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

[Ezeekiel]

Hating on Obsidian isn't fun for me. Despite their games getting increasingly worse

TBH I think TOW is way better or at least way interesting than Deadfire so far. Not a high bar for you guys i know

What makes you like it better/find it more interesting?

It's a different genre with the first person combat and whatnot, is that it, or do you prefer the setting?
Lack of Sawyer influence?

 

[Pegultagol]

I hadn't noticed this while playing, but most of the NPCs in a prominent position are women. And when they are men, they are often incompetent, or of questionable character. After you see this, it's practically impossible to unsee, because it's very explicit. I can't say that this was a big problem for me because, as I said, I hadn't noticed it when I was playing, it wasn't something that I consciously paid attention to. But on the other hand, looking back, it's really impossible not to notice that, yes, there is an agenda behind these choices, it's too obvious to be by chance.

Tyranny was a bit like that, although I remember there were decent male characters too. I'm trying to remember if Pillows had anything similar yet every single time I think of that game my mind draws a blank.

I admit, I felt in a similar manner about the portrayals, and felt curious enough to jog my memory to POE 2 to see if there's a pattern to this. I think this has been discussed already in other threads and posts but I wanted to personally deduce comparisons from my playing these games as it were. So this will be final say in the matter, but what I found was rather interesting:

The prime deity is Berath, a strong-willed 'female' entity who essentially resurrects you to go after the main 'antagonist' Eothas, a 'male' entity in form and voice. She holds in her hands your life and can end it in any moment.
Female' gods get portrayed more extensively than 'male' counterparts, with Magran, Ondra, and Woedica interject more into the story and even assert themselves in major plot events.
Ondra is on the refrain cycle on the lips of every Huana, her statue or representation is commonplace, and she even gets to have a cameo in respect to one of the companions.
Rymrgand, Wael, Abydon, the 'male' gods get relegated to short and thankless treatment in a few side quests (at least in vanilla).
The narrator is female.

As for factions, RDC and Huana are led by females, with respective male underlings. VTC and Principi are led by males, but depicted as incompetent, corrupt, and vain, and more or less usurped by female rivals in 'good' playthroughs. Minor locations such as Wahiki are ruled by a female, or a weak male figure stands by to be replaced or displaced. Places like Sayuka and Magran sanctuary are administered by females. The slave trader and the gang leader in the Gullet are males. One VTC related quest has two rival houses fighting out, with male led house (Velera) depicted as downtrodden and violent while female led counterpart (Berdatto) rolling in power and at height of riches. This is doubly reinforced by the psychopath son character in Valera house and the daughter character from Berdatto being portrayed as reasonable and pragmatic.

The Companions, I don't quite remember, but there are two new female companions and one gay companion (Tekehu?) I think. What I remember is Aloth whines a lot.

Is this pattern prevalent in the Outer Worlds? Advancing from Groundbreaker and playing to the end I find (spoilers):

Roseway, where head male scientist Anton is depicted as unscrupulous carpetbegger
The outlaw leader at Roseway is a psychopath female who tries to justify killing of scientists by having 'freed' them from servitude. The male security guard seems reasonable if not incompetent.
Monarch, where Iconoclast's self proclaimed male leader, Graham, is a loon, with another lead Zora, a female, is depicted as strong willed and sane alternative
MSI leader Nandi(?) is a high-strung buffoonish bureaucrat with poor corporate review, often admonished by his female secretary, while an unknown(?) female executive is seen as exemplary in reports
Fallbrook leader is a female, while her main antagonist at Boarst factory is a ruthless psychopath male
HRS-1084 operator who succumbs to madness is male
The surviving Alta-Vitae scientist whose motivations is altruistic is a female
ADA calls SAM over to 'service' her, SAM wants Pavarti to 'own' him

Spoiler

Akande, a female antagonist, takes over randomly as the chief antagonist and displaces Rockwell to a side character

Is this enough to suggest some pattern of bias on the part of writers? Or am I just looking too much into it and betraying my own confirmation bias for selective filtering of information? Well, I guess a bit of both. But these are my recollections so take from them what you will.

 

[Tigranes]

"The prime deity is Berath, a strong-willed 'female' entity who essentially resurrects you to go after the main 'antagonist' Eothas, a 'male' entity in form and voice. She holds in her hands your life and can end it in any moment."

