The lore of The Outer Worlds

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Hello and welcome to Lore Watch, a round table free form discussion about lore in your favorite media. I'm your host, Joe
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Perez, one of several Laura focused folks from Blizzard Watch, and I've got my space fairing cohort with me today,
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Matt Rossy. How you doing today? Um, I'm one year and one day older than I was previously. That is right folks.
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This is the birthday this is the birthday episode for our our bouncing baby boy Matt Rossy. Uh in which case I
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am going to do something here and give him control uh as it is my birthday gift
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to him where I will be the companion. What side quest will we unlock in our
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journey through space and time for my companion quest? I don't know. We'll find out. Matt, uh, why don't you tell
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So, yeah, I'm good with this. Yeah. Yeah. It's an improvement. It's a real improvement. So, yeah. Uh hopefully, you know, if you want to ask
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us questions, those are the ways to do it. But right now, we're going to talk about some things. I don't know how if
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we'll all do one subject the whole time or if we'll end up doing multiple things because I don't know how long it will
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take us to do this. Uh we're kind of flying by the seat of our pants here, guys, which I don't think surprises
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anybody who's ever heard any podcast we've ever done. But regardless,
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I'm also in for a surprise because I'm giving Matt has free reign. So, I we're going to see where this goes.
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Yep. Yep. Uh so, we're going to start with The Outer Worlds. Uh I have been playing Outer Worlds 2. We're not going
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to have any spoilers, and if we do have like one or two minor ones, we will we will warn you in advance. Um but between
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the original game and this game, uh one of the things I found really fascinating was how it builds up the concept, for
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lack of a better word, of what's going on in the setting. Uh you see the other world is set around 2355.
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It's a it's a divergent future, isn't it? Like it's a it's it's an alternate timeline based on
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one thing happening h not happening in 190. Uh President McKinley didn't get assassinated.
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This is important because I live in a city where that happened. Yeah. Uh so you know about Soga um
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shooting him. Uh Zurka, I think it's actually pronounced Zurka. Anyway, he he shot he shot McKinley, killed him, and
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as a result, Vice President uh Theodore Roosevelt became president in this
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timeline. That didn't happen, which is really important because without Theodore Roosevelt, you don't get all
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the trust busting. You don't get all the anti- monopoly stuff. You basically get
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mega corporations way earlier. Rich people like the Rockefellers have almost unlimited power
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because they can run everything through a trust and that trust can be national and once it's national it's very easy
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for it to become global. Uh so you basically see instead of the history we had their history goes on an unchecked
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corporist spree that leads up to around the 2300s when these big corporations uh
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decide to buy themselves a colony world. Now, corporations have been running on other colony worlds by this point
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because just before, let's say around 2300 or so is when something called skip
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drive is and uh this is our skip drive. This is kind of our faster than light travel for the setting which would will
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be very relevant later. Yeah. Um skip drive it it's seemingly
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invented by a specific person who's very involved in the Outerorlds 2 even though they've been dead for a long time. Um,
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but when she invents it, uh, she makes a deal with the Earth, what is called the
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Earth Directorate, which is essentially the United Nations of Earth in this alternate timeline, except it kind of
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runs the colonies as well. Yeah. It's sort of like, it's sort of like, if you remember, um, I liken it
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to, uh, the old Gundam Wing stuff where they had like the the colony and then
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the Earth Alliance. It's kind of like that. Yeah. uh each colony is is essentially
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independent but the earth d the earth uh directorate essentially like monitors
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them and can step in if things go bad. Uh you see that in the first outer world
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game which we'll get to. We will actually talk about the entire story of that game. Um, when she invents the skip
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drive, she makes a deal with the Earth director at saying basically, you will give me the world I go to outright. It's
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mine, and you will stay the heck off my back. In return, I will give you skip
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drives so you can colonize other set worlds. Don't try to figure out how they work or they'll blow up. And of course,
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she does this. She She makes the deal. She gives them skip drives. They do try to open one up to figure it out because
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of course they do and it does explode. So they're like, "Okay, uh, only had to
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lose three or four different groups of crew people before we realized we're not doing this." And so for I'd say about a hundred
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years, so probably early like middle to late 2200s to the 2300s, the skip drive is
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spreading throughout human space, which is itself spreading because of it. And finally, one group of 10 corporations
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that's getting kind of tired of the Earth Directorate's other purpose, the Earth Directorate both watches the
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colonies and kind of subtly pushes back against corporate influence. And as if
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you've ever played Cyberpunk, you know where we're going. The corporations want to be completely unfettered. So
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yeah, they want to make their own their own colony world with with uh blackjack and casinos and questionable morals.
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Exactly. Although they're not going to admit to the questionable morals thing because everybody's very proper. Um I I want you to imagine that 1900
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like literally 1906 never stopped. Yeah. Kind of like Fallout with like the 50s
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never stopped. This time the turn of the century never stopped. which is interesting because that is that's a in
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of itself a call back to uh like 50 sci-fi pulp stuff because there there
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was a a large handful of stories that actually took this concept back then and not necessarily the skip drives and
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all that other stuff but the whole idea of a future society that never progressed past 1900. So like
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Yeah. And so go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead. Okay. uh they 10 of them get together uh and
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they they create something called the Houseian Holding Corporation and they just buy Hian outright. They buy it.
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They're in charge. The Earth Directorate still has its um for lack of a better word influence, but it doesn't run the
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colony in any significant way. It's very handsoff uh because and and this is something we we'll see more about the
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Earth Directorate later. The Earth Directorate is both small and somewhat corrupt. I mean, the skip drive deal is
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your first clue. Uh, and this is the second one. They just corruption and my capitalist game. Never.
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Yeah. Never. They they basically just let a bunch of corporations buy a a a star system outright. And so the
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corporations go to Hion. Um, they have two ships that they're using to get to Houseion. One of them is the
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Groundbreaker and the other is the Hope. Groundbreaker shows up on time, probably because the, you know, heads of the
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corporations were on it, and begins attempting to to colonize a moon that they call Terror One. Terror as in, you
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know, Earth Terra Ter. Yeah. Terror one is their first attempt at colonization. It fails spectacularly.
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Um, you ever hear the stories about how when uh libertarians take over a city and the bears move in? Kind of like that, but in
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space. Yeah. Or if you remember when Sears collapsed, it's like putting putting a a Randian in
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charge of Sears. That's very much what this is like in that it just everything goes wrong. Part of the problem is that
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the the native life on the world that was then called Terra 1 and which will
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become called Monarch. Uh that moon, the native life on it is extremely prone to
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mutate. So everything they were doing to terraform it was affecting the creatures that lived there and causing them to
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mutate rapidly and viciously. Uh so it was it was extremely difficult to keep a
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settlement going. Eventually it got to the point where all these corporations were putting their black ops labs on
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Monarch because nobody was going to come out to check them. Like nobody was going to be able to get from place to place.
