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

[Infinitron]

 

[Roguey]

Believe that applies just as much to third person RPGs as well. Just say action RPGs.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I don't know what you mean with "warrant" but considering the game's ending and the overall reception it got, i'd say a sequel is pretty much guaranteed - unless something changes in the DLCs of course.

Would you *like* to have one... well, that is up to each individual. Personally i found the game entertaining despite its flaws (not that this says much as i find many games entertaining), so sure, why not? It isn't like there are many first person ARPGs (that i haven't played). I'd wait until a GOG release and even then i'd also wait for a sale (unless they manage to improve the gameplay and/or writing considerably in that sequel).

I meant based on the content of the TOW, its design, lore, and gameplay, would people really want to see this game get a sequel and be continued as a franchise.
The Outer Worlds does end on some cliffhanger notes on which a sequel could be made.

I have not played the game myself yet and it will be a long time but from what I have seen and read here on the codex TOW is rather disappointing after being announced as a spiritual sequel to FNV.
I am not even sure if it is that good on its own compared to other games these days.

Perhaps Obsidian is better off calling this a one time experiment and start over again on something new.

 

[DalekFlay]

I meant based on the content of the TOW, its design, lore, and gameplay, would people really want to see this game get a sequel and be continued as a franchise.

I think that flaws that really hurt the game are flaws a bag of Microsoft money would help immensely. It won't help the writing or horrible balancing if the same people are in charge, but could offer a bigger world with more intricate faction play and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.

 

[Haplo]

Arguably it's biggest fault is leveled and tiered junk itemization.

 

[DalekFlay]

Arguably it's biggest fault is leveled and tiered junk itemization.

I meant that as part of "balance." Also you can get super good at things like lockpick super fast. I doubt that would change if the same people were in charge, though I think they mentioned in interviews somewhere it was the result of a short polishing period? I forget.

 

[boobio]

It's sad what has happened to obsidian.

 

[DalekFlay]

Again! Must be the 4th or 5th time...

 

[Bad Sector]

I meant based on the content of the TOW, its design, lore, and gameplay, would people really want to see this game get a sequel and be continued as a franchise.

Well, sure, why not? Worst case it is complete garbage you can avoid, best case they fix the game's issues and becomes a good series, most likely case is more of the same which personally even though i consider it much inferior to FNV, is still something i had fun with.

The Outer Worlds does end on some cliffhanger notes on which a sequel could be made.

Since you haven't played the game, note that the "cliffhanger" isn't really something that demands a sequel, the game's own story is self contained. It is just that the ending allows for a follow up story, but a different one (and potentially at a different scale).

 

[Infinitron]

Oh it's out early:

In our final video exploring the design of The Outer Worlds, we look at the design of player choice, and the complexity of allowing players to feel like they are playing the game their way.

 

[Infinitron]

Some highlights from this episode:

Earlier in the game's development, Tim thought of the Leader archetype as a full-fledged playstyle alongside Combat, Dialogue and Stealth, but later on he realized it was more of a variant on the other three.

At one point, the Leadership skills were massively OP and had to be nerfed.

Companions originally didn't have their unique combat moves - the player character had them instead. When TTD was created, it replaced them.

TTD itself was originally closer to a VATS clone, locking on to enemies and letting you select body parts.

They experimented with letting you knock characters unconscious for non-lethal playthroughs, but it was too much effort to get working properly.

They wanted to have an animation where companions would whisper to you ("Psst, say this...") when you relied on their skill bonus for a dialogue skill check, but it was also too much effort.

 

[Alienman]

Sums up the game.

"Too much effort"

 

[DalekFlay]

Sums up the game.

"Too much effort"

To be fair they were relatively blunt before release about how it was a smaller, cheaper project than people think and to temper expectations.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I wish some developer said "adding bland companion quests was too much effort, that's why we could add some interesting feature that we randomly came up with and we liked it".

But this would have been more like the Troika Cain and Boyarski. Now they are old and wise from their past "failures", so they know to only deliver what's safe if mediocre.

 

[KVVRR]

I enjoyed going to get some drinks with Parvati, even if it was weird we couldn't sit down, but the rest of her quest was awful. I really didn't care about her love interest at all and why the fuck did they think it was a good idea to make it not one but TWO fetchquests at the same time?

it's not even worth it when her bad ending is actually a lot more interesting that the good one, with her going full mute and all of that.

