9/19/2023 0 Comments Games like the outer worlds![]() ![]() I crash landed, after being stuck in cryofreeze for lord knows how many years. I know nothing about a town I’ve spent but a few hours in. What was my goal here? To help people, right? But in what form? I’m not from Edgewater or the Vale. I found myself struck by Parvati, to the point that I put the controller down for a while. It doesn’t mean you’re playing a hero, necessarily, but it imbues you with maximum agency, while everyone else, like actors in a play, are left to wonder what you’ll choose to do next and respond accordingly. You are the one who knows the most about what’s going on, you’re the one with the answers. In a world of chaos, you are an agent of action. The way games like The Outer Worlds, maybe even part of their appeal, is the way the player gets to be the center of attention. Decent, hard-working folk just living their lives the only way they know how. But the town’s got some good people in it. There’s barely enough saltuna to fill our bellies anymore. We’ve been losing workers year after year, and corporate hardly ever sends replacements. “I don’t think you should cut off Edgewater’s power,” she said. (Also, this is a game where you want to read as much dialogue as possible. But because Parvati is so picky about her moments, there was a sense of importance. You don’t have to listen to her, it’s possible to dismiss her interjection outright. “Do you understand what you’re about to do?” she asks. It did.Īs I approached the computer, my companion Parvati, who at this point in the game is largely deferential and carefully chooses when to speak up, pulled me aside for a quick talk. People enjoy being boxed in between arbitrary choices that feel gross, given how often video games concoct some way to make sure the player is the kind of hero able to thread the needle and make everything a-okay.Īnd so when I headed to the geothermal plant and found myself at the computer that’d let me divert the power to Edgewater or the commune, everything seemed simple-which should have been my first hint the game was going to throw a curveball eventually. But unlike a game like Disco Elysium, whose ideological leanings are made bare and form the game’s structural foundation, The Outer Worlds is much fuzzier, partially because the structural formula of this very specific type of game often demands a rigid “this” or “that” choices to drive players, limiting the imagination of the possible in pursuit of raw simplicity.īut that raw simplicity is part of the appeal, I think. Its premise posits a capitalist critique, and capitalism’s excesses are the primary source of the game’s hit-or-miss humor. The Outer Worlds’ politics, especially in the opening hours, aren’t clear. Adelaide, seeing an opportunity to upend the unending status quo, asks the player to instead deprive Edgewater of its power, essentially dooming it. Reed, arguing there's no other choice, asks the player to head to the plant and cut off power to the commune. The rebellion was, at first, tolerated, but now it’s siphoning power from the geothermal plant and the cannery is without enough workers. A group of folks led by a woman named Adelaide McDevitt, rather than trying to overthrow Reed and Spacer’s Choice, left Edgewater behind to start their own commune. The people of Edgewater have been treated like disposable trash for a while now, but instead of this leading to a revolutionary spirit, it’s just destroyed their spirit. It’s a chance to reflect upon arrival at a virtual choice and how it might impact real-life ones.īut let’s back up a second, and walk towards how I ended up swerving at the last second. ![]() The Outer Worlds is a messy game, but the reason I’m drawn to experiences like it isn’t the shooting or the looting, it’s because I want to feel morally compromised and expose my own ideological contradictions while working through the bad-to-terrible options the game presents me. It wasn’t a decision that left me feeling great about its implications, but thanks to a last second intervention by the game’s first companion character, a delightful engineer named Parvati, I was given reason to reframe the choice in front of me and who it could hurt. I, The Woke Gamer, ended up diverting the power back to the corporation, depriving the dissenters, and believing it was the least worst decision for everyone involved. ![]() It turns out that person, the same person who was so sure about what choice they would make, is me. ![]()
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