The Outer Worlds begins poorly, and ends well. In fact its entire structure is one of nested narratives that follow this progression from awkward starts to rewarding and complicated finishes. But the entire experience of the game is contained within the microcosm of its starting area. There were all the irritations that frequently turned it into a slog, and then there were the endings and the grace notes that kept me going.
Yeah, I feel like this game may be the biggest disconnect between myself and Waypoint in a long time. I am having nothing but an excellent, excellent time.
So, Iām still in the first area of this game, but I can definitely see where Rob is coming from.
Iāll have more thoughts when I finish it myself, Iām sure, but hereās a couple I keep having: I feel like Iād rather be playing my heavily modified Skyrim. It looks better, has deeper systems, and itās exactly the comfort game I like.
I know itās unfair to compare a new, unmodded game to one thatās been out for years and has thousands of mods but I keep doing it anyway?
A weird thing to note. Rob talks in this review about how the company town feels lived in, but every house I went into felt so sparse. No one was ever in any of them. Most of the people are just named resident? Itās a very small thing, but the lack of meaningful and even non-meaningful clutter items really makes these spaces present as sets and not homes.
Iāve only seen the first 90 minutes, but I already feel the āHello, Iām Stupid McCapitalism and I speak in brands and slogansā thing to be extremely grating.
I will say one of the strange things Iāve heard is Dan on the Beastcast talking about how the shooting feels better in Outer Worlds than Fallout 4, which I donāt agree with at all.
I feel like of the 3-4 guns Iāve fired so far, they all feel underwhelming and look really boring. And the shooting just feelsā¦ Flat? I dunno, I feel like the combat in Fallout 4 was much more punchy. Enemies threw a lot of grenades at you, and you had really good control of your weapons around corners.
Iāve been really enjoying the combat in this. Prefer time-dialation to VATS and think the guns are pretty fun. :x This is a rare moment for me. Iām with Ryckert on this one.
I will say though that Fallout sells hit impacts better. The dismemberment in fallout makes sense, but here people just fall apart or fall down and itās kindaā¦ like death animations from a game from like 2009 or something lol.
Iāll say that for me so far, I do think that the gun play in Outer Worlds is the best Iāve played in one of these games, better than any Fallout game for sure. But Iāve always considered this an especially low bar to clear and I donāt think the gun play is especially good. Itās on the more enjoyable side of passable.
While Iām mostly having a pretty good time, Robās review and Austinās thoughts both had their own aspects that I found to hold true for me.
In Robās review I really agree that the Firefly schtick wears thin, and I think it wears thin FAST. That said I also have never liked Firefly so I think Iām especially ready to hate it. The other thing is how limited the character creator felt. If youāre giving me a sci-fi game in 2019 and the options are male/female, Iām gonna be disappointed.
In regards to Austinās thoughts, what I found to ring true was that the amount of junk youāre picking up feels at odds with the space opera genre. Iām supposed to be some dashing space faring captain, so why is this game so eager to give me 20 Spacer Sabres to break down???
Like I said earlier, Iām having a great time with the game, but itās far from perfect. Iām glad we are getting more tempered takes like Austinās and Robās to help give me language to think about why Iām bouncing off aspects of this game.
Iāve only played about a couple hours, and I would say itās meeting my expectations for a spiritual successor to F:NV.
Putting aside how the hyper-capitalist backdrop and semi-libertarian flavor may or may not engage you, thereās a value in the way that this and NV have a deeper regard for allowing core or incidental characters to just tell you stories about how the world functions, and about their role in it.
The first major settlement you get to screams of being an actual, functional place where people know and talk about each other (also, you know what they eat). That seems like a small accomplishment to praise, but there are very few games which make me feel like Iām in a living space.
I just want to mention that this isnāt the only negative review of this game. The Rock Paper Shotgun piece is just as negative (and personally, Iāve seen a bunch of Devs disappointed on their own feeds too). Rob isnāt as big of an outlier as it seems.
Sam Greerās review (which you can read for free on her patreon) is similarly cold on the overall experience of The Outer Worlds, even if there are certainly things about it they enjoyed. Which I donāt share as some sort of takedown of the game because itās clear that it is working for a lot of people.
