The Outer Worlds 2’s Propaganda-Filled Radio Was Inspired by Fallout: New Vegas
How Obsidian crafted a whole universe of music.
Obsidian Entertainment has had a profound effect on the role-playing genre over the decades, from the complex morality of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 to the minuscule multiplayer mayhem of Grounded. But not a single Obsidian game has had more of a lasting legacy than the beloved Fallout: New Vegas — and elements of that very game have bled into the studio for years, but never more so than the new sci-fi epic The Outer Worlds 2. While the first game was sometimes colloquially called Fallout in space, The Outer Worlds 2 only strengthens that idea with some very specific elements. Nowhere is that more abundantly clear than with the game’s surprisingly robust radio system, letting players tune into dozens of songs, radio dramas, and pieces of propaganda that help flesh out the factions of The Outer Worlds 2. And there’s a direct link between this new feature and New Vegas.
“Bethesda introduced the radio in Fallout 3, which we didn’t have in the original Fallout games, and I thought that was really cool. But most of the stuff they did, and in New Vegas, was all off-the-shelf existing music,” The Outer Worlds 2 creative director Leonard Boyarsky tells Inverse, “I understand why they had to do that, because it’d be ridiculous to think you would come up with 60 songs from scratch. So even back then, it was in the back of my brain that it’d be cool to hear what music from this place would have sounded like.”
Boyarsky has a long history with the Fallout series, working on art design and game direction on the very first game and Fallout 2 with Interplay Entertainment. He joined Obsidian in 2016 and worked as game director on the first Outer Worlds. And as it turns out, the studio actually wanted to implement a radio in that first game.
“We actually had some very rudimentary radio stuff early on, but there’s so much beyond just the content for the radio. How are you going to handle it when people start talking? How are you going to keep it from being overwhelming?” Boyarsky says, “We tried and just had not been able to do it in the first game. And I wasn’t even necessarily thinking about it for the second game, but Brandon Adler, the game director, really wanted it because he loved how it worked in New Vegas.”
Realizing the dream of what an actual in-universe radio could be is something Boyarsky and the team finally achieved with The Outer Worlds 2 — not just using licensed music but literally creating those 60 original songs, radio dramas, ads, and more. Every single thing you hear on the radio in this game is completely original and made from scratch. There’s an almost unbelievable amount of time and thought that went into that. Boyarsky says this was a brand-new challenge for him, and a collaboration between the game’s writers and creative teams, sound teams, and a swathe of musicians Obsidian partnered with.
Part of what was so difficult about this radio, in particular, is that it had to match the theme and historical inspirations of the game. The Outer Worlds sci-fi universe is essentially locked in an eternal early 1900s aesthetic, because this alternate universe diverged from real-world events in 1901, with United States president William McKinley not being assassinated. That idea is integrally tied into the rise of rampant capitalism, and the game’s factions.
Factions are a key part of The Outer Worlds 2’s universe — they mold the main narrative and how you play in pretty much every way. On top of that, each one is meant to represent a satirical take on a form of society. Auntie’s Choice is a bunch of ravenous venture capitalists, where climbing the ladder and buying products are the most important things in life. The Protectorate is a Soviet-inspired authoritarian regime, where every facet of your life must be given to help the cause. And finally, The Order of the Ascendant is an eccentric bunch of math worshippers, hoping to further human evolution by solving the Universal Equation.
While looking at the diversity of each faction, the game’s bizarro turn-of-the-century setting necessitated a smart approach to even the kind of instruments you use in creating original songs.
“It was an interesting challenge. We already had this time period set, and because of that, it also kind of set the music technology side of things. How far we could push anything had to stop at the end of the 1930s, maybe 1940s,” production director Tony Blackwell tells Inverse, “Everything has to be very analog. So we have to figure out things, like The Order faction, for example. They’re the futurists, so what do you traditionally lean into when you think of sci-fi music — something like a Theremin. But straight away we knew we couldn’t use a theremin because it’s heavily rooted in 1950s sci-fi, even though it was created earlier.”
