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The Outer Worlds 2

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Director Criticizes The Outer Worlds 2, Says Obsidian Hasn’t Innovated Since New Vegas

It's not often that a developer comes out to publicly criticize another's work, and yet that is precisely what Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Game Director Daniel Vávra did yesterday via his X account...

https://x.com/DanielVavra/status/1985848222707765440

OW2.png
 
SecretStash said:
Sounds like an accusation for all games
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It's also kinda stupid in my opinion.

First off, coming up with something totally new is hard. Turns out humans have been around for a long time, a whole lot of shit has already been thought up. It is hard to be completely original, everything tends to be derivative/redone to some extent. The idea that a dev could just come up with a new mechanic if they wanted to is silly.

Worse though is the "give me a living simulated world!" Man, that is just not feasible. No, that is NOT what you have kin KCD 2. The idea that you can truly simulate a world is silly, we don't have the tech to do that. Heck, you may not even WANT to do that. Sometimes a very curated experience is what you want, and that will by necessity limit choice. I can appreciate a good game that says "We have a narrative we want to tell, and that means we have to tailor your experience to tell it how we want."
 
polonyc2 said:
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Director Criticizes The Outer Worlds 2, Says Obsidian Hasn’t Innovated Since New Vegas

It's not often that a developer comes out to publicly criticize another's work, and yet that is precisely what Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Game Director Daniel Vávra did yesterday via his X account...

https://x.com/DanielVavra/status/1985848222707765440

View attachment 765134
Click to expand...
He's not wrong but KCD2 didn't feel like anything new or groundbreaking to me either. The problem with game development and coding in general is that you can be doing something amazing and ground breaking on the backend and it still feels like the same old shit to the end user. It's hard creating unique systems that also conveys that uniqueness to the player in a meaningful way. The last game I played that did that successfully was the Nemesis system in that Lord of the Rings game.
 
Microsoft keeping schtum about the sales numbers seems to suggest it will come on sale much quicker than I thought. Liked the first one a lot, mainly because it was set in a non gritty, colourful Sci-Fi setting that looked like a pulp book from the 50's, which I love.
The gameplay itself was fun, but not fantastic, and the anti-capitalist message would have been OK if it hadn't been pummeled into the ground with all the subtlety of an Extinction Rebellion demonstration.
But I will certainly buy this as well when it is on sale.
 
I have no doubt that there's plenty of devs out there who have a great idea that want to try it and they get the "no" from higher up because it's too risky
 
He says "Microsoft money" but big companies run studios on tight budgets just like everyone else. Otherwise they don't make money.

Most actual innovation is from small studios and indy developers with actual passion for making games instead of a soulless megacorp.
 
sharknice said:
He says "Microsoft money" but big companies run studios on tight budgets just like everyone else. Otherwise they don't make money.

Most actual innovation is from small studios and indy developers with actual passion for making games instead of a soulless megacorp.
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Also the bigger the money, the more "safe" the project needs to be. If you develop something on a $50,000 shoestring budget, you don't actually need to find all that many people who like it for it to be a success. Assuming you price it such that you take in about $10 per copy sold after store cuts and taxes, you only have to find 10k buyers and you've basically doubled your investment. You can have a small and happy fan base and do fine. That means it can be niche, it can try things that are off-putting to many people.

However if you spend $500 million, well than your game is going to need some BROAD appeal. Even if you are able to price it high enough that you take in $50/copy sold, you still need 10 million buyers (at full price) just to break even, never mind make any money. So you have to go for things you know are widely popular, you can't do things that only niche segments like or take huge risks, because that could sink you even if it is a "success". Like you could make a game that got good reviews, people enjoyed, that sold a few million copies, but it is still a financial failure because you spent so much.

