Wormerine

NPCs refuse to talk with you because of your obvious . . . eagerness.

Yes, and it is good news. If you add romance into an RPG, its smart to cater to many tastes/roleplaying options. A big chunk of time is spent to develop fairly shallow romance options for multiple companions. Its also limits who your companions can be. While romancable companions can, and have been good after so many RPG they all become samey. I personally felt original Pillars greatly benefited from not having romances - as the result it had quite a few "fresh" companions. I do find it odd when every person who spends time with you is an available date. Hard to believe all those super attractive people don't have lifes on their own and all wait for their chosen one and the chosen one is you! Deadfire had a shot at it, and I see it as one of the elements which weakened its companions (this and ambitious way of delivering their story, which in my opinion, didn't pay off). So yeah, not having romancable companions is a plus in my book.

We know more about Obsidian secret project. However, there is a new secret project in works according to gamespot. https://youtu.be/58qKmxO_YfQ?t=1225 What could it possibly be? First Obsidian game under Microsoft banner?

I might have used wrong word there. I didn’t mean “streamlines” as a bad term.

No details revealed yet, but the word is that it is first person only, therefore I don’t expect much (if any) visual customisation. Curious about “character creation” and overall game systems though.

Playing right now through Dark Souls for the first time and it does just that. There was one objective that was a bit obscure. A game which did open world without pointers well were Gothic1&2. Exploring world and finding/using maps was part of the gameplay and led to really enjoyable and memorable experience. Hey, if someone wanted to show you something they would lead you to it. Those are games that open world games should learn from. The problem isn't in existence of more detailed maps, but rather that game design forces you to fully rely on UI pointer or GPS to navigate.

Really can't say without seeing you play. Baldur's Gate in certainly on easy side, compared to other D&D games. There are certainly some tough fights in BG2, but it's biggest issue is being obtuse. No matter the difficulty they are always easy to cheese. Never played Pillars 1 on anything below Veteran. I found this difficulty just right, with a power creep on later levels. I came into PoE1 right after playing through Icewind Dale2. Are you sure you understand the mechanics? I found my 2nd playthrough on PotD somewhat easier than my first one as I knew what I was doing. For example it took me a big chunk if playthrough before I realised that you can't stack item buffs (stronger buff to the same attribute will cancel the weaker one, instead of adding up), which immediately made my characters more effective. Make sure you target weakest defence and that enemy armor doesn't eat up all your damage. I do remember shades to be particularly annoying early on, with lighthouse being somewhat tricky. They like to go for the squishy targets.

I support the OP, though that far into development it’s probably set in stone. It’s a shame when games use open design (be in open world and sprawling levels) but then use quick and lazy way out by putting quest markers, and pointers. Obviously, creating world and quests which ar to be completed without help of UI is much harder - memorable landmarks need to be put, lots of testing to see if players got enough information and if the intended path is clear enough. Having a quest marker generally lead to tunnel vision and less immersive experience. Unfortunately, if game isn’t designed to be used without such compas, simply turning it off doesn’t solve the issue. Hopefully the game willl make up in other departments.

Probably because Obsidian didn’t release a demo for public. It’s Game Informers.

Maybe there will be stat which is responsible for your “slowdown meter”. Maybe it will have other applications than just slowing time in combat.

Difficult to say right now. We know we have two main planets and couple smaller moons, asteroids and space stations. It certainly can't be New Vegas form, as we don't have a singular space to cover. Maybe something more like Deus Ex? (two major hubs and bunch of smaller spaces).

:-D That's best summary of Bethesda RPGs I have every seen. "You could do it or not do it and not feel like you are missing something".

There is a slowdown mechanic about which is talked a bit in here: https://youtu.be/J3cRpYGVPsU?t=551 Essencially, there is a purple bar underneath health which can be used for slowdown. It drains slowely if you don't move/attack (so you can slow down to comprehend your situation) but drains quicker if you move/attack. According to GameInformer it might give you some attack bonuses as well (though he seems unsure).

As we don't see your character (it being first person game) I doubt we will customise our apperance, maybe with exception of some basic stuff (like sex). I do remember reading somewhere that character creation happens in first person perspective, but I have read bunch of articles on OW and can't find it right now. Skill checks are numeric in dialogues, but it is possible that initial character creation will be somewhat streamlined, if Tim will follow his ideas which he presented a while a go. A quick character creation while waking from cryo sleep is likely.

It’s tough subject. I generally prefer if game stick to one camera option and it well, but if FP camera makes you sick it is a completely fair request to implement one. I don’t think Obsidian can afford implementing another camera option poorly, I have seen suggestions to implement out of combat camera only. I would be surprised if Obsidian would do that. Bunch of people will play the game, and if camera if wonky, it will be seen as a broken feature, not as an option for people who really really need it. If it is possible at all, a good solution might be to make camera easily moddable - even if animations a wonky, or armours aren’t build to cover character character properly - something to allow community to add that feature, even poorly, without putting pressure on Obsidian to deliver a completely new way of playing the game. I don’t know, it sucks. One thing I can be thankful for, I guess, is not having a motion sickness.

I suppose it depends on how the character is designed. Borderlands are multiplayer game, which means that from outside they had to look somewhat decent. Even if the character is fully modeled (important question - can you see your legs in OW?) he might look very much like this: https://youtu.be/yPSCeVSM0Sg

Nah, I always dislike cashing in on hate. Bethesda’s recent blunders might very well work well for this project, but that would be unwise and not very classy to jump unto the Bethesda hate just to ride the bandwagon.

I am not so sure. It seems like you will do plenty of shooting in OW. Original fallouts worked because combat was a fairly rare affair, keeping the gore effective. With newer titles, like Fallouts past 3, gore looses all It’s effectivenes and becomes self indulgent. I would mind seeing something darker in OW, but maybe keeping it to individual quests/monsters/events might be more effective, rather than Warhammering everything.

31.12.2019. I hope they are not aiming for suicidal November, but late spring/summer feels right to me. It’s looks pretty well cooked but it’s only a demo, and it’s a big RPG so who knows how much work they have to do. I really would prefer for them to keep this one in over for a bit rather than release with critical bugs, imbalances like they did with Deadfire.

Absolutely marvellous. Quite curious about the game systems, but overall I am 100% sold.

Yeah to be honest this piece of news moved my status from"looking forward to" to "hype".

Nah, it makes sense especially on RPG. If you customise your character (looks, armour) it's nice to actually see them. But it seems Obsidian is going full 1st person which means that adding 3rd would be probably lots of work (is character even rendered? Animation? Armor fitting character? Collision? Etc.).

According polygon can't view character outside inventory https://www.polygon.com/features/2018/12/7/18129759/outer-worlds-obsidian-entertainment-new-rpg-preview

According to polygon https://www.polygon.com/features/2018/12/7/18129759/outer-worlds-obsidian-entertainment-new-rpg-preview

Ugh... hopefully not Unity. I have so many performance issues with every Unity game. Still, Outer Worlds might be a final excuse for a PC upgrade. We will see.