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

[fantadomat]

"Megacorps" like Disney do exist, but they are in constant competition with other companies. The Outer Worlds presents a dictatorship-like future where one corporation rules in authoritarian fashion, which is quite different. As discussed a ton when the game came out, it feels almost more like communism than capitalism run amuck, because of how it's presented. Though lobbyists for corporations like Disney do allow for substantial government control on issues of mutual interest to all corporations, which could be seen as similar.

And who are those mythical "competitions"? Amazon,Goggle and Disney are monopolies lol.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Posting Megan Starks's updated resume for posterity. https://www.fictivate.com/games.html

The Outer Worlds / Obsidian Entertainment
Senior Narrative Designer (Team Lead)

Shipped titles: The Outer Worlds (PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One | Single-Player Sci-Fi RPG)
Rated 86 on Metacritic
Awards: to be added

Work experience:

• managed a team of game designers and writers to implement core features such as:
  • the critical path/main storyline content
  • companions
    • recruitment, character quest, main conversations, banter, POI barks, interjections, voice sets
  • player ship
    • ADA, the crew meeting, ship events, companion decor, player mementos
  • Phineas' orbital lab
  • voice sets
    • combat and ambient chatter for all factions and speaking creatures in the game, including companions
• designed and wrote
  • companions
    • SAM
    • Vicar Max (co-wrote with Leonard Boyarsky)
  • iconic, main characters
    • ADA, the Unreliable's Autonomous Digital Astrogator
    • Hiram Blythe, the Information Broker
    • Catherine Malin, a SubLight boss
    • Slaughterhouse Clive, the self-proclaimed Boarst King of Monarch
    • The Corporate Compliance Crew (also known as the C3s): Berthold, Donald, Addie, Hudson, Joy, and Lance
    • Also, some minor but memorable characters including but not limited to: Nelson Mayson, Agnes & Tucker Needham, Jesse Doyle, Ellen Chawla, Edna Ingmire
  • area content and regional storylines
    • Monarch: Fallbrook, C&P Factory, Stellar Bay
    • The Groundbreaker
  • factional characters (establishing a voice unique to the faction)
    • SubLight (the game's organized crime outfit)
    • Automechanicals (the game's robots)
  • quests, computer terminals, examinables / journals, items, and decor descriptions
• oversaw voice recording and character casting
• created marketing materials, ad copy, and trailer scripts including:
  • Gameplay trailer: "Come to Halcyon"
    • provided narrative direction, co-wrote trailer script
  • Taco Bell Commercial: "A Taste of Power"
    • assisted final script, co-wrote early script "Play It Your Way"
• participated in pr and community outreach

Heh, if that twat managed to change a light bulb she'd be "Responsible for single-handedly managing an overwhelmingly successful upgrade of advanced environmental illumination system with zero additional costs and no security incidents." :D

 

[Infinitron]

As discussed a ton when the game came out, it feels almost more like communism than capitalism run amuck, because of how it's presented.

I've thought about that but it's actually neither. The Board really seems to have been designed to be a plausible stand-in for any sort of bad government.

When the story requires it, the Board is fractious and weak, because the different corporations who make it up are in competition with each other and can't cooperate to improve the colony. Yet at other times, it might be totalitarian and overbearing.

The inconsistency is part of the deal. The corporations think they have a plan, but they're incompetent and falling apart. That's the real overarching theme of the game.

 

[DalekFlay]

I've thought about that but it's actually neither. The Board really seems to have been designed to be a plausible stand-in for any sort of bad government.

When the story requires it, the Board is fractious and weak, because the different corporations who make it up are in competition with each other and can't cooperate to improve the colony. Yet at other times, it might be totalitarian and overbearing.

The inconsistency is part of the deal. The corporations think they have a plan, but they're incompetent and falling apart. That's the real overarching theme of the game.

You're right that it's more complicated, I think it takes influences from a lot of sources. I keep trying to sum it up and it doesn't work. There's lots of stuff about an overbearing bureaucracy and living just to work and honor the state (or corporation here), which reminds me of communism. However there's also tons of stuff in it reference traditional "extreme capitalism" tropes as well. The core message as you say is an inept controlling elite who after screwing up focus on saving themselves, which can apply to either.

 

[Infinitron]

One thing the game vaguely gestures at is tying its main plot into the ideas of the Scientism and Philosophism ingame philosophies. So the Board's plan to just give up and put everybody back into cold storage is analogous to a kind of twisted reading of the Order of Scientific Inquiry's doctrine of predestination. "We're destined to be in control and there is no other way."

Philosophism's portrayal in the game is a bit murkier but it seems to prize "organic growth" over planning and predestination. Such is Phineas' plan to just wake up thousands of scientists from The Hope and hope they can come up with solutions to the colony's problems.