I love it when companies do passion projects and take risks, but I also recognize that you can only do so much of that, and only put so much money in to it because of the risk of failure. Heck, I've seen plenty of "passion project" games that have a small but ravenous fanbase, looked at them, and said "Nope, not for me." Like I can respect what you are doing, but still not want it.

grifter_66 said:
He's not wrong but KCD2 didn't feel like anything new or groundbreaking to me either. The problem with game development and coding in general is that you can be doing something amazing and ground breaking on the backend and it still feels like the same old shit to the end user. It's hard creating unique systems that also conveys that uniqueness to the player in a meaningful way. The last game I played that did that successfully was the Nemesis system in that Lord of the Rings game.
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Very true. Just because a system is cool on the back end, doesn't mean it matters to the player. If you develop some extremely advanced AI that governs NPC behaviour, but the end result is they act just like a basic scripted character did... well then it doesn't much matter, game play wise. You can crow on about the technology and that's fine, but to the gamer what matters is how it actually changes gameplay, or doesn't.

Likewise just because the system is technically cooler, doesn't mean it is better. Maybe you make that advanced AI system and all NPCs live full and rich lives and go on about their business... but the effect to me is that I can't find the fucking quest giver when I need to because he's decided to go off on a vacation rather than be standing where I found him. It can make it worse.


One sort of ultimate example I like of "too much freedom being bad" is the existence of builder games at all, like Minecraft or Terraria. Something people like to talk about that makes the awesome is the freedom they give you... yet it is still a limited and curated freedom. You want REAL building freedom? Use Solidworks. There are programs out there, it being one of the premiere ones, where you can build basically whatever you want. They are literally used to design and test the products you buy. You are limited basically only by your imagination, understanding of engineering, and memory in your computer. What's more, get good at it and this is a marketable job skill.

So why don't people just do that? Because presented with a truly blank canvas, and a complex tool with nearly unlimited power, it isn't actually that much fun. The limits placed on you by the games make an environment where it is more fun to create, and actually easier. The more limited, curated, experience is actually the one that people find more fun.
 
Sycraft said:
Also the bigger the money, the more "safe" the project needs to be. If you develop something on a $50,000 shoestring budget, you don't actually need to find all that many people who like it for it to be a success. Assuming you price it such that you take in about $10 per copy sold after store cuts and taxes, you only have to find 10k buyers and you've basically doubled your investment. You can have a small and happy fan base and do fine. That means it can be niche, it can try things that are off-putting to many people.

However if you spend $500 million, well than your game is going to need some BROAD appeal. Even if you are able to price it high enough that you take in $50/copy sold, you still need 10 million buyers (at full price) just to break even, never mind make any money. So you have to go for things you know are widely popular, you can't do things that only niche segments like or take huge risks, because that could sink you even if it is a "success". Like you could make a game that got good reviews, people enjoyed, that sold a few million copies, but it is still a financial failure because you spent so much.

I love it when companies do passion projects and take risks, but I also recognize that you can only do so much of that, and only put so much money in to it because of the risk of failure. Heck, I've seen plenty of "passion project" games that have a small but ravenous fanbase, looked at them, and said "Nope, not for me." Like I can respect what you are doing, but still not want it.


Very true. Just because a system is cool on the back end, doesn't mean it matters to the player. If you develop some extremely advanced AI that governs NPC behaviour, but the end result is they act just like a basic scripted character did... well then it doesn't much matter, game play wise. You can crow on about the technology and that's fine, but to the gamer what matters is how it actually changes gameplay, or doesn't.

Likewise just because the system is technically cooler, doesn't mean it is better. Maybe you make that advanced AI system and all NPCs live full and rich lives and go on about their business... but the effect to me is that I can't find the fucking quest giver when I need to because he's decided to go off on a vacation rather than be standing where I found him. It can make it worse.


One sort of ultimate example I like of "too much freedom being bad" is the existence of builder games at all, like Minecraft or Terraria. Something people like to talk about that makes the awesome is the freedom they give you... yet it is still a limited and curated freedom. You want REAL building freedom? Use Solidworks. There are programs out there, it being one of the premiere ones, where you can build basically whatever you want. They are literally used to design and test the products you buy. You are limited basically only by your imagination, understanding of engineering, and memory in your computer. What's more, get good at it and this is a marketable job skill.