Plenty of powerful female goddesses in real life mythologies throughout human civilisation. Alternatively, you could say that Eothas is by far the most important, consequential, prominent, and 'cool' deity in the franchise, and everything is built around him. Berath just gives you a quest then whines at you every once in a while. Eothas isn't even conventionally 'evil'. This is a weird metric because the only way to pass is seemingly for everybody to be male, which obviously isn't what you're arguing for.

Assessing everything by a razor sharp "is it male or female" yardstick to derive the total SJW-score is just as oversensitive and pointless as SJWs sitting there counting every white male in a movie and then crying about it.

Unlikely that I'll bother with TOW, but one look at the totality of Deadfire should make it clear it's not really about "natives good settlers evil" or "women good men evil". If anything, the game is far too disjointed and all over the place to even succeed at that.

 

[Shadenuat]

Not a lot of them wore full plate armor and existed in 15-16 century in world where you can do magic if you claim you're an atheist tho.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The prime deity is Berath, a strong-willed 'female' entity

Berath has two forms, one male and one female.
This is under the assumption that the two Glanfathan forms acknowledged are the same and not distinctly different.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Berath is a death god just like Hades. I'd argue that the prime deity is Woedica since she was the chief deity before being betrayed, a situation which you can mend at the end of PoE1 anyhow. That aside, another contender could be Rymrgand in terms of age since it's hinted that he might've existed somehow before the creation of the pantheon (not only in myth, but as an entity).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

since it's hinted that he might've existed somehow before the creation of the pantheon

The writer who created Rymrgand confirmed that this was the intention, but I'm not sure if it's actually canon or not.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

since it's hinted that he might've existed somehow before the creation of the pantheon

The writer who created Rymrgand confirmed that this was the intention, but I'm not sure if it's actually canon or not.

We still don't know much about him. It's a shame that, from what I could gather having not played BoW myself, they haven't really expanded too much on his lore, not even on the link between him and the White Elves.

 

[DalekFlay]

Monarch has been the most interesting part of the game thus far, but man that side quest where you have to look for the missing dock employee was so embarassing.

Spoiler

Not only its almost a complete rip-off of the Andale unmarked quest from Fallout 3, but its an extremely poorly executed rip-off. The second you enter the house its like they just slaped a neon sign saying "we are a family of canibals" to the player. Theres no suspense because the twist is too on the nose for you to care about what you will find inside the house.

On top of all that, they were super bullet-sponges for me for some reason. Old fucking lady takes 10 shotgun blasts, fuck off.

 

[Darkwind]

Assessing everything by a razor sharp "is it male or female" yardstick to derive the total SJW-score is just as oversensitive and pointless as SJWs sitting there counting every white male in a movie and then crying about it.

It is clear you either haven't played this game, are simply a dumb fuck, or are a purposefully obtuse shill. Choose one.

There IS a reason to a male/female yardstick when you couple it with what are those genders comprised of. TOW is grossly overt in its portrayal of short haired turbo-dykes in all positions of power. And I do mean all. Sanjir hapless incompetent leader of Monarch, str0nk empowered secretary secretly runs show. His opponent Graham, sociopath, but Zora is the kind hearted and true leader. Ditto for Edgewater w/ the corporate dick and the kindly old lady (though she did have at least a somewhat dark secret). This pattern is endlessly repeated in every place you visit.

So you know what else is pointless? When you are run over like a freight train by an obvious and glaring agenda and then saying you are being 'oversensitive'. Remember your choices? Shill, dumb ass, or ignorant for chiming in on a game you haven't played that many of us have completed or are deep enough into to see a pattern that is as plain as daylight, again, pick one.

 

[JDR13]

Parvati is the internet favorite companion because:
All the companions are boring as fuck, but Parvati is the only female companion that can be visually identified as a (gamebryo-esque potato-replica of a) human female.

I like her because she's a clone of Kaylee from Firefly. That's probably the only reason though.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Parvati is the internet favorite companion because:
All the companions are boring as fuck, but Parvati is the only female companion that can be visually identified as a (gamebryo-esque potato-replica of a) human female.

I like her because she's a clone of Kaylee from Firefly. That's probably the only reason though.

Firefly Nostalgia, eh? Too bad Whedon is incapable of making another show like that.

I don't really remember what the character was like, tbh. Been forever (edit: since 2003??? what the fuck) since I watched Firefly.
Was she an Asexual Pajeet-girl?

 

[Beastro]

So is this a game of "let's all pretend that we don't play this game"?