 

[Lilliput McHammersmith]

Out of curiosity, do people think the original one's content and design warrant enough reason for there to be a sequel in the future?

I remember hearing that The White March was better than Pillars of Eternity base campaign? I feel like Outer Worlds shows enough potential for them to come back and do it right. The intent and some of the ideas were there, just didn't cook long enough.

The White March was better than the base game in Pillars. It's very good DLC. But I also liked Pillars more than I liked TOW

 

[Fedora Master]

I, too, like hardtack more than stale bread.

 

[RuySan]

Started playing this one on Gamepass....and it's perfectly fine, even if very unambitious. I love the colourful look of it, and the anti-capitalist message is lovely for a commie like me, but the game plays it very safe. Even Fallout 4 is much deeper and has more interacting systems than this. But I'm still at the beginning.

 

[Lilliput McHammersmith]

I, too, like hardtack more than stale bread.

Ha!

I think the general consensus on the Codex is wrong about Pillars. I played it right after playing Baldur’s Gate for the first time and I loved it. Pillars is no hardtack. It’s easily an 8/10, especially with The White March. I loved the combat and the story.

(I also like BG1 more than BG2, so y’know, different strokes I guess)

 

[Lilliput McHammersmith]

Talby how is liking Pillars an NPC opinion? Literally everyone on this site dislikes it. It's odd, because Pillars is huge incline.

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

I played this game through and thought it was fun, but I was disappointed at how short it was. We were all warned about that, though.

One thing it made me notice was that New Vegas was kind of just a perfect storm of various factors. You get rid of the Bethesda parts of New Vegas and you end up with The Outer Worlds, and admittedly it's weaker for it. The bad things about that game are all due to its Fallout 3 (and Bethesda) DNA, but those are also the sources of many of its good parts from a design perspective, too.

Obsidian was forced to make New Vegas an open world game with a lot of exploration, environmental storytelling, and general "open-ness" for mods to add content, because they were building a total conversion for a Bethesda game. The Outer Worlds has next to none of that. All the areas and locations are very contained and closed areas. There's no real exploration to do and no point to do it, there's not a lot of environmental storytelling, and there's very little open-endedness to add any new content through mods that would fit into the rest of the game. I don't foresee this game having a very vibrant modding scene even once (if) mod support comes out.

In that way it seems like the New Vegas they might have made instead if they were making their own game and not a mod for somebody else's. Whether you like that is up to you, but it's definitely not New Vegas 2. It's still one of the better RPGs to come out in the last 5 years though, which may or may not be an upsetting fact to some.

I'm gonna leave the SJW shit aside. Honestly, it's not really that invasive. I've noticed that the whining about it mostly comes from people who haven't played the game but saw a single 2016 haircut in some preview footage and latched onto that as an indicator of everything else in the game.

 

[DalekFlay]

Talby how is liking Pillars an NPC opinion? Literally everyone on this site dislikes it. It's odd, because Pillars is huge incline.

It's in the top 50 on here, so I don't think many actually consider it "bad." It's just kind of bland and has some quirks, so the try-hards call it irredeemable shit like they always do.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

It's in the top 50 on here, so I don't think many actually consider it "bad." It's just kind of bland and has some quirks, so the try-hards call it irredeemable shit like they always do.

Pillars of Eternity finished #45 using a voting system that did not ask Codexers for an assessment of games but instead to cast a few votes for their favorite RPGs --- meaning that a game could be widely hated by the Codex yet still finish in the top 100 list, as was just barely the case for Oblivion(!) of all games. The superior voting system used for the poll covering RPGs from 2012 through 2016 placed Pillars of Eternity in 23rd place among a much smaller selection of CRPGs. Even there, it was aided by the Bayesian average that granted an advantage to Pillars of Eternity for being so widely played by Codexers (for example, Lords of Xulima had an average score of 3.50 to 3.39 for PoE, but its smaller number of votes resulted in a lower Bayesian average score).

 

[Takamori]

Regarding The Outer Worlds, I played at max difficulty and it was a honest 6/10 experience. Good ideas there but lacked the budget to do justice to then and there was flaws with story telling and companions. Felt that the game setting the story around you was all right but the main quest story and the companions around you felt a bit preachy, like one of those He-man endings where he advised kids to not set themselves on fire. Its mediocre but not in a negative way, it does everything okayish but nothing that would make me remember this experience for too long. For the little price that I paid for it, I can't be mad at it.

 

[Fedora Master]

Since this thread keeps popping up.