The Outer Worlds Catch-All

Recreational Villain wrote:
omni wrote:

It'll be Day1 on Game Pass for PC, too....

Wait... what... is that the same thing as the new monhtly MS ~Xbox/(X) game service version that is coming out for PC [too] ? The relatively little piece I've absorbed concerning that has me excited. I could see such being my personal Steam killer -- notwithstanding that MS has historically, to my novice eyes, been all over the map with how they want to juggle their dual baskets of Xbox and PC gaming.

There are 3 variations of Game Pass:

Xbox Game Pass - Vast majority of Xbox-only titles, but there are 2 or 3 'Play Anywhere' titles that you can actually play on PC also ( Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4, etc). Quite a long list of games.

Xbox Game Pass for PC - Similar deal, but for PC only. Over 100 titles already. This will grow. Games like The Outer Worlds, Phoenix Point and numerous others have also been confirmed as being available on Game Pass for PC, though not all are Day1.

Game Pass Ultimate - This includes both Xbox Game Pass and Game Pass for PC, as well Xbox Live Gold (for Xbox) and is supposedly going to include Project XCloud, when it releases.

I think Xbox Game Pass is $9.99/month, PC Game Pass is $5/month for your first month/while in Beta but will eventually rise to $9.99, and Game Pass Ultimate is $14.99/month. (I think those prices are correct anyway)

^ Thanks, and damn, I believe I have Phoenix Point coming by way of a ~kickstarter way back, but at those prices, may still make the jump for Outer Worlds, and other titles, going forward.

I hear that the sale on Gamepass Ultimate expires June 30. Totally unconfirmed, but I bought 2 slightly discounted years of Gold and then used the $1 Gamepass sale to convert all my time to GP Ultimate. Max is 36 months, FWIW.

Hey. We may finally get a decent Fallout game!

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I hear that the sale on Gamepass Ultimate expires June 30. Totally unconfirmed, but I bought 2 slightly discounted years of Gold and then used the $1 Gamepass sale to convert all my time to GP Ultimate. Max is 36 months, FWIW.

Ok, this may take the cake for dumb questions, however: if I don't currently own an XBOX can I do the whole conversion gimmick? At that price, the cost savings essentially fund an Xbox(?) and at only ~ $5 more per month after the first 36 months why not have the Ultimate version.

Specific concern: If I buy those cards or whatever all I need is a Microsoft account? I don't have to own an Xbox to activate? My forward apologies if I failed to glean that from prior information in the thread.

You just need a Microsoft account, and you can do the entire thing with a web browser.

Edit: And just to clarify: Xbox Game Pass for PC will include The Outer Worlds. It's not just for Xbox. So if you have a capable gaming PC, you can get Xbox Game Pass for PC or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and get this game (plus all the others) with your subscription without having to also buy an Xbox.

^ Excellent. Thanks for the pinpoint clarity. Time to do a deep dive into both catalogues.

[edit]
Confirmed with MS support on the one point. Guess I'm locked in now with this whole 'experiment' *.

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*the idea of 'gaming buffet' via a Netflix-like service still blows my mind.

My only regret is buying only a single year of Xbox Gold before paying the $1 to convert it to Ultimate. I wish I could retroactively go back and get two more years.

Me too!

No biggie though really. I was still happy with the number of months mine converted to, before I knew you could stack so much time in it.

Fallout-Like The Outer Worlds Coming to Nintendo Switch

I'm absolutely shocked by this, honestly. Glad, but shocked.

This probably should go in the industry thread, but Microsoft has been framing their relationship with Nintendo as a strategic partner rather than a strategic competitor for a while now.

It's not quite clear what either side's long game is here. If nothing else, both sides may see a structural advantage in having good relationships in place.

Yay Switch.

I'll need to see some performance comparisons on this one. I know Outer Worlds is a AA product and Switch isn't the weakest of platforms but the question is whether it'd be a good port or not.

Also: remember that this is a 2K published joint. Microsoft bought Obsidian but The Outer Worlds was already contracted by 2K for development and publishing, which is why it's also releasing on PS4. So it is doubtful Microsoft has anything to do with this decision.

ccesarano wrote:

I'll need to see some performance comparisons on this one. I know Outer Worlds is a AA product and Switch isn't the weakest of platforms but the question is whether it'd be a good port or not.

I think it'll be in okay hands, but it very much so will likely look like poo comparatively. The sacrifice is real, and I'm ready to pay it.

I'm gonna play it where I've already paid, on Xbox Gamepass, but this is super cool. When I was young I always wanted more portable RPGs, since they were often the most time-consuming games.

The Outer Worlds - Hands-On Preview

The Outer Worlds Exclusive PS4 Gameplay - Can It Live Up To Fallout: New Vegas?

