Outer Worlds Devs Are Asking if Reality's Gone Too Wild for Their Own Satire, Mate
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Obsidian's Creative Director, Leonard Boyarsky, is wondering if reality has become too wild for *The Outer Worlds 2*'s sharp satire, reckoning that the increasingly timely nature of their critiques might make him think twice about tackling such themes today. He admits their fiction has an uncanny knack for mirroring real-world absurdities, even when they're not trying.
Alright, buckle up, digital voyagers and fellow reality-benders, because we're diving into something a bit… meta today. *The Outer Worlds 2* has just landed, and much like its predecessor, it’s serving up a hearty platter of corporate shenanigans, political absurdity, and institutional chaos. And honestly, it’s all a bit *too* familiar, isn't it?
Now, our mates over at Obsidian Entertainment, the masterminds behind this particular flavour of dystopian delight, are pondering a rather existential question. Creative director Leonard Boyarsky recently told Polygon's Josh Broadwell that if he'd started this whole series back in, say, 2019 or 2020, he's "not sure that I would have had the intestinal fortitude to push through on these kinds of topics." Bloody hell, talk about a mood.
And you can see his point, can't you? The gaming landscape, much like everything else, has gotten a fair dinkum dose of political intensity lately. What was once niche commentary is now front-page news. Plus, with Microsoft, Obsidian's parent company, reportedly getting quite chummy with the current U.S. administration, there’s an interesting layer of corporate optics to navigate. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How much satire is *too much* satire when reality keeps trying to one-up your fiction?
The game itself is a mirror. There’s an early questline featuring refugees caught between a profit-hungry corporation (Auntie's Choice) demanding servitude, and a science-worshipping religious group (Order of the Ascendant) offering bare-minimum sustenance, all while sickness runs rampant. Sound familiar? Boyarsky is quick to say these parallels aren’t *intentional*, but rather an "inevitable" reflection of humanity and what happens "when certain types of people get power." It's like they've got a crystal ball, but it's just showing them what's already lurking in the shadows.
This isn’t a new trick for Boyarsky, mind. He, along with Tim Cain, has been poking fun at the powerful and the peculiar since the original *Fallout* games back at Interplay and Black Isle. From *Arcanum*'s "fantasy racism" built on tech and magic exclusion to *Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines*' power struggles and even Obsidian's own *Avowed*'s imperialist exploitation, it’s a recurring motif, a wizard's sigil if you will. These folks just *do* these kinds of stories.
What’s truly wild, though, is their uncanny knack for being timely *without even trying*. Boyarsky recounts making the first *Outer Worlds*, crafting a sub-story about crops losing nutritional value, only for a real-world news story about exactly that to pop up. Talk about a glitch in the Matrix! It makes you think if maybe, just maybe, they accidentally tapped into some universal constant of human absurdity. "We were barely staying ahead of the news," he quipped, sounding like he’d just dodged a rogue fireball of reality.
So, what's a developer to do? Boyarsky half-jokingly suggested they might need to "make a game all about rainbows and unicorns and everything's happy, and maybe the world will catch up to that." And you know what? A part of me, the wildly optimistic part that believes in magical thinking, really hopes he’s right. Until then, *The Outer Worlds 2* stands as a brilliant, if slightly unsettling, reminder that sometimes, the most fantastical tales are merely holding a funhouse mirror up to our own strange reality. A massive tip of the hat to Josh Broadwell and Polygon for getting the scoop on this fascinating peek behind the dev curtain!
Tags: TheOuterWorlds2, ObsidianEntertainment, GameDevelopment, GamingSatire, NarrativeDesign
Original article: Polygon