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If you couldn't land a ship on top of wherever it was, you were not going to go see it. It was just too aggressively
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difficult to get any. Um, while the the populace of of Monarch was adapting to this by becoming basically grizzled
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prospectors who shoot anything that moves, uh, eventually the corporations except for one, uh, MSI, the the Monarch
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something incorporated, I always forget the the rest of the name, but it was called MSI. uh that company had invested
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so heavily in Monarch that they couldn't pull out. Everybody else did. Everybody else pulled out and basically a 9:1
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meeting of the holding corporation that eventually cut it cut the Monarch MSI corporation out of the colony of the
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colonial uh board essentially just abandoned the place and even interdicted
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it. They they put gunships in orbit to keep anybody from leaving or entering.
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But the gunships were not tremendously effective and Monarch basically became a
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hub of crime and villain. Uh with people still acting like Victorians who were very very upset about this and wanted
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wanted everybody to understand that they were perfectly good, you know, polite people when they weren't murdering and
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eating people. Uh so that's Monarch for you. Uh it's basically like Tatooine but also a swamp. So it's Tatooine and
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Deobba. Uh that's that's Monarch. They decide. Okay. So Terara one didn't work.
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So we're renaming that monarch and we're going to go with another planet we're calling Terara which was Terra became Terara 2 and then eat and they settled
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that world and that did much better. Uh there were still lots of things on the planet they wanted to eat you but there
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were like they didn't seem to be mutating nearly as much and it just it was a much easier settlement all told.
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Um there were other worlds. Uh I forget the the the main one in the in the setting like I think it was actually
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still on the same world as Eden, but there was a city uh called Bzantium that
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essentially was the the the home of the Houseion Holding Corporation uh and the
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minister who they appointed, Minister Clark, who they appointed to run the
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planet. He was working with an an Earth Directorate character. Uh but he didn't
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actually like he basically drugged that guy and kept him sealed away in a room and completely stole any of power or
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authority he had and just ran everything. And the reason he did that was because they discovered that one of
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the side effects of their terraforming was that the planet couldn't support life long term. All the stuff you're
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trying to eat was alienbased. It was all based on the biology and ecosystems of
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the worlds that they had settled, which wasn't earth biology or ecology. So,
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eating food wouldn't help you after a while because only food that came from
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Earth like salt, which was actually a combination of of salmon and tuna, they
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they made a genetically engineered combination of salmon and tuna. So, salta high yield, high protein.
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Yeah. Sultu, you would could survive eating it, but none of the native animals, for instance, when people
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started eating sprats, you didn't get anything nutritional out of it. And so, as a result, the colonies were
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tipping towards ultimate disaster. Um, meanwhile, the other colony world, the
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colony ship, the one that actually had all the smart people on it, the one with the scientists and everybody that would
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be useful for actually figuring out the problem and solving it, never arrived. And that's because there was an accident
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in space and the skip drive broke when they were still less than halfway to the
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colony. So they had to push the ship up to relativistic speed and point it at
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Hian and fly it without being in escape. They couldn't be in the freezer pods that everybody else was. So they were
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going to age and die, but that was the only way they could get the ship to where it was going. and in anything like
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an appropriate amount of time. This took so long that by the time that the Hope
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got there, everybody on board had basically had a mutiny against each other and they were all dead. And so the
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ship just drifted run by a a daughtering artificial intelligence that was like basically not maintained for like 50
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years. It barely got them there and then they found it. the uh the the Hian
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Holding Corporation found the ship but didn't want to tell anybody about it because they would be like the story of this gruesome massacre and and the
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failure of everything and they liked it fine the way it was where the hope served as a cautionary tale but also a
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mystery and then they had the hope so they could do whatever they wanted with it. They could sell people. Here's the
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other problem, too. Because the ship had been drifting and everybody' been in in freezy pod time for like 50 years. If
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you took them out of the pods, they melted. Yeah. Cuz waking them up was a they were
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in for such a long period of time because originally they were only supposed to be in cryo sleep for about 10 years. Um
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Yeah. Which, you know, even that was pushing it. Yeah. And that was pushing it. And one of the things that I think is interesting is the game at this point
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actually calls upon real world science involving cryogenics. Uh which is the
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problem that you have is that for a short period of time you can essentially hibernate cells where they don't degrade. Um they're they're essentially
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flash frozen, right? The problem is waking somebody up from cryo sleep
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because those cells have to be essentially uh thought out in a way that doesn't uh shock them. But the problem
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that you run into is when you freeze things and thaw them, you break down the
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tissue. So like yeah, ice crystals form. Yeah. Then those ice crystals melt and and
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when they melt, the tissue goes with it because the ice crystals per perforated it when Yeah. Think think of it like if you take
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like a a steak and like uh you have two steaks. You put one in the freezer and you you leave one, you know, out and you
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freeze one for a day. The other one you leave in the fridge. You take them both out after a day. The one that's frozen
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thaws. It's going to have a completely different texture even after one day than the one that you just had in the
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fridge. Just And this is why you can't refreeze meat once you've thought it. Correct. Because once you do that, you're just
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completely destroying its cellular structure. And not only that, but starting to release harmful chemicals like ammonia and other things that our
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bodies naturally generate at a higher frequency. The game actually pulls on the real world sides of it, which always
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made me very happy u but also very horrified, which is I think the appropriate reaction to the game at this
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point. But uh a doctor uh Dr. Vernon Wells realizes that he's figured out a way
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around this. Get the name. Get the name. Vernon Wells. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, Vernon figures out, oh, I can I can possibly using
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chemicals found only in in this system, I can possibly revive one of these
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people without them melting into a puddle. But it's risky and I only have enough
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material to make one dose of this. So, I'm going to have to break on to the the
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hope and steal somebody. and you start playing as the character who is who gets
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stolen and exposed to the treatment, which had like a 50/50 chance of working. Uh, it does work. You don't
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melt. You do get brain damaged in a way that gives you the ability to freeze time. So, if you remember VATS, you get
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VATS. Yeah, we should probably we should probably back this up real quick here and just have like a sort of an interjection where this game was
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developed by the folks that you know worked on Fallout New Vegas, which is a lot of people's favorite uh Fallout
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game. Not everybody, but a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. And there's a lot of that DNA here. We should also just point out that the
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reason that they got to work on Fallout New Vegas was cuz they were also mostly the people that made the original
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Fallout and Fallout 2. Mhm. Uh for example, Fergusquat who comes up many times. Fergusquat was basically
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running Obsidian at this point. He is still running Obsidian as far as uh and so yeah, they they get the uh go-ahad to
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make this game uh after they they made Fallout New Vegas and it was incredibly
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popular. They they just completed it when Microsoft bought them. Uh, so the
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Microsoft had nothing to do with the making of this game, but they're very they were very involved in going, "Ooh,
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ooh, this is a game people will will be, you know, it's provocative and interesting and and we can make money."
