Fallout creator Tim Cain has offered a glimpse at a pre-release vertical slice of The Outer Worlds, praising his team for how quickly they put the game together.
In a new video, Cain, who directed The Outer Worlds and is consulting on the upcoming sequel The Outer Worlds 2, says that developer Obsidian allowed him to share the pre-release footage. Cain explains that this ‘vertical slice’ served as something of a proof of concept that Obsidian had to send to publisher Private Division to show that development was coming along as planned. A vertical slice is intended to function much like the finished game, and Cain says that while the player is blocked off some certain functions in this build, this piece of development was so successful that it did actually make it into the final release.
What Cain is particularly keen to highlight, however, is how quickly this slice came together. The ninth six-week milestone that Obsidian had to deliver to its publisher, this is a look at the game only a year into proper development, in September 2017. That’s something that Cain is clearly proud of.
“Keep in mind,” he says, “the team had one year to learn Unreal, in this case Unreal 4, and then make this game. So they had one year, and this is on an IP that we were spinning up, that we hadn’t decided anything at the beginning of that year. We had a lot of things ready, but they had one year to learn Unreal, to learn how to code in it and code the mechanics, to make concept art and then figure out how to get that concept art realized in 3D in Unreal 4. This is a lot of work, and it’s a testament to how good the team was that they could do that in one year. I’ve seen teams and heard of teams that couldn’t do this after two, three, or four years, so: Go Team Outer Worlds.” At the end of the video, Cain says “I hope you’re really impressed with what this team could do with an unknown engine and new IP after just one year.”
Cain goes on to explain just how much of the game was in place in this slice, as well as how Obsidian hid the things that didn’t work. Hair didn’t really work at this point, so most characters are bald. There are only two available companions and no crafting, so the team didn’t let you go back onto your ship where you could access a crafting table or switch your allies up, and made sure not to put any crafting locations around the map.
Just a year into development, this certainly does seem to be a pretty impressive effort. But we’re many years out from The Outer Worlds now, and attention is gradually turning to its sequel. Sadly, we don’t get any form of insight into The Outer Worlds 2 from Cain here, but that’s largely in keeping with expectations – it’s been a quiet three years since that game was announced, and with Avowed next up for Obsidian, it might be a good while yet before we hear more on the studio’s sci-fi efforts.
He might be offering a peek behind the curtain here, but Cain says he also has a secret Fallout sequel that he’s “never ever going to talk about.”
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