The Outer Worlds Was Held Back by Console Memory Budgets

In hindsight there were definitely parts of the game that felt like they had been scaled back.

I really enjoyed TOW but it did feel very AA at times. Interesting to see that it was consoles that held it back, I played it on PC after all.

Some people keep saying they don't understand why some games are only possible on next gen and they think its just to sound cool.

Is this series spoiler filled if you haven't played the game yet?

I don’t really buy this when you have games that look way better with way bigger worlds that are populated by way more NPC’s than what they state. To name just a few you have any of the AC games,The Witcher 3,Horizon Zero Dawn etc

Remember those loading times in the Witcher every time you went into a house in the city? and the same 3 NPC's that were sitting there?...oh right...

This is the one game I will be sad not to be able to play on PS5. The Outer Worlds 2, can't play everything I suppose.

I don't believe him tbh. There's countless bigger games, with bigger worlds, bigger events, more NPCs on screen, etc.

@dark_knightmare2 It’s kinda hard to compare those games to TOW when they have completely different design philosophies. The examples you listed are open worlds which don’t render everything at once. The Outer Worlds has individual maps which are all loaded in at once. While this avoids loading screens, it meant detail had to be sacrificed.

@dark_knightmare2. I know right.hes using this asca excuse.word up son

I thoroughly recommend this youtube channel. The docs Danny has done on The Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn are especially enlightening but most are worth a watch. Not watched this one yet but will do.

@Athrum Not sure what game you played but I didn't see a loading screen in The Witcher 3 unless I fast traveled or died. Walking into buildings was instant. Although there were a lot of similar looking citizens I give you that. I pretended that was due to lots of inbreeding.

@LieutenantFatman

I agree. I really enjoyed Outer Worlds, and I am sad that I probably won’t be playing the next one.

@Athrum Are you high on something? The Witcher 3 didn’t have any load times unless you died or fast traveled, or was booting into the world from the start screen.

@JesWood13 @BearsEatBeets He said The Witcher. Not The Witcher 3.

@Eldritch Admittedly that is true but I assumed the comment meant 3 considering the original is a PC game from 13 years ago and would make for an odd comparison.

Did the memory constraints hold back the story too?

Bethesda seems to manage with the Fallout and Skyrim series. The entire world is there for you to explore, with the only loading being when you enter some mission areas. TOW goes to lengthy load screens when you enter towns, your ship, mission areas, other worlds/ships/stations. I’m enjoying it and have no complaints, but the memory statement doesn’t mesh with what Bethesda has managed.

@JesWood13 that was exactly my point. Should've put a /s

Days Gone is another example, especially when you load the screen with freakers.

Seems like excuses from a good, but not as skilled developer, as some.

I don't buy this either. The consoles are essentially PCs in a box with 8GB unified RAM and decent graphics cards. They don't have the same restrictive configurations and 'tricky' bespoke hardware as, say, the PS3 with its split memory and fancy-but-finicky Cell CPU.

There are numerous other open-world games, including years older titles, which seem to manage just fine whilst doing much more. Smacks of excuses to me. Sounds more like it wasn't so much that the systems couldn't do it, but that they couldn't figure out how to make the systems do it.

I find that very hard to belive

@BearsEatBeets I just made my assumption on there being no load times in 3. So who knows. Perhaps after all this he means 2 and he was on an Xbox. lol Either way I guess we'll find out.

Outer World has loads of loading screens. It's not rendering anything all at once without loading.
This is just another excuse from a company know for making excuses for why their games aren't as good as they should be.

I never knew the Push Square community was full of video game developers who know better than actual studios.

@LiamCroft And yet they did not understand most of Mark Cerny's ps5 presentation for developers. 🤷‍♂️

Ah well, it was still a fab game. Loved the characters that were in it.

@LiamCroft thanks, I was going to comment exactly that.

I recently purchased outer worlds. Im not exactly happy with it. Seems like this guy is making excuses, that are unnecessary to make. But since he is, outer worlds 2 should have no excuses....

@get2sammyb not really, Outer Worlds isn't exactly a graphical powerhouse, and every room requires loading.

It's just poor resource management imo. It's an excuse that holds no water.

@LiamCroft so we're not allowed to question the validity of the excuse? Much more technically advanced games out their than Outer Worlds. You don't need to be a game developer to see that his statement is nonsense.

@oldschool1987 Different games have completely different expectations, budgets, team sizes, and tech to work with. The statement is not nonsense whatsoever — especially so from the perspective of a comments section which wouldn't know the first thing about making a video game.

@lordzand You know, not everyone has a Rockstar budget. There’s only so much optimizing some devs can do. This stuff takes time and next gen will really help devs like this.

Please. There are larger games not giving excuses. The guys defending them should just STOP. Anybody can guess Cyberpunk will pack a punch, and it's the same console with the same first person perspective with attention to detailed environments, so stop. It's about being clever in managing and working around hardware limitations. GTAV on PS3 is bigger than TOW on PS4, what's the excuse. Well yes you could say team sizes and budget, so blame that and not the console.

@LiamCroft budget and personal limitations would be an excuse that makes sense.

This isn't exactly a graphical leap, the game play is also stilted and very last gen. If it looked like God of War I'd take their excuse more seriously. But nope, it's nonsensical, it seems most here agree. They've seen much bigger games, do more, while pushing technical boundaries. Nothing about Outer Worlds is boundary pushing. Very fun game, but not exactly a game that screams it needed more power from the machines.

Nonsensical.

And how do you know what experience this comment section has? Seems very presumptuous of you tbh. Let people have their opinions, you don't need to attack them for it.

i have only one thing to say... LEARN TO F**KING OPTIMIZING YOUR CODE!

