The Outer Worlds – Art, Companions and Dark Comedy

GameInformer continues to cover Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds. Their latest set of features is dedicated to The Outer Worlds’ promotional art, Obsidian’s approach to companion design, and the intricacies of adding dark and humorous elements to story-heavy games. Here’s Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky talking about dark comedy for ten minutes:

And here’s a bit on Obsidian’s approach to writing RPG companions:

You may be exploring a faraway star system in The Outer Worlds, but that doesn’t mean you need to be lonely. You encounter other people during your travels who are willing to fight by your side and join your crew, and who enrich your experience by offering different perspectives. We talked to a team of writers at Obsidian to get specific info on three of the companions you can recruit, as well as various other tidbits about the studio’s general approach to these characters.

Generally, one writer handles all of a companion’s interactions

If you take a liking to one particular companion, odds are good that you have a single member of Obsidian’s writing team to thank. Though parts of the process are certainly collaborative, all of a character’s interactions are usually guided by one person for consistency’s sake. “It’s a lot easier to keep any character in the hands of one person, because everyone’s going to put their own spin on a character to some extent,” says senior narrative designer Carrie Patel. “The more a character changes hands, the more you’re getting multiple different executions, multiple different flavors.”

The crew dynamic is important

While the team wants the companions to be interesting as individuals, they also need to cohere as a group. They banter as you walk around, interact with each other on your ship, and bring different capabilities into combat. “We knew we needed companions with sort of that Firefly flavor,” says narrative designer Nitai Poddar. “We wanted them to be a band of, not quite misfits, but different personalities coming together on the same ship. And we knew we wanted a fairly confined number of them so that each would be individual.”

You encounter them early

Opportunities to recruit companions are front-loaded, to avoid the sense of under-developed characters joining late in the journey. “You encounter all the companions in the first third of the game, because it’s no fun getting a companion in the last hour,” co-director Tim Cain told us at the game’s unveiling.