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The Outer Worlds Info Round-Up

Teslerum

Member
Stage Demo Walkthrough



Trailer



Stage Demo Impressions




Interviews:





Previews:
PCWorld: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3402058/obsidian-the-outer-worlds-e3-preview.html
GameCrate: https://www.gamecrate.com/preview-outer-worlds-e3-2019-fallout-in-space-good-and-bad/23306
Game Rant: https://gamerant.com/the-outer-worlds-gameplay-demo-e3-2019-preview/
Prima Games: https://primagames.com/feature/outer-worlds-preview-perfect-game-fallout-fans
IGN: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/12/the-outer-worlds-can-be-tailored-to-anyones-taste
Tomsguide: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/outer-worlds-obsidian-e3,news-30329.html


Some Quotes:
In the E3 2019 demo mission, the player is tasked with disrupting the operations of a powerful local businessman named Clive. Getting into his slaughterhouse to confront him can be accomplished a few different ways: either charging through the front door with weapons, picking a lock to access a nearby sewer, or by using a holographic disguise that allows you to enter restricted areas. The holographic disguise looked to be a recurring feature of the game. It has a limited charge the runs out as you move, and NPCs will still confront you and may require smooth talking even when you have the disguise active - so it's best used in concert with a character that has decent charm or intimidation skills.

Shoot at an enemy’s head, and you might blind him; shoot at an enemy’s hand, and you might disarm him.

On the factory floor, there were also choices on how to deal with a workshop full of human workers. By getting on the loudspeaker and taking advantage of Ellie’s ability to lie, the avatar convinced the workers that the boss wanted them all to take a hike immediately. From there, all she had to do was sneak past a few robotic guards. She didn’t have to do this, though; she could have sneaked past everyone, or fought off the robots, or used a completely different tactic to get the workers to leave.

Even once the party finally met with Lumbergh, it wasn’t clear how the scenario would play out. While Malin wanted Lumbergh’s head, Lumbergh made a counter-offer: Kill Malin, and receive a lifetime supply of boarst in return. A highly skilled player could convince the two crime lords to work together – or perhaps kill them both and leave a void in Monarch’s power structure.

“I apparently ran over so many mines or just got shot in the head so many times that I got offered a flaw to take a permanent concussion,” remembered Stark, “which made my character dumb.”

These ingredients play out in adorable disturbing ways, with my personal favorite being the pen of cystypigs. These are animals that have been engineered to produce delicious bacon-flavored tumors that, when ripe and juicy, fall off the pigs and are you used to create various products such as Borst pockets, Borst and beans, and Borstworst. “You haven't tried the worst until you've tried, Borstworst.”

And
 
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Silent protagonist ugh. Glad it's on Game pass coz silent protagonist killed the hype for me. Silent protagonist in 2019 .Unacceptable
Really? The silent protagonist is what drove it home for me. Fallout 4 was all the more worse for a voiced protagonist. I know that was a Bethesda game, and this is an Obsidian game but the comparison seems similar enough. Also, The Outer World's focus on roleplaying and choices seems to run counter to a voiced protagonist. If this was a story-based shooter, then I think you'd be correct, but with this being an RPG I think the silent route makes sense.
 

Filben

Member
Fallout 4 was all the more worse for a voiced protagonist.
I actually felt more connected with the protagonist. To contrary believe, I can't identify myself or relate to a 'camera' moving through the world. I didn't care at all about Corvo in Dishonored 1 because he wasn't a character to me, I did care though about Emily in Dishonored 2. I want to see and/or hear emotions so I can bond with the character. I also ideally want to see my character that I created (so I can also see his or her emotions); that's the reason why I liked the (optional) dialog camera in Fallout 4. Of course I take more complex dialogs over the shitty simple ones in Fallout 4 if I had to choose. If I can have both, however, please give me a voiced protagonist.

Outer Worlds is still a day one buy for me, though. Everything else looks amazing.
 
Really? The silent protagonist is what drove it home for me. Fallout 4 was all the more worse for a voiced protagonist. I know that was a Bethesda game, and this is an Obsidian game but the comparison seems similar enough. Also, The Outer World's focus on roleplaying and choices seems to run counter to a voiced protagonist. If this was a story-based shooter, then I think you'd be correct, but with this being an RPG I think the silent route makes sense.
Loved voice character in Fallout 4. Courtney Taylor is such a good voice actor. She has a very sexy voice
 

Teslerum

Member


Leonard seems confident for a future in this video, much more than they were a few months ago.
Could be MS hinted at something/has aquired publishing rights for future games from Take2.
 
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Filben

Member
Loved voice character in Fallout 4. Courtney Taylor is such a good voice actor. She has a very sexy voice
I usually play the dubbed version of a game, but after hearing her I immediately fell in love with her voice. Not gonna lie, she one of the reasons I chose a female protagonist and played the damn game for so long.
 
I still can't believe this is launching on Game Pass! I was so convinced it wouldn't because of the publishing deal before Microsoft bought them.
 

