Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

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

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/2018/12/07/six-big-takeaways-from-the-outer-worlds

The Outer Worlds
Six Big Takeaways From The Outer Worlds

Yesterday, Obsidian and Private Division announced The Outer Worlds, a sci-fi RPG that looks to please Mass Effect and Fallout fans. In The Outer Worlds, players take on the role of a colonist who has just awoken from a long interstellar hibernation then sets off to explore a solar system with the ultimately goal of getting to the bottom of a corporate conspiracy that threatens to destroy everything humanity has built.

Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky are the game’s two co-directors, and both designers worked on the original Fallout as well as titles like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, WildStar, and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. We talked with Cain and Boyarsky and spent a day at Obsidian learning all we could about their special new project. Here are six reasons RPG fans should keep The Outer Worlds on their radar.

1) A Unique Take On Sci-Fi
The Outer Worlds is an epic sci-fi opera, but Obsidian’s take on sci-fi is a bit quirky. If you watched the game’s debut trailer, you might have picked up hints of BioShock, but Irrational’s classic wasn’t a direct inspiration. The team was initially inspired by Art Nouveau and Victorian sci-fi from the late 1800s. The Outer Worlds isn’t exactly steampunk, but its universe is filled with a lot of clunky technology and its environments feature a lot of heavy cables and piping.

“We like doing stuff that’s a little bit different,” says Boyarsky. “We wanted to make a sci-fi game, because we’re both big sci-fi fans. You can say Fallout is sci-fi, but it’s post-apocalyptic, which is a bit of a sub-genre. This seems like a good opportunity to go pure sci-fi, so we started to talk about corporations and the way they brand everything. We wanted to explore a future world in that vein. As we talked more, we were drawn to the robber barons of the late 1800s and how they controlled every aspect of people’s existence. That just felt like a really good fit for this.”

2) You Explore An Entire Solar System
Obsidian’s universe isn’t as big as a Mass Effect galaxy, but in The Outer World’s players will fly around an entire solar system aboard their own spaceship. We only got a taste of a few of these environments, but they seem sizable in their own right, and this diversity of locations gives Obsidian the opportunity to create a wide variety of ecologies.

Halcyon is the name of The Outer World’s solar system. It is the furthest colony from Earth and features two main planets humanity initially intended to colonized. However, once the colony ships arrived in the system they realized that only one of the planets as good for habitation, so while one planet is full of sleek technical marvels and gleaming skyscrapers, the other is a barren wasteland teeming with wild monsters. In addition to these two planets, players can explore several moons, asteroids, and space stations spread across Halcyon.

3) Goofy, Dark Humor
If you have any question about The Outer Worlds’ brand of humor, just know that you can play through the entire game as a dumb guy – literally, there is a dialogue option labeled [Dumb] that will let you role-play as a clueless brute. Halcyon is also filled with fat snakes that were bred for their leather, missions about diet toothpaste, and a rare weapon that works like a shrink ray to miniaturize your opponents.

“I think humor is really, really hard to do in a game, but games that go pure dark are hard to take in every night,” says Cain. “I play games that skew dark, and after a while I just don’t want to play them anymore. We like this kind of dark humor where we can put something in the game that also looks silly, but when you dig into it, you find out it’s really horrific.”

“You can actually get a lot darker and a lot deeper into things if it’s fun and humorous,” adds Boyarsky. “Getting deep into the human condition can be a little overwhelming, but if you are having a fun time and laughing and then we sneak in some of that depth and darkness, it actually resonates a little better.”

4) Open-Ended Problem-Solving
Obsidian looks to allow players to tackle The Outer World’s missions in a variety of ways. Charmers might work their way out of firefights with the right words, while thieves can bypass combat by finding a backdoor into most outposts. Those who choose to engage in The Outer World’s first-person combat will have the option to slow down time with a feature called tactical time dilation. This slow-mo feature allows players to look closely at enemies to gain information such as their level of health and other stats. Attacks made during tactical time dilation also do extra damage, but ultimately players will be able to approach every problem in their own way.

“We always ask ourselves, ‘How are people going to react in the game and what do we think they’re going to want to do,’” says Cain. “We added a lot of different playthrough paths. For combat, we have both melee and ranged, but players also have stealth and dialogue options. Then we have all the hybrids like what if you want to sneak through part of the map and then talk your way out of a jam. Or, what if you just want to kill everybody? We’re happy to say that you can kill everybody in the game and still finish the main story arc. You’d be a psychopath, but you could do it.”

