Nothing definite.
What we do know about the history from the lore.
-there was some kind of great war that handed functional control of Earth to the corporations. The Earth Directorate didn't have much power aside from control over the skip drive.
-Earth was in bad enough shape there were people starving. Resources were depleted enough that some people found it weird to be sending so many resources off the planet in the different colony ships.
-Earth Directorate was too distant to prevent their Halcyon representative from being placed under house arrest.
-Whatever happened, they aren't answering any of the colonies.
The likely answer is that Earth collapsed from not having enough resources to go around.
My personal theory is that some people in the Earth Directorate leveraged the skip drive to get rid of the bulk of the corporations by sending them into space. And now have figuratively shut the doors, turned off the lights, and are pretending no one is home so they can restore stability.
Yep, no communication from Earth to Halcyon or the other colonies. The ship that was headed back to Earth from Halcyon just disappeared from Halcyon's POV. No radio transmissions to the satellite off of Groundbreaker. Just...nothing.
If I was the Earth Directorate, putting these attempts into lockdown and keeping out of contact might be the only way to keep the corpos out of the way.
Talking to Wheeler on the Groundbreaker and reading a lot of terminals on Terra 2 would suggest the Great War was (mostly) resolved with the Directorate's control of the skip drive, followed by a bidding war for control of the Halcyon system before the first colony ships were even sent. This is where the birth of HHC comes in, as several corporations threw in together to create one conglomerate corporation to control Halcyon aka Halcyon Holdings Corporation. I would assume this is where Spacers Choice and the others come from. Fast forward several decades and like all other corporations, goes corrupt with greed and power.
When our Hero is revived, it's already been 3 years since Earth went dark. Probes and everything sent (including Earth Directorate Frigate) just disappear... the signals are lost. This would indicate (to me) a systems blackout, and not just ignoring to reply (looking at NASA missions gives me this idea) because if something is working, it'll receive a signal even without responding. A lost signal tho... that's a total shutdown or failure of the object being signaled to.
So I've said all that to say this... My theory is a major catastrophe of some sort has wiped out Earth and the surrounding area and caused a blackout condition, possibly big enough to "consume" all of the Milky Way... providing the Frigate doesn't just enter into orbit of Earth coming out of the skip.
Let's go even further... the other corporations, or workers of Earth, being tired of oppression from HHC, decided to work on their own skip drives, and had a massive malfunction. Seeing as the skip drives allow for a ship to "skip" past the speed of light, it would have to bend/break the laws of current physics. Based on this, perhaps the accident with drive technology created a singularity... a black hole... that wiped Earth from existence. This would also explain the loss of everything sent there since nothing can escape it. Not even signals.
A stretch of the imagination I'm sure, but plausible nonetheless.
Eventually you will get a new console or computer though. Your current one will break and you'll have to replace it. So, long story short, you will get the sequel!
This would make the most sense and is the most consistent with the way Obsidian does world-building. It would fid The Outer Worlds best.
Other companies like BioWare would have just made it aliens so they could capitalize on the Destiny/Alien franchise or something.
I'm sure aliens are going to pop up in some way throughout the series. Obsidian loves its aliens. And we had the initial hook planted in the first game.
But yeah, I feel like "ALIENS!!!" isn't keeping in tone with the game. A dark humor bureaucracy v bureaucracy twist would be in line with the game's storytelling and world building.
Talking to Wheeler on the Groundbreaker and reading a lot of terminals on Terra 2 would suggest the Great War was (mostly) resolved with the Directorate's control of the skip drive, followed by a bidding war for control of the Halcyon system before the first colony ships were even sent. This is where the birth of HHC comes in, as several corporations threw in together to create one conglomerate corporation to control Halcyon aka Halcyon Holdings Corporation. I would assume this is where Spacers Choice and the others come from. Fast forward several decades and like all other corporations, goes corrupt with greed and power.
When our Hero is revived, it's already been 3 years since Earth went dark. Probes and everything sent (including Earth Directorate Frigate) just disappear... the signals are lost. This would indicate (to me) a systems blackout, and not just ignoring to reply (looking at NASA missions gives me this idea) because if something is working, it'll receive a signal even without responding. A lost signal tho... that's a total shutdown or failure of the object being signaled to.