TheSweeper

Member
Silent protagonist ugh. Glad it's on Game pass coz silent protagonist killed the hype for me. Silent protagonist in 2019 .Unacceptable

I'm with you on that.

I'm going to try it anyways, as I'm a sucker for RPGs but I was really disappointed to learn about the silent protagonist and lack of romances.

Guess I'm spoiled by Mass Effect.
 

Teslerum

Member

Some quotes:

About who decides on the sequel
RPG Site:
(laughs) But if it's a hit, and the opportunity to follow up with a sequel or DLC or something is announced. Whose decision would that be? Obsidian's, Microsoft's, or Private Division?

Mikey Dowling: It would be Microsoft, if a sequel would happen.


About tone and the question of voice acting in a rpg
RPG Site:
So what sets The Outer Worlds apart?

Leonard Boyarsky: I think it's the tone and feel of the world, and the fact that it really reacts to your choices. There are a lot of games that do that now, at least more than there used to be, but I feel that we take it further than other games. That was one of the reasons that we didn't want a voiced protagonist. Because you know, once you do that you set the personality of the player at least partially in stone.

RPG Site: Speaking about Fallout, there's a sort of relevant tangent there as voice acting was added and it's not always seen as the best change the series has undertaken.

Leonard Boyarsky: Yea, I can't speak as to why Fallout went that direction, but for us it wasn't even a discussion to voice the player-character. It was always assumed from minute one that we would not. There's two aspects to it -- no matter what voice you 'pick', someone is going to feel that who they hear isn't who their character is. On the other side of that, if you're recording player voices you have to restrict what you write. If you come up with five more ideas or choices, but there's no opportunity to record new lines, then you can't really go further with ideas and you can't easily go back to add choices that weren't there before. So it gives us a lot more freedom, and it allows the player to completely imagine who they are in our world without anything in their way.


About companions
RPG Site:
So about the characters that are voiced, the companions -- last year I got to talk about them a little bit with the game's first showing, but a couple of things were kept under wraps. We only knew of Felix and Ellie and since then Parvati. Is Nyoka (a companion showcased during the E3 demo) new?

Leonard Boyarsky: We didn't make a big deal about the reveal, but she was in our PAX demo a couple of months ago. So those are the four companions that we've talked about, and we aren't sharing yet the ultimate number or who the others might be. As always, we want the companions to be very integral to the game world. For instance, Nyoka is from Monarch, so when the player is running around this area, other characters will recognize her and have that history with her. She'll probably help call out a few people that are actually full of shit and trying to mislead you.

RPG Site: Seems like something she'd say.

Leonard Boyarsky: Exactly, and not only that but we tried to emphasize the Leadership characteristics in our demo, where companions are buffed to be even more important, and they'll even give part of their skills back to the player, so we don't just have companions as sounding boards, they'll have that gameplay role as well.

RPG Site: In some games with a system of companions, sometimes there are cases where two companions will never see eye-to-eye and you have to pick and choose. Is that the case in The Outer Worlds?

Leonard Boyarsky: No, in our mind, we wanted to make a rich group of characters that will effectively become your crew. Now, these characters all have deep ties to different parts of the world, but we didn't want to lock off characters behind allying with different factions or something like that. We didn't want to tell players "Oh, if you side with the Board, this is what companion we allow to side with you". We really wanted to allow players to build their crew as a group of smugglers or however they wanted to play it, and having this choice was always a conscious goal of ours.


About killing everyone
RPG Site:
Last year, I asked Megan if it was possible to kill any character in the game, and the answer was yes. I just want to make sure: is that true and still the case?

Leonard Boyarsky: [After a pause] There is one character that you can't kill until the end of the game. But every character in The Outer Worlds can be killed.

RPG Site: It's a pretty stark design decision to declare that you're going to allow that sort of freedom.

Leonard Boyarsky: It's always a goal of ours, I think - I can't remember if this is true - but even in the very first Fallout, that was a goal on our part, with the exception of one person that couldn't die because they were a ghost, so that's not cheating. Somewhat of another exception here are companion characters.

RPG Site: Oh?

Leonard Boyarsky: What I mean is, you can kill them before they become allied with you, but once they are, you don't have friendly fire options to be able to past that point. You can send them away and they'll disappear from the game, but as companion characters, they do work slightly differently. So I guess that's technically a caveat. Tim just did a playthrough where he killed almost everyone he came across, so he finished the game fairly quickly because he couldn't do most of the side quests. But he was able to complete the main story no problem.
 
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Thanks T Teslerum for updating this thread. The Outer Worlds is the game I’m most looking forward to this year and any new info is always a welcome sight.

I wonder what a potential sequel looks like now that funding isn’t a huge issue. Obsidian was always quick to point out the scale of the game was determined by funding. If that restriction was removed, I wonder how much different the game would’ve been.
 

Teslerum

Member
Thanks T Teslerum for updating this thread. The Outer Worlds is the game I’m most looking forward to this year and any new info is always a welcome sight.

