GameCity '07: Braben goes inside Outsider

Developer behind Elite and Thrillville spills a few more of the beans on his highly anticipated actioner, which will feature a re-creation of Washington, DC.

NOTTINGHAM--The Outsider is David Braben's latest project--and it is nothing short of ambitious. Ambition is not an alien emotion to the famed game designer, who worked on the original version of space fighting and trading game Elite in 1984, which was critically lauded for being way ahead of its time.

In his GameCity event keynote speech, titled "Creating Games for the Next Generation," Braben revealed some of the extent of his game's scope. He told the audience, "The Outsider has a big, open city. We've created, essentially, the whole of Washington, DC. You can go into any of the buildings." He showed how this was possible, by using what he called a "Lego system" of modular development.

Braben also explained the Outsider will feature thousands of non-player characters with distinctly different appearances. As in many other open-world games, said characters will wander about doing their day-to-day business in the background of the game's events.

He also talked about some of the more controversial aspects of the game, which sees the main character Commander Jameson, accused of killing the President of the United States. He must then decide which, if any, of the many different agencies and factions in the game to side with, including a terrorist faction.

Braben commented, "I've been criticised for saying you can work with terrorists--but one man's terrorist is another's revolutionary. And actually they're [not] such bad people at all--one of the things they are fighting against is the corruption, and that's good."

In summary, Braben said The Outsider will be essentially be an action game. He explained, "It's about chasing people, being chased, car chases, that kind of thing... It's taking the first-person shooter genre and hopefully expanding it a little." He hastily added that those who preferred to play the game a different way could do so, although, "sadly," it would likely be impossible to complete the game without killing anyone.

25 Comments

  • Leninator

    Posted Oct 27, 2008 8:41 pm PT

    I went to this talk to be honest he spent very little time explaining the outsider and used the talk mostly to plug his glorified themepark (thrillville) and tell the room (moslty filled with game programming students) about how bad games development courses are.

    As for the outsider... he gave a talk and showed off some static and unimpressive pictures with no live action throughout the little part of the presentation he gave to the outsider.

    He left out that this game was originally announced to be released in '06, but I don't blame him for not wanting to admit all he has is vaporware...

  • amo_lang123

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 6:45 pm PT

    wow... thats all i have to say

  • akiwak

    Posted Jul 30, 2008 1:43 pm PT

    Sounds innovative

  • AnFangs_Endes

    Posted Jan 27, 2008 4:21 am PT

    So does that mean we're going to have a Second-Person Shooter on our hands then Emma?

  • tatu2004

    Posted Oct 29, 2007 11:56 am PT

    this game sounds good to me i'm looking forward to hearing more about this game and seeing new gameplay trailer's

  • MasterChief725

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 5:06 pm PT

    big open cities, first person shooting, car crashes....you can do worse

  • pucechan

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 12:12 pm PT

    Cute seeing him use Commander Jameson as the guys name but presumably that'll change. For those whose gaming started in the 16-bit console era, that was the default name your character had in the original Elite.

    Interesting to see how the game ends up but I'm more interested in Elite 4 (even if it seems Braben is still avoiding talking about it... )

  • SmoothCrimen

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 6:47 am PT

    First person?? Third person?? who cares!!! gimme my car, I want to chase!!!

  • dorohala

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 6:47 am PT

    NOT BAD at least we are getting some where!

  • anamnawshad

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 3:32 am PT

    Sounds great! Hope he'll be able to make it a cool game.....

  • Emma_UK

    Posted Oct 26, 2007 2:08 am PT

    He said the game is 'essentially' a first-person shooter, but as far as I could see it still had the third person perspective, hope that answers your questions.

  • kori911

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 7:35 pm PT

    I'd buy it for a dollar.

  • Pete5506

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 6:40 pm PT

    cool

  • drogaz

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 5:35 pm PT

    Sounds awesome to me.

  • vadicta

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 5:34 pm PT

    i cant wait to see how this game shapes up. Finally i will get to mold my plotline

  • ZOnikJJ

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 5:30 pm PT

    uh.. huh...

  • Tripwolf

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 5:05 pm PT

    Interesting stuff.

  • DonutTrooper

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 5:04 pm PT

    Reminds me of that poor kid who made his HS a CS map, and got arrested for that. CS mods4life!

  • TyZeRViRuS

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 5:03 pm PT

    Good to finally here a bit more of the game....and whats the 'First-person shooter' he's talking about? I thought this would be 3rd person. Ah well, still sounds cool though.

  • PureDante

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 4:56 pm PT

    Um...yay?

  • Filaki

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 4:56 pm PT

    @soldier-dark

    Well, he did mention that they're taking the FPS genre and expanding it. WTF? they're going through the trouble of recreating DC and then making you play in FP? even Oblivion had the option of going behind your character.

  • mxpowar

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 4:51 pm PT

    But when is this game coming out? That's the important question.

  • soldier-dark

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 4:51 pm PT

    So wait, this game is in first person?

  • Filaki

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 4:50 pm PT

    did he say "first-person shooter"? I was hoping to be able to see the character, it always helps when playing sandbox games.

  • mikethemonkey

    Posted Oct 25, 2007 4:44 pm PT

    I guess this is cool?????

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