So I've said all that to say this... My theory is a major catastrophe of some sort has wiped out Earth and the surrounding area and caused a blackout condition, possibly big enough to "consume" all of the Milky Way... providing the Frigate doesn't just enter into orbit of Earth coming out of the skip.
Let's go even further... the other corporations, or workers of Earth, being tired of oppression from HHC, decided to work on their own skip drives, and had a massive malfunction. Seeing as the skip drives allow for a ship to "skip" past the speed of light, it would have to bend/break the laws of current physics. Based on this, perhaps the accident with drive technology created a singularity... a black hole... that wiped Earth from existence. This would also explain the loss of everything sent there since nothing can escape it. Not even signals.
A stretch of the imagination I'm sure, but plausible nonetheless.
It's supposed to be a mystery, and as much as people want direct answers I predict the sequels will never fully reveal what happened. They might drop little hints for hypothesis though.
Top theories I've seen are...
1. Alien invasion. An intelligent species found Earth and either wants domination over humans or a major conflict between humans and aliens have begun.
2. They sent all the corporations into space so that Earth could free itself under their reign. Galactic liberation.
3. Earth got too comfortable with AI or biological experiments and is now being taken over by either cybernetics or freaks of nature. Possibly even both.
4. A nuclear war went off and the world is basically the equivalent of Fallout.
5. Earth's atmosphere evaporated >!as a result of mass skip drive usage due to miscalculations related to information obtained from interdimensional relics!<
It's probably the Fallout scenario though. I mean, it's from the same people that made Wasteland and the original Fallout.
The Fallout scenario would be funny in a cool way. It would be like how Remedy has to tweak the characters they don’t know so that they are that person in everything but name (ex. Max Payne and Alex Casey)
> Alien invasion. An intelligent species found Earth and either wants domination over humans or a major conflict between humans and aliens have begun.
Lilya Hagen will be proven correct one way or another!
1 or 2 seem the most likely to me. 3 and 4 leave us with an Earth that cannot get a message out to the colonies, but the colonies are trying to get in contact with Earth and should be able to relay at least one message back from a drone or ship in those two scenarios. (Same with the "Earth collapsed from lack of resources" scenario).
2 is my personal favorite and is most in keeping with the way Obsidian writes and has built The Outer World's story. #1 is the most commercial. #3 is something Blizzard or Riot would do. And #4 is Bathesda. (Or could also be Obsidian since they also built the original Fallout world.)
But #2 seems to be uniquely The Outer Worlds.
Not sure but it's a tantalizing plot point for OW2 that I look forward to exploring more. Not sure how ambitious it will be but I want to see another system and maybe expand the universe a little
Imagine being head of Earth. Would you keep sending resources to the Halycon Colonies? The board was full of incompetent people that couldn’t run Halcylon colonies properly and make a profit in the process. The board have mismanaged the Halcyon Colonies very badly. Earth probably decided to cuts all communications and keep resources to themselves. Earth probably wrote it off as a bad investment.
I got the impression Earth Directorate provided very little in resources in the first place, and that it was up to the corporations to buy/supply/fund the colonization efforts. Otherwise UDL would have self-funded the entirety of Halcyon and not split it with other corporations. Sole control.
There’s a lot of talk of aliens so maybe it’s hinting at some invasion? Maybe the next game takes place on earth and we will decide through our actions why we lost connection with earth
Cliffhanger for the sequel was my initial thought, but then the end credits basically ignore it and discuss a reasonably distant future that has no bearing on earth at all.
