Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Private Division
Release: October 25 2019
On: Windows
From: Epic Games Store
For: 50, $60, 60
There are a few times, during Obsidian’s rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ lootin’ first person space cowboy RPG The Outer Worlds, where the game lampshades the tropes it uses. One of them really stood out to me. An information broker asked me to clear the airwaves he used for his radio signals, meaning I had to convince two rival faction leaders to stop broadcasting. This meant having to do a task for each of them, with each task involving a sub-task.
When I handed the quests in, they both had more errands. And so on and so forth. When I finally returned to the broker and he asked me to reset his satellite relay, I was like “Oh, I bet I have to press three different switches now or whatever”, and he was like “No, don’t be ridiculous, that is a stupid system, who would design that, it’s just one button.” And while it’s all very well to put that little joke in your game, it won’t change the fact that the rest of it is all about finding sets of three switches.