So why don't people just do that? Because presented with a truly blank canvas, and a complex tool with nearly unlimited power, it isn't actually that much fun. The limits placed on you by the games make an environment where it is more fun to create, and actually easier. The more limited, curated, experience is actually the one that people find more fun.
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This is true that's why it's much less likely a game from a microsoft funded studio will have any innovation at all in it.
 
peppergomez said:
This is true that's why it's much less likely a game from a microsoft funded studio will have any innovation at all in it.
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Extra particularly Microsoft. Having talked to someone who worked for a game studio there (granted this was like 10 years ago) they said they were a good publisher to work for in that once they committed to a project they funded it fully and saw it through, but bad in that they only wanted to fund sequels, they weren't interested in much originality.
 
Been messing around with this a bit over the weekend. It runs well enough with everything cranked and DLSS Quality with framegen on, although HDR makes framegen ghost the entire UI like crazy. Unplayably, so. Luckily the game actually looks better with HDR off. Maybe they'll fix that, though? I guess it's a known thing and you pretty much have to choose one or the other. I turned a few of the settings down to regular "high" (shadows, reflections) and it's staying above 100fps full-time. There are some weird micro-hitches on occasion, but nothing too distracting. I think it's mostly related to smoke/fog effects and my detail settings don't seem to matter much.

In terms of the game, it does look quite a bit better than the original. If nothing else, the world geometry feels a full generation ahead. Facial expressions still look wooden, but I guess that adds to some of the humor? Gameplay-wise, I think the shooting and platforming mechanics both feel cleaner. It's no longer an RPG with shooting elements, it plays more like an actual action game. The story and dialogue are following the path of the original. It feels novel and clever initially, but I'm not sure the hyperbolic corporate humor is going to carry this thing for 50 hours. Hopefully there's more to it than that.
 
Roughly 50 hours off of first playthrough. Very satisfied with it.

If I didn't get "the best" ending I got what I thought was pretty good with a handful of areas I'm wondering how I could have done better. Going to set aside for a bit but will enjoy a replay at some point before too long.
 
A new patch just dropped that fixes the framegen UI ghosting issue. Performance seems better in general, although I only played it for like 2 minutes. An area with lots of smoke effect would be the true test.
 
I had a few minutes longer to mess around with the new update. The Digital Foundry ideal settings video still mostly holds true, but there is now a separate setting for hardware RT shadows. You can turn RT on for everything else and leave that off.

Beyond that, the game UI no longer ghosts when you have frame generation and HDR turned on at a the same time. Performance seems a hair better, but it's still not quite totally smooth. Panning around while moving still looks a little juddery. I tried a bunch of settings and they don't really seem to affect that. It's not a deal breaker or anything, but it's annoying. Part of me keeps wanting to "fix" it, even though it doesn't seem to be possible. I tried a couple of those engine.ini fixes that helped in other games (like Avowed), but they don't help in this instance.
 
CD keys has in back instock like 16.00 off 54.00 was sold-out for all of last week.
 
I'm 15 hours in and have mixed feelings about it. Overall, the game is beautiful, but some of the quests are aggravating and it feels to me much more serious and not nearly as fun as the original game.
As of right now, I'm not sure if I'll finish it. If I do, I might not buy the DLC, something I really enjoyed with the first one.
 
piratepress said:
I'm 15 hours in and have mixed feelings about it. Overall, the game is beautiful, but some of the quests are aggravating and it feels to me much more serious and not nearly as fun as the original game.
As of right now, I'm not sure if I'll finish it. If I do, I might not buy the DLC, something I really enjoyed with the first one.
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Guess Im not picking it up 1 game was mid at times.
 
piratepress said:
I'm 15 hours in and have mixed feelings about it. Overall, the game is beautiful, but some of the quests are aggravating and it feels to me much more serious and not nearly as fun as the original game.
As of right now, I'm not sure if I'll finish it. If I do, I might not buy the DLC, something I really enjoyed with the first one.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I understand that sentiment. The humor from the original is mostly relegated to the occasional smart ass dialogue choice you can make. I'm not quite as far, but the quests have thus far been especially fetch-oriented and dependent on one another. The core plot missions have been 100% "You can't make everyone happy, so GOTCHA - you have to choose a side!" over and over. Of course all the characters are flawed, flat, and single-minded. Choosing a side is basically a coin flip. Either that or it's a quick web search to discover who has the best loot. I hate that sort of thing. It worked in New Vegas when you had a single big ass choice between factions, but now Obsidian seems obsessed with the idea.
 