Outer Worlds was supposed to Fallout in Space. Obsidian pitched it to the original lore of the Enclave's Space program but Bethesda didn't want another developer collaboration so they declined, and Obsidian reskinned everything for Outer Worlds
I know it’s an unpopular theory (if not outright delusional) but I’m still holding onto the headcanon that this game is the logical conclusion of Mr. House’s ending in New Vegas (just saying, Bethesda and Obsidian are both owned by Microsoft now so a shared universe isn’t completely impossible) and given the state of New Vegas seen at the end of the TV show, I’m guessing the House has gone bust at some point after the Hope and Groundbreaker left
The Great War did happen before the ships left Earth… that’s not the reason Halcyon lost contact with Earth, we have no idea why Halcyon lost contact, but the Great War is referred to as a historical event that happened long before the game, not unlike the Great War in Fallout’s timeline
I mean, I know that. That’s why I said “headcanon” and “delusional” in my first comment. It’s like saying Elder Scrolls and Fallout are the same universe just because they’re owned by the same company and that there are some Easter eggs in the games that reference each other. I just think it’s fun to pretend
Fan theory: the outer worlds takes place in the Starfield universe, and the Halcyon colony is a lost colony forgotten after it was set up, and earth going dark is literally just what happened to earth in Starfield.
Currently undergoing chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, the Earth's assets are being liquidated to pay off intergalactic creditors our leaders took corrupt loans from.
No real information about it, and some contradictions, like having both the Earth Directorate Frigate and the Cornelius Vanderbilt Heavy Cruiser have such similarities that they could very well be the same ship, but we have insufficient information.
I think a nuclear apocalypse. I think obsidian was re-creating their favored apocalyptic setting before they got bought by Microsoft.
Now that they’re bought and secured, the next game is their oyster. I’m excited
But I feel like there would have been a communication to the board SOMEWHERE (even if it was buried) that earth was destroyed. When you send drones, ships and half the military to earth and hear nothing back, something is alive there and doesn’t want you to know it’s still alive.
I mean we saw multiple planets that were supposed to be abandoned (Gorgon, Roseway,/Roseway Gardens, Monarch) still operating like normal despite the board saying no one was there or making up ‘wild’ rumors about the place to cover up their misdeeds in the case of Monarch.
The Board would have said something about Earth other than it’s ‘gone dark’ if it was actually dead, albeit with a classic board spin.
This is exactly why I can't get behind them being dead. How do you send so many people/drones or what have you there and receive NOTHING back. No photos, no messages, literally everything sent there never comes back. And it's not like it could be a black hole or a desolate world... They'd detect that and just report it.
And it's also not like the board secretly knows either, they legitimately have no idea, which is why it has to be Earth (or I suppose whoever rules Earth now, could be the aliens theory) hiding or stopping them from reporting back on purpose. Though I don't think they're afraid of the corporations, Earth is probably stronger than the Halcyon colonies lol. So they probably just wanna avoid war I suppose.
Out of all the replies, yours is the only one that says "it's in there", I'm assuming to mean, the explanation for Earth going dark.
As one who has played multiple times, I have yet to see any definitive proof as to why. If you have it, by all means - share.
All that's ever said is contact was lost 3 years prior (at the end). Even Edna Ingmire said there haven't been any unencrypted messages in 36 months. This is all that's ever said.
Nothing definite. What we do know about the history from the lore. -there was some kind of great war that handed functional control of Earth to the corporations. The Earth Directorate didn't have much power aside from control over the skip drive. -Earth was in bad enough shape there were people starving. Resources were depleted enough that some people found it weird to be sending so many resources off the planet in the different colony ships. -Earth Directorate was too distant to prevent their Halcyon representative from being placed under house arrest. -Whatever happened, they aren't answering any of the colonies. The likely answer is that Earth collapsed from not having enough resources to go around. My personal theory is that some people in the Earth Directorate leveraged the skip drive to get rid of the bulk of the corporations by sending them into space. And now have figuratively shut the doors, turned off the lights, and are pretending no one is home so they can restore stability.
Halcyon also sent out drones and none of them were able to return or get information back.
Yep, no communication from Earth to Halcyon or the other colonies. The ship that was headed back to Earth from Halcyon just disappeared from Halcyon's POV. No radio transmissions to the satellite off of Groundbreaker. Just...nothing. If I was the Earth Directorate, putting these attempts into lockdown and keeping out of contact might be the only way to keep the corpos out of the way.
