author: Bart Swiatek
Obsidian: The Outer Worlds Will be Political, But Not Moralistic
Leonard Boyarsky, the creative director of Obsidian Entertainment, said in a press interview about how developers approach worldviews in the futuristic action RPG The Outer Worlds.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- In The Outer Worlds we will find political topics and some of them will be important for the plot;
- The creators make every effort to ensure that the various positions are represented credibly and do not want to moralize the players;
- The approach to worldviews may resemble the 2001 RPG Arcanum.
The creative director of Obsidian Entertainment, Leonard Boyarsky, was recently interviewed by VGC. The main topic of the conversation was the studio's umcoming title, the SF sandbox RPG - The Outer Worlds. The producer presented, among other things, the developers' approach to worldviews.
Power in the dystopian future
It turns out that one of the so-called political motifs - abuse of power - will be very important for the plot of the title.
“It can be insidious; the way which people control the stories you tell about the world. If you let other people control that narrative, then they can control you to a certain degree. That can be any form of government: if it wasn’t capitalism it could be something else.”
Although politics will have a significant impact on the story of the game, the way it is presented must be subtle and humorous.
“I don’t want people to think this is a really hard, politically-charged game: it’s supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be humorous,” emphasized Boyarsky.
Credible, humorous and with no morals...
According to the developer, the key issue is not to provide players with ready-made solutions and answers. Instead, they must be given the opportunity to draw their own conclusions. The dev refers here to another title he has worked on - the RPG Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura from 2001.
“But like how with Arcanum when we were dealing with racial issues, the story always comes down to balance of power, how people get power and how they use it. We’ve been very careful, I’ve been very careful. (...) There are people in this game who have philosophies that I don’t agree with and I take pains to make those people very likeable, very sensible and very believable. Then there are people in the game who say things I agree with, who are perhaps not very nice to hang out with."
“So we don’t want to set up strawman or anything and say, ‘look how horrible this is!’ It’s really about looking at all aspects of issues. The last thing we want to do is make a game that people feel is lecturing them." explains Obsidian's creative director.
The Outer Worlds will debut on October 25, this year on PC (Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is worth noting that on PCs and Xbox One the title will also be available as part of the Xbox Game Pass subscription.
