Olio CafeThe Outer Worlds 2 lead says his RPG isn't a critique of capitalism, but Baldur's Gate 3's publishing lead isn't so sure: "Expression in video games is cooked"
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Agent_Karyowww.gamesradar.com/games/rpg/the-outer-worlds-2…
Josh Sawyer hearing his colleague say that
“We aren’t criticizing Capitalism, just its most singular defining feature.”
I haven’t played the second one yet, but the first one absolutely was! I’m one of those “patient gamers” — especially after seeing how they did the first one. I’m going to wait for the full/final edition and wait for a sale on it. I still haven’t played the DLC for the first one because the path to ownership if you already own the base game is essentially “just buy the whole thing again.” So nah, I’ll wait.
The first one, though. With all the dirty corporations, yeah, it’s pretty obvious what they were going for. Almost annoyingly so, but it was obviously satire. Cyberpunk did the same thing, but it was less satire, more serious. Companies actually going to war with one another.
I don’t know about “cooked,” but I remember back with Fallout 4, it was so obvious the factions were based on the 2016 US presidential election candidates. The Brotherhood of Steel was Trump, might and conquest. The Minutemen was Sanders, cooperation and building/farming. Socialism through and through. Railroad was Clinton, or the liberal view of her, placing the iconic slave freers in a future tense, saving robots from their makers, wiping their memories and giving them new ones, and ushering them away from the Institute. I’m not sure who, if anyone, the Institute was meant to represent. They’re pretty much evil, the others exist in shades of grey, so they could be valid choices and largely, people went for the one that aligned with their politics. A few people disagreed the factions were based on or correlated to politicians, but most people would espouse beliefs and ideals that would align with a certain politician (any of them, I mean, not just one) and they would almost always favour that politician’s associated faction. (Then there’s the achievement hunters who do all of it one time for the meaningless awards. Or the privacy-focused gamers who get all achievements to poison the well, though I think if you get all the achievements, your data isn’t included for obvious reasons.)
Fallout 4 released at the end of 2015 and was obviously in development for a long time prior… I think you’re reading into it too much if you think the factions are supposed to represent the 2016 election….
Yeah thats crazy talk, it’s just generic politics.
Not me just thinking people picked factions because they seemed cool to play in a video game or they liked the faction companion even if it did not align with their real-world politics ;-; or wanting to explore what the story had to offer from every side (I guess that could be completionist or achievement-hunter?)
Never heard of people tracking faction data, so I never even conceived of the idea that you might do multiple playthroughs, one for each faction just to hide who you really wanted to join. Now I’m curious to find the data.
It’s not just tracking faction data. Microsoft introduced the achievement system with the Xbox 360 for two purposes. One, to give gamers an overarching goal (play multiple games, get the highest Gamerscore). But two, to show developers (or maybe more publishers?) how their game is played. Consider: Every achievement is time/date stamped. Also consider: Most games give you an achievement for starting the game (or beating the training dungeon, as it were). So they have the time/date you started. Then they have the time/date you did all the things.
Even if you got all the achievements, they still know which faction you went to first. Which one you saved for last. Which side missions and challenges you completed (provided they have achievements). Sticking to Fallout 4, it’s widely speculated (but has never been confirmed) that the reason you can only play a good guy in Fallout 4 (until you get to Nuka-World, the final DLC) was because there were achievements in Fallout 3 for reaching levels 8, 16, and 24 (IIRC) at Good, Neutral, or Evil Karma levels. So they know that most people hit those landmarks at Good. Achievement hunters hit them first at Evil, then reloaded a save, dumped money into the church to get Neutral, popped the level up, then reloaded, donated even more to get Good, then popped the third one, then reloaded their Evil save and continued. But they see that, they know you’re gaming the system, so they don’t consider that data for determining who plays good or neutral; that would be considered an Evil player.
Not all games “care” about achievements. The Avatar game on 360 infamously gave you 200GS for beating 20 enemies in a row, 5 times. So you could get 1000GS at the start by just standing there and fighting 100 guys. Apparently it’s not hard. Those developers didn’t care about the metrics.