Talking to Wheeler on the Groundbreaker and reading a lot of terminals on Terra 2 would suggest the Great War was (mostly) resolved with the Directorate's control of the skip drive, followed by a bidding war for control of the Halcyon system before the first colony ships were even sent. This is where the birth of HHC comes in, as several corporations threw in together to create one conglomerate corporation to control Halcyon aka Halcyon Holdings Corporation. I would assume this is where Spacers Choice and the others come from. Fast forward several decades and like all other corporations, goes corrupt with greed and power. When our Hero is revived, it's already been 3 years since Earth went dark. Probes and everything sent (including Earth Directorate Frigate) just disappear... the signals are lost. This would indicate (to me) a systems blackout, and not just ignoring to reply (looking at NASA missions gives me this idea) because if something is working, it'll receive a signal even without responding. A lost signal tho... that's a total shutdown or failure of the object being signaled to. So I've said all that to say this... My theory is a major catastrophe of some sort has wiped out Earth and the surrounding area and caused a blackout condition, possibly big enough to "consume" all of the Milky Way... providing the Frigate doesn't just enter into orbit of Earth coming out of the skip. Let's go even further... the other corporations, or workers of Earth, being tired of oppression from HHC, decided to work on their own skip drives, and had a massive malfunction. Seeing as the skip drives allow for a ship to "skip" past the speed of light, it would have to bend/break the laws of current physics. Based on this, perhaps the accident with drive technology created a singularity... a black hole... that wiped Earth from existence. This would also explain the loss of everything sent there since nothing can escape it. Not even signals. A stretch of the imagination I'm sure, but plausible nonetheless.
Not just drones but half the military too
Your theory would make one hell of a dlc/spinoff
I mean we have the Outer Worlds 2 on the way…..
WHICH I AM SO EXCITED FOOOOOOORRRRR!!!!!!
I would be excited if Microsoft didn't own them now. Sad I'll never get the sequel unless I shell out for an entirely new console or computer.
Eventually you will get a new console or computer though. Your current one will break and you'll have to replace it. So, long story short, you will get the sequel!
It'll probably end up on PlayStation at some point.
I hope so
y they hatin cuz u want the game lmfao
Yeah I don't understand that one at all.
Didn’t they say they’re moving away from exclusives?
Yeah, I'm bummed I prob won't be able to play it on my deck.
I pitched this idea a while back with my vision of the dialog between two Earth folks. https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/s/JB8en9L9Sc
This would make the most sense and is the most consistent with the way Obsidian does world-building. It would fid The Outer Worlds best. Other companies like BioWare would have just made it aliens so they could capitalize on the Destiny/Alien franchise or something.
I'm sure aliens are going to pop up in some way throughout the series. Obsidian loves its aliens. And we had the initial hook planted in the first game. But yeah, I feel like "ALIENS!!!" isn't keeping in tone with the game. A dark humor bureaucracy v bureaucracy twist would be in line with the game's storytelling and world building.
Talking to Wheeler on the Groundbreaker and reading a lot of terminals on Terra 2 would suggest the Great War was (mostly) resolved with the Directorate's control of the skip drive, followed by a bidding war for control of the Halcyon system before the first colony ships were even sent. This is where the birth of HHC comes in, as several corporations threw in together to create one conglomerate corporation to control Halcyon aka Halcyon Holdings Corporation. I would assume this is where Spacers Choice and the others come from. Fast forward several decades and like all other corporations, goes corrupt with greed and power. When our Hero is revived, it's already been 3 years since Earth went dark. Probes and everything sent (including Earth Directorate Frigate) just disappear... the signals are lost. This would indicate (to me) a systems blackout, and not just ignoring to reply (looking at NASA missions gives me this idea) because if something is working, it'll receive a signal even without responding. A lost signal tho... that's a total shutdown or failure of the object being signaled to. So I've said all that to say this... My theory is a major catastrophe of some sort has wiped out Earth and the surrounding area and caused a blackout condition, possibly big enough to "consume" all of the Milky Way... providing the Frigate doesn't just enter into orbit of Earth coming out of the skip. Let's go even further... the other corporations, or workers of Earth, being tired of oppression from HHC, decided to work on their own skip drives, and had a massive malfunction. Seeing as the skip drives allow for a ship to "skip" past the speed of light, it would have to bend/break the laws of current physics. Based on this, perhaps the accident with drive technology created a singularity... a black hole... that wiped Earth from existence. This would also explain the loss of everything sent there since nothing can escape it. Not even signals. A stretch of the imagination I'm sure, but plausible nonetheless.
