The Outer Worlds not a "politically-charged game"

Politics in games is something that's been coming up as a discussion point since the dawn of time, but it's flared up a lot more in the last few years. Whether it's Ubisoft's stance (or non-stance, as the case may be) on US politics in The Division 2, or Bethesda's defence of shooting Nazis in Wolfenstein, developers have been divided on whether or not to address real-world topics in their games, and fans have been equally divided on whether they want them in there or not.

Now another developer has waded into the debate, and it's none other than Obsidian. Leonard Boyarsky, creative director of The Outer Worlds, has said that he doesn't want the upcoming game to be politically charged in any way, nor does he want to bombard players with these kinds of messages.

"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," he explained to Video Games Chronicle. "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."

Instead of being about capitalism then, it's about the wider and more universal theme of "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."

These themes aren't too heavy either, Boyarsky explained, and humour will be thrown in there as well.

"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."

"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."

This contrasts with the views of other creators, as Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith also spoke to VGC about politics, saying the following about the universe he brought to life:

"Oh yeah. Somebody asked me a while back if Cyberpunk was political and I said inherently it's always political. It's not politics in terms of right or left, or even conservative versus liberal... everything is political. Human beings are political. First we got food, then we got prostitution, then we got politics. And we might have gotten politics before prostitution, but I'm not sure."

We can expect The Outer Worlds on October 25 this year on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and when we spoke with narrative designer Dan McPhee, he told us that the game is "all about giving choice".

Where do you think video games should stand with regards to politics?