Obsidian Entertainment has gone from Fallout: New Vegas where you were free to kill anyone, even at the cost of disrupting main quests, to Outer Worlds where most of that freedom is still intact to Avowed where the freedom to do evil choices is either taken from you (npcs not reacting to being shot in the face) or having no impact (npcs ignoring your stealing of money and food in the tavern).
I agree with your thought that it’s a directorial choice, not attention to detail, but it’s one that goes in the complete opposite direction of what the studio is known for.
You could kill almost anyone in NV as you cannot kill children in any game nor can you kill major quest givers.
Perhaps they have reasons to not want to encourage senseless violence to NPC’s at a time when a chunk of the population clearly views others as IRL NPC’s?
Or they just suck at their job because those who would not suck at it are making much more money elsewhere. Let’s not forget companies like bethesda, MS et al dumped an overwhelming amount of talent because they were expensive.
There’s a reason everyone and their mother, in the west, now shifts to middleware like UE5.
Obsidian Entertainment has gone from Fallout: New Vegas where you were free to kill anyone, even at the cost of disrupting main quests, to Outer Worlds where most of that freedom is still intact to Avowed where the freedom to do evil choices is either taken from you (npcs not reacting to being shot in the face) or having no impact (npcs ignoring your stealing of money and food in the tavern).
I agree with your thought that it’s a directorial choice, not attention to detail, but it’s one that goes in the complete opposite direction of what the studio is known for.
You could kill almost anyone in NV as you cannot kill children in any game nor can you kill major quest givers.
Perhaps they have reasons to not want to encourage senseless violence to NPC’s at a time when a chunk of the population clearly views others as IRL NPC’s?
Or they just suck at their job because those who would not suck at it are making much more money elsewhere. Let’s not forget companies like bethesda, MS et al dumped an overwhelming amount of talent because they were expensive. There’s a reason everyone and their mother, in the west, now shifts to middleware like UE5.