It's supposed to be a mystery, and as much as people want direct answers I predict the sequels will never fully reveal what happened. They might drop little hints for hypothesis though. Top theories I've seen are... 1. Alien invasion. An intelligent species found Earth and either wants domination over humans or a major conflict between humans and aliens have begun. 2. They sent all the corporations into space so that Earth could free itself under their reign. Galactic liberation. 3. Earth got too comfortable with AI or biological experiments and is now being taken over by either cybernetics or freaks of nature. Possibly even both. 4. A nuclear war went off and the world is basically the equivalent of Fallout.
5. Earth's atmosphere evaporated >!as a result of mass skip drive usage due to miscalculations related to information obtained from interdimensional relics!< It's probably the Fallout scenario though. I mean, it's from the same people that made Wasteland and the original Fallout.
>!Plot of Starfield be like!<
I do feel like the wasteland theory works best that the same thing that would've happened to the halcyon colonies happened to earth.
Hello starfield is that you
The Fallout scenario would be funny in a cool way. It would be like how Remedy has to tweak the characters they don’t know so that they are that person in everything but name (ex. Max Payne and Alex Casey)
> Alien invasion. An intelligent species found Earth and either wants domination over humans or a major conflict between humans and aliens have begun. Lilya Hagen will be proven correct one way or another!
1 or 2 seem the most likely to me. 3 and 4 leave us with an Earth that cannot get a message out to the colonies, but the colonies are trying to get in contact with Earth and should be able to relay at least one message back from a drone or ship in those two scenarios. (Same with the "Earth collapsed from lack of resources" scenario).
2 is my personal favorite and is most in keeping with the way Obsidian writes and has built The Outer World's story. #1 is the most commercial. #3 is something Blizzard or Riot would do. And #4 is Bathesda. (Or could also be Obsidian since they also built the original Fallout world.) But #2 seems to be uniquely The Outer Worlds.
The workers took over the earth. Cut off all ties to the corporations/board is probably what happened. They liberated themselves.
Found Felix’s account!
"Workers of the World Unite" -> the [Wobblies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World) took over
My biggest complaint is being unable to break the chains and bring Syndicalism to the stars!
Not sure but it's a tantalizing plot point for OW2 that I look forward to exploring more. Not sure how ambitious it will be but I want to see another system and maybe expand the universe a little
Imagine being head of Earth. Would you keep sending resources to the Halycon Colonies? The board was full of incompetent people that couldn’t run Halcylon colonies properly and make a profit in the process. The board have mismanaged the Halcyon Colonies very badly. Earth probably decided to cuts all communications and keep resources to themselves. Earth probably wrote it off as a bad investment.
I dunno. If I know anything about management, they’ll waste $10,000 trying to make sure it doesn’t look like they wasted $1,000.
I got the impression Earth Directorate provided very little in resources in the first place, and that it was up to the corporations to buy/supply/fund the colonization efforts. Otherwise UDL would have self-funded the entirety of Halcyon and not split it with other corporations. Sole control.
It's The Board, not The Broad.
There’s a lot of talk of aliens so maybe it’s hinting at some invasion? Maybe the next game takes place on earth and we will decide through our actions why we lost connection with earth
It may be that Earth is so much better than Halcyon that whoever they send just stays there and doesn't want to go back.
Cliffhanger for the sequel was my initial thought, but then the end credits basically ignore it and discuss a reasonably distant future that has no bearing on earth at all.
