The Outer Worlds Impressions - Oh.....I get it now

[Mad World]

Anyone can help me out with something? I want to know if the game has full-body awareness. Think Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Far Cry 5, Prey, etc., where you can look down and see your legs and/or torso. It probably doesn't due to the fact that what you wear can be fully customized, but I'd like to know. Thanks!

From what i've seen in an LP, no.

Damn. Was trying to get footage, but couldn't find any. Anyway, thanks.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

It's widely stated that the best Fallout game in recent memory was not made by Bethesda...a game made by Obsidian using Bethesda's engine and assets, Fallout: New Vegas.

My personal joke has always been that when Black Isle shut down, the good coders went to BioWare but the good writers went to Obsidian. Obsidian created hands-down my favorite CRPG of all time in terms of concept and theme -- KotOR2 -- and they're hands-down the best in the industry when it comes to narrative design, storytelling, theme, and writing. My favorite CRPG NPC's are both Obsidian characters -- Kreia and Caesar.

Sadly, that's the silver lining as Obsidian always struggled with the technical aspects of game design. Some things not being Obsidian's fault, like LucasArts screwing them out of six months' development time on KotOR2, but others were like FO:NV shipping with showstoppers. From what I understand, Outer Worlds' release managed to avert the stumbles expected of Obsidian, which is worth at least a huge sigh of relief from me. If this gets Obsidian half the respect they deserve simply on their creative muscle alone, it's a win in my book.

 

[Trunkage]

So having hopped back on, and gotten the first big choice out of the way as it were.

I actually noted there was something of a non-impact on the world. Curious as to whether I was missing some sort of followup trigger

Spoiler

Essentially routing power to the Deserters shut down 1 shop in Edgewater, and other then a few ambient lines, had no real discernment on the rest of town. Nobody shifted over to the Deserters, all the quests were still completable. I didn't even get a hostile reaction from anyone then Tobson's three generator guards since I'd done a basic amount of sidequests. The Deserter's don't even really acknowledge the event at all.


Digging into whether I'd missed something here, I actually find out the quest continues. But only if you do it the other way around do you get a complete set of options with tangible consequences and also some closure on some background stuff that had never materialized into its own questline.


So I'd take the "choice" elements with a grain of salt, there's clearly options you're meant to take, that get more attention to them, while the other route just trails off.

Can you tell me when a choice during game actually mattered? In your opinion. Take all endings out, because that's easy to make a choice matter when the game doesn't continue.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

Currently playing it. this might be best RPG i have ever played.

I cant believe im playing RPG. the combat is so damn good. first time in RPG history.

great work obsidian.

 

[sXeth]

So having hopped back on, and gotten the first big choice out of the way as it were.

I actually noted there was something of a non-impact on the world. Curious as to whether I was missing some sort of followup trigger

Spoiler

Essentially routing power to the Deserters shut down 1 shop in Edgewater, and other then a few ambient lines, had no real discernment on the rest of town. Nobody shifted over to the Deserters, all the quests were still completable. I didn't even get a hostile reaction from anyone then Tobson's three generator guards since I'd done a basic amount of sidequests. The Deserter's don't even really acknowledge the event at all.


Digging into whether I'd missed something here, I actually find out the quest continues. But only if you do it the other way around do you get a complete set of options with tangible consequences and also some closure on some background stuff that had never materialized into its own questline.


So I'd take the "choice" elements with a grain of salt, there's clearly options you're meant to take, that get more attention to them, while the other route just trails off.

Can you tell me when a choice during game actually mattered? In your opinion. Take all endings out, because that's easy to make a choice matter when the game doesn't continue.

I mean, I'm not miffed by the fact that by all appearances, I'm going to F off into the space sunset and never be bothered by anyone in Emerald Vale again, which I more or less expect to be the case.


Its more that in a binary choice, half the quest goes missing if you pick one of the choices. The one that many people will probably pick at that, given its siding against the crazy corporation that owns its employees to the point suicide is "vandalizing company property".

Its weirdly slapdash, to the point I started combing wikis, reddit, etc figuring I must've missed something. Whereas the other scenario has the components you'd expect where you need to merge the two factions back together. I wouldn't expect the other option not to mostly be a mirror of that, but instead its just totally absent.

 

[McElroy]

Full price game, bad. Gamepass game, good. Also no Denuvo in this game.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it. The dialogue options have a nice variety to them, unlikein FO4.

