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

[DalekFlay]

That's the biggest problem. Going pro-board means experiencing Byzantium before Monarch, and it just doesn't measure up as a fleshed out hub.

Urban landscape could've been great for some espionage factional warfare.

Lacking that kind of depth is a major problem with the whole game. Monarch gets closest to feeling fleshed out with lots of RPG options, but even it is very lacking compared to New Vegas or whatever. I always wanted to see an "indie Morrowind or Deus Ex" and now that we've basically got one but the limitations are very obvious.

 

[Duraframe300]

That's the biggest problem. Going pro-board means experiencing Byzantium before Monarch, and it just doesn't measure up as a fleshed out hub.

Urban landscape could've been great for some espionage factional warfare.

Lacking that kind of depth is a major problem with the whole game. Monarch gets closest to feeling fleshed out with lots of RPG options, but even it is very lacking compared to New Vegas or whatever. I always wanted to see an "indie Morrowind or Deus Ex" and now that we've basically got one but the limitations are very obvious.

To be fair, Outer Worlds isn't exactly representative here, because its insanly incosistent in its quality and that's more to put down to parts of the games development team dragging the whole thing down than it is to the idea itself.

 

[Junmarko]

I always wanted to see an "indie Morrowind or Deus Ex" and now that we've basically got one but the limitations are very obvious.

Yeah, they need to pick one though, not try and attempt both like they did here. Game ends up being jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none. To the game's credit, it does attempt the "0451 game" (as Grunker terms it) the best, and is the real strength. Really felt they wanted to go strongly in that direction with what little missions are in Byzantium but fell short. Disguise system as an example, was dumbed down, but they added a timer which gave a little bit of challenge to stealth through player urgency - problem here being, the game barely has any of these encounters.

EDIT: Lab infiltration mission (forget the name) was really good, and felt like they ripped it straight from Deus Ex in the best way. So many approaches thrown into one pot.

The RPG Codex's Top 101 PC RPGs

#8 Deus Ex
Grunker: Modern stealth games and Deus Ex-likes - oft-times called "0451 games" - make one core mistake in their design. This mistake is the most apparent in Arkane Studio's Dishonored, but it can, in one way or another, be found in almost every 0451-game released since 2004. They ask you to focus on either stealth, combat or some other aspect of their "toolbox" design, and the character development and reward structures push you down "corridors" of character customization, offering you the "choice" of how to play the game from beginning to end, rather than asking you to utilize the full extend of the varied skills at your disposal.

 

[luj1]

I always wanted to see an "indie Morrowind / Deus Ex"

It exists. It's called Brigand: Oaxaca.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Polygon writer wants more 20 hour RPGs like Outer Worlds because they keep forgetting the story of longer RPGs
https://archive.is/ALHGQ

 

[Junmarko]

Polygon writer wants more 20 hour RPGs like Outer Worlds because they keep forgetting the story of longer RPGs

More Deus Ex / VtmB level execution is all that's needed for the shorter cRPGs, more like that would be great. Polygon game-urinalists thinking the bar set by Outer Worlds in any way reaches those is laughable.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Leonard Boyarsky: Having been the main writer on Max, I’m partial to his pairings with the other companions.

So based Leon wrote Max? Well doesn't that explain a lot.

 

[Junmarko]

So based Leon wrote Max?

He designed all of Roseway and used it as a vertical slice for the rookie team to follow as well. Noticed a big difference in quality there too, was one of the more interesting locations imo.

 

[RNGsus]

(screen from The Outer Worlds)

 

[Infinitron]

The Outer Worlds post-release plans: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...dian-post-acquisition-to-see-what-has-changed

The Outer Worlds is included in that. A post-release plan hasn't been announced yet but there's still a team in The Outer Worlds corner working on something. Obsidian isn't leaving it behind in a rush to work on Microsoft projects.

"Actually it's the opposite," Urquhart said. "What's always been interesting about the independent developer before was: who was going to pay for support? If I'm not being paid for support by the publisher then [...] we have this weird thing of how do we do it?

"In the Microsoft world, we get to run a studio based on what makes sense for the franchises and I'm not having to make these day-to-day decisions so much. People are obviously loving Outer Worlds and we made it because we love it, so now we get to keep on doing things to help support [it]."

