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A tiny grudge.

At egscomics 

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The Outer Worlds, there's a lot to praise about you, but you broke my heart.

What's more, it did it twice. There was a point in the game in which it made it sound, to me at least, that you could scan people, and look like them via holographic disguise. It sounded great.

Then it turned out it gave you holographic outfits for sneaking. No makin yourself look like a guard by copying an exact person via hologram.

I mean, it's my own fault for getting the wrong impression, but I was so disappointed.

Anyway, I've heard of a few games with transformative and wacky effects that ultimately deal damage, and I am just not on the same pages as those games. If I want to deal direct damage, there's tons of ways to do that. If I want to effectively give an enemy a status effect (or just mess with friendly NPCs, having silly low-stakes fun), that's what something like a shrink ray would be for.

I'm not 100% certain why I stopped playing The Outer Worlds without finishing it, as I remember having a few personal issues with getting in to it, but I'm pretty sure I quit very shortly after getting the shrink ray and learning how it actually worked.

You had to keep it aimed at an enemy to keep them shrunk, it hit them with a debuff, and it did damage.

This was after I'd devoted a significant amount of my skill points to Science with getting fun things like the shrink ray in mind.

I suppose it's fine, and I assume some people really liked the shrink ray as it was, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the straw that made me lose interest.

But then I'm someone who used to cast spells like Frog, Pig, and Mini on my own party members in Final Fantasy for the heck of it, so... Maybe I'm just unusual in what I want in my video games.

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Comments

Joe Blue

wait what? that's a thing?

Monsterzone5

Funny thing, a shrink ray made purely through science would absolutely do damage, it would actually be downright fatal! In some cases you’d likely freeze to death while suffocating! And in most cases you’d be left basically blind & deaf, while movement would be incredibly difficult if not outright impossible!

Thisguy

That's pretty much what The Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator did in the old Doctor Who serials. Compressed a target down to the size of a doll, killing them.

Thisguy

Not sure if The Outer Worlds is the game you want if you want fun, wacky, harmless antics. Its a game where, sure, you can make a lot of choices to minimize having to kill people, but ultimately, no matter which choice you make, people are going to die. You choice is really only who dies, and if you kill them or not. Same in most games with ethics and moral choices. A weapon is designed to incapacitate its target. The question is how it goes about that, and killing the target is usually the most effective, as with most weaponry, trying to find the sweet spot between "no effect" and "death" is really hard. And in a world like in Outer Worlds, no-one is particularly worried about if other people get hurt or not.

M.

Ah, yes. Hearing about a thing in a game that sounds really cool only to discover it's not what you thought it would be is so disappointing. :(

Crissa Kentavr

The 'you have to keep it on them to shrink them and do damage' is just tactically boring, though.

John Trauger

Question about a game I never played and never expect to: You shrink someone, their HP pool temporarily reduces as a result, right? One simple, easy way to account for this is to record the change as damage. now if it interacts with armor like a weapon and heals without reversing the shrink effect, etc. that's a whole 'nother thing...

Anonymous

Dear Mx. Shive, I have heard your desire for shrink rays in games. I wish to inform you there is a mod for Skyrim that grants a shrink ray wand: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65079/ (this mod is not mine) Further, I'm in the concept phases for a gender-change wand and plan to add it.