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The Outer Worlds - Information Thread, update - "Spacer's Choice Edition" announced for $60 ($10 if you already own base game + both DLC expansions)


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I don't have much opinion on the companions in this game yet except that I really like the companion abilities, which are, for all intents and purposes, spells/abilities you yourself are casting, they just require the companion in your party and alive, so in that sense they're extensions of your equipment and can handle threat and stuff. That I like. Other than that, unsure as of yet.

 

But I will say I fucking hated the companion mechanic in Mass Effect, or at least in ME2. The rigid ass loyalty missions (The exact same amount for every character, would be loyal without fault beyond that point, ugh, like a fucking formula, made them feel like the opposite of people.) just ruined the entire concept for me. I'll never know why that formulaic garbage was so beloved. Rather than fostering an actual relationship with dozens upon dozens of dialogue choices that actually mattered, loyalty came down to whether you completed these specific quests or not. You still had choices you could help them make from time to time, which was great, but much like the renegade/paragon system, putting a direct label and/or bar on it just video gamed the shit out of it and ruined it for me.

 

This is another area where I think Disco Elysium excels. Your actions have consequences, and your partner, for example, has opinions on everything you do and say, and getting him to trust you isn't something you finagle by watching bars or doing pre-assigned Loyalty Missions™ (god, just the fact that they're called that is so antithetical to the concept of loyalty to me) but rather conversing with him, learning who he is and what he thinks of the world, being decent, reliable, thinking things through. But him trusting you also isn't just some generic check mark on the game that you want to tick off, either, you could totally go down a route where you antagonize and fuck with him, or get him to distrust you on purpose and fuck him over. God Disco Elysium is so good. Go play that game you fucks, I don't want to hear about how you finally gave it a shot in 3 years and how you "can't believe you never tried it."

 

Uhh, what was I talking about again?

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30 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

-snip-

Sure, it is ok not to like them in ME, but I well. I guess... Like, In this game, you, the player behind the screen are the one developing a relationship the characters, while in Mass Effect it is more your version of Shepard who is developing the relationship. I just so happen to prefer how ME does it. It is like a book I guess where you are supposed to somewhat live vicariously through the character and enjoy the ride. I find myself connecting to the companions more with a method like that.  The Outer Worlds really isn't like that at all, and so I kinda don't care about them as much as I want to or as much as the game wants me to. 

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1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

I don't have much opinion on the companions in this game yet except that I really like the companion abilities, which are, for all intents and purposes, spells/abilities you yourself are casting, they just require the companion in your party and alive, so in that sense they're extensions of your equipment and can handle threat and stuff. That I like. Other than that, unsure as of yet.

 

But I will say I fucking hated the companion mechanic in Mass Effect, or at least in ME2. The rigid ass loyalty missions (The exact same amount for every character, would be loyal without fault beyond that point, ugh, like a fucking formula, made them feel like the opposite of people.) just ruined the entire concept for me. I'll never know why that formulaic garbage was so beloved. Rather than fostering an actual relationship with dozens upon dozens of dialogue choices that actually mattered, loyalty came down to whether you completed these specific quests or not. You still had choices you could help them make from time to time, which was great, but much like the renegade/paragon system, putting a direct label and/or bar on it just video gamed the shit out of it and ruined it for me.

 

This is another area where I think Disco Elysium excels. Your actions have consequences, and your partner, for example, has opinions on everything you do and say, and getting him to trust you isn't something you finagle by watching bars or doing pre-assigned Loyalty Missions™ (god, just the fact that they're called that is so antithetical to the concept of loyalty to me) but rather conversing with him, learning who he is and what he thinks of the world, being decent, reliable, thinking things through. But him trusting you also isn't just some generic check mark on the game that you want to tick off, either, you could totally go down a route where you antagonize and fuck with him, or get him to distrust you on purpose and fuck him over. God Disco Elysium is so good. Go play that game you fucks, I don't want to hear about how you finally gave it a shot in 3 years and how you "can't believe you never tried it."

