According to developer Obsidian Entertainment, the upcoming first-person RPG, The Outer Worlds will not be politically-charged. The Outer Wilds, if you’re unaware, is being worked on by former Fallout developers and led the E3 2019 Game Critics Awards with four nominations. Obsidian’s creative director, Leonard Boyarsky told Video Games Chronicle that the team has been “very careful” not to “lecture” players, saying it’s “the last thing we want to do,”
Boyarsky continued:
I like money: I’m not against capitalism and in a lot of ways I’m happy with our society. But of course there are a lot of ways in which it could be improved.
We started development in April 2016 and a couple of things happened [in world politics] between then and now that nobody expected. We weren’t expecting that.
It can be insidious; the way which people control the stories you tell about the world. If you let other people control that narrative, then they can control you to a certain degree. That can be any form of government: if it wasn’t capitalism it could be something else.
I don’t want people to think this is a really hard, politically-charged game: it’s supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be humorous.
Obsidian’s stance isn’t unlike Ubisoft’s. Both companies claim their products are apolitical. Whether or not that’s true is up to you.
The Outer Wilds will be released on October 25, 2019, the same day as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the remake of MediEvil. With that being such a crowded release day, perhaps one of the three titles will get moved.
What do you think about the company’s stance on politics in The Outer Wilds? Do you think it will end up feeling political? Let us know!
[Source: Video Games Chronicle]