But that said the game doesn't really do enough to emphasize this stuff.

* * *

Another thing I'd note is that it's quite rare to see a game explicitly take sides like this between two in-game ideological systems. I was a bit shocked that the unambiguously "good" outcome for Vicar Max was for him to essentially become a heretic. It's the most actually political thing the game does.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I took the plot more as a reference to the novel Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where earth was populated by the 'useless' members of another society. All the smart people were on the derelict ship, the rest of the colony was populated by shoe salesmen and hairdressers. Har har!

The concept of enlightened rule by scientists is pretty Lockian/Enlightenment derived, though I suppose a reactionary reading could be made as well. Phineas seems like a clear libertarian character.

 

[Jackpot]

I don't mind the critique of corporate culture, but if you want me to take the game seriously you need to be a bit more subtle than "not at all".
This game is like borderlands not just in its visuals and theming, but in that every point it tries to make is spelled out to the player 10 times like we're children.

 

[FreeKaner]

Direct sequel also lowered the quality of dumpsterfire and definitely caused it to lose a lot of sales beyond its plenty faults.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Never realized I hated the colorblind until I suffered The Outer Worlds for 10 minutes while trying not to puke. Thanks for the wokeness Obsidian.

 

[BlackGoat]

Colorblind friendly? lol no shit. Of course it's less friendly for those of us who can see color

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't mind the critique of corporate culture, but if you want me to take the game seriously you need to be a bit more subtle than "not at all".
This game is like borderlands not just in its visuals and theming, but in that every point it tries to make is spelled out to the player 10 times like we're children.

Yeah, even though they try to give the corporate side some better justification with the "twist" about the colony, it all means nothing when the ending slides clearly state corporate = bad. This all reminds me of a good article I read not long ago about the left vs. right political dynamic crumbling, and the true division because "faith in pro-corporate elites vs. non-corporate revolution." Not gonna address that political question, but Outer Worlds in many way feels like it's all about that divide and being against corporations, without easily fitting into standard "conservative versus liberal" concepts.

 

[Quillon]

I noticed that even in pillars & deadfire; whenever there is a reactivity or something, its way too deliberate, screaming: "HEY I AM REACTIVITY, I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU DID THIS REMEMBER, HOW REACTIVE THIS GAME IS! RIGHT? WINK WINK", subtlety goes out the window, a different version of Kojima-exposition/revelation dump but more often + repeated same expositions through different NPCs so dumbfuckest of us all shouldn't miss a thing. In the end it feels cringeworthy and that we're being treated like children yeah.

They need to shift-del their RPG writing guideline doc that has accumulated over the years; they may be thinking its sophisticated but its too stale and predictable at this point and didn't evolve for the better over the last 10 years. Quests in TOW plays out exactly the same as in pillarses, in terms of structure, I can recognize an Obs quest from a mile away

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I noticed that even in pillars & deadfire; whenever there is a reactivity or something, its way too deliberate, screaming: "HEY I AM REACTIVITY, I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU DID THIS REMEMBER, HOW REACTIVE THIS GAME IS! RIGHT? WINK WINK", subtlety goes out the window, a different version of Kojima-exposition/revelation dump but more often + repeated same expositions through different NPCs so dumbfuckest of us all shouldn't miss a thing. In the end it feels cringeworthy and that we're being treated like children yeah.

Not to mention that it's very schizophrenic and feels like it was added as an afterthought - having background reactivity with minor NPCs when there isn't enough of it for major ones.

I am particularly annoyed that Lucia Rivan doesn't acknowledge the fact that you are a Darcozzi Paladin in Deadfire.

 

[Quillon]

Not to mention that it's very schizophrenic and feels like it was added as an afterthought

Because it is afterthought by design. We have seen Sawya's tweets like "I still have 80 reactivity lines to write for Pallegina" towards the end of production. Which means they have a very "creative" process that in the end it comes down to ticking checkboxes, then ofc my death godlilke watcher will say to pallegina "omg you are one of the godlikes, aren't you!?" lol but there'll still be minor reactivity for most everything but occasionally not for the one that is most important.

 

[Zombra]

Sawya's tweets like "I still have 80 reactivity lines to write for Pallegina" towards the end of production. Which means they have a very "creative" process that in the end it comes down to ticking checkboxes.

As opposed to what? Shooting rainbows from your fingers and having a script magically just "be reactive"? Of course they start with a structural foundation and flesh it out with writing afterwards.

 

[Quillon]

As opposed to writing organically/adding to/editing at the same time. He knows the exact count of what he's gonna write, which means there are already lines written for his character to respond. All he has to do sit down one afternoon and fill the boxes as Pallegina, I'm sure after writing 80 lines for different situations he's able to catch what's missing/wrong etc.