 

Uhh, what was I talking about again?

ME's loyalty missions are a byproduct of the scope of the game and ultimately the shallowness of the dialog. I think What your wanting is just not feasible for a game with 20 side characters,side missions,multi factions,and multi races that spans 3 games and 100+ hours of game play.All those choices would get out of control and would be impossible to control the story.Once you peak behind the curtains of ME's story and dialog system you see the limitations. DE seems to be a more distilled system from what I have seen, I havent play it yet. Smaller in scope and but much more refined? 

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Just now, SimpleG said:

ME's loyalty missions are a byproduct of the scope of the game and ultimately the shallowness of the dialog. I think What your wanting is just not feasible for a game with 20 side characters,side missions,multi factions,and multi races that spans 3 games and 100+ hours of game play.All those choices would get out of control and would be impossible to control the story.Once you peak behind the curtains of ME's story and dialog system you see the limitations. DE seems to be more distilled system from what I have seen, I havent play it yet. Smaller in scope and but much more refined? 

Pretty much this exactly. Its scope is extremely limited but as a result it has so much more complexity and depth.

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Not that I really give a shit, but is it confirmed you can't romance the characters on this? 

 

Spoiler

Because after I did the first part of Parvati' mission during one of our conversations,  I definitely got a dialogue choice that was flirtatious.  I didn't pick it though but it was there.

 

Did the devs definitively you can't romance the companion characters?

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46 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Not that I really give a shit, but is it confirmed you can't romance the characters on this? 

Did the devs definitively you can't romance the companion characters?

There is ZERO romance. I made a post with a small not-main-plot-related spoiler on the previous page about it . Like, there is the grandma that hungers for the cock and you can even tap that. You can't tap anything. There aren't even whores. Well, unless they are in the rich people zone, but I doubt you can bang'em even if they exist!

 

But yeah, you can flirt up a storm all you want. Gonna get nuttin from it. Makes the charm stat feel not that great. I mean, you can't even charm the pants off anyone!

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Figured I'd chime in here... Definitely more Fallout than ME. Also definitely see the Firefly homage. I'm finding the corporate satire to be a little bit over the top and that it'd probably have been better to be more subtle and less a hammer to the face.

 

So far I'm just off the first planet. Reading everyone's comments about the companions vs ME... I'm not sure what it is (and I'm still very early) but there was something that Bioware had in the way that they wrote the companions that made me feel much more connected to them. This game looks like it's trying to replicate this but so far hasn't pulled me in... it's like they have personalities but at the same time they don't. Both the ME and DA companions definitely seemed to have a stronger sense of show, not tell... while at the same time not being so blunt. I know that may not make much sense but it's the best way I can put words to it.

 

Gameplay wise, I definitely like the shooting better than any of the fallout games I've played. I never really loved VATS in Fallout even though it's a kinda cool mechanic. So I like this one better since I still have to aim vs pick something with the highest percentage of doing what I wanted.

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One thing this game has going for it the the ambiance.

 

Edit: I dislike that you can't hide the companion controls part of the HUD. It is quite large and intrusive. Makes things look cluttered. It took me a while to stop noticing it. If it was on the other side of the screen I might not mind.

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57 minutes ago, Dexterryu said:

Figured I'd chime in here... Definitely more Fallout than ME. Also definitely see the Firefly homage. I'm finding the corporate satire to be a little bit over the top and that it'd probably have been better to be more subtle and less a hammer to the face.

 

So far I'm just off the first planet. Reading everyone's comments about the companions vs ME... I'm not sure what it is (and I'm still very early) but there was something that Bioware had in the way that they wrote the companions that made me feel much more connected to them. This game looks like it's trying to replicate this but so far hasn't pulled me in... it's like they have personalities but at the same time they don't. Both the ME and DA companions definitely seemed to have a stronger sense of show, not tell... while at the same time not being so blunt. I know that may not make much sense but it's the best way I can put words to it.

