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

[Lemming42]

Can you remind me again what her plan was? Wasn't it freezing everbody until the problems magically disappears? Without any new scientists to work on it except for the idiots the game showed being active at the time?

Essentially, yeah. Her plan was to vacate the Hope (she tells you that there's no chance of saving most of the other Hope colonists - the game contradicts her on this later on, and on everything else she ever says, but at the moment she says it, you can assume she's right) and then use the ship to store the Halcyon colonists, putting an end to the imminent starvation crisis. She's then going to bring people in and out of cryo at six month intervals to keep the colony afloat, presumably while looking to some kind of long-term solution, or waiting for Board resources that exist on the barely-mentioned other colonies to make their way to Halcyon.

There's also a crucial bit of info that the game decides not to tell you until the very end - Earth has gone dark. From Akande's perspective, the resources and aid she's been waiting for are never going to come, and she's gone from being in charge of a failing colony to being in charge of some of the last remnants of all of humanity, and they're slowly dying. This goes a massive way to explaining her character - the stress of the situation she's in would obviously be pretty unimaginable - and to explaining her cryo plan, which in light of this information has the added bonus of keeping some of humanity alive indefinitely.

You're right in that in the final game, her plan is gibberish, because the writers deliberately sabotaged it to the point of outright telling you it won't even work, but that's the overall outline.

My theory is that the core plot conflict was conceived by someone who thought in terms of ideas, while the actual script was written by left-wing tribalists. A conflict of ideas can have nuance and tradeoffs. A conflict of tribes just has the Good Tribe and the Other Tribes Who Are Evil. And, as left-wing tribalists, there was no way the writers would allow the corporations to be the Good Tribe.

Ordinarily I wouldn't go in for this type of explanation, but I think it's exactly what's happened. If I had to guess, the game's development looks something like this:

1. Somebody comes up with an initial treatment that describes the situation: the colony is starving. The people in charge are having to make impossible, nightmarish decisions. Sophia Akande, a high-ranking member of the Board, is holding the place together with her own two hands, barely keeping it from slipping into the brink - not to mention, she's also grappling more or less alone with the horrible knowledge that Earth has gone dark and that help isn't coming. Forced by circumstance, and guided her own hard-nosed pragmatism, she learns of the Hope and realises that it may be humanity's last chance (notably, she may face opposition from within the Board for this plan). One scientist, Welles, goes rogue - he's an idealist with a wild plan, and if he's right, which he may well be, he can save everyone. If he's wrong, the colony dies. Welles' plan is insanely high risk, whereas Akande's plan is far less optimistic but far safer. The player is forced to choose between "50% chance save everyone, 50% chance kill everyone" and "100% chance save some people, 100% chance doom some people". It is a good plot which can make for a fantastic game.

2. The brief passes to a team of writers who are tasked with translating it into a playable game. Most, if not all of them, are interested in making a "satirical anti-capitalist" game, and trying their hand at a bit of Rick and Morty "humour". The Board - who might not have even been an arch-capitalist entity in the original outline, but have been designated such now for the purpose of conveying this brilliant "satire" to players - begin to transform from broadly sympathetic people making tough decisions in a horrible situation into a group of laughable villains. The harsh measures they're being forced to put in place turn into "ha ha suicide fees for depresssed workers, lol". All Board members except Akande are written as stupid bastards.

3. Someone realises Sophia Akande is still too sympathetic. To fix this, they make a quest where she tells the player to commit genocide, and have it be the introductory quest to the Board for many players. For good measure, they also have her literally open fire on the player then and there if they refuse. Close shave, there - now nobody's going to side with the Board, phew. Someone also realises that Phineas' plan is still unpalatable, so they hastily write an epilogue that says "don't worry, everything worked out perfectly just off-screen!" if you pick Phineas, and "everyone is miserable and dead forever" if you pick Akande.

4. Either because the game was written by several people who didn't communicate properly, or because the game went through various drafts and kept remnants of previous incarnations, or because everyone involved is completely talentless, the game is now tonally and logically incoherent on every level. Despite the best efforts of the writers to shit on their own product, the original plot is still visible if you squint, and can be gleaned in the occasional bit of dialogue or datapad. The result is a truly awful game.

 

[Roguey]

The Avellone go-to is to blame Feargus's meddling.

You guys are overthinking a stupid plot that was written by talentless diversity hires

The plot came from Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain.

 

[Yosharian]

The Avellone go-to is to blame Feargus's meddling.

