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

[cvv]

Any completely ancap society would have corporations paying much more attention that their employees/citizens stay loyal, in ways both malign and benign. And they definitely wouldn't go about in ways that tank productivity, like only feeding people tuna or something on the first planet of the base game.

The game is not trying to be realistic at all. That's not its tone, and it shouldn't be judged for failing at something it's not at all trying to do. It's more of a Terry Gilliam allegory world than a "realistic" one in any way.

Dude, alegory IS realistic. It's building on and pointing at something real. That's the whole point.

ToW is failing precisely at that - it thinks it's an alegory while in reality it's just a pile of shit because it portrays nothing real, just childish fantasies of brain-addled, know-nothing Californian millenials.

 

[DalekFlay]

Dude, alegory IS realistic.

 

[KVVRR]

And they definitely wouldn't go about in ways that tank productivity, like only feeding people tuna or something on the first planet of the base game.

It was space rats and wooden chips/garbage, actually. The reason they did this was because they couldn't grow any other food and (I suppose) the local fauna was toxic, that's what the "plague" that the first town is suffering from actually is. They're just too dumb or brainwashed to even understand what malnutrition is.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The lack of companies spiking employee drinking water with amphetamines is disturbing

 

[Tyranicon]

I'm honestly tired of old and improbable premises such as megacorps taking over nation-state roles (why? there's no profit in it). This is why Warhammer 40k is such a good setting, because it's laughably absurd (mankind ruled by an unflinching douche-bag theocracy that hates everything), and it fucking works.

We need more of those settings, please.

 

[cvv]

I'm honestly tired of old and improbable premises such as megacorps taking over nation-state roles

This vision of corporate dystopia, first presented by Gibson's Neuromancer, and parroted by games like ToW is obviously just a childish leftist fairytale.

But there are genuinely interesting visions of a future where nation-states have been supplanted as anachronistic, irrelevant entities, by various other societal arrangements. One of the smartest ones is described in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, one of the best SF novels ever written. Wish someone made a game based on that.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

This vision of corporate dystopia, first presented by Gibson's Neuromancer, and parroted by games like ToW is obviously just a childish leftist fairytale.

But there are genuinely interesting visions of a future where nation-states have been supplanted as anachronistic, irrelevant entities, by various other societal arrangements. One of the smartest ones is described in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, one of the best SF novels ever written. Wish someone made a game based on that.

I feel like there's a distance measured in lightyears between Neuromancer and Outer Worlds's Futurama-derived corporate dystopia, which not surprisingly, is almost exactly the distance between great writing with nuance and shit writing that comes packaged with bricks to hit the reader over the head with.

Futurama is not to blame, the execution of the homage to Futurama is what's painful.

Stephenson's good, but needs an editor. Loved Snow Crash if only for the practice of tattooing crimes on one's forehead.

 

[Tyranicon]

This vision of corporate dystopia, first presented by Gibson's Neuromancer, and parroted by games like ToW is obviously just a childish leftist fairytale.

But there are genuinely interesting visions of a future where nation-states have been supplanted as anachronistic, irrelevant entities, by various other societal arrangements. One of the smartest ones is described in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, one of the best SF novels ever written. Wish someone made a game based on that.

I feel like there's a distance measured in lightyears between Neuromancer and Outer Worlds's Futurama-derived corporate dystopia, which not surprisingly, is almost exactly the distance between great writing with nuance and shit writing that comes packaged with bricks to hit the reader over the head with.

Futurama is not to blame, the execution of the homage to Futurama is what's painful.

Stephenson's good, but needs an editor. Loved Snow Crash if only for the practice of tattooing crimes on one's forehead.

Stephenson has a ton of great ideas and loves to talk through them. I'm not a huge fan of his writing style, but he's someone I keep an eye on.

 

[commie]

I'm honestly tired of old and improbable premises such as megacorps taking over nation-state roles (why? there's no profit in it). This is why Warhammer 40k is such a good setting, because it's laughably absurd (mankind ruled by an unflinching douche-bag theocracy that hates everything), and it fucking works.