Hopefully they make release without delays. At the moment they are far enough from Cyberpunk to not be impacted by it. And in terms of WRPG's they don't really have any big competition for this year at all.

I wonder what a potential sequel looks like now that funding isn’t a huge issue. Obsidian was always quick to point out the scale of the game was determined by funding. If that restriction was removed, I wonder how much different the game would’ve been.

Tim and Leonard dream big, I doubt they wouldn't have to scale down in the end anyway.
 
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Teslerum

Member
Yeah, so theres a Kotaku podcast with Jason Schreier interviewing Leonard Boyarsky... Yeaaaaaaaaaaaah... Hahaha


Yeah, you know what you're thinking *Eh, Schreier probably tried to turn it overly political.....

Yeaaaaahh, hahahaha....

ha....

haha...

Ah, I'll just post the question he asked midway through the interview

*Are you at all worried that you teach people to be facist?*

shark.jpg


And thus the shark jumped. Or how other people would call it *The moment Jason Schreier completly lost it*
 
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Teslerum

Member
A day later and I'm still shocked by that interview. From the fake laugh, over questioning why the game even offers the choice to side with the corporations to stealthly asking if he as a member of the media is also included in the *media control narrative* in a bad way.

Because of course if theres any indication that anything bad would also apply to people fighting the *good fight* like he is that would be BAAAAAD, but otoh corporations=bad is good.

Fuck, there lots of people with whose opinion I completly disagree with who I would still have a beer with and joke around. Jason Schreier is not among those people, because after that interview I can only imagine him as a two-faced snake.
 
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Teslerum

Member
I need to know, can i kill a person just by using my high charisma level?


Can i get shit done just using speech check?

Good chance you can in some way considering their history. Don't know about straight up suiciding someone like in Fallout 1 though.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
I have been keeping an eye on this since I heard about it as in theory it should be my bag. I do have a couple of issues however. #1 is that it's an Epic exclusive - so I'll not be buying it til it makes its way to Steam or Gog (preferably the latter). #2 is a worry that it may be just another Fallout-style sandbox. The writing and worldbuilding will need to be really fucking good to counter that. I hope it turns out amazing.
 

Teslerum

Member
I have been keeping an eye on this since I heard about it as in theory it should be my bag. I do have a couple of issues however. #1 is that it's an Epic exclusive - so I'll not be buying it til it makes its way to Steam or Gog (preferably the latter). #2 is a worry that it may be just another Fallout-style sandbox. The writing and worldbuilding will need to be really fucking good to counter that. I hope it turns out amazing.

#1 You will be able to purchase and install it over the new GOG Galaxy client at least (As Microsoft partnered up with them) whenever it releases. Game Pass works as well.
#2 It's not a classic open-world, more like, for example KOTOR2.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
#1 You will be able to purchase and install it over the new GOG Galaxy client at least (As Microsoft partnered up with them) whenever it releases. Game Pass works as well.
#2 It's not a classic open-world, more like, for example KOTOR2.

#1 I'm afraid I can't support EGS in any capacity for my particular reasons re erosion of choice etc. MS store I might tolerate, though not Gamepass as tempting as it is due to the long-term erosion of consumer rights that represents. Steam is already further than I'd like to go in that direction.
#2 That sounds better - more focused is good, I played KOTOR 2 for the first time a few months back and it became one of my favourite games of all time, admittedly in large part due to Kreia.
 

Teslerum

Member

"You [can actually] end up being the antagonist of the game, based on your choices," she continued. And though Starks wasn't able to provide specifics (as doing so would obviously spoil the game), she did say that choosing to be The Outer Worlds' villain "definitely" has drastic changes to the overall outcome of the story.

"[Characters] will comment if you run around naked," Starks said, laughing. "A lot of [the story] is based on the actions you take in the game. If you kill someone that [another character] cares about, they're definitely going to be very opinionated. Felix is kind of this happy-go-lucky, violent anarchist, so he doesn't like it if you're siding with the Board and doing their propaganda stuff." How you present yourself can influence others' perception of you and, in turn, change what options you have with the said character going forward. Approaching a peaceful town with all your guns out isn't the best first impression, for example. "They'll ask you to put your gun away if you're in town," Starks said. "They'll say, 'Whoa! Watch where you're pointing that thing!'" Though it doesn't have as major an impact on questlines and the overall story, characters will react to whether you're a man or woman as well.

In another example, developing a fear of the dark provided a welcome perk but at the cost of losing out on sneaking into an enemy stronghold via the unlit back alley. You need to think ahead when it comes to Flaws, as something that doesn't seem very important early in the game can have consequences hours later.
 
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Teslerum

Member
Number of substantialy different endings has been confirmed as 3. (Board, Phineas/Rebellion and Independent).
So one less than New Vegas. (NCR/Legion/House/Independent).
 
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Tiamat2san

Member
I WILL be the villain in the game!
I always am an asshole in game where I have the choice to be.
I am a nice person in life but always the worst in game.
It’s so fun.
 
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