't a new feat, but to go as far as The Outer Worlds seems so is perhaps a bit nuts -- but I think I like it.

Weapon modification examples were also given, such as the ability to change an energy weapon's damage type from plasma to shock in order to make it more effective against robots. For characters with low Engineering ability but high Science, using a specifically suited Science-type weapon such as a shrink ray might be a better choice. This could, hypothetically, pair well with a strong Leader-type character, who could shrink enemies and then use their companions abilities to finish off targets with direct damage.

Flaws: Turning Weaknesses into Strengths
Altogether, it seems that The Outer Worlds' exploration, team composition, combat mechanics, and interesting faction-type system mesh into a unique machine of sorts of components RPG fans should love tinkering with. Specializing in certain abilities, allying with a specific faction associated with a particular gear set, and putting together a sort of build that best implements how a given player wants to approach the game's combat sounds like a uniquely challenging puzzle each player will have to piece together. Furthering this even more is the strange implementation of a system called 'Flaws'. Flaws are effectively a sort of 'anti-Talent', a penalty that one may choose to handicap themselves with in order to gain further ability in another skill area.

For instance, a player that takes a significant amount of damage from a type of creature known as a Raptodon could find themselves eventually able to select the Flaw “Raptophobia”. Players with this Flaw will take penalties for any future encounters with the specific enemy type at the exchange of earning an additional perk point to spend elsewhere. Taking on Flaws is optional, but permanent once decided on, so the hope is that there are certain enemy types or situations that the player knows they could handle even when put at a disadvantage, and then gain a bonus in another area return. Other examples of Flaws were a fear of heights that kick in whenever the player is near a steep drop-off point, as well as fear of the dark. Coupled with a day/night cycle, it's easy to see how certain Flaws could become large potential handicaps.






Admittedly, to me the idea behind Flaws didn't come across to me as quite as novel as they were presented -- they fundamentally appear very similar to the sort of traits a player might select at the start of a new Fallout: New Vegas file for instance, where one weighs the benefit and penalty of taking on a specific character attribute, such as increasing critical hit chance at the cost of your weapon condition decay rate. However, the fact that Flaws are presented to the player based on their game experience, such as Raptophobia only being offered to players once they've hit a damage threshold incurred by Raptodon enemies, does provide a unique enough twist on the idea to make it worth headlining to a degree.

Lastly, combat involves a process somewhat akin to a real-time V.A.T.S called 'Tactical Time Dilation'. Not only does this slow down time in a manner typical to several first-person shooters, but it combines this bullet time-style effect with a scan feature that allows the player to see an opponent's health and armor and even their assigned faction. It also allows the player to target particular limbs. In true Obsidian fashion, a narrative reason for the player-character to possess this sort of ability was hinted at, somehow related as a consequence of their extended freezing circumstances as something for the story to eventually reveal.

Underneath The Outer Worlds' familiar shell lies something I haven't seen before
It's honestly difficult for me to decide exactly how to close out a set of preview impressions like this. "I'm looking forward to it" or "I'm excited", seem kind of pointless because, well, of course I am. On the surface, while the art style and gameplay mechanics offer a few interesting twists and wrinkles, it's nothing we haven't seen before. At the same time, though, we know that this is the sort of game Obsidian can do, and do well -- there's a reason that titles like New Vegas and Alpha Protocol are often praised for their reactive narratives and role-playing moxie. Seeing Obsidian return to this style of game after so many years away is reason enough to perk up a bit, but what sticks with me most is the unique setting presented. The Outer Worlds might look like something we've seen before, but when factoring in the general narrative premise, particular sense of humor, and the coupling of story components with core gameplay fundamentals, its apparent that what I've seen so for is not really all the familiar, and that's what excites me the most.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidians-t...nd-fallout-into-a-bold-open-ended-sci-fi-rpg/

Infinitron

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/12/07/the-outer-worlds-is-bringing-fun-back-to-science-fiction

THE OUTER WORLDS IS BRINGING FUN BACK TO SCIENCE FICTION
The future is corporate and you might have brain damage, but the good news is there's nowhere to go but up.

Obsidian is no stranger to good roleplaying games. For more than a decade the developer behind Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas, the Pillars of Eternity series, and more has delivered the kind of strange and fantastical worlds where players can get lost saving the world, or dooming it. Now, the studio is back at it again with a new sci-fi slice of fresh hell to get lost in: The Outer Worlds.

The Outer Worlds is something new for Obsidian. It’s not concerned with dragons and elves, or post-apocalyptic desert bugs and raiders. There are no Jedi (that I know of.)