It makes sense - not least because Obsidian, and presumably now Microsoft, owns The Outer Worlds IP. Tim Cain mentioned this in an interview with Game Informer a while back, saying, "we get to retain ownership of the IP". Supporting it works out well for everybody, and who knows? One day The Outer Worlds 2 might be an important next-Xbox game.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Leonard Boyarsky: Having been the main writer on Max, I’m partial to his pairings with the other companions.

So based Leon wrote Max? Well doesn't that explain a lot.

Max is way one of the best companions! Even tho Parvati is the breakout star my personal favs are Max, Nyoka and Ellie!

 

[Roguey]

With the exception of Ellie and Felix, we started with basic archetypes – the big game hunter, the disgruntled truth seeker, the naïve innocent, etc., and then we put our own spin on them. For Ellie and Felix, we just needed two temp companions who could talk to each other as they followed the player around for our vertical slice, but we liked them so much we decided to keep them.

Suppose this explains why they're a couple of nothing-companions no one ever talks about (other than to comment about how there's nothing to them)

That aspect of Parvati came from her original writer, Chris L’Etoile. After he left the project, she was taken over by Kate Dollarhyde, who continued to expand on those themes. There was no specific directive they were fulfilling; it all came from the characterization they wanted to explore for her.

A Bioware writer brings the decline and Boyarsky rubberstamps it because he's too much of a coward, go figure.

Anyway, I amended the writer list from earlier in the thread.

 

[Duraframe300]

Outer Worlds is 2nd best selling game in october.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/14/...of-duty-and-outer-worlds-deliver-solid-month/

 

[Duraframe300]

Ah yeah, I forgot



Edit: Doubly important because Outer Worlds won against NBA 2k20. The same series New Vegas lost against in 2010.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

 

[fantadomat]

Outer Worlds is 2nd best selling game in october.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/14/...of-duty-and-outer-worlds-deliver-solid-month/

Retard,it is a bunch of big words meaning nothing. Every time is the same,epic and the publisher say that they sold good or above expectations,then half a year later some dev leaks that it wasn't actually true. Either show some hard data or fuck off shill!

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

That's a NPD Group data, which is as hard numbers as you're going to get until Take-Two publishes next update to shareholders.

 

[Junmarko]

Retard,it is a bunch of big words meaning nothing. Every time is the same,epic and the publisher say that they sold good or above expectations,then half a year later some dev leaks that it wasn't actually true. Either show some hard data or fuck off shill!

Sony and MS can't really BS 100% when physical distribution is still high on consoles, distributors give a good indication of sales figures. Figures on PC here are no doubt muddy and likely lower than consoles due to Epic. Any data is probably from "Game-Pass sales" (Microsoft looking at Windows & Xbox as one platform).

 

[DalekFlay]

More Deus Ex / VtmB level execution is all that's needed for the shorter cRPGs, more like that would be great. Polygon game-urinalists thinking the bar set by Outer Worlds in any way reaches those is laughable.

As you said before, it would have been a lot better if they made a Deus Ex style game, with the budget and areas they had. I would guess they wanted to capitalize on New Vegas' popularity at the same time though, leading to the mix we got.

 

[Commissar Draco]

OK game started to get crashy at finale its time to unsub from Platform and uninstall (I will watch ending on Juice-tube). Must admit I did preferred Rosarium the best, still can't think why they put some many towns in game only to use them one time and never (aside from some companion quests) return to them. They should instead make game on planet where proles live, make really long quest chain to obtain transport to space station/satelite where elites resides a and then to Space Ship which brought them all in search of this mac-guffin which should save all (or at least factions you backed in game) this way we would not get game which thousand miles wide and foot deep. Its not New Vegas it sure ain't Bloodlines but its still better than Fallout 76 and 4 so congratulations for Obsidian for finally making commercially successful title even if its really something not made for Commissar or white straight men.

 

[aweigh]

out of curiosity i dropped the resolution 720p and set all of the graphical settings to low and lowered the Resolution scale to 50%, to see if the intermittent frame-drops when walking around areas were the game or my rig.

It's the game.

Even at 720/low/50% resolution scale, when walking around Edgewater town, I'd still get occasional frame drops as *something* is loaded while I was walking around the town.

It's aggravating.

 

[luj1]

Its the code

 

[JDR13]

What kind of toaster are you trying to run it on?

 

[aweigh]

i5 8400 / gtx 1060 / 16gb ram / nvme ssd

you gotta have a very high IQ to understand proper frame-pacing tho

 

[JDR13]

Or just not be retarded.