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So, that's that's how that went. uh when your character wakes up, you basically
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wake up by being dropped on a planet, the the planet Eden, um and accidentally
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killing the guy who was supposed to pick you up with your not in charge of this pod's flight path. He Wells cures you,
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wakes you up, and immediately drops you out of the ship cuz he's getting chased by by uh the various corporations and
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their their military fleet. So, he just drops you going, "Okay, good luck." And and yes, you accidentally crush and kill
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Captain Hawthorne, who is the captain of a ship called the Unreliable that was supposed to meet you there and pick you up and give you the skinny on what's
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happening so you can help Wells with his goal of saving the the crew of the Hope
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so they can use their giant brains to help, you know, save the colony. Like, you know, how do we get it so people can
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survive here? How do we, you know, feed people? Like, you know, we just can't we don't have sufficient salta to feed
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everybody. Not even close. the places that that give people soul tuna are now
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not giving people soul tuna because they don't have enough. Um, so that's how this thing basically kicks off. That's
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how the the setting kicks off. You spend your time going through you discover the thing about the the plant the light the
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plant and animal life native to this system cannot nourish you. Um, and even attempt the only way they manage to get
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it to nourish people is to feed it human beings. uh instead of you know instead
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of just using normal fertilizer uh because fertilizers are all synthetic. These are these are mega corporations.
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These are companies each on the scale of like if Disney, Amazon and and Boeing
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were one company it would be like onetenth the size of these corporations. Mhm.
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Uh so the everything is synthetic. Everything is very slickly mo. You know,
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if you ever watched old commercials, it's like everything is like that. Everything just like, you know, now with
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Q- rays or parasite free, note parasite free means merely that we do not have
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any currently living parasites. And if you do get a parasite, we are not going to charge you for it. Like that kind of
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thing. That's that's what the the corporations are like. They're they are evil and also really quaint about it. Um
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so they're they are using like synthetics for everything. every every fertilizer, everything they do. Half of
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the food they're giving you is synthetic. Um there's like two foods that I think that would be okay without
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like one of them is is borst, which is grown from I'm sorry I have to to use
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this word cy pigs. Do you want to tell them what cy pigs are, Joe? Not really.
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Okay, trust us. Pigs are not good. No. like, okay, so the the the they do
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represent something that we should probably talk about a little bit um which is in an effort to
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um fix the problem. There's a lot of there's a lot of like
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genetic dabbling that goes on. Um, and cy pigs are
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they are literally like the worst part of the animals from Fallout made into a
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caporeal form. Um, so they're say they're the dead p Dead Deadpool of pigs. They really are, except they might
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actually be uglier than Deadpool. Uh they're bred by the local corporations uh that they grow uh
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uh bacon tasting tumors on their necks which they when they're matured and I
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really apologize. I hope you're not eating for the next part of this. Uh the tumors just fall off when they're ready
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and then you harvest them. Uh and it's packaged as a and I'm going to air quote
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here a sustainable meat product. Um, and
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then there's no lie there. There's not. Um, but then there's also stuff where like the hooves of them are
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used as feed for a feed supplement uh for protein. Uh, and it's like this is a
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perfect encapsulation of how sideways things have gone thanks to the
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fact that corporations have basically been left unfathered for, you know, 400 years. 300 years.
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Yeah. Uh, I want you to imagine like if there was never been an FDA, solyomide would still be in use. It's it's like
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that on speed, which would be legal. It's just Yeah. In fact, that's another
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thing that happens because they're having the food problem and they're trying to come up with any way they can to solve it without admitting it. They
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don't want to tell anybody, "By the way, we're all going to die if we don't come up with something." Because people
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productivity is king for these corporations. And people are never less productive than when you they find out
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they're going to die no matter what. So, how do they keep on generating that their profit that will allow the
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corporations to presumably fix this or as is more likely the case, save
23:15
themselves from it? Um, they're like, "Okay, we can't tell anyone what's going on, but but we still need to get
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productivity up and sleep is a problem. Why do people keep sleeping? We need people to stop sleeping and just work
23:28
forever, but they keep doing stuff like falling down and passing out and going
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insane. How do we fix that? Uh, they come up with a they have a molecular
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biologist and she comes up with something called adren time. Adren time is like if you took anti-narcolepsy
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medication, methamphetamine uh, and LSD and combined it and made it minty. And
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as a result of this, uh, a whole swath of of workers are taking adrenal time
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thinking, "This is great. I don't have to sleep anymore. I'm so productive." And then, of course, because you know
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what's going to happen, they begin violently degenerating mentally because they haven't slept in days.
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Yeah. And we know that like I think it takes what, two days for us to start going mad. Like it's it's not as quick
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of a descent as it is in the movies, but like you at 2 days of no sleep, your brain starts deteriorating. And these
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people are going weeks, weeks, months, long periods of time with
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just like literally jacking this adrenal time into their their vein. And as a result of this, yeah, as a result of
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this, um, there's a lot of people called like scavengers or scabs, cs,
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um, they're they make sense in the setting because not because they're all
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radioactively mutated or whatever, but because they're literally madmen who can't grasp reality anymore. So, they're
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just wandering around attacking people randomly. They're not even attacking you because they really want to take your
25:07
stuff because they barely understand that you have stuff unless it's adrena time. They just want to kill everything
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because they're they're that far gone. This is just one of many programs that they've come up with to try and solve
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it. Another problem the corporations have is something called uh purple berry. Uh purple berry is a purple
25:26
berry. I mean, it's a purple berry product that gets used in practically everything from cereal to, you know, as
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a food additive, as a pop is a toothpaste flavoring. Uh, there's only
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one problem. Every single sample of purple berry that exists, not just in
25:45
house, but in every colony, is got a symbiotic entity that lives inside it.
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If if if we'll talk about native species in a little bit, but one of them is
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called the mantis, like the mantis people, the mant queens, mant drones, uh various giant insects that go from a
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pupé state to um basically a big caterpillar-like state to a wandering
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mantis death machine state to a queen state, which would starts just exploding with with um offspring.
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Purple berry carries something that's like that. And if you eat it, they get
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in your body and eventually they will chew you from the inside out and you will explode.
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But it takes a while. Uh rather than the company that that both invented uh Adren
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Time and is marketing all this is a company called Spacers Choice, which is imagine a a gigantic mega corporation
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that's also like Kmart and that's Spacers Choice. They are the bottom rung
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in terms of prestige, money, and power, but they're ubiquitous because they make the cheapest stuff. So, every nobody's
26:57
got enough money to buy from all the other corporations when they they unless they, you know, are actually wealthy
27:02
themselves, most people are stuck with Spacers Choice. Yeah. Because I mean, Helyian commands massive like their stuff's expensive
27:09
because it's and I'm going to air quote here again because there's a lot of air quotes when dealing with this, the best.
27:15
Um, but they're essentially the ruining uh the ruling mega uh corportocracy
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um with you know as far as like the umbrella corporation that holds everything uh the holding
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which which uh spacers choice is part of with Auntie Cleos UDL and Rizzo's and
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they control literally every aspect of this colony and we haven't even talked about any Cleos or or UDL or Rizzo yet.
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No, and we will be um but Spacer's choice is the bottom wrong one because
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they dominate not through the, you know, reputation, however artificial for
27:50
quality or for targeted research, but through just spraying garbage at people.
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It's like, you know, we we have the cheapest gun, we have the cheapest uh, you know, armor, we have the cheapest
28:02
food products. As a result, Spacers Choice didn't want to go through the trouble of actually coming up with a way
28:09
to prevent the parasites being in the the purple berries. So instead, they discovered by accident while like
28:16
studying salta that hey the salt tuna used to have a parasite and we just
28:22
froze them once we prepared the meat. We would just freeze it and the parasites would die. And so that's what they did
28:27
to the purple berries. they just froze them and that did in fact kill the symbiotic thing living that becomes
28:33
parasitic in a human body that did kill that. However, it didn't kill all the
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eggs in the in the purple berries. Mhm. So, it's technically parasite free, but
28:45
if the if if the eggs survive your digestive system long enough, you might still come down with it. It just re it
28:52
reduces it. It's safe within an tolerance that Spacer's Choice was okay with, which is
28:58
not to say that any sane person would be okay with, but Spacers Choice didn't. So, yeah, that's just another example.
29:04
Uh, and Spacer's Choice again is the bottom rung corporation. Uh, corporations that are much much more
29:10
powerful. They have much more prestige include UDL, which is basically just a straightup arms manufacturer. UDL looked
29:16
around and goes, there's going to be a lot of need for people to crack skulls and shoot people for us. So if if
29:23
imagine a company that just sells weapons to the strike breakers who come in like it's like the space Pinkertons
29:30
and the gun companies in one company. Uh that's UDL for you. Uh they they send
29:35
they make the they make the thugs, they arm the thugs, they rent the thugs out to other people.
29:40
You can become a thug. Yeah, you absolutely can. Um then there's Rizzo. Rizzo is like um if Willy
29:48
Wonka was also incredibly much more evil than he is in the book and movie, which
29:54
let's be upfront, Willy Wonka is not a nice person. No. And especially if you read the book, not even like the Willy Wonka like movie
30:03
does a lot to soften the edges, especially with the performance by Gene Wilder.
30:08
Yeah, I think that's that's unfortunately Gene Wilder just being himself. But when you read like the original
30:13
saying I don't love him, he's great. Yeah. When you look at the the original like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, oh boy,
30:19
is it is it is a a recipe for death and destruction on a massive scale.
30:26
Yeah, like the Oompa Loompas. It's just straight up slavery in the book, guys. Um, so yeah, that's Rizzos is very much
30:32
like if Willy Wonka had control of an of an intergalactic multic mega corp. He's just that's what they are. They make a
30:38
lot of candy and they have a kind of relationship with Auntie Cleo because uh
30:44
like a lot of their products they sell to her in her company which then markets
30:49
them. So they don't have to do a lot of the marketing themselves. They mostly only market their own soda. Uh and but
30:56
yeah, the rest of it is just everybody needs food. Rizzos can make food. That's
31:01
their deal. Auntie Cleo is a is a petrop. It's it's about fuel and
31:07
chemicals. Um they they're constantly trying to find new fuel sources. They're constantly trying to find new chemicals
31:13
to give people. Uh they were actually mad that somebody else came up with
31:18
adrena adren time. That made them angry because that's the kind of thing they do. Um so
31:25
they're they're basically like they have Auntie Cleo herself who is like the genuinely grandmotherly looking person
31:33
that's in charge. Uh, and she does a lot of Futurama. Yeah, mom from Futurama. Very, in fact,
31:38
that's a perfect if you've seen Futurama and you remember mom, that's what Anti Cleo is. Anti Cleo is in that role. So,
31:44
that's there are other corporations like for instance MSI. Um, it's Monarch Systems Incorporated now that I'm
31:49
thinking about it. But MSI is another one, but you don't really they're exiled to Monarch, so you only deal with them
31:54
when you're there. And there's others that are just not particularly important for the story. They just don't really
32:01
show up. Um, but they're there. Uh, as a stellar industries, by the way,
32:07
not a stellar industry. Um, so there's there's a a lot of this stuff going on. All of these companies are trying to
32:12
conceal the fact that the food is just slowly degrading people and in order to
32:18
grow food that will actually be edible, you essentially have to use human corpses, which only one person figures
32:25
out. And she figures it out when she's no longer uh working for Spacer's
32:30
Choice. So, she basically just uses this this knowledge to keep her own people fed by going to the town graveyard and
32:39
digging up all the corpses and then using them as compost because then the plants that grow grow drawing on the
32:46
nutrients from the corpses. Uh, which is one of many. This is a very obsidian style choice.
32:52
It's also very early in the game that you get to they get to like interact with this, right? Like a lot of the
32:58
stuff is like the they're not shy in the storytelling of the game of putting how
33:07
awful it is directly in front of you early and often. And it's it's an
33:14
interesting thing because most games shy away from that and kind of let you like discover it as you move
33:20
along. this one unabashedly just puts it out there and says, "Nope, everything is awful and uh humans are the cause of it
33:26
and here's here's what's going on." And it's also like if you want to compare it to other games Obsidian has
33:31
made, um as an example, I think um New Vegas is about 50% as everything is
33:38
awful upfront. And that's a game that starts with your character getting shot in the head. Yeah. But the outer worlds is actually
33:45
worse because literally nothing is off the table in terms of corporate malfeasants. Like they won't pay their
33:52
they don't pay their workers enough or let them take even remotely enough breaks. Um if you get sick, they will
33:58
just let you die. um to the point where they actually drove their smartest, best
34:03
chemical engineer out of the of the the settlement town that's doing the salta
34:09
farming, which you need because salta tastes like despair. I mean, it is just
34:16
it is the worst thing ever. So, they need people like her to make it palatable. And as a result, when she
34:22
leaves, uh they start having problems getting people to eat Sulta. Oddly
34:28
enough, Sprat tastes fine. So, they begin cutting their sulta with sprat. As we've covered before, sprat, which is
34:34
like a little reptilian rat creature that lives in the in this uh on these worlds. Sprat don't feed you. Like, if
34:41
you eat a sprat, you get nothing. Uh so, yeah, as they're doing this, the salt is getting worse. Everything's falling
34:46
apart. There's so many different corporate decisions that make things fall apart in so many different ways. Uh, at one point you go to a another
34:53
part of this world and find a hidden lab that's an auntie's choice lab and you
34:59
discover um there's a rapidon with a specific kind of toxic venom. And that
35:06
toxic venom ends up as a really great toothpaste because it acts like a like
35:12
an appetite suppressant. And that's good because that way people
35:17
can work harder and longer without eating. Again, you see what they're doing? They just want to make it so
35:23
everybody can work without ever eating or sleeping or living at all. And they're trying to do it through
35:29
chemistry. And and if you've not ever around Yeah, I was going to say as a reminder the
35:35
hope which has been missing for 60 years at this which was just discovering that you woke up on had all of the smart
35:42
people that would have been able to fix and solve this problem from the beginning. Yes. And so there was nobody there to
35:48
say we cannot possibly do this. You need to throttle back. You know your unchecked greed is going to get everyone
35:55
including you killed. Uh, so as you go through the the game, basically you're just going from world to world trying to
36:01
get together what Wells needs to save the day while deciding whether or not
36:06
you're going to help him or if you're going to help the Houseian Holding Corporation. Ultimately, you discover
36:11
that Minister Clark has kidnapped the Earth Directorate leader and the one that was left in the colony, not the one
36:18
back on Earth, and kept him imprisoned and is just, you know, using him to make
36:23
proclamations. uh they very deliberately put the satellite that allows direct
36:29
communication with Earth out of commission so that nobody could call back and and cut Houseion off entirely
36:36
from Earth so there's no way anybody can find out what's happening. Uh and they're just at this point running it
36:41
into the ground hoping somebody will figure something out. Uh Wells is like look I you know I am smart. I'm very
36:47
smart. I came up with a way to keep you from exploding after you've been frozen for 50 years. But I I I can't fix this
36:55
by myself. I need the the smart the smarty pances from the hope. So your options are A1, go get the Hope, uh get
37:02
the people off of it, get the chemicals that that Wells needs to cure them, and then basically kill enough of the people
37:09
at the at the Houseian Holding Corporation that they can't stop you from trying to fix the problem. or you
37:15
turn wells in, get paid a lot of money, and nobody fixes the problem, and that's
37:20
how the game can end. Well, even even worse than nobody fixes the problem, it's you you essentially
37:27
turn everybody in on the hope uh basically by by jumping it to the prison
37:32
colony. Uh, and then the prison go is going to be where the corporations uh
37:38
are going to like just murder all the people that are on board the ship because we can't have anybody fixing the problem because somehow that makes
37:45
perfect corporate sense. Yeah. Because if they fix the problem, everybody will know they fixed the problem. That would
37:50
mean everyone would know there was a problem and that they didn't fix it. So yeah, there's lots of minor stuff here,
37:57
too. Um, the characters are really great and Parvat is a standout, but they're all pretty good. I mean, I don't like Felix that much, but you know, he's
38:03
fine. He's just kind of there. Uh, but I like pretty much everybody else. I like Ellie. I like
38:09
um I like, you know, uh I even like Max a bit just because he's
38:14
when he when he finally lets his map slip, he's funny as heck. Why don't why don't we go through a brief a brief uh
38:20
because again it's a game by Obsidian and it's a game in which the companions
38:26
make a lot of the game uh from their lens of viewing the world uh and as far
38:32
as their questing uh it sort of exposes you to most of the world. So but I think
38:38
maybe a quick rundown of the companions you take with you might not be a bad idea if you want to maybe start with start with our our I think everybody's
38:44
favorite Pavari. Yeah, Pavati. Parvati is is played by Ashley Burch first off. So, you know,
38:50
right off the bat, you know, this is going to be a character you're not going to forget. Parvati is a lot of things. Parvati is unfailingly optimistic and
38:57
kind. Parvati is um really uh if you don't read this character as autistic
39:03
coded, I don't know how you don't read it that way because Parvati is autistic.
39:08
It's pretty Yeah, it's pretty pretty on the sleeve there. Um, Parvati is very much wants to help you because um, she
39:16
believes, you know, you're you you're the only person so far who seems to want to fix any of this of the stuff
39:21
happening. Like her father's died and he was the the main tech guy in the colony. Now she's kind of doing his job, but she
39:28
doesn't really officially have it. She just sort of is doing it. uh her quote unquote boss is kind of letting personal
39:36
vendettas override the so the safety of the town that he's in charge of. Uh
39:42
meanwhile the person people who have left the town are fullon hate just straight up hater towards the
39:48
corporation that runs the town and thus everybody who currently lives there. So they're not helping. Um is like we got
39:55
to we got to get this done and you're the only person I can see who's doing anything. So she falls in. She immediately becomes like just the the
40:01
best companion. Love having her around. Um, also she has a really cool I for
40:08
lack of a better word, an ace romance. I don't know how else to put it. She's ace. Like she's straight up asexual.
40:13
Doesn't really care that much about it. Just, you know, it just isn't a real big deal to her. But she is capable of
40:19
loving people. Um, so she's not arrow. Um, she meets uh Gwen Tennyson, who I
40:25
not Tennyson, is it? Is it Tennyson? I cannot remember the name of that woman. I also cannot remember it. Jun Lee uh Jun Lee I can't remember Jun
40:33
Lee's last name. I think it's Jun Lee Tennyson but Jun Lee Jun Lee Tennyson is the captain of the groundbreaker which
40:39
was the ship that got here successfully. Her family had struck a deal with the
40:44
corporate board that once everybody was disembarked they got the ship and they've built the groundbreaker into a
40:51
space station that they it's neutral. It it all the corporations none of them are
40:57
running it. the Houseian Corporation isn't running it. It's their family. Uh and as a result of that, they're
41:04
constantly at odds with the with the Houseian Corporation, but House can't afford to like to to push them because
41:11
their ship is one of the few like places that can be used by everybody to get to
41:17
places for marketing and so forth. It's just a good solid neutral base that nobody really nobody has the the uh
41:24
desire to destroy. So she falls in love with with her and they have a very cute, sweet, extremely awkward uh relationship
41:32
between two obviously autistic coded characters. Uh my my wife and myself see
41:37
a lot of ourselves in this. Uh so that's that's Parvati. Max is the vicer of the
41:43
of the small town that you first go to. Um, and Maxis tells everyone he's in the
41:49
the he's part of the order of scientific investigation, but he's not exactly
41:56
telling the truth. He isn't lying. He is he believes in in the same belief system
42:01
that everybody else in the OSA does. He believes the universe is basically a giant clock. And for for full This is Maximillian
42:09
Dodto. Yeah, Dodto. Um, Max, however, got this
42:14
quote unquote faith when he was put in corporate prison. Um, and mind you, he was in corporate prison as a vicer. He
42:22
wasn't there as a prisoner, but he was still in prison. You you're in a prison when these guys are running it. It sucks
42:28
for everybody. So, he learned he learned that there was a a philosopher who had a
42:34
completely different view on everything, but he wants the guy's books. And that's the whole deal for him. It's him
42:40
basically trying hard to push the idea that he's special while he's in a
42:46
religion that says no, nobody's special. Everybody should just live the role they have in life because it's all part of
42:52
the cosmic order. It's it's all mathematically pre-ordained. If you're trying to like elevate yourself, that's
42:58
arrogant. So Max, whose entire family was workingass, uh his attempt to become a lettered
43:05
educated individual goes against that divine plan. And so in a way it's
43:11
extremely rebellious. It's it's essentially saying I I believe in the divine plan and I'm gonna completely
43:17
ignore it. That's how much I believe in it. This is my thumb. This is my nose. Take that divine plan.
43:23
Yeah. So that's Max. He he ends up like starts off being kind of whatever, but he gets more interesting as you go
43:30
through and and follow his story. Uh you got Felix who is essentially I live on a
43:36
space station. I'm considered a a stowaway uh because I was born there and
43:41
nobody knows who my parents were or anything like that and I just lived on the ship like a you know like a a
43:47
runger. Yeah. I love I I love that the the introduction you get to him or at least
43:52
in all the official literature is that he is a rebel without a cause. Mhm. Because that's is he's what he is.
44:00
Yeah. He he he's a rebel because he's got nothing. He isn't part of anything because he grew up essentially thrown
44:07
away at birth and he grew up inside the hatches and and passageways and hidden
44:14
parts of the ship. Uh so he is, you know, that's Max. There's not like following his quest is basically just
44:21
finding out that, you know, people lied to him and used him when he was a kid, which isn't surprising, but it's it's
44:26
fun to go kill those people. Um, but he doesn't have the same kind of like dramatic shift that Pavati or Max or our
44:33
next one, Ellie. Uh, Ellie, um, Ellie is a doctor. And when you first meet her,
44:40
she's very much the kind of doctor who doesn't is like has a a kind of
44:45
anarchctic quip for everything and basically just likes to shoot people and take care of herself. Doesn't want to
44:51
owe anybody anything. So if she h has anything she feels like is a debt, she immediately needs to settle it. She
44:58
cannot have that going on. So when she turns out she thinks she owes somebody something, she involves you in this
45:04
whole complicated scheme to essentially pay off the person that she owes so she
45:10
doesn't have to owe them anymore. Yeah. And and for for she's also one I think one of the more interesting ones to me because she actually also grew up
45:16
with uh her parents were wealthy socialites. Yeah. They're the big the big deal.
45:23
And like she just decided that she didn't like safety. She didn't like a
45:28
life of elegance essentially. Uh and so that's when she decided to become a pirate. And I'm going to air quote
45:33
pirate. Um with her pirate haircut. And I'm also going to air quote that one.
45:38
It's pirate adjacent, but it's Yeah, she doesn't actually commit any piracy. But you No, she doesn't. But she keeps referring to herself as a pirate, which is really
45:45
which is really kind of funny. Um, but she's also like one of the ones that like she despite all these characters
45:51
flaws, like she values like professionalism. Uh, doesn't like to form relationships,
45:57
like that type of stuff. Uh, yeah. And she is she is very much a very conscientious doctor while she's
46:02
doctoring you. Yes. But the second that she's done doctoring you, she no longer that's it. I did my
46:08
bit. Now it's your life to go ruin. Uh, try not to come back next week. You know, that sort of thing. Uh, finally
46:15
there's Neoka who is a hunter and she while I say she's a hunter, she
46:21
grew up on Monarch. She lives on Monarch. She's the guide you're going to get when you get to Monarch to get you out to the information broker you need
46:28
to get to help wells solve this whole problem. And she is first off she's ragingly alcoholic.
46:33
Oh yeah. Very point where you in order to get her to be able to take you out into the wilds and find things,
46:39
you have to figure out a way to get her essentially undrunked. Um, and she suggests going to this this one doctor
46:47
in town and getting like the the drugs that will undrunk her. Uh, you can go do
46:53
that. You can make a deal to get them. You can buy them. Or you can do what I do always. Go up the back stairs and
46:58
steal them. Uh, I do it every time because, you know, f you people. Yeah. I'd steal from every corporation if I
47:04
could get away. Um, but so yeah, I go steal them and we go off into the woods. Eventually, you find out that the reason
47:10
she's so messed up is that she and a bunch of other people kind of created their own little found family and Monarch did what Monarch does best and
47:16
ate her found family with horrible crushing jaws. Um, so there's there's
47:22
one other companion too that I think is also very interesting because we didn't talk about You talk about the Astromemech, man.
47:27
Yeah. The the Well, he's not nec he's not an Astromemech, right? He's a cleaning mech.
47:33
Sam uh who is a sanitation and maintenance auto mechanism or SAM cuz
47:38
SMA didn't work so they just put the A in the middle and whatever um is a robot
47:45
uh that was uh formerly in the companionship of Captain Alex Hawthorne
47:50
uh the one that you land on and eventually essentially become
47:55
because the ship is programmed ADA the artificial intelligence of the ship is programmed only to respond to Captain
48:02
Hawthorne. And therefore you have to be Captain Hawthorne which tells her to respond to you. Yeah. Which she tells
48:07
you up front. Yeah. Cuz she she's smart enough to know like well I can only work with Captain Hawthorne. You're Captain Hawthorne,
48:13
right? Um but Sam I think she's talking to you.