You guys are overthinking a stupid plot that was written by talentless diversity hires

The plot came from Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain.

He directed the narrative, sure, but did he actually write everything? Was he in charge of the writing for all the quests? The inane dialogue? I doubt it.

Not that I have a shred of respect for either of those guys after TOW, but still

 

[Roguey]

He directed the narrative, sure, but did he actually write everything? Was he in charge of the writing for all the quests? The inane dialogue? I doubt it.

It would be impossible for him to write everything, but he was responsible for direction. The buck stops with him (unless Feargus meddled in which case Feargus takes the blame).

Also Outer Worlds won a Nebula for its writing, beating Disco Elysium. Libs gonna lib https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-outer-worlds-wins-nebula-award-for-game-writing

 

[Vulpes]

The writing is so shit, schizophrenic and pozzed that I almost started killing everyone at several points in the game out of sheer frustration. The first moment was when I finally got off the starting planet and took the time to get to know my initial companions a bit better (who I already wasn't a big fan of). The mechanic was telling me how she's asexual and not even five minutes later she wants me to do a sidequest where I help her hook up with the space station's dyke captain (someone she just met for the first time). I would've ignored this sudden 180 flip as a miscommunication between writers, but it gets pretty retarded soon after. Get this, the captain's position is hereditary (her great-grandmother was the original captain) and she's not exactly keen on trusting outsiders or letting the Board exert control over it, so how the fuck is a dyke relationship supposed to work out? She never mentions having any siblings or nephews she can pass the title to.

A much more headache-inducing moment (that nearly made me uninstall the game) happened during the SubLight questline. Up to that stage of the game, their director seemed to be the most competent and level-headed person I met so far, and then their ruined it at last moment by turning her into a nutjob conspiracist who believes that an alien invasion is imminent. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, I lost what little respect I still had for Obsidian by that point. In fact, I wholeheartedly wished to see their entire writing team get fired and sent to do back-breaking manual labor.

Because it was written by woketards. Just look at that hbs game (or as real Battletech fans call it hBStech).

Dragonfall, a game that gets a lot of underserved praise on the Codex, had the same issues and it isn't brought up nearly enough. It's full of libshit tropes like ORC LIVEZ MATTUR, bash le fash and fawning over anarchism.

 

[gurugeorge]

I would agree that the general premise and setup for ToW was pretty good - I mean, that's why I tried the game, because the setting looked cool. I even liked the graphics, with the garish alien life, etc.

Where it falls down is, indeed, in the regular flow of lame dialogue and story beats, as well as in being almost completely without innovation and relying on the same old gameplay tropes that we've seen a thousand times before. There was no attempt to stretch or improve the genre whatsoever.

 

[Wesp5]

I would agree that the general premise and setup for ToW was pretty good - I mean, that's why I tried the game, because the setting looked cool. I even liked the graphics, with the garish alien life, etc.

I imagine that Tim and Leonard came up with the premise and general plot and the junior writers messed it up, because Tim often said that he can't write and I never heard that Leonard wrote something either. I bet with Bloodlines it was the same at first, either them or Jason came up with the main story, but they were lucky that Mitsoda came along later to make it and the characters work.

 

[Wesp5]

She's then going to bring people in and out of cryo at six month intervals to keep the colony afloat, presumably while looking to some kind of long-term solution, or waiting for Board resources that exist on the barely-mentioned other colonies to make their way to Halcyon.

But this would still mean 100% certain death for everybody, just later. If they bring only the same people out of stasis that couldn't find a solution to the starvation problem for all the years the colony has been established, why should this suddenly work? Why would other colonies move resources to Halcyon when they probably have the same problem and far reaching space travel isn't really kind of safe? Welles' idea is certainly better, like the reverse of the Hitchhiker's arks !

 

[Butter]

I would agree that the general premise and setup for ToW was pretty good - I mean, that's why I tried the game, because the setting looked cool. I even liked the graphics, with the garish alien life, etc.

I imagine that Tim and Leonard came up with the premise and general plot and the junior writers messed it up, because Tim often said that he can't write and I never heard that Leonard wrote something either. I bet with Bloodlines it was the same at first, either them or Jason came up with the main story, but they were lucky that Mitsoda came along later to make it and the characters work.

Who wrote Arcanum? I refuse to believe that Edward R.G. Mortimer is a real person.

