The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony

[jf8350143]

Maybe it's because of my poor wording, but you guys are blowing the brothel thing way out of proportion. The developer was just goofing around, which illustrates the point that in 2012 nobody saw brothel as a serious issue. It was simply, players expect a brothel so we add a brothel, conversation over. Whereas if they added one now, all of the Twiteratti would be writing critical essays about smashing the patriarchy, women's exploitation in the middle east and whatever the fuck else.

I don't think TOW is particularly woke and all the whining about evil SJWs is way over the top. But it's definitely sanitized. And that's a problem, because the setting lacks flavor.

Another example is that Firefly inspirations are all over TOW. The Unreliable looks vividly similar to Serenity, Parvati is a copy of Kaylee, and many other obvious references. But Firefly was packed with gorgeous women, it had a hooker crew member and one of the episodes happens in a hooker town. So even ultrafeminist Joss Whedon understood that hey, sci-fi audience is very male and that audience is going to enjoy our product more if it gets to see the titties.

I have no issue with asexual lesbian companion, some strong independent wymen as NPCs and any of that stuff in particular. What I have an issue with is writers catering to their own social bubble instead of to people who are going to actually play the fucking game.

Didn't deadfire has brothel? That's just one year ago. The only differences is that nowdays in the brothel you can 100% expected it to have males in it working as prostitutes.

 

[Roguey]

Sure they can. But their style is generally different. There are already algorithms that can identify the writer's gender, it's so well defined. (Btw finally a way to determine if there are any actual women on Codex).

This measures masculinity and femininity, so masculine women and feminine men are going to slip through. Plenty of masculine women on the dex (violence-oriented video games are a masculine hobby after all).

Of course women can also write masculine. No one ever accused Deus Ex: Human Revolution of being twee back in 2011. And Bloody Baron, everyone's favorite Witcher 3 quest, was written by Karolina Stachyra.

I take it you didn't play Deadfire on launch.

Sawyer completely flip flopped on his approach to difficulty from Pillars to Deadfire. He sold out.

 

[Quillon]

(Outside of codex)People hate Bethesda atm

for that reason alone they don't wanna criticize Obsidian at all

 

[Nano]

Yeah this game is boring me. If Edgewater and what I played of Groundbreaker are basically what the rest of the game is like, then I think I'm just gonna go back to my New Vegas playthrough.

 

[DeepOcean]

(Outside of codex)People hate Bethesda.

More like youtubers hunting for views, once Todd deliver his next sweet lies, the sheep will forget all about it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

(Outside of codex)People hate Bethesda atm and for that reason alone they don't wanna criticize Obsidian at all.

I think Obsidian would get a lot more shit if Cain and Boyarsky weren't honest and upfront from the start about all the stuff game is missing. In that quick fire interview where they get asked like 150 question, Boyarsky says "nope it won't have that feature, time and budget" like 50 times.

 

[HoboForEternity]

monarch is definitely a slog to play

i think edgewater and groundbreaker was great, but by the time it get to monarch it gets really boring.

the main culprit is item and enemy progression. by the time you reach monarch, i think you've seen all the enemy types in the game, just with beefed up stats. there are tons of "unique" enemies and they are just the same mega raptidons / mantiqueen with beefed up stats. same look, same movesets, weakness, etc.

the loot gets boring. the weapon progression is bascially shotgun > shotgun mk II, rifle > rifle mk II etc. there are alot of unique weapons, but aside from science weapons which can be fun, they are weak. i found several unique named weapons which have the same stat with guns on the high tier, but no upgrade slots. some unique weapons have elemental damage which can easily be added trough mod in regular weapons.

add the huge map with random loot mostly and generic raider #1311241 and tons of mantis / raptor it doesn't make enticing content. most of the quest are fetch quest too. one quest that i feel the coolest so far is the pork king quest. it use the game mechanic well, with multiple entrances, optional pacifism, and non raider enemy.

pacifism outside the cities are useless too because most of the time you just face random nameless marauders and animals that you have no consequences of killing. i think the level design are good, multiple entrances, etc but they dont do much with it and just fill them with generic enemy #141132

i heard it picks up when you get to byzantium, but eh, monarch is like half the game content.

 

[JDR13]

the loot gets boring.

I've only just reached Groundbreaker, and I'm already getting bored with the loot. The problem is that there's way too much of it, and it doesn't feel like I'm really earning most things.

Still enjoying this more than Greedfall though.

 

[HoboForEternity]

the loot gets boring.

I've only just reached Groundbreaker, and I'm already getting bored with the loot. The problem is that there's way too much of it, and it doesn't feel like I'm really earning most things.

Still enjoying this more than Greedfall though.

weird because i enjoyed greedfall more than this so far.

 

[JDR13]

the loot gets boring.

I've only just reached Groundbreaker, and I'm already getting bored with the loot. The problem is that there's way too much of it, and it doesn't feel like I'm really earning most things.