5) Embrace The Fear
The Outer Worlds is constantly watching players and recording their actions. Ultimately, it will present new events that could leave lasting scares on your hero. At various times, the game will invite you to select a fear for your character. These fears are based on things that have happened to you. For example, if you take a lot of damage from a certain enemy type, you may be invited to develop a fear of that enemy, which means you will take extra damage those foes. In return to taking a fear, players will get to pick an extra perk to buff their character in other ways. This creates an interesting risk reward dynamic where players can choose to have some weaknesses in order to make themselves stronger. Once these fears have been chosen, they are locked in, but players can also choose to opt out of this fear system entirely.

“If you’re familiar with the works of Joseph Campbell – The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces – he always talks about how heroes are more interesting because they have flaws, so we incorporated the fear system,” says Cain. “The game’s flaws can be anything from a fear of heights to a fear of the dark, or you can be susceptible to different damage types. So the game might go, ‘Hey, I noticed you catch fire a lot. Do you want to be susceptible to flame damage?’ People are like, ‘Why would ever want to be susceptible to flame damage?’ But if you’re one perk away from something really cool, it can be really tempting.”

6) Companionship On The Spaceship
During your journey through Halcyon, you will meet a host of characters who will join your crew. These characters feature their own unique abilities, motivations, and ideals. As you get to know them, they will give you personal companion quests, and completing these missions could change their character. Companions will interject in the middle of conversations and buff your skills, but they might also leave your crew if they don’t like what you’re doing. We encountered one companion named Ellie, who is a tough, no-nonsense sharpshooter. Another companion, named Felix, is a sarcastic melee brute with a good intimidation skill. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to romance any of your companions.

“You encounter all the companions in the first third of the game, because it’s no fun getting a companion in the last hour,” says Cain. “They are designed to touch most of the major skills, so they are all different, but there is some overlap so there’s not just one guy who is really good at ranged attacks or one person who’s a good doctor. They also play off all the different ways a player can play. Like, if you’re playing a psychopath, we show how all these companions react to that. If you’re being really nice, not all the companions are going to be like, ‘Oh great, you’re a hero.’”

Given Obsidian’s lineage working on games like Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and the Pillars of Eternity, The Outer Worlds looks like the kind of game that RPG fans have been waiting a long time for. We enjoyed our brief taste of Obsidian’s unique spin on sci-fi and the studios bizarre humor, and we can’t wait to get our hands on the game in 2019 when it releases on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. For more, be sure to watch our New Gameplay Today video preview or watch the announce trailer.
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2015
Messages
150
I fucking knew it they should have gone isometric instead of this atrocity. I dont know if its lack of money or talent, but it looks like the game was resurected from 2009 or smth

No one cares about isometric in 2018 you fuckin moron, you can do it for a kickstarter game, but an AAA that actually needs to sell? good luck.
Divinity Original Sin 2 says you haven't been returning her phone calls. Is something wrong?

Divinity Original Sin 2 is not an AAA game and it's an outlier, it sold well but nothing crazy.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,889
I love how shameless a ripoff it is at first glance :lol: This is going to be an exciting drama to follow around Christmas and beyond...

Yeah I think they're quite deliberately mimicking Bethesda Fallouts here in terms of combat and movement.
What about dialogue? Holy fuck. I wish they had gone with a 3rd person dialogue, but this of course adds a lot of work on positioning and repositioning the camera, etc.
Talking heads were in REAL Fallouts and in Bloodlines. They are perfect.
 

Oracsbox

Guest
Considering I'm going to be looking at these characters a lot while playing is it really to much to ask the woman look attractive and not like round faced puddings.
There's a reason virtually every mod for any game makes women look better,so why not cut that out and have them attractive/slutty/striking/pretty/tarty from the get go or at least not like dykes.
I know I've mentioned this several times now but it does bother me.

Shooting looks a bit shit but that could partially be whoever is playing (I hope anyway).
 

Terenty

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 29, 2018
Messages
1,367
No one cares about isometric in 2018 you fuckin moron, you can do it for a kickstarter game, but an AAA that actually needs to sell? good luck.

They could have done a lot of cool stuff stilystically and graphically to appeal to wide audiences with isometric in 3d instead of this vomit
 
Last edited:
Joined
Dec 12, 2015
Messages
150
Divinity Original Sin 2 is not an AAA game and it's an outlier, it sold well but nothing crazy.
It did more than well as far as I know. Anyway, I agree that an isometric game can't reach the millions of sales of something like New Vegas.