We need more of those settings, please.

I dunno...East India Company was pretty much a 'megacorp' that was a kind of nation state in itself ruling over vast areas of India. The Outer Worlds with the planets being colonised by similar types of entities and then morphing into 'nation states' is a plausible enough idea. The problem is the execution is so glib and without nuance and it just makes it into a caricature with no subtlety, just evil profiteers for teh lulz.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Futrama is basically Outer Worlds done correctly tbh.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Futrama is basically Outer Worlds done correctly tbh.

Agreed. It's really kind of embarrassing-in-a-cover-your-eyes-and-shake-your-head way to "our inspirational source material!" to do a weaker version of it and then dilute it with Borderlands, but there you go.

Homage away!

 

[Flou]

DLC typically has nothing but skeleton crew working on them. It shouldn't take 10 months for six hours though. 10 months is enough for expansion-sized content. Dead Money was released two months after New Vegas, Honest Hearts five months after that, Old World Blues two months after that, Lonesome Road two months after that. It took the Perils of Gorgon team the same amount of time to make one six hour DLC as the time it took the New Vegas team to make four five-to-six-hour DLCs.

Oh and lest you think this is a "Chris Avellone is a fast writer" thing, Bethesda released five 3-5 hour Fallout 3 DLCs and one five-hour, one fifteen-hour, and one seventeen-hour Fallout 4 DLC in the same amount of time.

Corona virus surely delayed the release by a month or two, like it has done with pretty much every game so far. If you compare Outer Worlds to FNV. FNV was done in a hurry in the first place, so them making the DLCs in a rapid pace "fits" the release schedule Bethesda mandated. At least some of the FNV DLCs could have done with more Q&A. Not sure how bug free Gorgon is.

How experienced is the team working on the DLC? If it's a junior/inexperienced crew working on it, that could easily add another month.

I don't think writing speed is an issue here. You should have the content ready and locked when the team starts working on it as the development cycle can't really afford long pauses or scratching some of the content because their ideas just didn't work.

 

[Wesp5]

Stephenson has a ton of great ideas and loves to talk through them. I'm not a huge fan of his writing style, but he's someone I keep an eye on.

Stephenson's writing style is so bad, that I already forgot anything that happened in his books. Gibson on the other hand has the style fitting to his works, which makes his books twice as good!

 

[Roguey]

Corona virus surely delayed the release by a month or two, like it has done with pretty much every game so far. If you compare Outer Worlds to FNV. FNV was done in a hurry in the first place, so them making the DLCs in a rapid pace "fits" the release schedule Bethesda mandated. At least some of the FNV DLCs could have done with more Q&A. Not sure how bug free Gorgon is.

How experienced is the team working on the DLC? If it's a junior/inexperienced crew working on it, that could easily add another month.

I don't think writing speed is an issue here. You should have the content ready and locked when the team starts working on it as the development cycle can't really afford long pauses or scratching some of the content because their ideas just didn't work.

The DLC should have been released no later than March if they were going by normal DLC release schedules. Consoles have 500 gb-1 tb hard drives, and quite a few games now require 100 gb of space; these things need to be released while they're still installed, that's the point of releasing DLC-sized content as opposed to old-fashioned out-dated expansions.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

DLCs - how does the Outer Worlds DLC compare to the Pillars DLC/expansion schedule?

Fallout New Vegas: Wouldn't QA on the DLCs have gone to continuing to fix and patch the core game since that continued to be a shitshow well after release? Probably took developer time, too?

To add insult to injury, I thought Bethesda actually hired more QA after the New Vegas experience because of what a mess it was (but not in time for the New Vegas experience).

 

[Ol' Willy]

Stephenson's writing style is so bad, that I already forgot anything that happened in his books. Gibson on the other hand has the style fitting to his works, which makes his books twice as good!

The only Stephenson book I have read is Snow Crash, and I liked it. Yeah, beginning makes you want to kill yourself, but it gets better further.

But I do like Gibson more. His Spawl trilogy is oozing with atmosphere. Man indeed has a style.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Fallout New Vegas: Wouldn't QA on the DLCs have gone to continuing to fix and patch the core game since that continued to be a shitshow well after release? Probably took developer time, too?

To add insult to injury, I thought Bethesda actually hired more QA after the New Vegas experience because of what a mess it was (but not in time for the New Vegas experience).

Stop permeating this bullshit, New Vegas wasn't more of a mess on release than Fagout 3 was. And both share this abominable engine, though Obsidian had way less experience with it.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Kotaku with an article today about how the ending options are too morally grey and depressing.

That article is soo dumb the writer thinks the ending where

Spoiler

you reunite Minnie and Olivia means they both work on Adrena-Time instead of working on a cure for the marauders. Like, it's so obvs they're working on a cure I don't know how the writer didn't totally get that

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Stop permeating this bullshit, New Vegas wasn't more of a mess on release than Fagout 3 was. And both share this abominable engine, though Obsidian had way less experience with it.

Wasn't comparing the two, was only saying New Vegas was a shitshow on launch. I didn't buy Fallout 3 at launch, so couldn't even speak to it.

 

[Roguey]

DLCs - how does the Outer Worlds DLC compare to the Pillars DLC/expansion schedule?

They're taking much longer on TOW.

Fallout New Vegas: Wouldn't QA on the DLCs have gone to continuing to fix and patch the core game since that continued to be a shitshow well after release? Probably took developer time, too?

Base New Vegas was in decent shape after December.

 

[DalekFlay]

Didn't I read that Outer Worlds had no DLC in the pipeline at launch like a lot of games do? I thought I did. If they started from nothing then 6 months makes sense. I'm sure they were also doing the second expansion beside it and that will come out quicker.

Also I played New Vegas right at release and don't remember it having more issues than a typical Bethesda style game. Console version was reportedly broken as hell though.

 

[Roguey]

Didn't I read that Outer Worlds had no DLC in the pipeline at launch like a lot of games do? I thought I did. If they started from nothing then 6 months makes sense. I'm sure they were also doing the second expansion beside it and that will come out quicker.

Also I played New Vegas right at release and don't remember it having more issues than a typical Bethesda style game. Console version was reportedly broken as hell though.

Nope, they were working on this as far back as June 2019. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...go-to-new-thread.119594/page-232#post-6195582

Development. Hell.

Meanwhile, Murder on Eridanos is scheduled for "the first half of 2021" which doesn't bode well for it either if that ends up being June.

 

[Quillon]

Murder on Eridanos

Is that the second DLC? They better give it to Kate D & co too! Otherwise she'd go and throw up on other gamez they are working on! :D If they are actually doing anything worth playing that is.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Didn't I read that Outer Worlds had no DLC in the pipeline at launch like a lot of games do? I thought I did. If they started from nothing then 6 months makes sense. I'm sure they were also doing the second expansion beside it and that will come out quicker.

Also I played New Vegas right at release and don't remember it having more issues than a typical Bethesda style game. Console version was reportedly broken as hell though.

Nope, they were working on this as far back as June 2019. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...go-to-new-thread.119594/page-232#post-6195582

Development. Hell.

Meanwhile, Murder on Eridanos is scheduled for "the first half of 2021" which doesn't bode well for it either if that ends up being June.

Took nearly as long to develop one DLC as it took them to develop new vegas

 

[KVVRR]

Didn't I read that Outer Worlds had no DLC in the pipeline at launch like a lot of games do? I thought I did. If they started from nothing then 6 months makes sense. I'm sure they were also doing the second expansion beside it and that will come out quicker.

Also I played New Vegas right at release and don't remember it having more issues than a typical Bethesda style game. Console version was reportedly broken as hell though.

Nope, they were working on this as far back as June 2019. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...go-to-new-thread.119594/page-232#post-6195582

Development. Hell.

Meanwhile, Murder on Eridanos is scheduled for "the first half of 2021" which doesn't bode well for it either if that ends up being June.

Took nearly as long to develop one DLC as it took them to develop new vegas

At least they (probably) didn't crunch the devs while working on it