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

[thesecret1]

Dude, your game's opening 10 hours are boring and predicatable, wake up.

No kidding, I uninstalled after about 6 when I found myself literally falling asleep at the keyboard.

I think the main issue was that in games like these, most people want to get immersed. They want to feel like they are inside the setting. It's why Bethesda games always get so many mods emphasising essentially slice of life things – hunting and skinning deer in Skyrim, being able to chop firewood to sell or burn, bathing... Loads of stuff that is absolutely ridiculous from game design perspective, save for the immersion it can provide. And then you get TOW that absolutely murders that entire aspect right out the gate by making everything a retarded parody. The fact it's hideous didn't help it either.

It's like they completely forgot what New Vegas is.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

garbage assessment

I guess we are now in the revisionist period of TOW's life.
We all played this trash, you can't peddle cringe about TOW's mediocre combat being what drove people away from a masterclass in RPG storytelling because we already know that's blatantly untrue.
By all the worldbuilding, writing, and design standards set by Fallout/Arcanum/New Vegas, TOW is unambiguous decline in every aspect.

But the humor though!!!

Deeply unserious opinion, maybe you meant to post in this thread instead?

 

[AwesomeButton]

garbage assessment

I guess we are now in the revisionist period of TOW's life.
We all played this trash, you can't peddle cringe about TOW's mediocre combat being what drove people away from a masterclass in RPG storytelling because we already know that's blatantly untrue.
By all the worldbuilding, writing, and design standards set by Fallout/Arcanum/New Vegas, TOW is unambiguous decline in every aspect.

But the humor though!!!

Deeply unserious opinion, maybe you meant to post in this thread instead?

I have better low-effort posts than this.

I made the disclaimer that I started the game to check what Tim Cain liked about it, not going to try to convince anyone it's a gripping RPG experience.

 

[Fedora Master]

Just proof that you shouldn't listen to has-been boomer devs.

 

[KVVRR]

snip

Nah, the game's meandering and making you go from place to place isn't that big of a deal, at least not nowadays. It is a problem but it's one that stems from this genre in specific, this mania open world games have with all this space in between interesting locations and nothing to really do within them. It's very hard to pull it off right and Outer Worlds certainly didn't have the time nor budget to actually pull it off. Funnily enough when the game first released I remember either obsidian, Tim or whoever else talking about how they didn't want to make TOW an open world game but one that had hub-areas, which would be the planets. It goes to show just how little content there really is when they themselves consider these maps small yet there just isn't that much in them, to the point the same complaints about open world games might apply.

But shitty gameplay in RPGs is nothing new. People can get by with terribly mediocre gameplay if there's something else to hook them. Like SpaceWizardz said, it's the tone and writing which utterly fail the game. You mention that you found the humor funny, but you're still on Edgewater. Go back a few hundred pages and you'll see how people talk about how they've becomed bored of it by the time they leave that planet, and how the game still has 3 or 4 more with the exact same jokes played over and over again in them.

Then about the C&C... there's some interesting options but again, if you keep playing, you'll quickly realize that most of the effort was put on that first planet. Try and see what a corpo playthrough looks like. To this day I still can't find a reason why you'd side with them even if you're going with a fully evil or greedy character. And they're the only other faction around.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You mention that you found the humor funny, but you're still on Edgewater.

I even specified - impressions after the first 5-6 hours.

Then about the C&C... there's some interesting options but again, if you keep playing, you'll quickly realize that most of the effort was put on that first planet. Try and see what a corpo playthrough looks like. To this day I still can't find a reason why you'd side with them even if you're going with a fully evil or greedy character. And they're the only other faction around.

My intention was to test Tim Cain's suggestion that the game can cover so many playstyles, so I thought I'd try to go against what I assume were the designers' intentions and roleplay the ultimate obnoxious libertarian Ayn Rand-in-stockings-pinup-on-my-school-locker autist.

In Edgewater, I found that I am implictly shown that I'm a bad person for helping Spacer's Choice, but these decisions were supported by the game, if begrudgingly. The libertarian mentality soon finds itself at odds with the corporations' policy of suppressing personal freedom however. They are more authoritarian/totalitarian which companies tend to become if they can get away with it, and on a remote colony in space, they indeed can. So I came to the conclusion that if you want to play a pro-corporations character, you have to roleplay something of a vatnik instead of a libertarian.

But why would you roleplay something that goes against your interests, and is it that bad in terms of how much the game supports it? The former - because why roleplay anything other than a calculating Anton Chigur murderhobo (aka "metagaming") except for fun. The latter - I don't know, haven't progressed that far yet, to see if it's really so bad and repetitive.