 

Gameplay wise, I definitely like the shooting better than any of the fallout games I've played. I never really loved VATS in Fallout even though it's a kinda cool mechanic. So I like this one better since I still have to aim vs pick something with the highest percentage of doing what I wanted.

Of the companions I have so far, I can say that they feel less “about” the player character than the ME / DA companions are. I kind of like that. The first two at least have more compelling reasons to join the squad than I felt that most of the ME characters did.

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13 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Of the companions I have so far, I can say that they feel less “about” the player character than the ME / DA companions are. I kind of like that. The first two at least have more compelling reasons to join the squad than I felt that most of the ME characters did.

I guess what I'm saying is more the "acting"... and I don't mean the voice acting. The ME/DA characters I felt acted a certain way. They felt a little more like real characters based on the way they acted (and portrayed who they were by their choices rather than basically coming right out and saying it). For example, Leliana was devout and it showed in everything she did. Cassandra is dedicated and it was easy to see in everything she said (without her saying "I'm dedicated"). 

 

Don't get me wrong. The companions here are better than I've seen in any previous Bethesda game. They just feel more like character sketches than characters. Compare Morigan to Vicar. Morigan acts ambiguous but Vicar basically just comes out and says it. Jack is full of rage but you have to pull it out of her as to why. 

 

My opinion may definitely change as the game goes on. I'm just saying that early on the character development is being done via telling me rather than showing me.

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It appears (from testing done at ResetEra) that the game is only optimized to run at 30fps and as such the PC experience isn't as good, and anything above that results in stutter caused by assets loading into the game. Even people running 2080ti and 9900ks can't go over 60fps at 1440p without a lot of frametime variance and fps drop. Hopefully they release some patches for PC to help this. It also appears that gsync and freesync have issues with the game as even running in "Fullscreen" isn't really fullscreen. I don't seem to have an issue in that sense, but many do. The Windows Store version of the game is also a bitch to edit/mod, which is no surprise. Fortunately I just bought the full version on EGS.

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5 minutes ago, Dexterryu said:

My opinion may definitely change as the game goes on. I'm just saying that early on the character development is being done via telling me rather than showing me.

That’s interesting, because I feel that almost all of the ME characters are tell, not show. I get that it’s an WRPG and there needs to be a lot of telling, I’m not objecting to it on a vacuum. Morrigan and Sven in DA are well written and I think it takes some time to get to know what their specific world view is. I feel that Leliana is, somewhat ironically a pretty egregious example of what it is that you’re talking about, as is the rest of the DA cast through 2 (haven’t played Inquisition) and almost all of the ME cast across all the games through 3 (haven’t played Andromeda) with the exception of Liara. 

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No way the console experience is better. I mean, I am only running very high and only at 1080, but the frames generally stay above 60. But I don't really get frames higher than 100 unless it is in a menu or maybe inside a smaller instanced area. Like, I rather be 1080p and 60fps than 1440 and 30. There is also the benefit of KB+M. Would hate to play this game with a controller. I did figure the Windows version would be harder to mod, but then again, I only paid a buck, and I won't be playing this game when the mods hit. That is even if there are good mods. I could see this game being not very mod-able. Maybe about DA:O levels of mod-ability or a little worse. 

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I spent the weekend playing this game and my view of it is that its basically a Fallout game, but shrunk from its typical scale to that of an amusement park paying homage  to Fallout. Along with the physical size reduction comes others, such as less deep companion relationships (though I found some of the dialog fun and there was still plenty there for me as I don't care about whether or not my protag has sex with character "X"), fewer overall items to collect and just generally a more "streamlined" experience. Overall though, I've enjoyed my time with it! The Graphics are a stylized sort that, despite the shrunk scale, still deliver some good vistas! Combat is forgettable, but I honestly don't find it frustrating or jankie. I refuse to hate a combat system that lets me drop kick a giant lizard, in the heat of battle, while garbed in combat gear that would fit right into Marcus Fenix's wardrobe! :sun: I consider this game a WRPG comfort food experience. It bops along, not really setting the world on fire, but entertaining me all the same. I said to a friend that it reminds me of some of my favorite Xbox 360 era RPGs. 

