You know how DH1 has shrine cutscenes that cut to the Outsider floating in a black void whenever he talks to Corvo?
Have you ever managed to find out if the void the DH1 shrine cutscenes are hidden under or above the map somewhere? Or if the Outsider is kept somewhere off-map as an idle NPC until he's needed for the shrine cutscenes?
I know that's been the case with some of the other NPCs, but I've never managed to figure it out and was always curious about it. I just wanna know *where* the Outsider and Void are kept when not in use, if that makes sense?
oh yeah for these the Outsider actually appears in the world - sometimes it's in the dedicated Outsider Space TM above the Shrine just as he actually in-universe would, sometimes it's somewhere else in the vicinity because the Outsider Space just didn't cut it (the one case I have in mind is - I think - because there was a ceiling too close and he'd have to stoop down to fit under it). You can usually get a glimpse of where he exactly is when the camera zooms out at the end of the cutscene.
He's not really kept anywhere before or after these scenes - he has a dedicated spawner that spawns him in that is only activated when the scene plays, and once the cutscene is over he's (quote) "destroyed", ie he just stops existing entirely. I wish I could at least show you him T-posing in his spawn location but unfortunately he always spawns in invisible and I still have no idea where the switch to make him visible is. In the case of Granny Rags' shrine though, the spawn in location was just exactly where he ends up floating during the cutscene. I did make him stop despawning in the Void and then bullied him for a while (knocked him unconscious etc) a great many years ago, that footage is. somewhere on this blog.
I took some shots of the Campbell mission cutscene with most of the effects turned off to show you where he is during this cutscene in particular since it's a pretty good example:
Normally during gameplay, he has this whole galaxy (a literal galaxy, that's what the texture is) behind him that makes it look like he's floating in a black void, mostly concealing that he's actually really there in real life for real. Kind of interesting that they chose to disguise his positioning like this given that the space above the shrines was from the start designed to be where he appears in-universe - maybe it's just to make him look cooler. It does make him look more otherworldly.
Just for fun I took the opportunity to wander outside the cutscene a bit. I always assumed the rest of the world just stops rendering during those cutscenes but it turns out that life continues to go on as normal even when you're locked into a cutscene. This guy's just walking down the street scratching his nose minding his business completely unaware that God is appearing in the flesh a few houses down. (The Outsider and Corvo both get rendered on the topmost layer so you can see them in the bottom right corner here.)
Ah screw it, I went and grabbed some images of the other scene I was talking about, the one where I know he does not show up directly above the shrine but in its vicinity - it's the Boyle mission cutscene. He shows up on the opposite end of the room to the shrine. I think you can see how low the ceiling above the shrine is here - I really do think they moved him because he wouldn't have fit under the ceiling.
Here you can see just how big the galaxy effect is that is responsible for most of his black background:
Whenever the Void actually needs to be rendered instead of just the Outsider popping in for a quick chat, the devs just plopped it in a little bubble somewhere. ie here it is under the Greaves Refinery during the intro sequence to the Flooded District:
also i tripped and accidentally took a bunch of beautyshots of the bestest most specialest boy in the universe im sorry i cant help it i think the boyle mission cutscene lighting is the best of all of his lighting, i've used it for screenshots i've used it for gifsets i have used it to ogle him and i will do it again
If there's any cutscenes you'd like to see some different angles of in particular, let me know! Capturing a whole cutscene on video from a different angle doesn't look great because he's set to always look at the camera, ie if we decouple the camera and move it somewhere else he starts getting bendy to try to look at it. But pausing time and taking screenshots is, as you can see, fully within my power :D
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