Still enjoying this more than Greedfall though.

weird because i enjoyed greedfall more than this so far.

Did you finish it? I started out loving Greedfall, but the more I played the lower my opinion got. By the time I finished it, I was just relieved it was over.

The exploration sucked, and the amount of backtracking during quests was insane.

 

[Zerginfestor]

but aside from science weapons which can be fun, they are weak.

Science weapons? They're the most powerful weapons in the game, by far. It's because they get stacking damage bonuses from Science, perks, and from the related weapon skill via crit chance. The Prismatic Hammer, the Shrink Ray Gun, and the Mind Control Gun all have ridiculous damage and/or DPS, ESPECIALLY that fucking hammer, who thought that was a fucking brilliant idea, to have a weapon that with it's smash attack can suddenly unleash all four damage types, which all stack up multiplicative from every % bump, to the point it does 12-15k damage? Fucking one-shotting everything you find with a single BOP. Think the major problem is that once you find these weapons, which 2 are early in the game, right after the first region, that the rest of the loot becomes...pointless? Some folks I noted just pump their science to 100 first thing or respec later on to get it to 100, and then tinker these weapons to max for the ludicrous damage, then respec back to normal.

 

[DalekFlay]

Of all the settings... Something just died deep within me.

Shadowrun depicts a world where corporations run everything but compete with each other for people and leverage in the ultimate "free market" where morals are out the window. To me that rings more true of what a capitalist anarchy would be like. Outer Worlds takes a much different track where one corporation controls everything and acts as a totalitarian bureaucracy. I'm not even saying they're wrong to write it this way, and they explain it by having the corporation buy the colony in advance and whatnot, but it's definitely not the usual mix of political commentary and setting that one would expect.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Of all the settings... Something just died deep within me.

Shadowrun depicts a world where corporations run everything but compete with each other for people and leverage in the ultimate "free market" where morals are out the window. To me that rings more true of what a capitalist anarchy would be like. Outer Worlds takes a much different track where one corporation controls everything and acts as a totalitarian bureaucracy. I'm not even saying they're wrong to write it this way, and they explain it by having the corporation buy the colony in advance and whatnot, but it's definitely not the usual mix of political commentary and setting that one would expect.

It feels more Soviet than anything. "The board", ridiculous red tape(?!), an actual ministry of truth, etc., Almost as if it's a parody of itself making fun of people who can't see the parallels and take it at face value.
I was promised a libertarian paradise and this did not deliver.

 

[Drakortha]

Something I noticed was how the game relied on stupid amounts of Marauders you have to fight in the open areas. Was it even ever properly explained who they are and why there's so god damn many? Don't they have a leader? There' an army of them out there - shouldn't they be treated as a Faction of their own by this point?

At least the raiders in New Vegas were divided up into their own Factions, and I remember there even being story behind some of them. But these Marauders are barely a cut above Bethesda's take on raiders in Fallout 3 & 4, or the endless bandits in Skyrim. Dumb squishy mob x1000. Nothing but a XP and loot pinata to shoot.

It's sad to think this game was advertised from the beginning as being "made by the original makers of Fallout, and New Vegas", giving the impression it's inspirations are from those games. But when playing this I feel it's trying to mimic Fallout 4 more than anything else. This game is basically Fallout 4 in space while trying to seem more prestigious because Obsidian wrote it or something.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Nobody flirts. Nobody fucks. Women dress like men and look deliberately unattractive. The whole fucking planet could be asexual for all I know. And in that asexual environment Parvati instead of standing out is bland and uninteresting.

Everyone's single except Ellie's parents as far as I can tell. Reed Tobson should've had a wife, couple mistresses and a dozen children

Said before: The game's bare-bone af and has nothing on a pre-76 bethesda game except C&C/reactivity. Only person I saw who barely noticed/mentioned this was that Dansgaming dude, everybody else somehow ignores everything the game lacks for the type of game it was supposed to be. They even cut corners in narrative, giving characters 1-2 sentences of backstory max. Boyarsky wasn't kidding as he repeatedly said "time & budget".

(Outside of codex)People hate Bethesda atm and for that reason alone they don't wanna criticize Obsidian at all, hope this won't give Obs confidence to double down on how they made this game and proceed to make the sequel with same shallowness in most everything.

This fundamentally misunderstands what the mass market audience wants out of a game. Occam’s Razor: the people praising The Outer Worlds to high heaven genuinely like it. Maybe they have bad taste or low standards, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone here. There are millions of people who love Skyrim, Fallout 3/4, Mass Effect 2-3, or Dragon Age 2-3. Their standards for ARPG gameplay are low. Their standards for character building and progression are low. As for the writing, The Outer Worlds works very hard to ape Joss Whedon (and I think the dialogue often succeeds at sounding like something you’d hear in a Whedon series/film). Maybe you never liked that style, maybe you’re burned out on it now that it’s colonized the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe (Whedon wrote and directed The Avengers), maybe you’re fine with it in a two hour movie but don’t think it fits in this particular 20-40 hour video game. Doesn’t matter, there are hordes of people who fucking adore this stuff.