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41 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

It also appears that gsync and freesync have issues with the game as even running in "Fullscreen" isn't really fullscreen. I don't seem to have an issue in that sense, but many do.


I have this issue every time I load up the game, you know it happens because you can’t pick certain menu items so you have to alt + Enter to get it into windowed mode then go to the graphics settings and choose fullscreen and 3840x2160 

 

As for the edit thing it worked fine for me on the windows store version 🤷🏼‍♀️

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I've been sick and didn't have much to do this weekend, so I've spent a lot of time in the game and have surprisingly found myself pretty much at the end of it. Overall I'd say it's a good version of a game that shouldn't still be getting made. If you want Fallout but with a new skin, this will scratch that itch. Otherwise, I think it's fair to wonder why this particular game type has evolved so little since Morrowind in 2002.

 

 

Most of my criticisms can probably be leveled against any Bethesda style RPG, so make of that what you will, but I still feel like there's a good case to be made against them. The core of the problem is that there is so much about these games that feels incredibly stale from both a technology and gameplay standpoint. When Morrowind released, there was a sense of wonder in such a huge area, all in 3D, all packed with items and enemies and NPCs that you could engage and interact with. It was so easy to overlook the obvious limitations and issues with their particular approach because it was novel and exciting. Here we are 17 years later and so many of those limitations have been overcome by other games, but somehow they're still tolerated in this particular strain. 

 

 One of those things that initially created such a sense of wonder was the idea that nearly every item was something to interact with. Every cabinet could be opened, every "prop" piece of fruit could be devoured. Kill a man and steal his silverware! Then the reality of the situation sets in. If everything can be interacted with, and if you spread necessities out all over the place, the possibilities made real by making everything interactable simply become chores. Kill the baddies, loot them slowly, repeat. Empty out the hideout, and crawl through every nook and cranny, carefully pointing at each individual piece of money and each tiny container of precious ammunition. In Outer Worlds, so few are the times when those possibilities add up to anything worthwhile. I'd wager entire hours of my gameplay time were devoted just to aiming at each highlightable object, picking up that which was desperately needed along with worthless junk that added nothing to my gameplay experience. It certainly didn't help that the whole process was slightly buggy, often not bringing up the dialog box when a body was highlighted, needing to look away and then look back before I could loot.

 

Then there are the technological limitations that felt so arbitrary. So many loading screens between areas, many of which weren't particularly large. In an age of endless wilderness in RDR2, having to load a tiny laboratory interior feels backwards. Even the large outdoor spaces felt small and isolated, and the cities and towns felt tiny and empty. Companion AI and pathfinding are straight out of the early days of 3D. The questing system is serviceable, but also incredibly limited. Only being able to handle a single quest at a time, it made dealing with multiple quests in the same area a chore of manual discovery rather than simply placing markers on a map. A map which, on my Xbox One X, was incredibly slow to load. There were times that I think it might have been faster to run to my destination than to open the map screen, wait for the map, and load my destination in fast travel. The inventory screen is serviceable, but again, feels out of an older time we should have long passed. Does anyone enjoy dealing with weight limits and juggling weapon and armor durability? Does anyone want to figure out which random bit of food is ideal to load into my healing vape for any given encounter?

 

 

 

Again, this is a good game for the most part. The combat is interesting enough (though not great), the setting is fun (if not entirely original), the rpg elements are above average, providing a variety of possible playstyles. The graphics are mostly pretty good, if not outstanding. The score sets the tone well and the cast is entertaining enough. I didn't keep playing for hours on end because this is a bad game and I wanted to punish myself, I enjoyed it because it's well done. It's just a pretty good game that has been grafted to such outdated bones.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

 I consider this game a WRPG comfort food experience. It bops along, not really setting the world on fire, but entertaining me all the same. I said to a friend that it reminds me of some of my favorite Xbox 360 era RPGs. 

I called it comfort food when describing it to a coworker this morning. Nothing about it is particularly amazing or terrible. It's just pleasant. 