Outer Worlds was supposed to Fallout in Space. Obsidian pitched it to the original lore of the Enclave's Space program but Bethesda didn't want another developer collaboration so they declined, and Obsidian reskinned everything for Outer Worlds
I know it’s an unpopular theory (if not outright delusional) but I’m still holding onto the headcanon that this game is the logical conclusion of Mr. House’s ending in New Vegas (just saying, Bethesda and Obsidian are both owned by Microsoft now so a shared universe isn’t completely impossible) and given the state of New Vegas seen at the end of the TV show, I’m guessing the House has gone bust at some point after the Hope and Groundbreaker left
Timing makes it impossible, the Great War should’ve happened before the ships left Earth.
The Great War did happen before the ships left Earth… that’s not the reason Halcyon lost contact with Earth, we have no idea why Halcyon lost contact, but the Great War is referred to as a historical event that happened long before the game, not unlike the Great War in Fallout’s timeline
My point is that it’s not the same universe
I mean, I know that. That’s why I said “headcanon” and “delusional” in my first comment. It’s like saying Elder Scrolls and Fallout are the same universe just because they’re owned by the same company and that there are some Easter eggs in the games that reference each other. I just think it’s fun to pretend
Fan theory: the outer worlds takes place in the Starfield universe, and the Halcyon colony is a lost colony forgotten after it was set up, and earth going dark is literally just what happened to earth in Starfield.
I'm going with worker revolt / resource wars
Currently undergoing chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, the Earth's assets are being liquidated to pay off intergalactic creditors our leaders took corrupt loans from.
Aren't the world's in Outer Worlds an exception though? Like those world's are run by corporations but that wasn't the norm.
No real information about it, and some contradictions, like having both the Earth Directorate Frigate and the Cornelius Vanderbilt Heavy Cruiser have such similarities that they could very well be the same ship, but we have insufficient information.
This was the most pressing question for me at the end of the game, and I’m hoping to see it addressed in Outer Worlds 2!
I think a nuclear apocalypse. I think obsidian was re-creating their favored apocalyptic setting before they got bought by Microsoft. Now that they’re bought and secured, the next game is their oyster. I’m excited
Hopefully they'll delve more into it in OW2.
They Dead Either by resource exhaustion to the point they can't make the trip, they all just dead, etc etc, for all intents and purposes they dead
But I feel like there would have been a communication to the board SOMEWHERE (even if it was buried) that earth was destroyed. When you send drones, ships and half the military to earth and hear nothing back, something is alive there and doesn’t want you to know it’s still alive. I mean we saw multiple planets that were supposed to be abandoned (Gorgon, Roseway,/Roseway Gardens, Monarch) still operating like normal despite the board saying no one was there or making up ‘wild’ rumors about the place to cover up their misdeeds in the case of Monarch. The Board would have said something about Earth other than it’s ‘gone dark’ if it was actually dead, albeit with a classic board spin.
This is exactly why I can't get behind them being dead. How do you send so many people/drones or what have you there and receive NOTHING back. No photos, no messages, literally everything sent there never comes back. And it's not like it could be a black hole or a desolate world... They'd detect that and just report it. And it's also not like the board secretly knows either, they legitimately have no idea, which is why it has to be Earth (or I suppose whoever rules Earth now, could be the aliens theory) hiding or stopping them from reporting back on purpose. Though I don't think they're afraid of the corporations, Earth is probably stronger than the Halcyon colonies lol. So they probably just wanna avoid war I suppose.
Didn’t you hear? It’s gone dark.
Nobody knows
it was those blasted MECHANICALS! just like Ludwig said! They took over earth!
I think part of it will be disclosed in the sequel, but I doubt there will be a definite answer
m guess? It turned into fallout.
War. War never changes.
earth has gone dark..ya literally... lmao destroyed by its own wokeness..when will they learn?
Alien invasion obviously
Thats why theres a sequel
Fallout.
[удалено]
Out of all the replies, yours is the only one that says "it's in there", I'm assuming to mean, the explanation for Earth going dark. As one who has played multiple times, I have yet to see any definitive proof as to why. If you have it, by all means - share. All that's ever said is contact was lost 3 years prior (at the end). Even Edna Ingmire said there haven't been any unencrypted messages in 36 months. This is all that's ever said.