No, that's what the board does with Bethesda games.

 

[Ivan]

Finished it. That Earth bait though.

 

[JDR13]

I don't really remember what the character was like, tbh. Been forever (edit: since 2003??? what the fuck) since I watched Firefly.
Was she an Asexual Pajeet-girl?

Nah, Kaylee liked dick, but they wrote Pavartie to talk almost exactly like her, and the voices even sound similar. Then there's the whole mechanic theme on top of it.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Melissa O'Neil in Dark Matter >>>> Jewel Staite in Firefly

 

[moraes]

The itemization in this game is the worst Obsidian has done ever. Endless recycling of trash tier weapons and armor, you'll amass 90+ healing and hack/lock-pick items in your first hours even in Supernova difficulty, piles of boring consumables with the same effect... I can't take it anymore, I might be getting too old for this.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

only non-science gun worth using is the assault rifle

 

[Ezeekiel]

The itemization in this game is the worst Obsidian has done ever. Endless recycling of trash tier weapons and armor, you'll amass 90+ healing and hack/lock-pick items in your first hours even in Supernova difficulty, piles of boring consumables with the same effect... I can't take it anymore, I might be getting too old for this.

That's every loot system nowadays... Basically trash in a million trash-cans and heaps all over every map + almost everything is just generic stuff so exploration and obsessive looting and quest rewards make you feel like an idiot for bothering at all.

 

[RNGsus]

That's every loot system nowadays... Basically trash in a million trash-cans and heaps all over every map + almost everything is just generic stuff so exploration and obsessive looting and quest rewards make you feel like an idiot for bothering at all.

And beyond rpgs too, twitcher 3 was the worst itemization I'd seen in years. At least GTA 5 has nice cars. Fucking crafting chaos and shitty user interfaces everywhere.

 

[Zerginfestor]

The itemization in this game is the worst Obsidian has done ever. Endless recycling of trash tier weapons and armor, you'll amass 90+ healing and hack/lock-pick items in your first hours even in Supernova difficulty, piles of boring consumables with the same effect... I can't take it anymore, I might be getting too old for this.

Yeah, it's getting overwhelming with the amount of shit you can find as food, I can understand it's for worldbuilding, different companies and all that, but jesus, my aid section for my Melee caveman is overflowing with shit. At least with ranged characters you can sell most of it on account of having 0 Temperament.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Can we take a pause and talk about the music? I mean, New Vegas or VTMB are hardly a consistent 10/10 GOTY from start to finish. But every once in a while you would be patrolling the Mojave, feeling kind of bored, then suddenly Jingle Jangle starts playing in the radio and you start blasting out deathclaws to the sweet sounds of swing. And you're having fun again.

I don't normally wish people ill fate, but can we all agree that Justin Bell should be flogged?

A couple of the ambient tracks are ok, but in general the music is bad.

 

[RNGsus]

rusty_shackleford is that the good or the bad track?

Let me know so I can agree.

I'm a settingfag, and when all your set pieces are Ass Effect 1 looking pod houses, you have a mascot from Regular Show, and butch dykes everywhere then if you are anything like me you don't even give this brand new IP a second look. If they wanted a space western, first get a damn concept artist who loves space and westerns.

Was there even a desert?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

rusty_shackleford is that the good or the bad track?

Let me know so I can agree.

Decide for yourself

 

[Lichtbringer]

"The story behind Parvati, the internet’s favorite Outer Worlds companion" - interview with Kate Dollarhyde.

https://www.polygon.com/platform/am...-outer-worlds-parvati-companion-quest-writers

There is a kind of science fiction right now that I feel is best exemplified by The Expanse. It’s this portrayal of a future where there is not just a male, white, cisgender future for our society. It is a spectrum of colors, a spectrum of experiences, the spectrum of languages, a spectrum of sexual identification, and of sexuality. How important was it for you as a writer to really look at the spectrum of human experience and project it forward into the future of science fiction?

It was hugely important and I honestly wish we could do more of it if we had more time. I’d write a million more words of unique people living their lives. Maybe in future projects I’ll get a chance to do that. But it’s not just representing a hopeful world, or a world that we want to see. It’s, from my point of view, representing the world as it currently is. There are women in positions of power. There are people of color doing all kinds of jobs. There are queer people in every corner and class of the world. And so I want the world of the future to reflect the world of the now. And that means reflecting our current reality.

Well, at least we know why the writing is so uninspired.