Outer Worlds
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So, I’m not sure how many of you are into video games, but Outer Worlds is a sci-fi game that came out a couple of years ago. Delightfully, for all the dark themes the game itself has a lot resemblances to a campy old comic book: plasma guns, alien monsters… and a shrink ray.
Basically, there’s a set of Science Weapons with unique, OOC abilities, and the shrink ray is the first of those you can find, right after the starting mission. Gameplay wise, it’s not ideal; it’s focused on debuffing the enemy rather than flat damage, but OW is game that wants you to commit to a build, a strategy, and there’s a stat especially for these weapons, and if you double down on the Science stat to the max (like, say, a mad scientist…) you can get that duration and damage up substantially. Plus, the roleplay value of doing that is real (and, there’s a story somewhere in imagining what your character could do with that over time, if they commit to being an amoral mad scientist, and just the whole corporate dystopia environment of Outer Worlds. Shrunken indentured maids?) Sadly, though you do fight women as well as men, any human enemies are in armor so not quite the ideal visual there, and the shrink itself is very temporary, even when you get the duration up.
I’m about to start a Shrink Ray focused build right now, but I thought I’d bring this up; Outer Worlds is old enough (there’s a sequel coming soonish! …As games go), that it should be relatively cheap at this point, and it’s widely held as an very easy game to boot, to the point where it’s often advised to start on hard mode, so in theory it should be accessible to the casual player.
Also, there’s similarities to Firefly if that’s your jam.
Power is choice.
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@i-am-insane said:
Also, there’s similarities to Firefly if that’s your jam.
That’s my cue to plug my F/f Firefly fanfic Played. Saffron returns with a shrink ray.
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@Olo
You quickly end up as the captain of a ship with a ragtag crew, in a universe with strong western themes. It’s honestly quite fun in it’s own right; you can be a smooth talker so slick you have someone hand you their life savings, so stupid you can barely form a sentence, a thug, a hero… or a mad scientist, as I’ve said.There’s actually quite a bit of mechanical support for these weapons, but if they could just commit to the shrink a bit, the way you could leave your party shrunk in FF7 or something, it would be awesome.
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@i-am-insane ooh these aesthetics and the shrink ray sound great. I will check it out!