It wasn't even $60 IIRC when it released, and there was a discount on top of that for pre-order or something like that.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2014
Messages
16,158
Location
At large
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Talking heads were in REAL Fallouts and in Bloodlines. They are perfect.
But here you are wrong, because the talking heads were all handmade and done only for important characters. The zoom in to the face approach is a Bethesda thing, and unlike the talking heads it's cheap and ugly most of the time. The talking heads are the opposite - custom-made, expensive and good looking, they give characterisation. How much characterization did you get from the Bethesda zoom-in?

And another point - in an isometric game you can't use the environment around the talking head as a backdrop, but in a 1st person game you can switch the camera to 3rd person and use different angles, like Witcher 3 does. This was not possible to do in the isometric fallouts, for obvious reasons. The Bethesda approach is cheaper to produce than the Witcher 3 approach, because you don't have to do positions for the camera for every conversation in the game, that's why both Bethesda and Obsidian went with this kind of dialogue.
 

Merlkir

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,216
OK, facial animation looks less good in the actual gameplay. I hope they work on that more and make it more expressive and less generic.

:keepmymoney:
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,062
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
Well the previews are very promising.

+ much like Fallout it mixes grimdark with the silly
+ no romances
+ you can play a dumbass
+ semi open-world
+ two planets, one terraformed, one not, so varied experience and environments
+ they promise traditional trio of sneaky, talky, murderhobo playthroughs
+ You get a ship and it seems to work like KOTOR ships
+ Flaws system seems cool
+ They have level-scaling, but it's limited and you'll be able to go far off the beaten path and try tough encounters
+ no mini-games.

- journos compare gunplay and combat to Bioshock. Bleh. But then you do not play Obsidian game for combat.


+ character creation
+ unvoiced protagonist


Still though.. there is something that I can't shake about this game.. I dunno if it's the clunky controls or the unpolished animations or the FoV..
I feel like corners are gonna be cut somewhere.

For that team size.. and a dev period of only two years.. I'm not sure Obsidian is capable of the depth I'd want. I can't get that AA comment out of my head.
 

Black Angel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 23, 2016
Messages
2,910
Location
Wonderland


Art style looks like Overwatch and Fallout 4 had a baby

I hope the there would be modding. If the game is at least Good For What It Is™, I'd like to mod the shit out of those UI. I know they're going to target mainstream audience, but I'm not a fucking retard who needs to be constantly reminded where's north, south, east, west, etc etc. It seems quest marker is going to be in, too, so if that's the case I hope they don't lazily design quests in regards to that.
 
Joined
May 5, 2014
Messages
1,677
I hope the there would be modding. If the game is at least Good For What It Is™, I'd like to mod the shit out of those UI. I know they're going to target mainstream audience, but I'm not a fucking retard who needs to be constantly reminded where's north, south, east, west, etc etc. It seems quest marker is going to be in, too, so if that's the case I hope they don't lazily design quests in regards to that.

It probably really depends on what tools that Obsidian puts out there, whether they're protective of them or not. UE4 can definately be moddable.
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2018
Messages
2,155
Location
Germany


Art style looks like Overwatch and Fallout 4 had a baby

I hope the there would be modding. If the game is at least Good For What It Is™, I'd like to mod the shit out of those UI. I know they're going to target mainstream audience, but I'm not a fucking retard who needs to be constantly reminded where's north, south, east, west, etc etc. It seems quest marker is going to be in, too, so if that's the case I hope they don't lazily design quests in regards to that.


Pretty much every game has options today to hide most UI elements. So i don't worry about that.
 

Vityaz

Augur
Joined
Oct 7, 2014
Messages
169
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

I can see them including something like random flings or one night stands akin to Fallout 1 and 2.

But yeah, keep that romance shit away from me.
 
Joined
May 5, 2014
Messages
1,677
Highly doubtful. I can't think of any UE4 game that was released in a mod-friendly state.

Upon release maybe. XCom 2 has had some modding for it using it's tools, i haven't checked whether anything notable has been done though aside from Long War 2.
 

jf8350143

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
1,277
I feel like the combat looks bad because of severl reasons: the player didn't know how to shoot with a controller (me neither but I'll use mouse and keyboard instead); everytime there is a combat the people just keep talking so the sound of the gun is always covered; also they barely use any skills, there should be bunch of different skills.
 

jf8350143

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
1,277
Also another good thing: all those faces they showed in the trailer, they are mostly just minor NPCs instead of companions, that's why they look so generic.
 

Terenty

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 29, 2018
Messages
1,367
Ok, this Game Informer vid is hillariously bad, i mean,like, utter shite. Shit graphics, shit boring dialogue, shit combat and ai, all these skill checks are been there done that material..
 
Last edited:

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom