It’s quite a tongue twister of a situation, isn’t it? It’s already challenging to mix up Annapurna Interactive’s 2019 action-adventure title The Outer Wilds with Obsidian Entertainment’s first-person role-playing game with an upcoming Switch release, The Outer Worlds. Both feature an outer space-based setting, both are available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows, and both are incredibly interesting and fun to play.
And now, telling the two apart just got even harder as the writer of The Outer Wilds will be working for the company which gave us The Outer Worlds!
Kelsey Beachum, who wrote for The Outer Wilds, announced her new job by bringing back a funny tweet she made last year. In October 2019, Beachum, who goes by @VanKelsing on Twitter, created a handy mnemonic for differentiating the two games:
If you’ve found yourself mixing up Outer Wilds and The Outer Worlds, you might appreciate this handy mnemonic I made up:
“Outer Wilds has an ‘i’ in it, because that’s the game ‘I’ wrote for.”
— Kelsey Beachum (@VanKelsing) October 28, 2019
On April 14, 2020, she replied to her previous tweet, updating the mnemonic to reflect her new employment situation:
Guess what, fellow humans, Obsidian HIRED MY DANG FACE
It is my first week and I am SO EXCITED
(Also don’t worry, I am working on a clearer mnemonic. Possibly: “Obsidian’s the studio I w*O*rk for, and they made The Outer W*O*rlds”?) https://t.co/3NkhMx79kN
— Kelsey Beachum (@VanKelsing) April 15, 2020
For those of us who aren’t Kelsey Beachum, our version of the mnemonic might work as follows: “Outer WIlds is the one she writes for, Outer WOrlds is the one she works for.”
Obsidian has made a secure acquisition in the form of Beachum. The Outer Wilds received a great deal of praise for its unique, immerse scenario and won Game of the Year at the 2019 British Academy Games Awards. Beachum’s distinct writing voice could easily pair well with the stunning visuals and soundtracks of an Obsidian title such as The Outer Worlds. Gamers should be excited about the release of such a collaboration in the future.
Congratulations, Kelsey! We are all looking forward to what you’ll create next. Hopefully, we’ll be able to write an article with a similarly humorous and eye-catching title about that one, too!