 

[cvv]

snip

People can get by with terribly mediocre gameplay if there's something else to hook them.

This. Proof - Torment, TW3, ME1, some of the best games ever with mediocre gameplay at best.

Obviously for decades we had games with great gameplay and shitty writing (98% of RPGs from 1980s on) but at least the inept writing in all the grorious RPGs of yore, hacked together by autistic neckbeard engineers with zero artistic talent, didn't stand in the way of your enjoyment of combat, itemization, exploration, systems etc.

But TOW made me so sick with the subliminal estrogen, vegan, Bay Area bluehair vibes the world and characters gave out I couldn't be able to enjoy it even if the combat or itemization was good. Which is wasn't.

 

[gurugeorge]

The only glimmer of interest this game had is its way of dealing with conversational responsiveness to the player - it seemed like an effort had been made to make the NPCs more "aware" of the player's choices, and comment on them in amusing ways, which I think is something that could be done much more in RPGs.

(While of course avoiding the ridiculous telepathy games sometimes have - you know, you dungeon delve in some obscure place and next time you go to town all the NPCs somehow know exactly what you did.)

 

[AwesomeButton]

This. Proof - Torment, TW3, ME1, some of the best games ever with mediocre gameplay at best.

Obviously for decades we had games with great gameplay and shitty writing (98% of RPGs from 1980s on) but at least the inept writing in all the grorious RPGs of yore, hacked together by autistic neckbeard engineers with zero artistic talent, didn't stand in the way of your enjoyment of combat, itemization, exploration, systems etc.

But TOW made me so sick with the subliminal estrogen, vegan, Bay Area bluehair vibes the world and characters gave out I couldn't be able to enjoy it even if the combat or itemization was good. Which is wasn't.

Feelz overrule balanced and fair systems. People have fond memories of old games because they were too young and noob gamers to notice how unbalanced their systems were and how corny the writing. Take Fallout for example. You aren't solving any complex problems, but you see the animation of the gun firing, you target a body part, you hear the sound, and the gecko is gibbed. You get to feel as if you just killed a monster, and that's what matters. A story is imprinted in your brain - you fought a wild animal and killed it with a gun. It was thrilling.

We hunt for those kind of moments in games. I remember playing Thief: TDP, another great example - you are not doing anything complex again - watching your light indicator and listening for footsteps. But you as a living playing person are watching and listening, and you are larping your character's watching and listening. You press and hold the right mouse button and you hear the lockpicks clicking inside the keyhole. You might just be holding down a mouse button, and swapping lockpicks now and then to progress the process, but you feel like a master thief

I remember you were a fan of KCD. That game relies on evoking those feelings in the same way, doesn't it.

 

[KVVRR]

So I came to the conclusion that if you want to play a pro-corporations character, you have to roleplay something of a vatnik instead of a libertarian.

Even this becomes kinda hard to do because of how the corporations are portrayed in the game. When you roleplay a character like that, you want to be behind something grander than you, you need to think of yourself as higher than the ones you're gonna surpress -- but how can you do that when the whole board route is you doing busywork for people that are, by all means, mentally handicapped? For you to do this in this game requires to go out of your way to turn Phineas in, and he's the only character that seems to be truly on your side even if you go on a full on rampage and kill literally every single npc in the game even if that doesn't really make sense. It's not like the corporations treat you well, the guy you need to talk to to betray Phineas is one of the most annoying in the game from what I remember. So instead of playing as this tyrant that rules with an iron fist you just end up becoming another corporate lackey. You being from the other colony ship and in cohoots with the only rebel in the game already puts you at odds with the establishment.

The only real reason I can think of would be that you fundamentally disagree with Phineas' halfbaked plan to save the colony. But then the board's plan is almost just as stupid as well. It's just not a good setup for a roleplaying experience, it's like the writers simply didn't want to write for that side of the story so they... just didn't, really. I remember having the same problem with the DLCs which don't really incorporate the corporations that much. I think. I can barely recall anything from them, honestly.

The only glimmer of interest this game had is its way of dealing with conversational responsiveness to the player - it seemed like an effort had been made to make the NPCs more "aware" of the player's choices, and comment on them in amusing ways, which I think is something that could be done much more in RPGs.

(While of course avoiding the ridiculous telepathy games sometimes have - you know, you dungeon delve in some obscure place and next time you go to town all the NPCs somehow know exactly what you did.)

