Tekijät kieltävät The Outer Worldsin poliittisuuden

Pelien tarinat ottavat yhä enemmän ja enemmän kantaa myös päivänpolttaviin kysymyksiin, mikä herättää tuntemuksia jos johonkin suuntaan. Hyvänä esimerkkinä Bethesda on aiemmin ottanut puolustelevan kannan Wolfenstein-pelien natsien tappamiseen, eivätkä esimerkiksi Ubisoftin The Division -pelitkään ole päässeet seulasta ongelmitta läpi.

Nyt keskusteluun on saapunut myös uusi ääni, kun Obisidian Entertainmentin Leonard Boyarsky kommentoi tulevan The Outer Worldin tilannetta. Luova ohjaaja vakuuttaa, että peli ei halua ottaa kantaa tai olla poliittisesti latautunut.

"I like money: I'm not against capitalism and in a lot of ways I'm happy with our society. But of course there are a lot of ways in which it could be improved. We started development in April 2016 and a couple of things happened [in world politics] between then and now that nobody expected. We weren't expecting that."

Peli kuitenkin kertoo laajempaa tarinaa kuin pelkkää kuvausta kapitalismista. Tämä vaatii mukaan myös huumoria.

"Power and how power is used against people who don't have it [...] It can be insidious; the way which people control the stories you tell about the world. If you let other people control that narrative, then they can control you to a certain degree. That can be any form of government: if it wasn't capitalism it could be something else."

"I don't want people to think this is a really hard, politically-charged game: it's supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be humorous," he said. "Having grown up in America and been through the onslaught of consumer culture, we're very familiar with that and like to poke fun at it."

Tekijät lupaavat ottaneensa aiemmista kokemuksistaan opiksi. Erityisesti vuonna 2001 julkaistu Arcanum otti kantaa tasa-arvoon, mikä nostatti kulmakarvoja.

"But like how with [2001 RPG] Arcanum when we were dealing with racial issues, the story always comes down to balance of power, how people get power and how they use it. We've been very careful, I've been very careful."

"There are people in this game who have philosophies that I don't agree with and I take pains to make those people very likeable, very sensible and very believable. Then there are people in the game who say things I agree with, who are perhaps not very nice to hang out with."

"So we don't want to set up strawman or anything and say, 'look how horrible this is!' It's really about looking at all aspects of issues. The last thing we want to do is make a game that people feel is lecturing them."