 

[Lemming42]

But this would still mean 100% certain death for everybody, just later. If they bring only the same people out of stasis that couldn't find a solution to the starvation problem for all the years the colony has been established, why should this suddenly work? Why would other colonies move resources to Halcyon when they probably have the same problem and far reaching space travel isn't really kind of safe? Welles' idea is certainly better, like the reverse of the Hitchhiker's arks !

I think you can kind of see the outline of what might have been the original plot if you squint. Akande's trying to keep the colony going as long as possible with the risk of it being in a permanent tailspin, and Welles is coming in with an all-or-nothing alternative that could wipe everyone out right away, or could save everyone.

Under Akande's plan, the appeal is that several more generations of people will definitely get to live in relative comfort, even if the colony's situation is deterioriating. She's also playing for time - theoretically, the longer she keeps the colony alive, the longer the chance of getting some kind of backup from elsewhere, or someone managing to find a solution. Welles' plan on the other hand could, potentially, wipe out the entire colony in a very short time period thanks to putting vastly more stress on the existing food shortages. So Akande is offering the guaranteed survival of the colony for another few generations, while Welles is saying "death or glory" and potentially risking depriving those generations of life, and gambling with the lives of everyone currently on the colony.

Though this is, again, me desperately trying to figure out what the hell the original story treatment might have been. In the final release, very little seems to make much sense, and the writers ensured there are absolutely no reasons left to even entertain the possibility of the Board's plan.

 

[MF]

Who wrote Arcanum? I refuse to believe that Edward R.G. Mortimer is a real person.

Chad Moore, mostly. Mortimer exists, he writes pen and paper modules and was contracted to do some dialogue for Arcanum.

 

[Yosharian]

I would agree that the general premise and setup for ToW was pretty good - I mean, that's why I tried the game, because the setting looked cool. I even liked the graphics, with the garish alien life, etc.

I imagine that Tim and Leonard came up with the premise and general plot and the junior writers messed it up, because Tim often said that he can't write and I never heard that Leonard wrote something either. I bet with Bloodlines it was the same at first, either them or Jason came up with the main story, but they were lucky that Mitsoda came along later to make it and the characters work.

Exactly.

 

[Maldoror]

it's like doing a Legion playthrough of New Vegas. Which is to say, they're so patently and retardedly evil that I have no idea why I'm working for them other than that I'm forcing myself to see all the game's content.

Not even remotely comparable. It is very easy to be seduced by Caesar's philosophy and particular accounts of history and his ambitions if you are an "ends justify the means" type of person with a fetish for what the Courier describes to Vulpes as "the purity of the Legion's justice", not to mention the fact that they are actively rebuilding the world instead of repairing it with scrap and duct tape.

I get what you're saying about the Board and I'm inclined to agree, but it doesn't apply with the Legion. One is well written and compelling and one is flat and confusing.

 

[Infinitron]

PSA for people who didn't play/finish the game, the Sophia Akande character who Lemming42 believes was mistreated by Obsidian's woke junior writers looks like this:

(But this is in accordance with my theory that The Outer Worlds is ultimately more sympathetic to its goofy white boy characters than to its hypercompetent girlbosses: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...ate-space-colony.130421/page-226#post-6547787)

 

[Lemming42]

The "woke" accusations are tedious - I think it's more a case of the writers just being completely shit more than anything else, and if ideology does come into it, the problem was that they were incapable of seeing the Board and anyone in it as decent, rather than anything to do with the sex or race of any given character.

However:

The Outer Worlds is ultimately more sympathetic to its goofy white boy characters than to its hypercompetent girlbosses

It's worth noting that Akande isn't a "hypercompetent girlboss" the way she's writtten; she's wrong about everything and the game outright refuses to let you even consider otherwise, and she's portrayed as a brutish idiot from the first instant you meet her. This is, I imagine, more because she's allied to the faction the writers despised and refused to give any depth or nuance to, rather than anything to do with her sex or race.

But... the quoted statement is actually true. It's hard not to notice, and it's the case throughout the whole game. Any female character in a position of power is portrayed as some degree of incompetent, uncaring, or outright malicious, while the majority of the game's male characters are well-meaning bumbling goofballs (most of whom were very obviously written by 20-something women). Female characters tend to only be written sympathetically if they're content with low stations, like Parvati. It's really fucking weird and it made me uncomfortable as hell while playing. I'm familiar enough with the type of online culture the writers likely come from to be able to explain why this kind of regressive shit ended up permeating a game that the writers probably believed was progressive, but that'd turn into me sperging online, so I won't.

