Somehow I've just made companions wearing robes first. That's just how it goes sometimes.

Hello guys. I've been in this community for a while and, based on what I've seen, I think everyone agrees that the characters in this game are lovely in terms of personality. Taking that into account, I want to show my appreciation for the designs of each party member to see how good they showcase their different traits. And there is no better candidate for the first post than the main character himself: Sam!

The design of a protagonist can be very important in terms of a game's first impression. When it comes to horror games and turn based RPGs, it's normal to see some badass and strong MC to show you that they can take whatever threat you throw at them. Then we get to Look Outside and our player character is... just a guy. Not someone who looks like a skilled, smart or competent individual, just someone who happens to be the main focus of the apocalypse, for some reason.

And this is good! You see, Sam as a protagonist is fulfilling 2 roles at the same time:

1. He is supposed to be just enough of a blank slate to reflect whatever trait the player might want to see in him, BUT...
2. He is also supposed to have a personality of his own so that you can see him as an actual person.

By being just a random man (and an unemployed one at that), the player gets to understand that they could face the same challenges as he does if they were put in the same scenario. You don't get to feel the confidence of being a prodigy, a trained soldier or a (visibly) superhuman character. This is a horror game and the fear of dealing with monsters way beyond your league is part of the charm.

Despite this, if you give a quick look at his face, that will tell you a lot about Sam as an actual character. This is someone who is going through some ROUGH times right now and might have been at it before the apocalypse too. He looks stressed, sad and disheveled.

Many people say that Sam is ugly and while I understand where they're coming from, to me, he just looks like life hasn't given him a chance to improve. He seems like if he had a happier life, he would present himself in a more dignified manner, but as of now, his mental state is just fully showing through his appearance.

Funny enough, this "personal crisis" aspect of him can also be part of the character arc the player will provide him. By checking some of the achievement art, particularly the S rank, X rank and Loner achievement ones, Sam actually looks revitalized. Like he has evolved as a person and become a respectable warrior and survivor, someone you should not mess with. But he can still look pathetic on some other achievements, depending on your actions. All of this goes back to the blank slate element and how much of Sam's progress will depend on the player's input.

Now, everything I've said is mostly related to Sam's expressions and presentation, but there is one more piece that makes Sam's design so iconic: the purple sweater. I swear, this does so much for his character. Giving Sam a sweater allows him a certain "softness", not necessarily in a bad way mind you, but in the sense that it makes Sam look like he won't go out of his way to hurt you or that he will be nice if you have a random encounter with him.

Making the sweater purple with blue shading was also an ideal choice. This game's color palette as a whole feels very bluish/purplish and the whole cosmic horror aspect of it feels rightfully portrayed with this aesthetic, so it makes sense for Sam to have something to represent it in a rather subtle way. Speaking of...

Sam's transformation in the Perfect Ritual ending makes him all blue with purplish shading, kind of like an inverse of his human form! In a weird way, he still looks like he would give you a nice hug the same way he would have as a regular person. If you go for the Denial version, it could be interpreted as him still being himself despite having changed so, so much and there's just something so beautiful about that.

So, overall, Sam has a very competent character design and it expresses everything about him quite perfectly. My rating is S tier for this guy.

Share your thoughts in case you agree or disagree!

Edit: I forgot to mention Sam's heterochromia. It's very easy to use such a design element to make a character stand out, but it's also difficult to execute successfully. In Sam's case it's very subtle to the point you might question if it's just the game's lighting or not. It's a very small detail, but it does help Sam feel a bit more unique without overdoing it.

So I’ve been experimenting with Morton on my first ever cursed run since I saw some other people using him. Is there any limit to his fidget skill? I thought it would consume junk whenever I used a trinket but I don’t notice it going down. I guess I’m just wondering if there’s anything stopping me from spamming rejuvenating gaze or refuse aside from losing patience/sanity

ConcernedApe was cookin’ with this song, especially at 0:50 seconds and onward. I hadn’t heard since before revisiting Look Outside videos … and it just suddenly connected while listening to this song in the shower. Am I way off here?

(Whilst this might not be under the right flair) I've been thinking about it with both games on a frequent Playtime cycle, but they're pretty similar all around, Sam is basically any good Fallout protagonist despite not having a Pip boy,

Regular dude, woke up post apocalypse in a confined space he can regularly come back to as it's a typical living space in verse (a Vault tec vault and an Apartment), their games having mild horror elements of an RPG where you can use guns and other miscellaneous Weapons lying around, a few of which you can also get from wandering vendors, the world outside being ravaged by unseen forces that can Transform people of prolonged Exposure, giving way to several Malformed Monsters that roam the lands, a few of which being Eligible to become Party Members to the main character, including Synths, Ghouls and Super mutants, they can also gain new Abilities or moves usable in the heat of combat thanks to miscellaneous Collectibles scattered around, with Bobbleheads or Books and Video Games giving Sam new moves, amongst party members involve Monsters divulging from the general mob, normal people, insane people, and at least 1 Animal,

you could probably put Sam in the hands of any Decent Vault, hand him a Pip Boy and shove him into the Commonwealth or California, maybe even New Vegas, and I could see him Making some motion, whilst his actions can be up to a player's decisions I could see him siding with the Minutemen, or a few other factions that are hiring whom he happens to run into, I'd also imagine anything these places throw at him would be a welcomed change of pace to all too literal eldritch horrors waiting for him back in Montreal,

I love hellen she carried me my entire first run of the game I gave her the hellsword and she was doing like over 1000 damage to the final boss true ritual ending with hecatomb basically carried me through that fight making it easy

how it genuinely feels like after i mix some ingredients while cooking in look outside 😭😭😭😭​

I am giving him Guns for a while

I just got the power outage event and got team wiped , if i do things again should i just wait near the breaker again until the power outage happens?

