The Outer Worlds

On companions.

Edited by lrrose on Feb 21st 2019 at 1:29:04 PM

Interesting link on the companions. Definitely one of the aspects of this game that I'm most interested in.

Interesting. I didn't see anything that suggested how many there might be. Anyone got a ballpark number?

Hm. I find the practice of having each writer write a single companion interesting. It sounds to me like a bad idea on paper, especially if you have them interact with one another, but then, Obsidian's pulled it off before.

Hearing that they're inspired by Firefly for the companions makes me incredibly happy, though. As does the knowledge that we'll have them all in the ship as a bse. Brings me happy memories of KOTOR.

My biggest positive about this, though, is that they're making the relationships with the characters more organic. No Friendship Meters or anything, they simply react to your choices on the fly, so you can't avoid having a character leave after doing something that goes completely against their moral code just because you gave them enough gifts to fill the bar. You go against their personal beliefs hard enough, they leave. I liked that when Bioware did it in Dragon Age, and I like hearing that Obsidian is doing it here too.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 21st 2019 at 9:18:06 AM

Speaking of Dragon Age, didn't Bioware also have individual writers write companions, as well?

I thought it was pulled off decently there.

They did? I wasn't aware.

Still, though, it's a practice that always sounds to me like a recipe for disaster, but seems to work fine in practice. I'd love to see how they make it work out when putting everything together someday.

Bioware does have a consistent writer for each character.

I'd imagine that they probably all write out their ideas on their own and then sit down as a big group to workshop everything to create coheasion.

After all, Dorian and Iron Bull only happened because the writers workshopped together and realized it could work.

Not sure about this game specifically, but I do think relationship meters have a place. Essentially, without it any decision that doesn't, by itself, make your ally leave you has no consequences.

It makes sense that a person would leave because of a lot of little things that they're willing to forgive by themselves. Or that they would stay with a person they really liked even if that person did something they'd normally leave over.

Personally I wish we'd avoid meters entirely and phase that out in favor of a more intimate examination of the individual actions. After all, the relationship meters result in wierd situations where character want to leave us because we butchered their village, but we gave them gifts enough to be +50 so they're fine with it.

Cold math just doesn't work with measuring people and feelings.

Edited by InkDagger on Feb 21st 2019 at 5:49:29 AM

With that I'd say it's a case of "wrong variables, wrong formula" rather than the concept itself. Things like gifts should give diminishing returns and the like. And while cold math isn't organic enough, I would say it's more organic than decisions having all-or-nothing consequences.

Though, to reiterate, I'd have to play The Outer Worlds before making any judgements about it specifically (it's quite possibly the right choice for this game) and I don't think it'll impact the game's quality a lot one way or the other.

I quite like the compromise Bioware found in Dragon Age: Inquisition. There are meters being tracked by the game, but they're not shown to the player, which makes the relationship feel more organic. You know there's a tracker in the code, but you still have to learn about the characters and understand how they act to know how much they like you and how they feel about what you do.

I disagree. A choice has consequence so long as your allies react to it, even if it's just by regarding that choice in one way or another. The existence of a meter is only to make that clear to player by flashing a big "Morrigan Disapproves -10" everytime you do something they don't like, but those kinds of reactions can be written into dialogue and shown by animation. I'm not entirely against the meters, but I do find they can be replaced. Again, the compromise in DAI is a prety good one. I'd be happy with game having an internal meter, but not showing me whenever that meter is updated with a warning, letting me figure it out by my companions' behaviours instead.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 21st 2019 at 10:55:15 AM

I'd rather character disapproval and frustration be voiced or shown. Even if its minor, a facial expression can tell me A LOT more than 'X Disapproves' ever will. That's what I'd rather we move more towards. Get us to read our characters, not the HUD data.

I do think not showing the meter is a good choice. I will concede the 'no consequences' part-I meant to say no 'long term consequences'.

Maybe that's something we could consider? Maybe have more scenes where 'If you're close enough to x, you get scene y. If not, you don't have that scene'?

Or more specifically, if them angry and leaving is a 'consequence', have more things that feel like 'rewards' or at least positive reinforcement or something on the other side of the scale?

I'm hoping for a secret alien and/or robot companion, it is an alien world set in the future after all.

On the danger of overusing this series as an example, Dragon Age Origins had companions give boosts to attributes as you earned their loyalty. I don't think it ever gets explained in-universe, being instead just a thing with the mechanics, which does kinda break immersion a bit, but I think it could be a start.

Loyal people are more effective then disloyal people, those bonuses simply represent that.

Honestly, I'm kind of confused as to why anyone would view that as immersion disrupting.

Also, Gameplay and Story Segregation isn't a TOTALLY awful thing.

Who cares if its isn't totally logical? Its a nice character bonus thing.

Yeah, but the bonuses were applied to you alone, not to the characters.

I could never understand, for example, why being friends with Alistair made me more capable to take hits.

Your point does make sense, though.

And yeah, gameplay and story segregation isn't necessarily bad, but it would still be nice to have the bonus be more integrated.

Um, are you sure?

I could've sworn their loyalty bonus just applies to them.

Well, I stand corrected. Took a look at the Dragon Age Wiki and you're right: the bonus applies to them, not to the player. That does make a lot more sense, especially with what you said about loyalty.

So yeah, that's a nice way to integrate bonuses into your relationship with companions without the strict need for a relationship meter of some kind. Have their trust in you develop into bonuses for the character.

Although I could do with it being a more subtle thing. DA:O throws a huge banner onscreen to tell you that you got the bonus, which I always found really jarring.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 21st 2019 at 11:46:42 AM

I think Pillars games did have multiple writers per character, but I might be wrong there?

Any given quest and companion is going to have a primary writer, and then they'll collaborate with others on dungeons and chained quests and moments where NP Cs interact with each other, passing their work around for feedback and drafting as they go. How much ownership of a given character there is does vary from studio to studio, but I'm kind of a little surprised myself that there are people who are surprised by and/or resistant to the idea. I guess I don't quite see the alternative — everybody writing everything simultaneously? It just seems like it kind of had to be more compartmentalized than that. It's just a difference of degrees, and with the kind of deep companion writing Obsidian does, giving one writer priority almost seems like a necessity. You want to give that character a unified voice.

Mixed writers always requires some management. I imagine part of the reason it tends to work well for BioWare and Obsidian, as well as a lot of RPGs is that companion design tends to be very... segmented, I guess? You have one massive block of companion content — their dialogues on the ship/back at base, maybe a few independent scenes, and maybe an overall a story arc developing through that. Then you sprinkle in a few reactions through the game — usually the companion will be taking a backseat and might just leave a small comment that doesn't alter the rest of the conversation — and there you go, there's the bulk of the content.

You need to keep all the content consistent in terms of lore, overall story, etc. but that's a mostly unavoidable part of handling multi-writer projects. But mostly the design is such that you have a framework where it makes sense to dedicate one writer to a character, for the same reason one writer might be the sole writer for, say, one particular quest.

Having one writer work on each character gives that character a consistent voice and personality and values. Really, that's the most important part of making a character seem human, so I also agree that it's odd to think of that as unusual.

The alternative is that different people write the same character in different scenes, and therefore they might have different interpretations of them and have them act in inconsistent ways by accident. You could avoid this through regular and intensive group editing, but that just expands the workload exponentially.

Having each writer with their own pet character(s) starts to sound like the path of least resistance, honestly.

Edited by Clarste on Feb 22nd 2019 at 12:32:01 PM