So THAT’S why The Outer Worlds felt too short

15 April 2020 - 15:22 By Christine King
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Artwork from the role playing game The Outer Worlds.
Artwork from the role playing game The Outer Worlds.
Image: Supplied

If you’ve played The Outer Worlds, and we recommend that you do, you may have found it to be a bit short for an RPG. Turns out, the developers had to make a lot of cuts before it was released; including an entire planet.

According to the first episode in a documentary series about the development of Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds, the sci-fi RPG was always meant to be small, but it lost some of its character and story development to a number of unfortunate cuts.

In the first video exploring the design of The Outer Worlds, we sit down with Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky to discuss how a team of fewer than 75 developers collaborated to create their sci-fi RPG.

The small scale of The Outer Worlds was meant to encourage people to replay it, to experience the branching narrative options, but it definitely felt like there was something missing.

“We had to make one cut too many. All through the project we were making cuts. We started out with a smaller scope in mind and we found out that that was too big as we went, and we made several rounds of cuts.”

Co-Game Director Leonard Boyarsky mentions that some of the parts cut would have helped provide a more natural progression towards the end of the story and, without them, it feels a bit rushed. According to other Co-Game Director Tim Cain, one of the most painful cuts was an entire planet. The loss of which meant actions on other planets felt kind of “disjointed”.

However, they don’t feel too bad about players complaining about the game being too short.

“If the biggest complaint about our game is that it’s too small and people want more of it, that’s good. We told our story. We had lots of side quests and lots of interesting companion characters. And we were really happy with the scope.”

If you’re looking for more of The Outer Worlds, there should be some story DLC coming out some time this year.


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Image: Supplied

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