48:19
Um you he's just a big old like bundle of of automaton. And I think it's funny
48:25
because his entire purpose in life is to shove acid at enemies. That's what he
48:32
does. That's that's his whole shtick. Uh but yeah. Yeah. Basically, they take his sub
48:37
routines for cleaning and turn them into sub routines for murder. Yep. It is. And as far as he's concerned, he's still
48:43
cleaning stuff. That's what he's doing. Technically, he is he's dissolving them with acid. They're going away. Um, but I
48:49
that's that's the other thing that I think is really interesting about this game too is it's not just the people that have personalities or um have like
48:58
sort of these like flaws or weird character things. Uh, it's also like the
49:04
robots and the artificial intelligence which again is a call back to the 1950s
49:09
style of serial pulps that they used to do and that were uh very much a a a
49:15
source for them. But one of the things that I think is really great about this and why I think the Outer World stands
49:20
up so well is not only does the game give you the freedom to experience the
49:26
world in universe in any way you want to, including uh you can beat the game
49:32
in I think 3 minutes. Uh if you have the like if you get rid of all of your
49:37
intelligence uh which is a completely valid way to play the game apparently. um like the old and funny
49:45
cuz you get access to it gives you rewards like you know giving you access to specific dialogue and interactions
49:51
depending on how you level your character in a way that the Fallout games at the time stopped doing. Um they
49:57
did a little bit but not quite as much. And you know the original Fallout games, New Vegas and and Outer Worlds really
50:05
let you do that and let you sort of immerse yourself in the world as that sort of character.
50:11
It is just really wellcraftrafted and I think it was very wellreceived as a result of it. It's also unique in the
50:18
fact that it's doing something um or at least at the time it was unique. We've
50:23
had a lot more of it since the success of this game um which is this universe is set within the framework of diesel
50:30
punk and I do want to talk a little bit about that since we have a couple minutes left to sort of like frame it.
50:36
So diesel punk is a subgenre of science fiction which is a cousin to steampunk
50:43
or cyberpunk. We've talked a lot about cyberpunk. We've talked about steampunk in the past. Um but everything go
50:49
basically revolves around dieselbased technology uh during an interwar period usually between 1900 and 1950. Um it
50:59
uses that retrofut retrofuture technology and postmodern sensibilities.
51:04
um which sort of give you that oldtimey feel but still kind of accept that
51:10
science and progress must move forward. And again, you're used to seeing it from
51:15
games like Fallout, but here they take it a step further. Fallout is its own
51:22
unique beast, and we've we've had entire episodes and series on it. Here they
51:27
take that same formula and they start applying actual real world science to it. A lot of the stuff that they're
51:33
referenced in here and a lot of the stuff that was referenced in like the 1950s cals that were doing this type of
51:39
of retrofuturistic stuff is based off of real science that they were trying to
51:44
work out and figure out. The idea of genetically growing uh sustainable meat
51:50
is not new. This has been around for decades at this point and is something
51:55
that people are still trying to do. That grown meat is a thing that they're still trying to accomplish. Um the idea that
52:03
your technology and ships are super advanced and can traverse uh thousands
52:08
of light years in space due to a faster than light travel system uh and reduce that trip down to fractions of the time
52:14
that it would take is again is nothing new. Uh we've had concepts such as solar sales since I think the 1800s,
52:22
right? like these aren't these are not unique or super new, but everything sort
52:28
of distills down into here where that framework that's slightly grimy, that's slightly unpolished,
52:35
uh, with the unchecked corporate greed, uh, combined with a society that has
52:42
essentially and in the storytelling of this game, it's a society that's forgotten how to be human, right? Like there's that that's one of the key
52:49
elements about this. Whether it's you believe in the divine mechanism of the clock of the universe, you're no longer
52:55
human because you're no longer making choices. You're just, you know, dancing to the beat of a drum. The corporations
53:01
at one point they they basically say uh the the order, not the OSI offshoot
53:06
called the order of the awakened, which is still basically the OSI just slightly different. uh they have this whole idea
53:13
about the grand plan and their whole deal is they're attempting to to accumulate knowledge because once they
53:20
know enough they will never have to actually make a decision again because
53:26
once they have sufficient knowledge they believe that the equation will always give them the predicted proper response.
53:34
And as a result of this essentially they have conversations like you know some people say that you know if we know
53:40
which one is the correct answer why even make the choice you already know what the correct one is. You don't have to to
53:46
do one or the other and find out. You just do it. That's what they want out of
53:51
the universe. They want the universe to be utterly predictable. You never have to make a decision.
53:57
Yeah. um that's that's just as inhuman as the
54:02
bland corporate greed or other things which we might not get to uh depending Yeah. And then the other thing that I
54:09
should also note is that the colonists themselves the people that have made it to the Hian system um that are are sort
54:16
of living their lives here and trying to carve out a future um with whatever
54:22
promises were made with whatever corporate deals they were making. It is also a breakdown in that. You see it in
54:28
the society, you see it in the cities, the settlements, uh the different planets you wind up visiting, the
54:34
different areas wind up visiting. People have often times just forgotten what it is to be a functioning society and a
54:42
functioning people. And that one is sort of a slow burn, right? Because when you
54:48
get there and you you you get sort of like the bits and pieces of it, that's sort of the slow reveal as you make your
54:53
way through the game cuz like you're on a space station and you wind up going through the checks and balances and you
55:00
there's like a quote unquote order to it and then you realize how much BS that is
55:05
and it's all for show and pretense. it's not actually how things are done. And
55:10
you start learning about the seedy underbelly of it and the fact that everybody has no idea what is actually
55:16
going on or what to do and are just trying to take advantage of every situation and everybody they can to give
55:22
themselves the most cushy life they can until they die or figure out how to put themselves into a robot body. Right.