If anything, I am just glad to see more critics that stray from that narrative because honestly, Iām so used to a lot of homogeneity in the critical reception of AAA games, particularly those that are widely well-received. More diversity of perspectives and taste in the realm of game reviews is something Iād happily welcome.
As for Rob & Austinās thoughts, I find myself growing increasingly tired of the prevalence of āchosen oneā narratives and moral choices that centre the individual as staples of this genre of RPG (and to some extent, immersive sims) so I imagine I would share some of their criticisms. That said, I like this sort of game a lot and count many of them amongst my favourites, and will likely have a decent time with The Outer Worlds whenever I get around to trying it out.
I am just desperate for developers to get away from these tropes and start experimenting with what stories you can tell if the player isnāt the catalyst of every major event/decision. I also tire of these games that let me play a helper/revolutionary in one hand and then in the other offer fantasies of wanton murder and supporting the oppressive status quo. If your spectrum of choice is trying to appease radically different ideologies in its power fantasy then it can only serve to leave you with a muddied, centrist core message most of the time.
āZiggy Stardust plays Oliver Twistā perfectly describes my player character. Percy Starman is a slightly ugly, bald man with fabulous green eye makeup.
Iām enjoying this much more than the Fallout games but same as in those, Iām finding it really hard to care about NPC who are just kooky caricatures. Itās made worse by the fact the two companion characters Iāve met so far seem much more well written and realised people. I havenāt made the choice at the end of the first planet yet but it feels like Iām either siding with the mindless ācorporateā drones or the mindless āfreeā drones.
Iām glad this game seems to be pretty successful though. Hereās hoping with Microsoftās resources Obsidian can expand their formula and push it to some more interesting places with future games.
I feel like this has to be the best test (within a AAA setting) of Fredric Jamesonās (or maybe Mark Fisherās?) statement that āitās easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalismā. Glancing at the factions available I am not convinced but I reckon Iāll still have a blast finding out!
So, Iāve spent enough time with Outer Worlds that I finally read Robās review, and I think it ā in addition to the Sam Greer review Emily posted above ā nail how I feel about the game. As a game, Iād describe it as āaggressively fineā: there are no glaring issues, no big swings that completely miss the mark, gameplay wise. But the result of that is that nothing feels terribly exciting for me. It plays almost exactly like the nu-Fallouts, which is fine but not a whole lot else.
The writing, though, is where I completely fall off. I just canāt shake the feeling that this is little more than the radical centristās pastiche on late capitalism in which the very thought of rejecting capitalist structures altogether must be paired with some flavor of immorality and/or incompetence. I get why this is the case, but itās still such a bummer that I get left feeling like Iām never playing a desired character role so much as Iām taking an elaborate Buzzfeed personality test to see how willing I am to seek long term changes at the expense of ruining peopleās lives.
Take that Emerald Vale climax. Why is it that in my particular playthrough, I donāt find out about how horrible a person the desertersā leader is until after I made the choice to give them the power? And why is she written so that her resentment toward the company town comes about as a result of grief, as opposed to any sort of class consciousness? And why does the game suddenly go so far out of its way at the last possible moment to tell me āYou know, youāre going to kill a lot of people if you make this choiceā when it had hours beforehand to make it clear why I should favor one faction over the other? When I got to the part where Parvati pleaded her case, I just rolled my eyes; not because Iām some heartless tank, but it just felt so contrived to the point that I could almost see the writerās hand guiding me to making the choice that theyād have made themselves.
Iām just left with the impression that this gameās writers either couldnāt or didnāt want to imagine an alternative to capitalist society in any form that makes it desirable. So often, it seems like the most moral choices the game paints for the player are ones that find balance between the two poles and come out the other end supporting a āgood capitalismā ā "Itās āHorseshoe Theory: The Video Game:ā If you go toward either extreme, youāll be treated as a bad person, but if you stay in the middle then youāre officially a good guy!
This is where I think Iāll land on the game, with the rider that this game is too comfy cozy RPG junk food in every other aspect of its design for me to care that much its politics. Itās using the trappings of capitalism but even the darkest consequences of that are played for laughs. None of it tries to hurt or shock the player, thereās no feeling there - so itās hard to get annoyed by it horseshoe theory-ing every major choice. I just refuse to care about your attempts to come across as deep, videogame. The factory owner gets got.