Instead, Obsidian’s new adventure takes place in a pulp science fiction world rampant with overtones of the dangers of commercialization. It’s a place where several corporations have won – buying up chunks of the galaxy in a bid to spread their profit-seeking, power-hungry grasp. Imagine being hired, and your job is to help colonize Planet Chevron in the McDonalds System. When you wake up, you’re on a terraformed world a lifetime away from everything you knew – that’s the first day of the rest of your life. That’s essentially where The Outer Worlds kicks off.

Setting the Sci-Fi Scene

As you awake from your cryogenic pod that you’ve been in about 70 years – which is objectively, dangerously, cellular-destroying-ly too long – you’re asked pointblank if you feel anything resembling explosive cell death. And things just kind of spiral outward from there.

The idea is this small corner of the galaxy and its two planet-like celestial bodies were discovered, purchased, and terraformed for colonization. But something went wrong. Tera 1, now known as Monarch, didn’t take to the terraforming, and it’s now become a moon full of monsters. The other planet, Tera 2, known as Halcyon, fared much better. It’s Earth-like, with plants and trees and animals, but it’s not really Earth. Those trees are Mostly-Oaks and Kinda-Pines, trademarked, most likely. That animal crawl-slithering in the grass-like field is a Leather Boa, a snake-like-thing that’s broader and fatter than Earth snakes, because it’s been genetically modified and bred to produce more leather. Profitable, most likely.

And though there’s talk of a vast conspiracy going on behind the scenes that we’ll get to the bottom of eventually, I’m still dwelling on the immense, weird details that Obsidian has put into The Outer Worlds. It’s impressively clear that the development team has spent a lot of time pondering what society would be like under the yoke of a soulless corporate overlord. After all, morals only get in the way of the bottom line.

To that degree, who you work for and what you do for your employer in this fringe colony is the beginning and end of your social standing. Society has weirdly evolved here. There’s a shorthand full of slang and colloquialisms that are more reminiscent of an Old West mining town and that a far-future space colony. The good news is things like racism and prejudice aren’t things anymore. But there is tribalism. Now, if you work for Spacer’s Choice, you don’t trust and likely even hate those who work for Auntie Cleo’s. And you know, because your armor is plastered with the propaganda of where you work.

Each corporation has its own personality and quirks that are more than just world-building flavor. Auntie Cleo’s mostly makes food and drugs. Lots of drugs. And they’re the good stuff. On the other hand, Spacer’s brand makes everything but it makes the cheapest version of it. Everything it makes unfailing breaks, but it’s really easy to repair, so your mileage may vary.



The Nuts and Bolts


On its mechanical surface, The Outer Worlds is the straightforward action-infused RPG we’ve come to know and love. It’s full of choices, people to interact with, quests to undertake and plots to foil, character customization, companions and companion customization, and loads and loads of weapons.

At first glance The Outer Worlds is reminiscent of the first-person-brand Fallout games, which is fitting, considering it’s being developed by the same studio that made Fallout: New Vegas. In it you gain experience, level up, assign ability points and perks to slowly carve out a playstyle. Maybe you’re really into swinging sci-fi sledgehammers. Good stuff! You can build into melee. Or if you want to be a silver-tongued problem solver, you can focus on social skills like persuasion, intimidation, and lying to bluff your way through dialog and avoid a fight altogether.

Or, you can build into tech skills: Science, Medical, and Engineering. If you want to make a character who’s very tech-oriented you can. For example, there’s a whole subcategory of sci-fi prototype weapons that increase in power with your science skill, rather than your gunmanship, with unpredictably funny side effects. Things like a Shrink Ray that appropriately shrinks down anything you organic you shoot, causing it to have less hit points and do less damage. And if it’s a person it gets a high, squeaky voice.

The point is there are any number of ways to build your character, and while every skill controls something in the game, the more you build into a particular skill, the more exotic quirks it unlocks. With every 20 points sunk into a particular skill you get a new perk. For example, building into stealth makes you hard to see, but drop 20 points into the Stealth skill and now you’re doing more damage when in sneaking. These bonuses happen every 20 points all the way up to 100, so there’s some incentive for committing to a path.

But unlike the lone survivor wandering the wasteland, you’re not a one-man show in The Outer Worlds. Throughout your adventure, you’ll meet and recruit companions, which you can befriend, buff up, and specialize. Though you can only ever have two companions at a time, you can mix and match them. Each companion comes with three skills that they’re really good at. When you level up, so do your companions, and you get to pick what perks they get from their own perk trees. And each companion brings their own preferences and special attacks, for example, Felix has a dropkick takedown. And, naturally, if you piss them off through your repeated actions, they’ll just bail on you.