As far as Steam and PlayStation, I know they also have achievements and trophies respectively, but I don’t know if they’re providing the same data to publishers. Their achievements and trophies are also timed and dated, so they probably are. Nintendo isn’t, and has said that they won’t. That said, I’m an Animal Crossing player, and that game has internal achievements which are dated. I’m not sure if Nintendo is tracking Animal Crossing Nook Mile Achievements, but they might be. I’m sure they’d be very interested to know if anyone is actually catching 2,500 fish, bugs, or sea creatures. It’s a dumb achievement, like you really have to be dedicated to go for that. Then again, Rockband 2’s Bladder of Steel achievement exists. In that music game, there is a setlist called “The Endless Setlist.” It’s all 84 songs on the disc. Of course, there are achievements for completing it at Medium, Hard, and Expert (and yes, completing the harder one gets the one(s) below it). Now if you do The Endless Setlist without failing or pausing, you also get the Bladder of Steel achievement. It takes 6 hours and 20 minutes. Ask me how I know this.
Thank you so much for the long post! Informational read. I never played Xbox 360 and never found out about this kind of tracking before your post, but you are right that what you can do with just the information of achievements attained and when would absolutely be useful to devs.
I cannot imagine never pausing in 6 hours and 20 minutes, but if you time your meals and drinks right it is definitely possible to go 6 hours and 20 minutes without feeling the urge to use the bathroom.
I did the Bladder of Steel achievement on Medium Vocals. Some of those songs have solos, that’s when I’d run to the bathroom. The setlist is not randomised, so I knew in advance when the solos were. I planned it out.
I cooked a whole pot of Kraft Dinner with hot dogs and green beans in it. Not a meal I’m proud of now. But it was filling, it tasted good, and best of all, it held up sitting out for a long period of time. I mean I had the pot on a pot holder in front of me. I ate when I needed to, and when I could. I also had a gallon of water on standby. I don’t remember the entire set. I do know at one point I was “late” coming back from the bathroom, the song was going on and I was missing line after line, my “crowd meter” dropping. I got there in time and started singing, and one “excellent” (highest rating) rated line sends you straight to the top of the crowd meter. I could have gamed it so I could miss a lot more than I did, and just coast through. The game is very forgiving, especially on lower difficulties, and especially on vocals.
Didn’t know about Fallout 4 having such obvious political subtext!
Seems almost excessive.
It’s not as excessive as Outer Worlds 1, but TOW was clearly meant as satire. Fallout is satire, too, but it’s satirising 1950s Americana. There’s always been some political subtext in Bethesda Fallouts.
It’s not often talked about, but the Institute and Railroad actually first appeared in Fallout 3. The robots were later rebranded as Synths but they were Androids originally — this was before the rise in smartphones, though. Fallout 3 came out in 2008, around the time Android phones started existing, but they were not popular yet. As time went on and Android (and iPhone) became super popular, the game was patched to rebrand Androids as Synths. At least, the last time I played Fallout 3, they were called Synths. I remember speculating that the Institute would be modeled after Apple. Of course this was inspired by Steve Jobs saying Android was a stolen product and they were willing to wage “thermonuclear war” to “right this wrong.” Since Fallout games are about nuclear fallout… well… the story just wrote itself. (That was just my fan theory, years before Fallout 4 was a thing.) But phones and speculation aside, Bethesda had the Underground Railroad helping robots escape from slavers. They also had slavers you could work for. And the main quest involved purifying the water in the Potomac (river that runs through Washington DC, where Fallout 3 takes place), via a machine built in the Jefferson Memorial (Thomas Jefferson notoriously owned slaves.) So yeah, politics in Fallout run deep. Oh yeah, the Enclave, a faction that did not return for Fallout 4 except via mods, was basically the old US government, but heavily fascist. In 2008 this was extreme science fiction. Now? It kinda tracks. The Enclave’s goal was the same as yours, purify the river, except they wanted you to put a virus in that would kill people who were impure. Targeted at ghouls (intelligent zombies) and Super Mutants (think Incredible Hulk, but permanent); it also seemed to target pure humans who were different (Black, LGBTQ+, other criteria — not sure if the actual criteria in the game were named, but that seemed to me to be what they were driving at).
New Vegas a little less subtly, but New Vegas was made by Obsidian… who made Outer Worlds. Not Bethesda. In New Vegas, none of the factions were great. Caesar’s Legion was obviously super racist and sexist, but the Brotherhood of Steel have always been evil outside of Fallout 3 (Elder Lyons’ group was the good offshoot of the fascist organisation) and the New California Republic were well intentioned but spread too thin. I went NCR every time, except for the achievements. Mainly because I liked the Ranger gear.
Was BoS really evil in the original?
Arguably yes. The originals were less black and white, though.