Incidentally, I think TOW is the ARPG equivalent of a Marvel movie (did Prime Junta already say this?). Safe, predictable, formulaic, but very polished and basically good for what it is (as long as you acknowledge that “what it is” is pretty much mindless entertainment).

So some of it’s just taste. As for why the choice and reactivity in The Outer Worlds feels so revelatory to casuals, think about what they’re comparing it to. TOW is a game for the tens of millions of people who don’t have much experience playing RPGs beyond Bethesda, post dialogue wheel BioWare and The Witcher 3. For this audience, New Vegas may be the only RPG they’ve played where you can select a full line of decently written dialogue, and where you’re rewarded for your build choices with the option to say cool stuff (Fallout 3 may let you pick full sentences but Bethesda’s writing is totally barebones and has no personality). Though the writing in TOW is materially worse than in F:NV, you’re getting real choices about what your character says—that’s a very different experience from giving Shepard or Geralt or the Sole Survivor some loose guidance on what to say and then watching them act it out. Obviously this isn’t news to anyone here, but most of the people who love TOW have limited experience with the genre. That’s why it’s so easy for them to equate this game to New Vegas. TOW’s scratching the same itch for them. Hell, it scratches the same itch for me, I’ve just played enough of these games to know that it’s not doing a great job.

tl;dr I wish Tim and Leonard had tried to make another flawed masterpiece, but they set out to make a polished blockbuster and they succeeded.

***
Child of Malkav Shadowrun still has governments! If that world continues on the same trajectory, with states getting weaker and corporations getting stronger, eventually you might end up with Outer Worlds style corporate feudalism.

 

[RK47]

I'm thinking the same as Kyl here - Obsidian aimed for the mainstream market with this game. They certainly did not follow the New Vegas blueprint of making the world more morally gray. RPG system lacks a lot of depth - especially with the companion skill boosts and outfits making low-investments in skills possible.

As for the short-haired models - ironyuri has convinced me that this is the result of low budget AA game. They basically polished the environment but do not want to blow the budget on animated hair. Think about it - Witcher 3 had those in spades - but TOW just can't seem to afford it.

Tim and Leo can't make what they wanted - Obsidian management simply wouldn't allow them. There's too much demand for a Bethesda-like game in the market that they had to be pragmatic about it. MCA's ramblings made sense that way. This is all 80% ironyuri's opinion anyway cause I hardly follow dev dramas as much as you all do. But the story seems to fit.

TOW isn't made to please the codex market, nor try to be a really deep RPG. It just had to not have any technical issues (minimal crashes) and look good enough to sell.

 

[Drakortha]

TOW isn't made to please the codex market, nor try to be a really deep RPG. It just had to not have any technical issues (minimal crashes) and look good enough to sell.

It's not like Bethesda left the bar very high, and we were never going to get another Fallout licensed game from this studio. Meanwhile Bethesda continue to rape the corpse of what was once my favorite franchise.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[HarveyBirdman]

People who have played this: was I right?

Is this Borderlands with Deadfire C&C?

 

[Drakortha]

So is there any hope for TOW2 at this point? Do we make excuses for them such as Time & Budget and wait for it's bigger budget sequel to blow all our socks off? I'm not holding my breath.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

More like youtubers hunting for views, once Todd deliver his next sweet lies, the sheep will forget all about it.

Call me an agent of decline, but I still have hope for Bethesda. I did turn in my Obsidian fan card, but i'll be willing to give BS Games Studios [two] more chances, furst with Starfield and secound with TESEX. I do consider Fallout 4 to be massive decline compared to FNV and F3, but F76 is an entirely different beast altogether, and tbh i'm not holding it against BS much. Bethesda *has* disappointed with FO4 and 76, but not in the same unforgivable way that Obsidian has with TOW. IMO Obsidian is the bigger offender (so far). Of course, we'll have to wait if BS is gonna go "woke" and degenerate even further.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Is this Borderlands with Deadfire C&C?

Deadfire C&C is quite meaningful and its not a feminist "essay" masking as a video game. So no.

 

[Zerginfestor]

People who have played this: was I right?

Is this Borderlands with Deadfire C&C?

I disagree, but only because Borderlands had more interesting unique weapons and better modifications to the base weapons, so you more often than not had different shit given to you from most enemies. Loot is just absolutely mediocre as barely any of the unique weapons have a different look but rather stat tweaks. Bleh.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

More like youtubers hunting for views, once Todd deliver his next sweet lies, the sheep will forget all about it.

Call me an agent of decline, but I still have hope for Bethesda.

Give up.

As a true fan of their IP in the fullest sense... give up. It's all over.

Is this Borderlands with Deadfire C&C?

Deadfire C&C is quite meaningful and its not a feminist "essay" masking as a video game. So no.

Pretty much the only argument I need re: writing for Deadfire.

 

[Black]