And Obsidian likes companions so much it has included them in a fourth pillar of the gameplay: Leader. Now, instead of going the combat route, the dialog path, or the stealthy option, you can be a leader and build into buffing up your companions. You can build your leader skill into inspiration and determination: Inspiration does increases your companions’ damage and determination allows them to take less damage.

But as the protagonist in the game you’re obviously special too. For example, for some inexplicable reason – maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s the brain damage from being in the cryopod too long – you can go into Tactical Time Dilation and slow down time in short bursts to pick apart enemies in combat. Which you can, as you might have guessed, build into through skills, allowing you to stay in this mode longer, or use it more often.



This Ole Clunker


Getting from one planet to another, or to the space stations that orbit them, means you’ll need transportation. To that end you’ll be able to eventually procure your own ship and use it to fast travel to other docks and points of interest throughout the colony. This is your own personal spaceship you work towards getting in the first act of the game. You don’t start with one. But it’ll allow you travel throughout the colony. And you can keep extra inventory and stuff there so you don’t have to carry it around.

But unlike other lovable, oafish captains of science fiction like Malcolm Reynolds or Han Solo, you’re no star pilot. You don’t have the faintest idea how to fly a ship. And you can't go anywhere at any time, which is why you need passkeys to access landing pads in other areas before you can head there.

Fortunately, your ship’s onboard AI named ADA handles the flying. Like all of the computers in The Outer Worlds, ADA isn’t sentient, but she does make comments that make you wonder what’s going on in her circuitry. Maybe there’s more to explore there? Makes you wonder.



Not Trying Too Hard


After seeing a lengthy hands-off demo and speaking with the developers, my favorite aspects of The Outer Worlds are how it subverts a lot of the traditional savior-or-scourge baggage that comes with playing an RPG.

That’s not to say this isn’t a tale of high stakes. While you’re certainly the unaccounted for variable in the whole corporate colony space, you’re anything but a chosen one. Obsidian has put a lot of effort into creating something that’s totally self-aware and regularly self-deprecating.

For example, the traditional forests of branching dialog options are present and accounted for in The Outer Worlds, with their corresponding answer archetypes. When confronted with an tragic obstacle, you can play the hero: “I’ll rescue the employees trapped in the lab from the ravenous beasts and kill only what I must to ensure their safety, because it is right, and just, and good. Because I am the hero they need and deserve.”

You can play the rampaging, murderous psychopath: “I’ll blast my way into that lab and kill anything with a face. Because I answer only to myself and everything else is just in my way.”

But The Outer Worlds offers up another option: the dumb option. What if, like me, you occasionally say something stupid: “Well, wait, how do we know the employees want to be rescued? Are we sure they’re in danger? Yeah, they’re screaming and panicked, but, maybe it’s just a coincidence? We should probably just leave well enough alone, right?”

And the world reacts to your stupidity and/or ignorance. Your companions will remember that boneheaded comment you made, or the decision to do the dumb thing, and call you out on it. Throughout the demo, on multiple occasions, I heard companions and quest givers basically talk to you like you were hit in the head with a brick and aren’t capable of following simple instructions. They’re irreverent and subtly funny without committing the cardinal sin of trying too hard to be funny, and most of all, it’s refreshing.

This extends out to the setting as well. Nothing takes itself too seriously because in the far future where your corporate colonizers dictate daily life you don’t have to worry about little things like morality or self respect. You’ll be having a completely normal conversation with a random NPC who works for Auntie Cleo’s, and as you wrap it up to go your separate ways, he reminds you to visit Auntie Cleo’s for all your needs. He plugs his employer in normal conversation. And why wouldn’t he? Everything in The Outer Worlds is bought and paid for. Buildings are slathered in billboards and advertisements. Folks wear clothes branded with logos and slogans. Even the food you eat is trademarked: like Bred. It’s like bread, but it’s not, it’s Bred. It’s like living in an IKEA.

The Outer Worlds seems, at least on first inspection, like the genuine article. We’re still a ways away from its 2019 launch window on Xbox One, PS4, and PC, but it’s lodged itself firmly in my head as something I’m looking forward to learning more about.

Its dark, deadpan humor is right up my alley and its self-aware mixture of absurdity and detail clearly hide more serious undercurrents. But I’m so interested in what’s going on both above and below the surface, that I just want to walk around and poke things, just to see what happens.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://www.gamereactor.eu/previews/715893/The+Outer+Worlds/

Obsidian's largest team yet, with previous experience on Pillars of Eternity II, South Park: The Stick of Truth and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, has been working on The Outer Worlds for over two years now.

you'd think they'd bother listing the game most relevant to outer worlds

 

[jf8350143]

Also no romance in the game. Bummer, I was hoping to romance the ship's AI, or maybe some aliens looks like true aliens instead of human with blue skins.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/12/07/the-outer-worlds-is-obsidians-funny-fresh-new-sci-fi-rpg

funny, fresh, huh?
lel

 

[Dodo1610]

Outer Wolrds has low Inteligence Dialogue!