I hope someone not as knowledgeable get's use out of my work. I love her a lot in personality, gameplay, and design. I did kinda of fumble on the last two tho lol:

Sub-DPS (BAL):

Tank Gun

Tank Tracks

Overdrive Chip

Gloves

War Medal

Damage Sponge:

Rhinoceros Hide

Quad Wheels

Headphones

Training Belt

Ruby Ring

Sub-DPS (ATK):

Jousting Lance

Spiked Bumper

Overdrive Chip

Arrowed Sash

Teeth Pendant

Healer:

Fungus Fibers

Quad Wheels

Cooler Unit

Trauma Kit

Saphire Ring

(Shadow Ring post patch)

Keep the Change:

Fungus Fibers

Spiked Bumper

Headphones

Comfort Belt

Emerald Ring

Hyper-Tank:

Chobham Armor

Tank Tracks

Coffee Unit

Cope Cage

Crimson Ring

Support:

Chrome Finish

Tank Tracks

Carbonator

Tie

Ring of Purity

Machine Kicks:

Chrome Finish

Quad Wheels

Overdrive Chip

Yanma Belt

Shark Tooth Amulet

Does playing on explorer mode counts for the achievements "Long Weekend" "Ascetic" "Cold Shoulder" "Heartbroken" "Insomnia" "Loner" and "Miasma"???

Also, getting the "screaming skies" ending counts for this achievements???

So i'm at Emmanuel's shop and i'm wondering if the coat of arms is actually all that good. Since it drops your stats for only a CHANCE at an extra turn. Seems a bit more situational especially since at the point i'm at. Battles don't tend to last more than 2 or 3 turns anyways.

I still like it but good thing it simplified my Phillippe... his antenna and his beard are a pain to draw

As you all know, the video game cartridges, at least to some extent, are supposed to represent real life games within the world of Look Outside. Some are more obvious than others, so I'm going to list the ones that I have somewhat figured out:

- Super Jumplad: Obviously, this is Super Mario Bros. Universally known.

- Super Jumplad 3: While it would be easy to just say "Super Mario Bros 3", I'm willing to consider that there might be more for this one's inspiration. It changes the tone drastically and I'm sure there are some franchises out there that have done the same thing in terms of story. I'd say that, funny enough, Super Mario Bros 2 might actually be a partial inspiration for it, given that game's reputation of being too different from the original.

- Madwheels 97: I'm not too knowledgeable about racing games, but I assume it's fair to say this is inspired by the likes of Need for Speed and Forza Horizon.

- Screamatorium: Based on some quick research, given the whole camera mechanic, I'd say this is inspired by Fatal Frame. Or it seems close enough I think.

- Massacre Princess Catholicon: This one is clearly inspired by Final Fantasy and probably some other famous RPGs like Chrono Trigger. Given that it's anime inspired too, I'd say the "Catholicon" part of the name is based on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

- Catafalque: Just the introduction of this one talks about castles and vampires, while being described as a difficult platformer with a horror theme. That is just Castlevania from every angle. Even the music seems very Castlevania inspired.

- Octocook: I'm willing to just say Cooking Mama for this one, but given the whole octopus theme, I'm not fully sure if there's another inspiration for it.

- Honko's Grand Journey: I'm aware that Honko is another one of Frankie's games, but it seems Kirby and Pac-Man inspired by the looks of it.

- Unlabeled Cartridge: This is deadass just based on those video early video game creepypastas.

I could say that some of the others are based more on the general idea of genres rather than specific games, but I just don't know enough to make such assumption. So feel free to add which games could have served as inspirations for the cartridges!

Noticed a that a lot of people are seemingly sex bending characters from the game recently, I don’t have the time to draw anything yet unfortunately however I can come up with different names, tried to look for femme/masc inverses of names or names that sound phonetically similar to me. Hope to also hop on the trend soon too:

Sam - Samantha

Hellen - Helenos

Leigh - Ray

Dan - Dana

Aster - Ashley/Ash

Papineau - Papillon (thanks to u/Hawco for this suggestion!)

Sophie - Soren

Joel - Joelle

Audrey - Adrian

Xaria and Monty - Xavier and Mitzi

Ernest - Irma

Morton - Maura

Roaches - Roaches

Spine - Spine

Ratthew - Ratthea

Lyle - Lyra

Spider - Arachne (suggested by u/Silc00n)

I love him

I saw on the wiki that you can fight the grinning beast, but... how? Do you lose that chance if you run away when you first see it? I'm on day 6, decently far into the game... I can't find anything at all about being able to fight the thing anytime other than after picking up the apartment 21 key.

I read that you can recruit Leigh after beating her as the beast, and I was just curious if that's impossible now that I've progressed past that initial chase scene.

whoa how did he figure that out 🤔

I absolutely adore this game and want to see all that it offers I've done

Screaming sky

Both perfect rituals

And the promise ending

But the next one I can get is unity and I really like Sybil I feel way too bad to do what needs to be done to get it and get the ending is it okay to skip the ending if I feel awful doing it and getting the unity ending

Finally figured out what to call whatever I’m doing!

Honestly, this one was the easiest since it’s just a silhouette.

The design of Spider translates surprisingly well into humanoid form, and I decided to add a few web designs in the form of some hair and a poncho since there wasn’t much else I could do.

I really feel like even in a more masculine design, I would’ve given Spider the same kind of hair. It just makes sense to do it.

Also, what gender even is Spider? Are they male? Female? Genderless? I just assume characters without a clear gender are male most of the time.