It's beside the point, though. Akande could have been a white man and the game would probably have still treated the character and faction terribly, unless one of the writers felt protective of him in which case there'd be a terminal entry lying around somewhere to show that he was secretly a "cute scrungly little scrimblo" or somesuch.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Is there some sort of mod or setting that makes the gameplay interesting? As I recall, my main issue with it was that it was so easy that it almost felt like I didn't have to be there to win.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Is there some sort of mod or setting that makes the gameplay interesting?

Apparently there's some mod that increases enemy HP or something like that. Someone mentioned it here some time ago.

 

[Yosharian]

https://www.nexusmods.com/theouterworlds/mods/141

https://www.nexusmods.com/theouterworlds/mods/148

Doesn't really make the gameplay interesting but it does make it less faceroll, I still managed to break the game using science weapons so maybe that Weapons Overhaul mod isn't balanced as well as it could be

 

[ColonelMace]

You can trivialize any fight even with difficulty enhancing mods by using the mind control rifle, which is not only a full on total disable but also counts as a silent weapon for some reason.

Gameplay really is beyond salvaging.
Didn't help me during my playthrough that I went for a min-maxed dude with very low dexterity : reload times were so bad I had to couple reloading animations with companions abilities (which doesn't stop your reload time although it kind of freezes the enemy in place).
It's really bad and probably top priority on the list of things to improve upon in the sequel. Might explain why they don't show anything (that and Avowed similarly slow and weightless gameplay which got legitimately frown upon by the greater public).

 

[Child of Malkav]

You can trivialize any fight even with difficulty enhancing mods by using the mind control rifle, which is not only a full on total disable but also counts as a silent weapon for some reason.

Gameplay really is beyond salvaging.
Didn't help me during my playthrough that I went for a min-maxed dude with very low dexterity : reload times were so bad I had to couple reloading animations with companions abilities (which doesn't stop your reload time although it kind of freezes the enemy in place).
It's really bad and probably top priority on the list of things to improve upon in the sequel. Might explain why they don't show anything (that and Avowed similarly slow and weightless gameplay which got legitimately frown upon by the greater public).

Other than the gloop gun, prismatic hammer and the spectrum rifle from the dlc I didn't bother with the science weapons after I saw how weak they were and their utility extremely limited. You mentioned the mind control gun, that thing lasts for like 5 seconds or something and requires you to keep firing and have line of sight on the target and with all that the target can't kill anything worth a damn plus IIRC you are also detected while shooting it.

 

[ColonelMace]

You are actually not detected most of the time, and the controlled target will simply walk around while your companions fuck him up.
There's simply not too much thought that went into it.

 

[Child of Malkav]

You are actually not detected most of the time, and the controlled target will simply walk around while your companions fuck him up.

Really? I'm misremembering this? I tried using the mind control gun and I always got detected. No matter whether I had LoS or not. And you had to keep firing the thing. The same crap with the shrink gun...it lasts 4 seconds or something. I mean, in that time I might as well just kill whatever I was looking at. The concept is good but they need to develop it further, maybe it's the "magic version" of the Tow universe. Instead of adding magic/psionic/biotic basically you have these guns that can have a huge variety of effects. But they need to be more powerful and last longer to be viable. The same thing with buffs in most games: they last between 5- 30 seconds. They should last for hours. They should be powerful and very expensive.

 

[Roguey]

You can trivialize any fight even with difficulty enhancing mods by using the mind control rifle, which is not only a full on total disable but also counts as a silent weapon for some reason.

Gameplay really is beyond salvaging.
Didn't help me during my playthrough that I went for a min-maxed dude with very low dexterity : reload times were so bad I had to couple reloading animations with companions abilities (which doesn't stop your reload time although it kind of freezes the enemy in place).
It's really bad and probably top priority on the list of things to improve upon in the sequel. Might explain why they don't show anything (that and Avowed similarly slow and weightless gameplay which got legitimately frown upon by the greater public).

"I was told to make it casual," - Tim Cain

 

[Yosharian]

I used this in my playthrough, 11k DPS shrink ray

https://i.ibb.co/0Q4zWTV/build1.jpg

 

[Wesp5]

But they need to be more powerful and last longer to be viable.

I agree. I believe I basically used a unique chaingun I found on the first map throughout most of the game and it was good enough! I only switched weapons to give myself some variety .