 

[hexer]

Also no romance in the game. Bummer, I was hoping to romance the ship's AI, or maybe some aliens looks like true aliens instead of human with blue skins.

Commentators in that gameplay video say there are romance quests but they're hard.
Maybe they were joking

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.mmorpg.com/previews/the...new-ip-for-the-premier-rpg-company-1000013259

The Outer Worlds Preview - A New IP for the Premier RPG Company

At a time in gaming where several say a game has to have multiplayer to succeed, Obsidian steps in to show off their latest foray into the single player RPG experience with their newest game The Outer Worlds with the help of Private Division. A new title that is part of a new IP for them aims to prove that they are still one of the best companies around in this aspect of gaming. I had an opportunity to visit Obsidian’s headquarters recently and get a look at the game and what it’s all about.

Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky join forces for this special new project from Obsidian. Both of them not only veterans of gaming but 2 of the original people behind Fallout. They sought to do something different and picked a sci fi setting for the Outer Worlds. Set in a future where Earth has colonized multiple worlds in space, you play as a survivor of a colony ship where mysteriously none of your crew was awakened. Left to slumber away as the other ship and crew did their job. Wakened by a quirky scientist you can set out to find out what happened and maybe fix things, or forget about all that and just enjoy your new-found freedom. Oh, and drugs, lots of drugs.

In the Outer Worlds, choice matters and with those choices come consequences. That scientist that saved you in the beginning? He’s wanted by the big corporations in charge and if you wanted to you could turn him in and get a sweet reward. Or, you could do the “right” thing and work with him. Obsidian really wanted you to be able to play the game how you wanted to. Not just with in decisions of combat, but in decisions of story and how things turned out. Of course, in regards to combat you could try to go in guns blazing, sneak your way through or even try to talk your way by. The choice is yours. This choice brought to you by Auntie Cleo, It’s better than nature.

The setting and looks right away set The Outer Worlds apart from other games. They sought to bring the flavor of the Robber Baron age to a new futuristic setting. In this new universe race or gender don’t matter, it’s all about what company you work for and how high up the food chain you are. As you explore the game, you’ll notice that settlements are owned by various brands with everyone towing the company line. It’s all about the brand and you’ll notice that not only in propaganda but in what the various NPCs have to say. The look of the game tends to have vibrant colors here and there scattered amongst the browns and grays of cities. With a clunky semi Victorian look to the tech itself. It all smacks of something you think you may have seen before, but haven’t.

You aren’t the lone hero in this tale, you are joined by multiple companions along the way. You can play with up to 2 at a time and your choices matter. They have their own set of skills with can augment yours and their own set of morals. They’ll let you know what they think not only of your choices but of the situation itself. Sometimes being very vocal about it. Sorry to those interested though, there’ll be no romancing your ship mates. But you can romance Spacers Choice all you want, it’s mm mmm good.

While all of the above sounds great, what about the combat? It’s all in first person and you have your choice of various weapons. The guns themselves come in various types produced by different companies for varying differences. Of course, if you’d prefer to step in close and use a melee weapon you can. Obsidian decided to offset the cons of having to close that gap with melee by having it hit in an arc. Getting more bang for your buck up close while sacrificing range. In combat your companions have special moves they can use and you yourself are special. Weather through all the chemicals used to awaken you or severe brain trauma you have the ability to react at a higher speed at times. Tactical Time Dilation allows you to slow down time for abit and get a better sense of your enemy or just to get a better shot at certain areas. It’s a skill that recharges over time and with certain perks can last longer. While all of that sounded fun, the team wanted more. A hero is great, a flawed Hero is better. The game watches you play and throughout may offer you a flaw. Take that flaw and get a permanent depuff, but get a perk. Would it be wise to have for you to be afraid of a robots and energy weapons for those extra skills? That’s a decision you’ll have to make. Or you could just sneak by your enemies.

The Outer Worlds wouldn’t be a game in the vein of Fallout if it didn’t give you not only choice in all of the above but in also what you say. While there are conversation skills like Intimidate, Lie and Persuade; those skills are only as good as your stats with possible bonuses from your companions. Of course, your character could have rather low intelligence and have dumb responses to conversations, just don’t expect your companions to not make fun of you for going that route. Your reputation stays with you and may affect encounters. Sure, one side wants you to get them a thing and is offering you some money, but the other guys are offering you more to destroy that thing. Do one or the other or play them off of each other as you make up your mind.

