Okay, Outer Worlds friends, what do we know about Earth circa the time The Hope departed?
What kind of world was the Stranger leaving behind? How much of a culture shock would they actually have in Halcyon? Why, in spite of their background we can select in the CC, could they be really skilled with firearms? Does everyone on Earth just know how to shoot a gun? What did religion look like on Earth, if anything? Did tossball come from Earth, or was that created by Halcyon colonists?
The Outer Worlds wiki does have some info available; I think the main takeaways here are:
TOW takes place in an alternate timeline in which Teddy Roosevelt was never President of the US, and rampant deregulation of business started in the early 20th century under McKinley (who survived his assassination attempt). No other deets about other historical events, like the World Wars, are present.
There is, however, mention of The Great War of the 21st century, which led to the formation of the Earth Directorate.
The Earth Directorate is a planet-wide government and regulatory body, responsible for cataloging and selling off-world colonies to corporations; it also plays a role in helping Earth nations settle disputes.
I’m not sure when the Halcyon Holdings Corporate Board was created, but the intent of it was to pool together resources from different corporations in order to purchase Halcyon from the Earth Directorate.
The skip drive was also created in the 21st century, so we can presume that space exploration was probably fairly common to hear about, at the very least, during the Stranger’s lifetime on Earth.
Most off-world colonies were founded with the spirit of business, not for religious, political, or scientific ideologies.
As for some of my thoughts on what info we have:
The Hope left Earth for Halcyon in 2285; I couldn’t find a date for The Groundbreaker but it was earlier. However, it seems reasonable to assume that the HHC and its corporations were probably active at least a few decades before 2285 if they were able to generate enough bits and clout to come together and purchase a colony. This would suggest to me that the Stranger likely has some familiarity with a lot of the companies, although brands, logos, and slogans could feasibly be a little different than what they saw back on Earth. What they actually sell most certainly would be, especially food and drink stuff.
With regards to religion: I don’t have any exact dates on hand so this is a little harder to pin down. Vicar Max mentions that Bakonu was one of the founders of the Philosophists, but he also says that the “Philosophist perversion of Bakonu’s thoughts came more than a century after his death.” He also mentions that it’s been some years (decades? I forget the exact quote and can’t get to my vids right now) since they’ve uncovered any new information about the Plan. I’d guess here that these religions probably existed in some form back on Earth, but that how exactly they’re implemented in Halcyon is unique to the colony.
Although the Earth Directorate by its nature as a regulatory body probably keeps things like workers’ rights a little better secured than in Halcyon, it also sounds like capitalism has been running amuck on Earth for a few centuries. Some of the more egregious things like renting graves and being more afraid of being fired than being killed would probably give the Stranger pause, but it might not be that shocking to them. (Probably a lot of “disappointed, but not surprised” depending on how you play them.)
But overall, info seems fairly sparse, so if you’ve come across codices in-game that haven’t made it to the wiki yet or pieced together a clever deduction about humanity’s home turf or even just have a headcanon backed with even the slightest hint of evidence, I’m super interested to read it.
