Latelistener
Arcane
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It sank already, especially when some estonian RPG made for spared money took all of the possible awards from Outer Worlds, a AA game led by legendary Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky.
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The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony
- Thread starter Infinitron
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Cross
Arcane
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Technically, there is no such thing as a 'classic obsidian RPG'. They've only ever made (spiritual) sequels to Bioware/Bethesda games. Which is probably their biggest problem: lack of a creative identity.
FreeKaner
Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
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
There is a certain anxiety right from the start of Deadfire. Anxiety that players will "accidentally" "miss-out" what they are trying to do, that's why the game starts with 2 cutscenes and one of them from the trailer, then a walk sequence holding your hand through the plotpoints of poe1, then you are sat down explaining what you did and what you are to do. This anxiety persists throughout the whole game, the devs seem to be dead scared that you will not get how to proceed and act like parents trying to guide you through the correct process.
It's part of the same trend in rest of the game, it seems that they did listen to criticism of the first game but they reached all the wrong conclusions, mishandled solutions or overcorrect. It's not enough to listen to criticism, you have to realise how to fix it and you also have to realise that what people directly voice as a criticism might not be the root of the cause but rather an result of it as well. Sawyer of course then gets to say "we just did what the players wanted!" and wash his hands clear of any misdeed.
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Nah I don't remember specifics, but I think from QnA and interview Josh understand that a lot of design decisions make PoE2 fail. I think he even admitted that some of his design decision is also a problem with the game.
Wunderbar
Arcane
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cainarsky be like: let's scrap this autism and replace it with only 3 types of ammo and leveled equipment. no one likes sawyer anyway.
and the outer worlds sucks.
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- Jan 28, 2011
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- 99,612
Obsidian - when creative recession (4 uninspired games in a row) meets midlife crisis.
Amazing to me how big console gamers want the HUD. I'm guessing they play on 55" televisions or even smaller, from a far distance across the room or something. Good on Obsidian for making it an options scale though, instead of increasing the size for everyone. It's already too big on PC.
They should add official options to turn HUD elements off too, as they clutter the screen and most of them are pointless. Thankfully on PC you can edit them out of the .ini file, but it should be a real option.
They should add official options to turn HUD elements off too, as they clutter the screen and most of them are pointless. Thankfully on PC you can edit them out of the .ini file, but it should be a real option.
Weird to me that the devs specifically put in a disable HUD feature to take screenshots with, then buried it under 10 clicks and 20 seconds of scrolling every time you want to do it. Why no hotkey?
There are not enough buttons on controllers to hotkey something so trivial.
Obsidian probably do not believe someone would play it on KB + Mouse.
So I did buy this and started three playthroughs with different "rules" to try to enjoy the reactivity and freedom.
#1: "Pacifist" playthrough with a talky/stealthy character. No direct attacks allowed, no companion attacks allowed. Be nice, try to help anyone who asks you, avoid criminal activity, side with the "good guys".
#2: "Barbarian" playthrough with a pure melee fighter. Be mean to everyone, don't work with companions, cut conversations short, ignore instructions, skip quests unless there's something in it for you, level up, ruin your reputation with everyone, get tougher and look for opportunities to prove how tough you are.
#3: "Normal" mercenary playthrough with a selfish gunslinger. Always demand money, take jobs, hunt bounties, etc.
Playthrough #1 is currently (permanently?) stalled due to a cheap undercooked quest, where a hostage has been taken. The thugs are standing around talking to the hostage about "who will pay a good ransom for you", but there is no opportunity for the player to actually offer a ransom or talk to the thugs at all even though they are clearly intelligent and would prefer profit to mindless lethal combat. Sneaking up to try to cut the hostage free also simply doesn't work - he is magically welded to the chair until his captors are dead. I even tried distracting the thugs by luring nearby monsters to the area, but it turns out that savage man-eating apes have no interest in fighting marauders - the two groups instead fight side by side in a unified effort to kill a dangerous common enemy: a harmless girl running away from them.