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1 hour ago, Biggie said:

Curious what everyone chose as their occupation in character creation?

Factory Worker, Conveyor Operator. 

 

Turns out, dodge is useless if you aren't a melee build. I thought dodge would be a random chance thing where you sometimes just didn't take damage. Like in a Turn-based RPG(FF) you just sometimes dodge without doing anything. 

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3 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

These .ini setting changes (actually downloadable .inis) seem to improve the look of the game and also increase FPS (and reduce stuttering) for most people: https://www.nexusmods.com/theouterworlds/mods/9

This is pretty nice. Upped the frames for me overall, but there are some spots that now make me drop frames that hadn't before. Not a big deal tho as it is an overall improvement as I said. 

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5 hours ago, TwinIon said:

<snip>

That's pretty much how I feel, except maybe a little less forgiving. I think the whole thing is fairly mediocre, and am having trouble mustering the energy to even open the game because I know it'll be another few hours of bad combat (Think of Destiny 2 or Call of Duty, but with this exact combat system, would you play those games? I sure as fuck wouldn't. Therefore it's a bad combat system to me.) and looting random garbage that's going to encumber me at some point. Another hour of my idiot companions getting themselves immediately killed in every combat encounter, taking away the only part of the combat I find fun (their abilities) and another hour of "brilliant" writing that's just over-the-top anti-corporate satire hitting you in the face so fucking hard it's determined to break your jaw. All with that never-gets-old conversation interface of zooming in real close to a single person's face as they stand there and stare at you, with multiple characters talking just cutting to their super close-up. Doesn't feel awkward or weird at all, nosiree.

 

Did you enjoy exploring in Fallout? Well fuck you, the world is chopped up into little chunks. No, they're not deeper or more complex than anything in Fallout, and instead of the space between them, you get loading screens. This makes some objectives for quests completely fucking absurd as a person will be "missing" and they're literally visible from the quest giver.


The writing is simplistic and sophomoric, and the idea of anyone calling it brilliant really rubs me the wrong way. Unless it really turns around at some later point in the game, it's just blunt and lacks anything resembling depth. I've made no meaningful decisions since starting the game and not a single character has made a case for why I should give a shit about these cartoonish morons.

 

I also don't find it to be RPG comfort food, because I had all these same problems with Morrowind. And Oblivion. And Skyrim. And Fallout 3. I never let the novelty of being able to pick up a trillion sporks excuse the poor gameplay and massively unfun elements of these games. And don't give me that "maybe the genre just isn't for you" spiel, the genre doesn't have to have shitty fucking combat and tedious encumbrance to succeed. It could be so much more, but because we continue to excuse the massive, MASSIVE flaws the genre has every time one of these games pops up, the flaws never go away. Why should they? People not only don't point them out, they actively fight against people who do.

 

All I see this game as is yet another bit of wasted potential, squandered by complacency and lack of ambition.

 

If you're going to put combat in your game, put as much effort into it as your dialogue system (not that I think they knocked it out of the park with this either) or skill tree. If you're going to have a bunch of shit for me to pick up, make it as interesting as you want the world building to be. There's no reason the experience has to be such a lopsided mess. I don't need it to be flawless, but it sure as hell would be nice if someone was trying to do more than the bare minimum.


I really do feel like this game has just become a chore for me. When I step back to decide what I actually want to do in the world, I just see each individual element as another chore list. Dialogue I don't find interesting, so slog through a conversation, combat I find mediocre, so force myself through that. Exploration on tiny worlds full of pocketing one semi interesting item and 800 inventory-cloggers. Then you kind of run out of stuff from there because despite how people talk about the big "play space" in these games, there's never actually all that much you can do. You can talk, you can fight, you can explore. And this game's kind of missing the exploration bit to a large extent.

 

Not every game is for every person, but I think whoever finally puts the time and effort to make EVERY system in these types of games excellent is going to reign as the new RPG king. The Witcher 3 pushed things forward a lot, but even that had so-so combat and annoying inventory management.

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