Yesterday, The Outer Worlds was announced to great fanfare. An RPG from Obsidian Entertainment with an actual budget? A spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas with companions, dialogue trees, actual RPG elements and good writing? Sign us up!
However, The Outer Worlds won't have romances, which might be an odd choice for those used to having the option in their RPG's, but Obsidian has an explanation: it wasn't worth it.
"Other people have explored the romance angle in different ways," Boyarsky told Polygon. "We felt like sometimes it kind of waters down your roleplaying for your character because it turns into this mini game of how do I seduce this companion or that companion. So it was just one of the things we felt wasn't really what we wanted to focus our time on."
Sounds fair. If you want to do something, you want to do it right, and arbitrarily including romance options does not a good game make. So, instead of having romance options, Obsidian is working on a companion system that allows companions to show their displeasure for the choices that the player makes. If they don't like what the player is doing, they could potentially just leave mid-mission and go back to your ship, where you will have to convince them to come back out, although to do so you would probably need the right stats and skills.
Players will have the opportunity to reject storylines. From the very beginning of the game where the player is revived by a scientist, they can either help or betray him. This is a focal point of the game, as the player is supposed to be able to do whatever they want during the course of the campaign.
“You are not forced to work with him,” Boyarsky said. “You can betray him the first chance you get to the government, and work on their side. You can effectively play the game any way you choose. You can be the hero. You can be anti-hero. You can be a full-on mercenary. You can be psychopathic killer.”
Players can also have a time and a half by choosing the dumb options in conversations. Rather than having the NPC's nod their heads and accept the player's poor logic, the NPC will react "appropriately" by reacting in disbelief, scorn, or a combination of both.
The Outer Worlds will be released in 2019 for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC platforms.
Quick Take:
It's to see a new Fallout-like title from the original creators of Fallout, especially after the failures of Fallout 4 and 76. I must confess that I've never liked Bethesda, even as far back as 2006 when Oblivion was released. I always saw them as a lazy developer that did the bare minimum to create a ""new"" RPG and ship out mod tools so that the rest of the game could be developed. My biases aside, The Outer Worlds looks very promising, and I'm excited to see what Obsidian can come up with now they aren't constrained by a limited development time and budget.
