Development Info
Features
Genre: First Person RPG
Players: 1
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Platform: PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch
Time on Team: March 2018 – April 2020
- A 20-40 hour single player campaign
- FPS style combat with a variety of ranged and melee weapons
- Exploration across several smaller open world spaces
- Numerous dungeon and town environments
- Quest and level design that lets players complete objectives through combinations of stealth, combat and dialogue
- A branching narrative focused on quality dialogue, and meaningful choices with far reaching consequences
- Traditional RPG sensibilities in a more polished modern package
Game Overview
The Outer Worlds is a dark and witty player-driven story set in a colony at the farthest reaches of the galaxy. As the cold, firm grasp of corporate bureaucracy starts to unravel due to one unknown visitor – you – the character that you decide to become – will determine how the story unfolds. Your choices will affect the way the story develops, as well as your character progression, companion stories, and endgame scenarios.
The game presents you with a variety of options to play through the game. With an array of ranged and melee sci-fi weaponry at your disposal, you can also solve issues with good, old-fashioned spoken diplomacy, or even leadership-driven delegation to your companions.
Responsibilities
Strike Team Lead:
- After alpha, I was responsible for a team of artists, designers and writers whose goal was to revise and polish two planets – Monarch and Tartarus – to shippable quality. In addition to management and design work, I reviewed dialogue, assisted with optimization and eventually assumed responsibility for all design bugs as designers moved on to other assignments
- Guided and mentored an external strike team in the creation of an experimental area and quest to aid DLC development
Area Designer:
- Primary designer for the quest “Slaughterhouse Clive” and its associated level. I drove a demo of this level at E3 2019, where it won numerous awards including the Game Critics Award for Best Original Game
- Primary designer for the 6 Monarch faction quests
- Helped design the intro/tutorial area and took it to an alpha state
- Helped design the SubLight Salvage quest line and took it to an alpha state
- Initial designer on 3 side quests in Byzantium, from documentation through alpha
- Helped bring the game’s final level (Tartarus) from alpha to ship
- Designed and implemented the Synthesis & Manufactory Center, a large, multipurpose dungeon in the Peril on Gorgon DLC
Writer:
- Provided additional writing, including dialogue in the intro area, Space-Crime Continuum and all the dialogue and text associated with the quest “Why Call Them Back from Retirement?”
- As part of the narrative team, won the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Game Writing
- Wrote dialogue, terminal entries, examinables and quest log entries for the Synthesis & Manufactory Center in the Peril on Gorgon DLC
E3 Demo Walkthrough
This demo featured the first level and quest that I designed and implemented while working on The Outer Worlds. I was also the demo driver in not only this video, but during live presentations at E3 itself.
Writing Sample
In this video, a player speaks to a character I wrote for, Hortense Ingalsbee, and proceeds to complete her short quest, “Why Call Them Back From Retirement?” This is a good example of the kinds of dialogue trees we would write for quest givers.
DLC Level Design: Synthesis and Manufactory Center
On the Outer Worlds’ firt DLC, Peril on Gorgon, I was primarily responsible for the Synthesis and Manufactory Center level. This including scripting the quest, writing dialogue and log entries for the space, and designing a large dungeon level that was satisfying for combat, stealth and dialogue focused playthroughs. Below you’ll find some screenshots of the level taken by the Level Artist, Daniel Keating, who decorated and lit the space. Be sure to check out Daniel’s Art Station for more of his awesome work!