55:28
Like there's And yeah, go ahead. I was going to say the other thing too and I do want to move on to
55:34
how people who know better and are like even like they're considered the upper crust of society like uh one of the
55:42
DLC's um is I think believe it's called uh Attack on Gordon. Uh it's it's
55:47
basically about how this this the adren time compound gets made. The person who
55:52
makes it doesn't even stop to consider the negatives until very late in the
55:58
development. And even then she kind of like hand waves it. But it's very clear the people
56:06
who are under her working on this are coming to her and saying look this is this is massively negative. Like it this
56:13
any positives from this are going to be deeply outweighed by the negatives. And
56:19
you see people who are smart and educated even the people who are like you know because it's been long enough
56:25
that they've had to train their own scientists and so forth. even the people who know better can willfully ignore it
56:32
because it's just not done. You just don't care about those things. You don't care about people. Um from the the first
56:40
moment you arrive in a town in this game and you you hear about people who are sick, so they're basically locked in
56:47
their houses to die because it would be too expensive to to cure them. And that's just accepted. It's just accepted
56:53
that that happens. And it's that way with everything. Uh, and I wanted to try and talk about how these themes move
57:00
into the next game without again without spoilers. Um, but one of the things you
57:06
see in in the next game is that unlike Houseian, which was bought by corporations and is the furthest colony
57:12
out, um, Arcadia is the closest colony. It's the first colony. And the reason it
57:19
exists is because the inventor of space drive made a deal, skip drive made a deal with the earth directorate and
57:27
became appointed as the matriarch of this protectorate she was granted. Uh
57:32
and then her son becomes the sovereign and then his son replaces him and becomes the sovereign who is currently
57:38
sovereign when the game starts. So as you go through the protectorate, it's a
57:45
it's a masterpiece society. It's it's um very similar to like you know the kind
57:51
of like a like a company town without a company or a Levit town or what have
57:57
you. Everything is run by the protectorate. It's essentially like it's like a socialist/communist
58:03
society except it doesn't have communalism as an ideal. Uh but it's just about you will live in the
58:10
prescribed role for you. you will never deviate from it. And as long as you fit
58:16
the paradigm of what a society should be, you will be taken care of to to what
58:22
you need. You will always have what you need. And that's it works okay for a
58:27
while, but as soon as auntie's choice shows up and and Auntie's Choice, by the
58:32
way, uh Auntie's Auntie Cleo got sick and tired of Spacer's Choice. And so she basically attacked them, took over, and
58:38
merged the two companies. And now she's aggressively attempting to conquer the Arcadia system. So yeah, she's she's now
58:46
basically become the Dell Corporation, taking over Hawaii, which they actually
58:51
did. Uh and they did also do that with bananas in various countries in Central
58:56
and South America as well. They straight up invaded to get the to get their hands on the bananas. These things have
59:02
happened. This is what Anti Choice is doing. Um that's not that's part of the the marketing campaign of the game. I'm
59:07
not I'm not spoiling anything. Uh, but all of this basically what it does is it
59:12
takes the message of the first game and it broadens it out. It also goes, "Oh,
59:18
don't feel too much like your group is is okay. If you're anti-corporal, if you're anti-corporate, that doesn't mean
59:24
you're, you know, on the on the right side of history because you might be a tanky. You know, you might be a fascist.
59:31
You might be uh a religious fanatic who's completely unwilling to examine
59:37
what they're trying to do to their society. It's like nobody in this game is no faction in this game is good.
59:44
There are good people, but none of the factions are good in Outer Worlds 2.
59:49
Even more so than in the first game where the factions included Rizzo's and Auntie Cleo. Uh you will end up working,
59:56
if you're not careful, you will end up working for Auntie Cleo in this game. And my word does it feel dirty. You will
1:00:03
feel oily if you do it. And it's it's really just an actually masterful way of
1:00:09
extending that since the this game is one of the few games I've ever seen that actually manages to narratively
1:00:16
and through actual questing and through data type entry stuff and through the
1:00:23
set design of the worlds conveys this message over and over again that
1:00:29
short-sighted you know unthinking adherence to a belief system is
1:00:35
inherently unstable whether it's corporate, you know, corporatism or it's, you know, even the Earth
1:00:42
Directorate has has some skin in the game as to being corrupt in in this whole thing. And you work your Earth
1:00:48
Directorate agent when you're sent out in the Outer Worlds, too. And you find out even they're not good. Not that you
1:00:54
you kind of knew anyway cuz they're they're from the beginning. They're like, "Oh, yeah. So, we're sending you
1:01:00
here and you can't we can't let you if you get caught, we're not going to say anything about it because you are going to steal a skip drive and and we're
1:01:07
going to take it apart because we found out you can do that. Uh, so we're basically breaking a a deal we've had
1:01:12
for like 150 years. Yeah, but we don't want to get caught. So, yeah, don't don't get caught. Uh, yeah, the whole
1:01:18
thing is just in a way it is the perfect Obsidian game. like it is. And when I say that, I mean it's it's the perfect
1:01:25
game in terms of like people like me who are of a generation to think of them as
1:01:31
that, you know, as that thing. So yeah, it's anything else, Joe? No, I was just going to say it's it's a
1:01:36
game that if you have not played it yet, I highly recommend, especially with the holiday season here. Um
1:01:42
yeah, play the original first, guys. Play the original because it's often on sale and it's often on sale very cheap. Um, I would not pick up the original
1:01:49
Nintendo Switch version. Literally anywhere else is fine. Um, yeah,
1:01:54
highly recommend playing through it. And then we're going to talk about two at some at some point. Excuse me. Um, and
1:02:03
we'll we'll get there because two goes off in some weird directions as well.
1:02:08
Um, but I think I will say just one more thing. two is the most open-ended in terms of how it
1:02:15
can all end of any Obsidian game, and that is saying something. They knew what they were doing.
1:02:21
Yeah. So, this one this one, it's it's very New Vegas in terms of how many
1:02:26
different endings it can have. But I think that's going to do it for us today, folks. I do want to thank you for joining us on this journey. Uh if you
1:02:32
have question, happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to Matt. Uh, and as a reminder, if you have questions for us
1:02:38
on this or any of our podcasts, be sure to send those into podcast at blizzardwatch.com. Specify the show that
1:02:44
is for in the subject line as well as any special pronunciation of your name. Uh, if you want to discord, we have two
1:02:49
channels set aside. The Q and podcast questions channel open to everybody. Same rules apply as sending an email. If
1:02:55
you are a Patreon subscriber, we have the patron Q and podcast questions channel where we tend to look there
1:03:00
first as a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on. Uh, and if you want to send us something through
1:03:06
Patreon, you can do that as well. Uh, we, you know, we'll get that. Liz or Dan
1:03:11
or somebody, one of our handlers will get it to us. Um, yeah. And we'll we'll
1:03:17
do our best to answer them and try to group them in, uh, like groupings. If you have a a suggestion for a a topic or
1:03:24
a uh show that you want us to do, you can also send those along. We're always happy to to to take a look at those and
1:03:30
see what we can plan for the future. Uh with that folks, we will see you next week.

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The lore of The Outer Worlds

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