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Does Braben Want to Revisit Game Mechanics from 'The Outsider' in Elite?
- Thread starter VR Golgot
- Start date
That's all a load of assumptions.
~~ CAVEAT: This thread isn't about whether or not a 'walking about' expansion is roadmapped, likely, or desired by yourself personally. Plz argue about those things in another thread of your choice~~
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Premise: Tech from The Outsider may be revisited if there's a 'walking about' expansion:
Background: What Was The Outsider Intended To Be?
TLDR: It was an 'Elite style' open world, with stealth & action options. Story NPCs with simulated 'motivations and aims' would, allegedly, allow players to chose their point of interaction, rather than being locked strictly into a linear 'cut scene' narrative.
Press Release:
Braben interview with CVG:
Insider talking to Joystiq:
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My Take:
I could see FDev generally feeling some of this is 'unfinished business', given how the funding was pulled. I could see Braben personally wanting to experiment in these areas still. (It's obviously an area of interest, given his 2007 'contextual conversation' patent etc).
The station areas of Elite, and the dialled up NPCs, could potentially provide a framework for similar systems. Not regarding a broader narrative, but regarding missions, minor faction behaviours, and general background flavour.
Some of what is described in those old sources now feels dated (background NPCs routinely react to drawn weapons now, story NPCs regularly follow variable routine paths etc). While the broader aim of steering a narrative with full open world agency sounds, ultimately, too ambitious. But these are interesting areas of focus. (And the type of areas that could add personality to Elite's safe harbours in space).
Having some form of stealth vs 'loud' dynamic would also be fairly familiar, (and fairly unsurprising, given stealth was part of the launch era concept art etc). But potentially a fitting rock and scissor to go with the paper chase of any people tracking / influencing. (Some way of 'disguising' yourself as an enemy faction could be intriguing potentially
Who knows if they actually have capacity for this, are looking into stations now (beyond some possible hints from the files), or whether it would be actually any good if executed.
(And as a caveat, it's notable that they haven't achieved anything as involved or 'emergent' with the ship AI to date).
But it's all intriguingly eccentric
It's interesting that the patent you referenced said it was abandoned very recently, this year......
I'd do a bit more research on the reasons why The Outsider wasn't released.
Now iirc Codemasters were bought out and the new owners cancelled it.
EA were interested but wanted to change it to a Bourne game.
It was however pretty much finished and just needed the final polish.
This is not gospel though, I'm old and forgetful.
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6 years spent developing the game and let down by publishers ending up in a canned game. Easy to see why they moved to self publishing where they can delay to their hearts content and let down the players (those that care about such things) without codemasters or EA's help
I see what you did there.....
I use to have a link for a tech demo of The Outsider, which to me, looked a lot like a Frontier take on Grand Theft Auto - and that's fine. It really was looking quite good. If I can find it, I'll share, but it's been a long time. I certainly wouldn't object to a fair bit of The Outside making its way inside Elite, though I suspect it would have to be somewhat "light weight", as Elite already has a lot going on inside.
I think it actually ran out in 2012:
The timestamp for current status just seems to show today's date.
Hadn't thought to check though, I just assumed it was defunct. I reckon it's interesting more for the intent (which correlates with The Outsider's remit), than for the specifics it's trying to protect. (Which seem crazy wooly to my amateur eye
)
Only people on the insider, know about the outsider ;-)
Oh OK, sorry, lemme get that deleted right away.
Hang on, wait...
What he said.
That is a 'somewhat' simplistic view, but I understand that some people will do everything to say negative stuff.
[puts on fake mustache]
the blue ARX icon is clearly recycled into Elite from this game.
the blue ARX icon is clearly recycled into Elite from this game.
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Yep, that seems to be the beats of it.
There's this interesting gossip, which has a certain delicious detail to it, but hard to verify on the nitty gritty:
'Flintworth' said:
'Flintworth' said:
Plus they were kinda wrong on the Elite 4 thing, ultimately
. (Although the cynicism feels kinda informed there too )
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They're referring to Realtime Worlds' collapse after APB bombed:
EA was the publisher for APB. EA probably had plans for them to do a Bourne game using the APB engine.Wikipedia said:
Yes, everything up to, and including, dealing with reality.
We can all get our tiresome pedant on...
5Ana's initial point was this:
But has this current game finished production? Has it, at this point, failed to deliver on pledged additions?
Nope.
Simplistic reductionism is well annoying isn't it
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The fine details can hold more fun at times
The funding flailing which brought The Outsider to a stop. The apparent legacy of FDev forging into self-publishing. The fact that they tried to break the mold with the prior game design there. The possibility of design ideas getting tried again within the proc gen twists of Elite, now that they can experiment at their own risk. (And PG & RNG seem very much here to stay, incidentally).
Could just be me, but I like pondering how the game with the pre-paid pledges could achieve them. Especially when they've toyed with outlandish propositions like synthetic voices (given the steps on in tech there). Or suggested they've
got a novel take on conversation trees.
It doesn't matter if those possible roads to the actual pledges don't happen. It's just interesting that they could ¯\(ツ)/¯
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This is the one I was thinking of...
Still on par with a lot of titles still coming out today. Codemasters started swirling just after the release of Blade of Darkness (aka Severance), and went down the drain quickly.
I loved that game. Amazing atmosphere and combat. And you still can't buy it digitally due some legal stuff.
What is a bourne game? I was never into these first person shooter games, I doubt I would have even noticed Outsider had it been released as planned. But I would be interested to hear about John Jameson and why he was framed for murder, and what then happened. Such eventful life.