Its actually pretty devastating that xbox got them. Especially seeing that they do bethesda better than bethesda and it seems that might be the direction they are going. Its like we ps5 players will only get the the cheap wish.com version of bethesda type games (which are infact actual bethesda games lol)
Edit:but as a huge bethesda fan i hope they get their crap together and start putting their full efforts in moving forward.

So PS5 will get a remaster I assume? Urgh

I always notice quite a few loading screen or loading stutters in unreal engine 4 games. So i'm assuming that the overhead is a bit larger than games that often time use their own engine or what features they used. As they said the lighting pass can uses alot of ram if they used the unreal's lightmass. I've read in a couple forums that can be memory intensive because it isn't real time, but it's baked lighting. I'd imagine given the smaller budget they used the tools in unreal rather than customizing it to something better. I'm sure it did hold them back, but I'm sure all developers can say that in some way or another.

@LiamCroft - To be fair, all people are doing is pointing to other games and saying "but hey, these games managed to do it, so why can't yours?". You don't really need specialist knowledge to make comments like this, in fact they could be an indicator of just that, but it's one that makes sense; if the only problem was memory on the console itself, then how come other games didn't have that problem? There are of course legitimate answers for this, but they're all different to the one given here, thus the real reason is likely something related (e.g. bad engine, budget constraints), but different to the one Obsidian provided, hence the comments.

I’m surprised how many people here expect the same ingredients to lead to the same results. If the same ingredients were provided to my kitchen, The kitchen in my local restaurant and a factory with 1000 employees you would expect to different food to come out of it. Similarly a game built with dreams and unreal or a custom engine will be different even when the PS4 has the same amount of memory. Saying Skyrim did it therefore it is possible doesn’t necessarily mean everyone can achieve those results. Doubling the available memory will reduce the work required to achieve those results and therefore make it possible for more developer’s to do so.

@LiamCroft I think a lot are confusing the npc's of other games who are just decoration with fully voiced and potentially quest giving npc's in here

One of the best games of last year for sure but i don't buy this at all, the game is a Switch game for gods sake so complaining about it being held back doesn't work when they chose to downgrade it enough to work on that console. Death Stranding, Horizon, Spider-Man, The Witcher 3, any Assassin's Creed game, Breath of the Wild on Switch, Red Dead 2, GTA V and so on all have bigger worlds, are all visually better and doing more with those visuals and all have way more NPC's with loads of them having more unique NPC's.

@LiamCroft Fine then you better stop reviewing games because you don't make VG's so hell the how can you have the know how to criticize them? Yeah we don't make games but it doesn't mean we can't question this, The Outer Worlds isn't that far from a last gen game in what it looks and does, not only that its also a Switch game as well. Saying the consoles held it back while making sure they could release it on a console what is way weaker then the PS4 sounds i don't know weird. TOW while fantastic the game is at its core a prettier last gen game and the fact its on Switch proves that.

@Jaz007 Not arguing your point but rather approaching it from a different angle. No, not everyone has a Rockstar budget (or timeframe), so then what exactly is Rockstar's excuse? GTAV was one of the ugliest, broken, worst example of a game I've ever played, and yet it continues to shatter records. I've not played RDR2 yet but from my understanding (from actual gamers, not R* fanboys) it's yet another poorly controlling, slow walking, garbage feature filled with content but nothing of value to actually play. What good is a big budget when they can't even get a working control scheme down? Their games control like the first 3D attempts through molasses and it's guaranteed their broken ass controls will make it to GTA6, along with their horrible open world and terrible writing.

TOW isn't perfect, frankly I'm glad I got it on sale, and I feel the developer here is bending the truth just a tad, but please stop holding Rockstar in any high regard. They're one of, if not the, worst developer in the industry. I know I know, the most rabid fanbase ever will eat you alive if you say you don't like GTA. I attribute most of their success to peer pressure though, and you'll laugh, but I don't personally know a single fan of R* games. Those that I know who have actually played a R* game, hated it. I've never met someone who actually played GTAV that liked it, because you can't. But the fanbase will bully you if you say it's garbage, despite it being garbage. Stop hating on other games yet giving R* a pass.

At the time I was hyped up for the game based on it being an Obsidian game and Bethesda was going through the anti consumer stuff... But in hindsight this game wasn't all that great. A shell in comparison to New Vegas, the game this company's claim to fame. I'm not sure if the visionaries of that project had left the studio up until this point. But as far as I see it, even if they had included the extra content. They'd still have missed their mark due to their world design and structure...

@GoblinKing86 I got RDR2 pretty soon after launch I haven't had many issues with it. As far your whole "from actual gamers" thing, this opinion comes from someone who's never played a Rockstar game aside from RDR2. It's an absolute masterpiece. It's slow yes, but that suits the game perfectly, and it some of the most meaningful content there. Almost every side-quest is unique or even makes some fun of it's slight(you barely repeat stuff compared to other games) repetition. It's insane how relevant and quality almost all of the content is. There are plenty of side-quests that are done well enough most movies would struggle to keep up with their quality of story and art. This also means each one feels unique and like you're not retreading the same ground again. The control scheme is fine overall, it may not be as smooth as Doom or DMC, but you're missing the point then. If you want a game where you can forgot about the story and shoot stuff, you're just playing the wrong game for you. It's a story-driven piece of art, one of the best there is gaming. One of the best there is in all media honestly.

Here's where I question this excuse from.

If the game had to be scaled back for PS4 and Xbox One due to memory constraints of 5-8GB usable RAM, system depending...

Why did they then decide to also port it to a system with even LESS RAM?

@Akimi I read it before playing and I didn't need to put holy water in my eyes. You'll likely be fine.