The Outer Worlds Interviews

A few days back we had a chance to watch some early The Outer Worlds gameplay and read a number of articles dedicated to Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming sci-fi RPG. But if you’d like to learn a bit more about this curious project and the people behind it, you may be interested in reading this GameSpot interview with the game’s co-directors Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky. An excerpt:

If you can really put yourself back in your own shoes in the ’90s, compared to today, what aspect of your current responsibilities do you love, and what do you miss from those times that you worked in an attic, and…

Boyarsky: Well for me I still love the things I loved then, creating a world from scratch, it’s just the best part about this. I love creating unique worlds with a unique feel and a unique look. The thing I do have to say I miss is that when we made Fallout and Arcanum, it was a very small team. We got to do all the stuff we’re doing now but we also got to do…Tim did programming, I did design, like a lot of art on Fallout. I was the lead artist and the art director, and I was also doing like havlf the animations in the game, modelling stuff, texture mapping. I didn’t end up scripting on that one, but I scripted in Arcanum. Working on those small teams you end up having your hand in everything.

For [The Outer Worlds] we are much more directors. It’s our vision, but we have a lot of very talented and wonderful people that we’re working with who have done things that, especially from an art standpoint, I don’t know that I would have brought it in that direction, but in a good way. We pointed them in a direction and they ran in directions that we never could have anticipated. In a way that’s very rewarding because you feel like you gave people a germ of an idea and they got to make it their own and it comes back to you and you see what people have done. But on the other hand, I’m not in there doing that every day. I’m making sure people are heading to the right destination and fulfilling our vision of the game. I’ve been able to do some writing, some hands-on art direction, but for the most part a lot of people are doing the actual nuts-and-bolts work that we used to do on a day-to-day basis.

Cain: Plus, one thing, in the ’90s you could do things no one had ever done before because everything was so young and it was a bit of a Wild West of an industry. Now every time you think of something and you look, it’s like, “Oh, this game did it. This indie game did it five years ago.” It’s hard to think of something that is completely original.

We managed to put some things in here that I’ve never seen done in a game. In that way, I kinda miss that…the sky was the limit back then. If you could think about it, you could do it.

And then, checking out this Shacknews interview with The Outer Worlds’ senior narrative designer Megan Starks. A few sample questions:

Shacknews: I’m intrigued by the idea of flaws. How does the system work, both in terms of influencing the character and how it shapes the overall story?

Starks: The interesting thing about flaws is, it does make it feel like it’s a unique journey to you. Like if you’re taking a lot of damage from Raptidons, maybe you become afraid of them, because they hurt you a lot. And then that affects your combat stats when you’re around Raptidons, specifically. You can develop a phobia for different creatures in the game. You can also have a fear of the dark, a fear of heights. One of the things I thought was really funny. It was something like, “I’m not going to take this flaw, but…” If you get crippled in the leg a lot, you can choose to take that as a permanent injury. Then you’ll limp around for the rest of the game.

If you do that, then you do get an extra perk in exchange. So it really just depends on how you want to spend your ability points and make your character unique to you.

Shacknews: Do certain flaws close off any part of the game to you? For example, if you choose to take on a fear of robots, do you get paralyzed with fear when you’re confronted by a giant robot boss?

Starks: No, they won’t lock you out of gameplay.

Shacknews: I did notice a day/night cycle. Are there certain quests that are only available during a certain time of the day?

Starks: We do have certain creatures that will come out at night. There can be some advantages if you want to sneak in during the cover of darkness. But we won’t limit you.