As others have said, this wasn’t what I had in mind. Older RPGs like Ultima actually do it pretty well. It would work with New Vegas’ framework. I’m not sure why Bethesda RPGs are still following essentially the Grand Theft Auto 3 model for their critical path. (A linear story trapped inside an open world)
Trying to hook this back to The Outer Worlds, I think we can assume the main quest is pretty open based on how you can kill everyone and what Tim Cain has already said in his RPG talks. It will be interesting to see how they implement it.
I get what you’re saying; you want a design that’s wider, with more ways to progress. The problem is wide designs require dramatically more work to create and test, and thus wide games tend to be shallow; in that you have lots of choices at each stage but you don’t get many stages. So the games are shorter.
That’s why there aren’t many games with meaningful choices and branching paths like Alpha Protocol, instead the most replayable single-player games tend to use a generated approach like No Man’s Sky or a series of intricately interlocking systems exposing emergent gameplay like Hitman.
I dunno, would you be happy if the main quest in Elder Scrolls 6 only took 10 hours? Maybe in other games like The Outer Worlds that could work, but ES6… no way.
You don’t want your main quest road to be a completely straight line, you do want some depth, but you also need to keep in mind that most people will never replay your game so all of that work will be completely wasted on most of your players. That’s why you offer a couple major branches, like the side to support in the Skyrim civil war, but you don’t offer a fully branching campaign because it would be too dang short.
The main quest in most Bethesda RPGs is that short. Try just following the main quest markers some time and see how long it takes you.
To be fair, that’s as much about the quest markers as it is the actual quest design. Games like Ultima were also pretty short if you already knew what to do, but unlike modern games, you had to piece it together by yourself instead of having glowing map symbols tell you everything. Consequently, they also felt much more open-ended and dynamic than they actually were, because players would end up finding their own winding path to the goal without need for explicit branching.
Yeah, it isn’t even that long. The length isn’t even the issue. What matters is how the quest is implemented. It should be more open-ended not a linear chain of “plot events.”
Take for instance Fallout 3…you can’t enter Raven Rock until the plot demands it. It’s silly. I should be able to find a way inside there like I could the Military Base in Fallout.
Generally speaking, the main quest could have a few victory conditions that are independent of any quest chains. In Fallout it was blowing up the Military Base and Cathedral. That’s it. (Finding the Water Chip was a mere side-quest!) There are multiple ways to accomplish these tasks. I didn’t have to talk to a Brotherhood of Steel guy first, or a Raider idiot second…go through a bunch of story junk, to even be able to get to these locations. That would be Bethesda’s implementation, and it is at odds with the rest of their open world design.
I have Skyrim modded such that I do an alternate start in a deleveled world. If I want I can start the main quest or I can just go on about roaming around in Skyrim. Making the main quest shorter but more branching, varied, and responsive on top of that would be terrific!
Nothing I said prior to him making that claim was even remotely personal. Re-read my posts instead of weirdly paraphrased and truncated snippets with no context after the fact.
You guys are crazy. (This! THIS is a personal attack!)
Just signed up for Ultimate Game Pass for 2 months for $4 so I can play this. As long as I can complete it within a month I’m golden. And I can try out Gears of War with my family too. What an awesome deal.
I believe that’s like saying “I just got Netflix to watch the Disenchantment season 2!” in that he sub’d the service that will, ultimately, offer him the content when it’s out.
Is this for Xbox or PC? I think the last time I checked Game Pass for PC it was $1 for the first month but $4.99 after that. If that remains I’ll gladly pay $1 to “rent” The Outer Worlds for 1 month.
It’s for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate which includes PC and Xbox. 2 months, $2, $15/month after that so be careful to cancel. You have a couple hours left to get it, I think.
Sorry! This is the last day of the special where you get Ultimate Game Pass for 2 months. Outer Worlds doesn’t come out until the end of next month but this deal will have expired by then.