As I'm starting to near the end of TOW2, It mostly reminds me how good of a game Starfield actually is/was. It's hard not to compare the two franchises, and I'm not sure TOW2 is better than Starfield at much of anything. The first game at least had a sense of humor. This game is mostly a lesson that flat characters are misguided no matter what system of government they happen to follow. Great. It's amusing on the first couple missions, but they just won't move on. We get it. It's not funny hammering that point again and again for 40+ hours. It feels like an SNL sketch that keeps firing off the same punchline for 12 minutes.
The gameplay is probably where the game shines most, and it's still nothing amazing. It's mostly just a standard shooter with mostly standard weapons.
At this point, I'm not sure I care if they make a 3rd game. At least in a traditional sense. Maybe some kind of spinoff in the same universe, but it doesn't seem like they can sustain this formula.
 
peppergomez said:
Its prob a $30 game
That's what I'd pay for it
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That's probably what I'd pay, too. It isn't bad, but if they went through with that $80 price tag fiasco I think people would be pissed. At least those few people playing it outside of Gamepass would.
As I got further into the game the more I realized that it's not even as good as the first game was. The shootouts are better and the graphics are better (if you have the hardware), but nothing else is. You can just pop into your inventory and wonder "what's the point of all this shit?" and I don't have an answer.
 
I won the game over the weekend and the later sections suffer from the same issues as the first game. I hit the level cap before even going to the last planet and the gear/rewards you get aren't any better or stronger than the stuff you find early. That made my motivation to do much of the later quests almost nil. I still tried to just to see what kind of affect things might have on the ending. As it turns out, not that much.

I did enjoy how they handled the ending (it's a recap of what happened to each major character in the game), but I hate how they kept gating choices behind scores of 15+ in the later sections. They really, really want you to play a "build" with 4 sky high stats and everything else at 0. Either that or they just want you to kill literally everything except the 2 factions, considering that's actually the most rewarding approach.

I replayed the first game and mostly enjoyed it both times, but I can't see myself touching this one again. It's not a bad game per se, but there's just not much point.
 
TOW2's system of choice sounds so much better on paper than it really ends up being. All that variety usually boils down to your stats allowing you to choose option A instead of option C, but the result are the same. Either that or you make a jack of all trades character and you can't do shit because none of your stats are high enough to unlock the right dialogue options. Then you're stuck fighting everyone all the time and you end up being at max level halfway through the game thanks to all that combat XP.
 
peppergomez said:
, I would not take anything those clowns write very seriously
The game looks like it's somewhere between mediocre to pretty good and im probably right
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Even people who enjoyed the first game like myself will say it was a mediocre game. From the sounds of things this one took a few steps in the wrong direction, but probably still okay.
 
Flogger23m said:
Even people who enjoyed the first game like myself will say it was a mediocre game. From the sounds of things this one took a few steps in the wrong direction, but probably still okay.
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Yeah. Its a AA game thst is realistically worth $30 or so to buy. I'll play it in a year or two when its on a deep sale.
 
My son just finished the first game and few days ago and really liked it so I got him The Outer Worlds 2 on Steam. It crashes every 10 minutes or so on his AMD Ryzen 5800xt and 9070xt. He has tried a bunch of suggestions but nothing is working so far. Nothing is overclocked at all.
 
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Vegas P11 said:
My son just finished the first game and few days ago and really liked it so I got him The Outer Worlds 2 on Steam. It crashes every 10 minutes or so on his AMD Ryzen 5800xt and 9070xt. He has tried a bunch of suggestions but nothing is working so far. Nothing is overclocked at all.
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:(
 
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