The Outer Worlds

This is a pretty sharp and fun and goofy critique of corporatism. The writing is absolutely my favourite element and the core first-person gameplay loop might be my least favourite - the first-person action is kinda just there. That isn't to say its akin to a contemporary "movie-game", the big glossy AAA ones where the creators definitely would have preferred to make a tv show or film but are stuck making a video game. No, this is certainly a game experience and benefits from being one, but certainly there's nothing specific to the first-person-shooter genre that it takes advantage of. The shooting mechanics are so bare-bones and linear that it never 'feels' like you're shooting a gun - there would genuinely be very little difference in this game if they removed weapon viewmodels entirely and let you just literally click on enemies.

So what this ultimately is, is a satiric comedy-adventure game, and I really, really like that part of it! There's so much to explore in each area. Despite being set in an entire solar system the play areas are quite restricted pockets. The open-worldness is almost an illusion, but I think its a really effective and well-utilized one. I never actually felt restricted, I was exactly where I needed to be. I think its even implied that there isn't really anything outside of the two or three towns on each planet, that the expansive corporations of this universe have basically arbitrarily gone to new planets and only actually colonise a tiny portion of them. Its sort of a bleak and funny concept, which is basically the whole game: bleak and funny. I enjoyed it.

An obsidian game advertised as "by the developers who worked on New Vegas" without any of the talented developers or writers who worked on New Vegas present in the development of this game. Extremely mediocre. Designed so much for replayability that they forgot to make anything else in the game good for it to be even worth replaying.

It's been a few months since I beat it for the first time so memory will be rusty. I liked Outer Worlds, and I am going to really emphasize the usage of "like", I think it's an ambitious game that really tried to make itself something more than it gets the chance to succeed at.

To best describe this game would be to call it a Fallout clone that really tries to explore other avenues but doesn't give itself the time to do those things. It's a space exploration game, but you are only allowed a mere handful of locations. One of which I spent so much time at I was praying to go to another planet by the time I was done. You get a healthy amount of companions, but none really get the depth you want out of them, I completed every companion quest and knew just as much about them after as I did before.

To give it some pluses, I felt the combat was fine, it did what it needed and that was good enough for me. I thought the dialogue tried a bit too hard at times, but I did get a laugh every now and again. Outside of that the game just felt incomplete.

Sadly I wasn't able to do the DLCs, maybe some point in the future, but it'll be a while before I decide to replay this.

News that the makers of Fallout: New Vegas were going to make an FPS RPG set in space was going to do nothing but set high expectations. Since the last couple installments of the Fallout franchise, Obsidian Entertainment has been everyone's mythical hero: the people who took a good thing and made it incredible, and who should've been handed the reins. I have one foot in the pro-Obsidian boat (I actually liked Fallout 4 and fail to see what the big issue is, but whatever), so I was among those with high expectations for The Outer Worlds. I'll head this off by saying that those expectations were, for the most part, met.

I wanted a robust RPG system, and I got one. I wanted an interesting world, and I got one. I wanted fun FPS combat, and I got it. I wanted engaging characters, and I got them. The thing is, I just didn't get enough.

The scale of the game was almost shockingly small, with only a handful of decently-sized maps that are just sort-of handed to you in a pseudo on-the-rails format. I never once felt like I could just pick a direction and go see what was out there. And the world itself had just enough intrigue written into it that I wanted to see what everything was about, but unlike the likes of Fallout 3 and Skyrim, I never wanted that deeper dive. My eyes glazed over when presented with a pane of flavor-text. The well didn't seem very deep.

One of the scratches this game itched was the Mass Effect itch, with the variegated cast of companion characters. There was a lot of potential for me to get just as attached to all these people as I got by the end of Mass Effect 1 (let alone the trilogy), but by the end the only character I felt endeared to was Parvati—and I think that's because her companion quest arc kind of required attention throughout the bulk of the main story, whereas everyone else's companion quests could be completed in one quick sitting.

Speaking of the itches the game scratched, there seemed to be a lot of influences playing in here. Good influences too. The Fallout/Elder Scrolls itch needs no mention, and I've already brought up Mass Effect, but some of the combat and the more confined maps felt very BioShocky. Setting and (the excellent) music made me want to dig out my Firefly DVDs.

There are a lot of good pieces to The Outer Worlds, and I believe they're all in the right place and in the right order—but there's just not enough. Like, literally do everything the same, only do more of it. Go deeper. Flesh this out, expand that. I mean, for exclamations within audible range, I feel like the skill tree was built for a game that didn't force you to end it around level 30.

I don't think this is a failure by any means. I enjoyed it, and I'll very likely play it again, but it'll give me the same feeling I had for those really fun demos that used to come with PC games back in the day. Really fun to replay, but god damn I wish there was more.

Update: After reading something about the game, I grew curious. Turns out I overlooked how The Outer Worlds managed to make dialog skills, of all things, a viable main build. I played through again, this time focusing on all things Dialog and Leadership, and it opens up a completely different FPS/RPG game than the standard get-good-at-guns-shoot-bad-guys routine. If you didn't hate the game but also didn't dive into this mode, give it a shot. It's fun.

I also realized that I thoroughly enjoyed the game in my replays, almost as much as the first time. It's not exactly a selling point that one has to play a game multiple times to see its true quality, but it's true here. Half-star bump on second pass.

As close as this to an 8/10, there are just too many cracks in the seams of an otherwise very good Western RPG. Character creation is very robust, and options to respec mid-game or take on flaws for more perks add a lot of dimension over the course of its somewhat short but generally well-paced adventure. But while the setting is suitably dire and the wry dialogue and the ironically chipper art direction help balance out a more helpless sci-fi story, even a couple of truly gut-punching moments can't save a story without the real weight of a New Vegas, whose player influences on the environment are still unmatched by the time the credits roll. Indeed, the ending of Outer Worlds feels very sudden, slapdash and anti-climactic, even with the major story revelations at the end-game. It just feels like they wanted to include some of the major themes and beats from the likes of FO:NV, KOTOR and even Jade Empire, but didn't quite have the time or money to see it through.

Combine it with the usual bugbears of this kind of game, like combat being okay at best, stealth being underdeveloped and the looting curve hitting a definitive wall not far into the game, and you have a mostly pleasant but rarely remarkable WRPG.

In the 2020s, we need to craft an international arms treaty to prevent the further proliferation of first-person RPGs with preachy plotlines and kitschy retro-futuristic science fiction settings. It has simply gone too far. The Outer Worlds never decides whether or not it's joking. In the online Age of Irony, the game's bashfulness is understandable, but in the end it keeps The Outer Worlds from making real statements, and other games better dance the line between dark humor and commentary.

The game is a large-budget, front-office spectacle of the highest order. Big game worlds, large casts, a voice-acting bill that aims to push every indie developer out of the genre entirely. The clear aim is for Obsidian to gun for the throne held by Bethesda, but doing so by making Bethesda's game with better polish is a losing proposition.

There are bright spots. The Outer Worlds is mechanically competent, and many of the quests are crafted well within the game's limiting framework. However, it's impossible to overlook the degree to which Obsidian's hyper-talented team sold themselves short by making a game that does nothing new and makes no meaningful statement.