#2 is going pretty good. I was especially impressed with the huge side option after Edgewater, where Phineas tells you you have to go get a navigation key to go to this one city. Instead you can say fuck it, I'll just land somewhere random on the planet and walk from there, using a completely different route. This is a super cool optional path that bypasses that whole space station completely. The downside: this character has no motivation to work for Phineas at all. I don't care about resurrecting the other colonists, but there's nowhere to step off these railroad tracks. Gameplay wise it completely works though.
#3 of course is fine, very much in the how this was really intended to be played vein, but predictably very formulaic.
#1: "Pacifist" playthrough with a talky/stealthy character. No direct attacks allowed, no companion attacks allowed. Be nice, try to help anyone who asks you, avoid criminal activity, side with the "good guys".
#2: "Barbarian" playthrough with a pure melee fighter. Be mean to everyone, don't work with companions, cut conversations short, ignore instructions, skip quests unless there's something in it for you, level up, ruin your reputation with everyone, get tougher and look for opportunities to prove how tough you are.
#3: "Normal" mercenary playthrough with a selfish gunslinger. Always demand money, take jobs, hunt bounties, etc.
Playthrough #1 is currently (permanently?) stalled due to a cheap undercooked quest, where a hostage has been taken. The thugs are standing around talking to the hostage about "who will pay a good ransom for you", but there is no opportunity for the player to actually offer a ransom or talk to the thugs at all even though they are clearly intelligent and would prefer profit to mindless lethal combat. Sneaking up to try to cut the hostage free also simply doesn't work - he is magically welded to the chair until his captors are dead. I even tried distracting the thugs by luring nearby monsters to the area, but it turns out that savage man-eating apes have no interest in fighting marauders - the two groups instead fight side by side in a unified effort to kill a dangerous common enemy: a harmless girl running away from them.
#2 is going pretty good. I was especially impressed with the huge side option after Edgewater, where Phineas tells you you have to go get a navigation key to go to this one city. Instead you can say fuck it, I'll just land somewhere random on the planet and walk from there, using a completely different route. This is a super cool optional path that bypasses that whole space station completely. The downside: this character has no motivation to work for Phineas at all. I don't care about resurrecting the other colonists, but there's nowhere to step off these railroad tracks. Gameplay wise it completely works though.
#3 of course is fine, very much in the how this was really intended to be played vein, but predictably very formulaic.
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My first playthrough was with a cutthroat merc who did it all for the money. I figured it would work well in the corporate-ruled setting. I thought it ended up kind of bland though, as the game seemed obviously more designed around a "fighting the man" paradigm. My second playthrough was as the more typical Han Solo type pirate with a heart of gold, and that felt much more rewarding and in line with the game's priorities and story. That was one of the more annoying aspects of the game for me, the limitation, but to be fair it's very hard to make all styles feel "right" and even New Vegas failed at that with a half-baked Legion questline.
Heroic Liberator
Arcane
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From Noah Caldwell-Gervais:
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^Conspicuous timing for that post: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/114260-the-outer-worlds-patch-13-release-notes/
Heroic Liberator
Arcane
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Well, he's somewhat of a shill, so no surprise there.
Dishonoredbr
Erudite
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- Jun 13, 2019
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- 2,432
I still watching but so far , the tldr of this video, it's how the game lacked ambition that he hoped and how the combat-loot gameplay don't work well with the best part of game , the dialogue. He likes the naratives but points several flaws (Monarch , A/B/C scheme instead of a more open ended). Also he comments how the game being so easy hurts the replayability.
jackofshadows
Arcane
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- Oct 21, 2019
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- 5,059
Still watching, my impression is the guy throws some valid points but basically it's all about failed expectations (as always).
IHaveHugeNick
Arcane
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- Apr 5, 2015
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- 1,870,558
Holy shit do they have like one dude working on this. It's gonna be half a year from launch soon and still nothing of importance came out.
Shows you how polished the game was at least, hree major patches there's barely any fixes in.
Shows you how polished the game was at least, hree major patches there's barely any fixes in.
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