The Outer Worlds' Combat Is Surprisingly Fun

Outer Worlds - Hands-on Preview - PC [Gaming Trend]

Seems fairly positive.

Yes, but to be fair most of Obsidian's games are very good - except for the bugs. That has been their Achilles heel for years. I wonder if this one will have problems too.

Obsidian hasn’t had a buggy game since Dungeon Siege 3. They reworked their QA System and have been fine since then.

Yeah, PoE1 had some problems, but not anything big as far as I remember. PoE2 was pretty much free of any major bugs, despite its problematic development process (like all their game it seems). There is always minor bugs in all RPGs of this style, that is probably unavoidable. Too many moving parts.

Wasn't it alleged that, for New Vegas, Bethesda said they'd handle the QA and debugging and then...didn't?

Eh, Obsidian is one of my favs, but I'd take some of the 'not our fault' spin with a grain of salt. Over the last few years Chris Avellone has openly ripped on Feargus Urquhart, and other Obsidian upper management -- sometimes casually and sometimes in very precise detail.

Josh Sawyer occasionally takes lighter shots as well. In fact, and somewhat recently, Josh openly references "his boss" during a ~ post mortem of PoE2. A bit dry in presentation style, but very interesting as to content. Link follows if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xChOXFJ83-g. [marked as: published Jun 5, 2019]

On the latter thought, Josh starts at ~ late 37:xx on the topic of the minimalist ship-to-ship minigame in PoEII, which plays out before you have a battle map on a ship's deck. By appearance, it's a few mostly static screens of text and options. "It was the most expensive feature in Pillars of Eternity Two: Dead fire in terms of dev time and money spent. It was a drain on every department, especially testing, but every other department had to contribute to it. It never really seemed to satisfy players. He goes on about it at some length and his internal struggle to gut the feature, later referring to it as "quicksand", repeatedly.

I generally like Obsidian as a dev house, and the games they put out, but stuff has been trickling out about their management for years -- even before Avellone and Josh started being more open about their grievances.

That is an interesting video indeed.
Not sure it says much about management problems though. The ship combat in POE2 was probably a difficult decision with no right choice at the time. On one hand it was terrible and should not be there. On the other hand, POE2 was a crowdfunded game, and Obsidian had "promised" ship combat. In other games ( best example I know is Torment: ToN) we have seen how the "fans" have lost their collective internet minds if a game strayed from the kickstarter pitch. The management might have, with good reason, thought they had to deliver something, even if it did turn out it was the wrong decision in the end. I bet that kind of wrong decisions in game development happens in every single game ever. Heck, Bioware seems to have made that into an art-form.
Avellones attacks have been way more serious, and if even a fraction is true they surely got problems. But Avellone also seems like he is on some kind of personal vendetta against the bosses at Obsidian, so probably hard to determine how much truth there is in those attacks.

That said, in Fallout New Vegas it is hard to imagine Obsidian was without fault. Obsidian has such a long history of issues when working with publishers/IP owners.

^ Avellone, most certainly, is grinding an axe. He was a founding member in ~2003 during the rebuild post Black Isle. I think, sometimes, folks just remember that he was their writing darling -- which they always pimped out for good press whenever they could. Word is they had management problems back then [during the Black Isle phase] too...

Circling back to Josh, I don't directly recall if it was in that particular segment, starting from 37:xx forward, or if Josh referenced it earlier in the talk, then looped back to it. He brazenly states that, and additionally admits he was in the minority at the onset and liked the feature -- anyways, he details that he tried to get the feature cut once it was trending as their biggest project pit. He just couldn't get any traction, at all, with his boss [he's directly taking a shot at Feargus].

I understand that it may have been a tricky proposition, but even in the backer beta it was a largely disliked feature. Some people hated it, which is why they eventually just let you skip it. Sales of PoE II indicate strongly that it was a bad, really bad, business call. At one point in the tracking was at ~ 110k [unit]sales for a period in which they were hoping for closer to ~ 400k - 500k+, iirc. They were doing that whole extended investment crap too and folks ended up getting ~$200* back per $1k invested. Those guys didn't even break even by a good margin for sure...

*trailing sales will probably help that, by not by much

Sure. Just meant that making a bad business call is not the same as bad management imo.
Which is not to say that there wasn't bad management.

POE2 probably sold poorly for many reasons. While POE1 is one of my favorite games ever, it seems like a lot of people bought that, played it a little, and realized that style of game wasn't really what they wanted anymore.

The scope of their projects at Black Isle and Obsidian has always lent itself to more bugs to fix. Think about all the freedom they give the player with things like dialogue choices and offering non violent solutions to quests. Well, someone has to error trap that to make sure that the vast array of possible outcomes are coherent, and not dead ends or cyclical and neverending.

The complexity is either exponential or logarithmic for every new game play avenue. So if you just double your QA you will still fall short by a lot with testing.