The Outer Worlds sets out to prove that the single player RPG experience is alive and well and that Obsidian is a leader in that genre. Only time will tell if that is true.

While at Obsidian HQ I had a chance to sit down and talk briefly with two of the minds behind The Outer Worlds, Matthew Singh (Senior Producer) and Charles Staples (Lead Designer). Here’s what we talked about.

MMO: For those who may not know, what is The Outer Worlds?

Matthew: The Outer Worlds is a new Sci Fi single player role playing game from Obsidian. It focuses on a colony on the edge of known space where the corporations have bought and founded this new colony. There were two colony ships that went out here. One made it, the other didn’t. You're a part of the one that did not make it. The player eventually gets unfrozen by a crazed scientist and he’s asking for your help to save the rest of the colonists. This is a player driven story so you can choose to help him or discover an adventure along the way and just work on that.


MMO: What are you most excited about with this project?

Matthew: I love helping craft unique worlds. Being able to work with Tim, Leonard and Charley in a way where we get the opportunity to with Private Division to actually build something from the ground up that nobody else has seen or experienced this world that is the coolest thing to me as a gamer and a developer.

Charles: For me it’s pretty similar. Being able to have the opportunity with Private Division to do what we love best at Obsidian, making a focused single player RPG that allows players to craft their own story and drive their own path. What we love most about making Obsidian games is choice and consequence. Being able to use all of our experience from previous games and to focus it on this one for a whole new experience with a whole new IP.

MMO: New setting that plays of the Baron Robbers era. Were there many difficulties bringing that to life?

Charles: Every time you’re crafting something completely unique like that there are lots and lots of challenges. You have to think through how does this world function? How the heck are they even building this colony in this other planet? How does terraforming work on a planet, what could go right or wrong? I remember talking to Tim about the physics and the types of things that had to have been made for this system to exist from that era. That depth of thought that has to go into that even for a video game is astounding. We wanted to make it feel real. We can do that because we have a lot of really strong leads of different disciplines and backgrounds in terms of making games and through their collaborative effort, we’re able to do that.

Matthew:And luckily with Tim and Leonard’s background of generating IPs they have a lot of experience about the thought and how much goes into creating a whole new IP from scratch so that we can address all those concerns and come up with a cohesive new experience for players.

MMO: Was there one thing while working on this that you said to yourself, people are going to love this this?

Matthew: I don’t know if there was ever just one thing for me. There were a lot of things that resonated. A lot of the concept art has struck a chord with me. I wanted to print up some of it to put on my wall. There were a few times I had to run over to the concept artists and was like “Who made this? Because this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” There were a lot of those moments on this project.

Charles: As an RPG company we always like playing with things. One of the new systems we put into this game is the Flaw system. That’s a really neat new thing that we’re doing where over the course of the game it’s kind of monitoring what you’re doing and will give you an opportunity at certain points. Say you’ve been fighting robots a lot and you’ve taken a lot of damage, so it’ll be like hey you’ve been fighting these guys a lot and been taking a lot of damage, maybe you want to be afraid of robots? It offers you a flaw of Robophobia and you get an opportunity where you can weigh that in your mind and you can take this flaw to get another perk point to bolster your character. But you’re taking an actual flaw that will hinder you in those battles.

Matthew: It helps define your character a little bit. In our play tests we’ve sort of noticed that it makes the person playing the game trying to stay away from those fears.

Charles: we’re always trying to take opportunities in roleplaying to build out your character. And that’s just one example, there’s lots in this game. But that is one that I think will set us apart, make for an interesting choice for the player.

MMO: Any last words for everyone reading?

Matthew: I think anyone that is an Obsidian fan will really enjoy this world. It’s something that I think a lot of people have been clamoring for from us. We have a pedigree with Tim and Leonard at the helm here. We get to finally make this kind of game that we've been wanting to make for a long time with the partnership with Private Division we’re getting the chance to make. If you like the style of classic RPG Obsidian experience that we tend to create, you're going to love The Outer Worlds.

Charles: I completely agree with what says right there. We’re using all t eh experience that we have. Tim and Leonard's experience with making games, Obsidian’s experience in making the games that we love to make and working with Private Division to work on this whole new IP that really focuses on all of our experience on what we’ve done before into a new single player role playing game experience.

Big thank you to Obsidian Entertainment for inviting us to visit them and taking the time to do this.