Obsidian put copious amounts of thought into the actual instruments and even the recording process, of the turn of the century — because the studio really wanted everything to feel authentic for the game’s vision. This led to some interesting solutions, like instead of having each instrument have its own microphone, setting a single microphone in the center of the room, thus giving it a more diluted effect and matching the actual old recording process.
“The radio was a good opportunity to have a lot of that kind of satirical comedy.”
Boyarsky notes it was exceptionally difficult to get everyone to think outside the box of how modern music was recorded, and how the team could “make a crappy recording of it and still have it be a cool piece of music. Ultimately, it was the authenticity, which also meant finding actual musicians who played period-appropriate music for a living.
To that end, one of The Outer Worlds 2’s writers, Joe Fielder, had contact with James Bonney, a composer who worked on BioShock Infinite and helped create the early 20th-century versions of songs in that game, like the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.” Instead of using session musicians, the team deliberately found artists that specialized in what they wanted — like a touring big band.
Each of the game’s three factions has its own set of 20 songs and radio dramas, and all of those had to represent each faction’s unique style of government and society. For example, the venture capitalists in Auntie’s Choice are constantly laser-focused on putting out the latest product or making sure they don’t miss their daily bowl of Purple Berry Crunch.
“All the products for Auntie’s were a blast to come up with. We’ve got Candy Tobaccco, where it’s like selling to the lowest common denominator. And the song [in-universe] is like, let’s get the kids on nicotine,” Blackwell says.
Auntie’s music involved a lot of big band compositions, and an overall swing kind of vibe — songs that you can snap your fingers along to. The Protectorate, meanwhile, was fashioned after the Soviet Union Communist era, with songs that were meant to feel heavy, depressing, and oppressive. But even that provided a unique challenge, because everything needed to fit those themes — but the songs still had to be listenable and relatable. To that end, the team at Obsidian created an idea called “Good Neighbor Prudence.”
When you listen to the Protectorate’s radio, there’s basically an MC named Prudence, a kind older woman who reminds you how vital it is to give everything to the cause and be a good citizen — a brilliant bit of emotional manipulation that then tied into everything about the sound design of the Protectorate.
“It was a big challenge, like we can’t just do a bunch of slow, heavy-sounding Russian Marches. We had to make this stuff sound like a fun song.” Blackwell says, “So that ties to the Prudence idea, this [music] is welcoming, even though secretly it’s trying to absolutely suppress your emotions and control you.”
Finally, The Order is maybe the most interesting of the three, because its music had to impart that bizarre obsession with math and calculations. That started with actual in-universe academic lectures you can listen to on The Order’s radio, written by Tim Cain, the co-director of the first Outer Worlds. However, this also provided a golden opportunity to lean into the game’s satirical writing, featuring grand operatic melodies that incorporate real mathematical equations.
“The radio was a good opportunity to have a lot of that kind of satirical comedy. Like if you aren’t paying attention, it just sounds like a normal song, but if you actually listen to the lyrics, you realize how ridiculous or funny it is,” Blackwell says, “What if they wrote a song about the Fibonacci Sequence and Fibonacci could be, like, a catchy thing. Or, writing a song about pi, where you're not talking about pi, you're just singing numbers.”
The Outer Worlds 2 marks a new era for Obsidian in a lot of ways. Chief among those is the ambition of doing things the studio has never done, including crafting hours of unique original music and audio content. That’s a big swing for a feature that’s marked as optional in the game.
“It was just about figuring out what would be in the world for each faction. For me, that was something we’ve never explored before — a don’t think a lot of people have,” Boyarsky says, “It’s a really cool way of getting the player feeling like they’re in the world, with a different kind of propaganda. And the people singing these songs, they mean it. Like a Protectorate song, like Give Me Your Hand — yeah, you lost your hand in the workplace, but that’s okay. You’ve done your part for the cause.
