If you liked Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, or Fallout 4, you might be familiar with the term VATS.
GameInformer published a new video about The Outer Worlds, and in it, Obsidian‘s unique interpretation of VATS was discussed. We will be able to slow down time to have some tactical shots fired towards our enemies to cause more damage. (VATS is in Fallout 76, but due to its online-only, server-based gameplay, there is no way to slow down time.)
„We’re trying to walk a kind of tight rope line between the two. In an easy encounter, you might be able to just shoot everything and don’t worry too much about taking cover, using health kits, etc. In larger encounters, when enemies have special abilities, that’s when we want players to think through ‘I’ll take a moment, check what this guy can do and what are the tools in my toolbox’.
We definitely wanted to make sure this game supported companion combat because we have a new leadership role. The leader character will swap companions in and out to gain access to their skills. Just by being together they’ll help out by dealing damage, they’ll grab ‘aggro’. Players can also direct them to attack specific targets. They also have special companion abilities that they can use to inflict certain status effects on enemies.
TTD is our tactical time dilation. You can slow time and move, shoot. It’s a way for you to behave tactically in combat if you’re not the best FPS player. But FPS players are still going to use it because it gives you bonus status effects depending on the targeted body part. At first, we had TTD slow everything all the time and just drain at a constant rate. It drained really fast. Then we balanced it so that if you just look around, you can have plenty of time in there. Moving drains it a little bit faster. When you start taking a specific action, that’s when you lose a big chunk of it. There’s a lot of choices for players to have even early in the game,” the video says. In other words, there will be „VATS” but with another name, and with good shots and our companions, we will get to dish out a lot of damage.
Also, Obsidian is not happy about people making fun of Fallout 76 after seeing The Outer Worlds. Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the two directors of the game (who also helped create Fallout in the 90s) talked about the subject in their interview with GameInformer.
„It’s disheartening when your game is used to tear down another game. They’re excited because your game is going to show up another game. That’s not what we’re making this for. We’re not making this to make anybody not want to play something else. We’re making it for people who want to play this,” Cain said. „The fact that people think we’re trying to say something about another company’s games that people have put their heart and soul into is not something that we’re really happy about,” Boyarsky added. Feargus Urquhart, the CEO of Obsidian, is also worth a quote: „In our mind, there are people that enjoy where Fallout was. That is what we wanted to do with The Outer Worlds, to give people that. Maybe that’s a bad decision from the standpoint of the number of people that will buy it. I don’t know. People seem to really enjoy what Fallout: New Vegas was, so let’s give them an experience that’s as similar as we can to that.”
The Outer Worlds is out this year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
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