The Outer Worlds 2

THE OUTER WORLDS 2

Title: Game Designer

Role: System Designer/Technical Designer

Company: Disruptive Games (Obsidian Entertainment Co Dev)

Platform: PC, Xbox

Engine: Unreal Engine 5

Disruptive games was tasked with adding an alternate third person camera system and full animation move set to a first person game that was fairly feature complete. I designed the camera system and worked with my team of animators and engineers to create a quality system that matched the gameplay of first person as closely as possible

Here are some of the highlights

Every weapon and player state has the ability to have a different camera position and field of view setting
Using a curve, we control the field of view and camera arm distance from the player when pitching up an down to allow for epic "worm eye" views when pitching up to look at the sky, and better interaction angle when looking down at the ground by pushing the camera in when pitching down
We incorporated shoulder swapping so all animations and VFX were designed to work on the right shoulder as well as left
I used Obsidian's tools and animation notifies to add shell eject vfx and mag drop vfx for all weapons. Before this all mag eject and bullet ejects were done through animation and didn't hit the ground
I worked closely with designers at Obsidian to come to compromises on where the gameplay in 3P had to differ from 1P to make third person animations and gameplay play better
I designed chest mounted third person flashlight that adjusted to attach to the front of all the armor pieces in the game

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Technical Details

Read on for more details about my work on The Outer Worlds 2

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Customization Options

One thing I saw in titles that swap between 3p and 1p perspectives is that the camera angles and positioning are the same for nearly all weapons and all player states. In Starfield for example, whether you are firing a pistol or a heavy machine gun, the camera angle is the same. I wanted us to have the option to change the camera position and field of view for every weapon and every player state. If I'm carrying rifle I am going to want to pull the camera in towards the shoulder. When I crouch I want the camera to get lower to match my posture. When carrying a melee weapon I wanted the camera to pull more towards center and raise it up so the game would play more like a conventional third person game that featured melee combat.

I designed the tools and worked with engineers to implement camera profiles for every state the player can enter (crouched, climbing ladders, jumping etc), then spent weeks tuning positions and field of view for over 40 weapon types for each state.

Gameplay Dissonance

Some of the unique challenges I faced were related to something I referred to as first person to third person gameplay dissonance. On the spectrum of cinematic third person gameplay such as what's found in game like Last of Us where transition animations are smooth vs Fortnight where transitions are instant and twitchy, The Outer Worlds 2 falls closer to the middle while leaning more towards the instant side.

This led to our first big hurdle. In 1P, transitions between movement directions was instantaneous, but that would look unrealistic with the slightly cinematic animation style we want. After testing and research we found adding about .2 seconds of acceleration/deceleration when changing directions was enough to allow animators to add direction transition animations.

Another challenge came up when dealing with parkour. To make it look natural, the best animations for mantling and vaulting requires the use of the left hand to be placed on the object being vaulted. That is literally handwaved away in first person by playing a quick animation down and out of frame, implying that the left hand was used for the parkour action. Third person did not have that luxury, which posed a real problem because you could reload your weapon and use items with your left hand while vaulting in 1P and we wanted to match gameplay. Our eventual compromise was to create a window of .5 seconds where we could get in a good looking animation placing the left hand on the parkour object and lock out all left handed actions until the exact frame where the left hand comes off the mantled object. I feel great satisfaction in coming to these compromises because third person gets to shine while staying true to the spirit of the game

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Interaction System

When I first started this project, I had a desire to solve a problem that has been bugging me personally for years. In games like Fallout, Skyrim and Starfield, when playing in third person the only way to interact with anything was to point the reticle at it just as you would in first person. One of the more annoying problems this creates is looting with a controller Trying to loot a room with objects at different heights and locations is uncomfortable and can lead to motion sickness as the player swings the camera wildly around to get at all the goodies while also moving the character back and forth and in and out to line up an object.

There is also a steering issue that plagues this kind of system. If I'm aiming at a console that is ahead of me, my third person gaming experience wants me to steer towards it with my body, but this game is asking me to aim at it with the reticle. I end up either lined up with my body at the console but my reticle is interacting with a switch on the wall besides it, or my reticle is on the console but my body is lined up with an NPC to the left.

I wanted to create a system where it felt as comfortable to play as a typical third person game but still kept the reticle as the hero for interactions, so here is what we did.

Added a curve to the camera position based on pitch, so if I want to look down at the table or the ground, the camera will move forward and over the player's shoulder for a better view
Added a collider in front of the player that would interact with consoles, chests and corpses, which effectively solved the steering problem
We made sure that the reticle interaction is still king, so whatever the reticle was pointed at was the ultimate source of truth for all interactions

What came of this is a system that solves age old problems while not outshining the first person system. Word is that this system is going into future Obsidian titles.