Tho the underlying problem is there is apparently a template dictating & allowing this process. I'm sure its very helpful when writers want to be "more creative" with the template's goal is everything's spreading out evenly and affordably.

 

[Infinitron]

Since this thread has been bumped, what's up with that DLC they talked about in December? Maybe it ends up being a full blown large expansion announced at E3 for release when the game comes out on Steam in October.

 

[Zombra]

As opposed to writing organically/adding to/editing at the same time.

You're dreaming if you think any project of this scale can be written as one big stream of hippie consciousness with no plan and no outline. "Let's hope we find places to put reactivity", and expecting it to not completely fuck over earlier work and cause massive rewrites to make it all fit together ... ain't gonna happen.

 

[Quillon]

As opposed to writing organically/adding to/editing at the same time.

You're dreaming if you think any project of this scale can be written as one big stream of hippie consciousness with no plan and no outline. "Let's hope we find places to put reactivity", and expecting it to not completely fuck over earlier work and cause massive rewrites to make it all fit together ... ain't gonna work.

Yup, but they should be standing in the middle of hippie consciousness and "way too strict" as per now they are at latter end of the spectrum; they don't wanna take risks for anything anymore, they don't wanna overtime/crunch, release buggy game, they don't wanna have their twitter time disrupted etc. Soulless games we get out of it.

 

[Zombra]

They should be standing in the middle of hippie consciousness and "way too strict" as per now they are at latter end of the spectrum; they don't wanna take risks for anything anymore, they don't wanna overtime/crunch, release buggy game, they don't wanna have their twitter time disrupted etc. Soulless games we get out of it.

Don't disagree here. Do disagree that having quotas is in itself an indication that anything is wrong.

 

[Quillon]

TOW made me disillusioned with Obs. "What can we expect from TOW?" x number of journos asked, to them the answer was always "classic obsidian RPG". By then I saw nothing wrong with that statement and thought they were betting on the narrative&setting but the game came out, woke af, everything plays out predictably, even the most impressive quest is predictable, narrative doesn't hook you etc. They bet on all their old tricks in the consolidated RPG making guidelines of nu-Obs and by some miracle with the help of Bethesda they succeeded. They don't have ambition anymore.

When they get unions and shit, creativity will sink across the 'murican game industry.

 

[Vulpes]

"What can we expect from TOW?" x number of journos asked, to them the answer was always "classic obsidian RPG"

That was the first major red flag for me since I don't remember ever hearing them describe any of their prior work in so few words. The fact that they kept vaguely comparing it to New Vegas didn't help either. As a matter of fact, the way the interviews were handled between those two games was the exact opposite. Just compare how excited they were talking about the NCR, Caesar's Legion and their conflict to how vague they were about the corporations and colonists in TOW, the difference is night and day

When they get unions and shit, creativity will sink across the 'murican game industry.

You mean it hasn't already? Oh, my bad. I'll just go back to playing "Open World Multiplayer Survival Game No. 10042945" then

 

[RepHope]

Since this thread has been bumped, what's up with that DLC they talked about in December? Maybe it ends up being a full blown large expansion announced at E3 for release when the game comes out on Steam in October.

They asked what kind of DLC people wanted in that big survey they did a while back. I told them to go big with a Blood & Wine or Shivering Isles type expansion. If that’s what they’re doing it’s going to take a while.

 

[RepHope]

"What can we expect from TOW?" x number of journos asked, to them the answer was always "classic obsidian RPG"

That was the first major red flag for me since I don't remember ever hearing them describe any of their prior work in so few words. The fact that they kept vaguely comparing it to New Vegas didn't help either. As a matter of fact, the way the interviews were handled between those two games was the exact opposite. Just compare how excited they were talking about the NCR, Caesar's Legion and their conflict to how vague they were about the corporations and colonists in TOW, the difference is night and day

When they get unions and shit, creativity will sink across the 'murican game industry.

You mean it hasn't already? Oh, my bad. I'll just go back to playing "Open World Multiplayer Survival Game No. 10042945" then

They were also pretty upfront about not getting to do everything they wanted. Didn’t Boyarsky even say he can’t play the game because all he can see is how much of a decline it is from what he wanted? But yeah the corps are a shitty joke compared to the Legion.

 

[DalekFlay]

Since this thread has been bumped, what's up with that DLC they talked about in December? Maybe it ends up being a full blown large expansion announced at E3 for release when the game comes out on Steam in October.

It'll be interesting what they do, since the game is kind of limited in scope as everyone's been saying. If it was a success and Microsoft wants to capitalize on the franchise, one wonders if the DLC might be an expansion that improves on the main game.