I wish the companions in this game were better than they actually are because of this system. Having them actually interject in conversations is a very cool feature. But then they're just... not really that interesting, honestly. Ellie is a borderline caricature and hates her rich parents. Max's quest is a nothingburger and actively makes his character less interesting once you finish it. Parvati wants a gf (and is asexual). The only one that I really enjoyed was the meme cleaner robot, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

 

[cvv]

People have fond memories of old games because they were too young and noob gamers to notice how unbalanced their systems were and how corny the writing.

Nostalgia is certainly a bitch and nostalgiafags are disgusting creatures.

But You can play old games even now, when you're an old fart, and they're still fantastic. Within the last 10 years I played Betrayal at Krondor again, old Wizardries and M&Ms, Fallout 1/2 and many others and I had a blast. I didn't think the systems were unbalanced, quite the opposite. And yes, the writing is corny, with rare exceptions, but again - it doesn't make you wince over stunningbrave girlbosses, black vikings and all white-straight-male chars being either wet noodles or evil assholes.

As for KCD, the game relies on strict authenticity, regardless of currentyear imperatives (no there weren't any female knights or black aristocrats in early 1400 rural Bohemia, end of story), and a gameplay tightly centered around immersion.

 

[AwesomeButton]

People have fond memories of old games because they were too young and noob gamers to notice how unbalanced their systems were and how corny the writing.

I didn't say this as a bad thing.

As for KCD and authenticity, I was talking about the game designer's choices about the best way of translating the player character's actions into activities for the player, a.k.a. minigames. The stealth activity is more authentic than the pickpocketing activity for example. But in the end it's somewhat subjective, it comes down to "did it give you the feeling you yourself were prowling behind some guy and swiping an object from him?".

It's just not a good setup for a roleplaying experience, it's like the writers simply didn't want to write for that side of the story so they... just didn't, really.

Same impression here, even from just Edgewater, it's obvious how the writers have been playing favorites. In the case of this game and this developer, this is quite a condemnation on the writing's quality.

 

[cvv]

Zombra bro, not sure what you think a "cuck" means...

...but it's not someone who hates woke SoCal writing.

 

[9ted6]

It's just not a good setup for a roleplaying experience, it's like the writers simply didn't want to write for that side of the story so they... just didn't, really.

Cain's sure as hell not as good as he used to be. The Outer Worlds doesn't just preach a specific viewpoint at you, it does so with all the subtlety and nuance of a bus getting dropped on your head.

 

[Late Bloomer]

How I feel after having played Outer Worlds

Timestamped at 2:15

 

[Diggfinger]

I mostly thought the game was OKtm

The world, weapons and quests were OK, sometimes amusing. Definitely MANY ways to go about (some) quests with wildly different outcomes.

But there's alot of combat - and it gets really repetitive. Some more AI patterns - like in Borderlands where enemies sometimes rage and attach each other - wouldve gone a long way. I just found myself sticking to the same weapons and having the same experience over and over again.
Also, wasnt must interesting in terms of build-diversity I wanted to try. They played it way too safe here.

Alas, I must say getting through the final hours was a chore. Only took me 15H to complete the game, but felt like an eternity in the end :-/

Maybe the DLC(s?) make it more interesting but Im OK for now.

 

[Fedora Master]

The game has actual pee pee poo poo humor. It's infantile.

 

[Ryzer]

Best recent Top-selling game by Obsidian.

 

[Modron]

Best recent Top-selling game by Obsidian.

Pretty sure that would be Grounded...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

How I feel after having played Outer Worlds

Timestamped at 2:15

The way he keeps softly wobbling like a bobblehead is hypnotic.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

How I feel after having played Outer Worlds

Timestamped at 2:15

He seems to like whatever he is drinking.

 

[cvv]

Me after 2 hours with TOW

 

[Krivol]

I see Tim Cain inspired more people to play this shit.

I also decided to try again.

It's fucking worse than Fallout 4 and I got to the Monarch to check if it gets better! I started DLC (the Murder one) and had a nice time with it for an hour, and then exploration started...

How can you fuck up with exploration? How can looking for stuff under every rock become boringfest?

Tim, I hope you were fucked in the ass hard...

Never again!

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's like he slept through the development of RPGs for the last 20 years, and someone woke him from cryosleep.

 

[Krivol]

It's like he slept through the development of RPGs for the last 20 years, and someone woke him from cryosleep.

But 20 years ago we had Gothic, Thief 1 and 2, and Deus Ex - games, where exploration is awesome to this day.

It's like he played only Fallout 3 and Borderlands and decided to mix them up (and even failed with that - lulzy Borderlands writing is actually fun and works with the game's atmosphere).