 

[stroopwafel]

Terrific game. Enjoying it a lot as well. Writing in particular is very sharp with layered and ambiguous dialogue. There is a lot of 'grey' in the dialogue options which I love. The game has me totally hooked by story alone but the ambiance and sense of place only elevate it even further. It's hub world approach doesn't do the game any disservice either as it gives the game a more intimate setting for the incredible story to stew in. I enjoy the combat though it's not as good as Fallout 4. Weapon modding same it's good but not nearly as in-depth as FO4. But ofcourse FO4 felt very loose connecting it's uninspired narrative to exploration and combat so you always felt stuck in the same fetch quest loop. Outer World feels organic and lively in a way you feel motivated to play just to learn more about the world and it's characters. Outer Worlds is just an incredible marriage of narrative design and world building.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

I'll say this, it does have a few PC port issues that would normally turn me off from a game entirely until it's fixed, but I've found the game compelling enough to actually push through most of those issues, which is more than I can say for the majority of games.

It stutters. The crosshair is in a lower position with no option to toggle it. It's a bit blurry (that can be fixed in config files though). But it's otherwise stable, and while a bit janky with enemy AI, I can't say it's ever bugged the experience.

It's not perfect, but it's a great attempt at a Fallout like experience without necessarily having the money and assests to back it up.

 

[laggyteabag]

That style of environment... makes it sound like ME: Andromeda

There are certainly similarities, but the execution is entirely different.

Andromeda has very large worlds, but for the life of me, I really cannot remember all that much going on in them, but big, open, empty space with a couple of landmarks.

With the Outer Worlds, the maps are much smaller, but they are much more dense with content. Buildings, bandit camps, caves, etc.

So whilst you could just point yourself in a direction and start travelling in Andromeda, you wouldn't be likely to find any meaningful gameplay opportunities along the way. It is a much better experience in The Outer Worlds, because you are just constantly tripping over stuff.

Worth it?

I don't think so.

Depends, are those "worlds" feeling like horizontal slices of a bigger open world, or are fleshed out, like let's say "hubs" in Deus Ex?
Cause if the latter, then hell yeah, it's worth it.

I always wanted a game that does something like Hengsha and Detroit in Human Revolution, but in many more variants. From your description it also sounds like the "open world" in original Fallouts, which kept the sense of space with overworld, while keeping content more focused in separate world locations.
And in a proper rpg, i'll take that aproach over vast sprawling world with content more on less randomly sprinkled over it.

Having not played Deus Ex, I cannot really draw a comparison. So let me explain it a little better.

Each planet has its own story and characters. The events on Planet A are not likely to have an impact on Planet B. Sure, there may be some crossover at a later point in the story, but so far they are mostly not related.

So you essentially just hop from planet to planet, solving problems - or causing more - making your way around the solar system.

 

[CritialGaming]

Well after another 12 or so hours with the game I wanted to give and update on the impressions I originally had.

Namely, combat is not great. It's actually kind of bad imo. The gun play nor the melee is fun enough to want to actively do combat and I found myself letting my companions do all the work because I simply can't be bothered, also they do way more damage than I do for some reason even though I'm upgrading my equipment and barely giving them anything. So I really don't understand that. Also explain to me how my 81 dps mace deals way more damage than my 320dps handgun? Can anyone explain that shit? Because all my damage stats are in guns, so why do the guns suck? I don't get it.

Additionally I've made several choices in the game, as I stated before there are loads of quests that give you options to deal with them different ways. Power the corporate city or the hippy community, for example. Which in the context of the writing is an interesting choice because the corporate wants you to steal the hippy's power not to kill them or anything but to force them to come back to town and get back to work. The city needs the workers and is suffering because of it for reasons I wont spoil. And if you go talk to the hippy's they of course want you to give them the power so they can keep growing pot and singing around campfires I guess. But the community just bitches at you that work is hard and they dont wanna work. Which makes the game feel real to me. Like it definitely is a satire commentary on capitalism but it also illustrates that capitalism is the best economic system we've invented so far.

The game does a good job of showing you that capitalism isn't perfect, but it also goes out of its way to show you that other systems are worse, and it does it in a brilliant satire that never makes it feel political, or that it's trying to push any message to you, instead it is merely presenting the player with this world and you make you own opinions about it. Which is dope.

The problem with the quest I mentioned above. Is that no matter what choice you make, it doesn't affect anything in your playthrough. It basically just changes the person you turn your quest into and that's it. Supposedly there is a reputation system but I haven't seen that matter in any meaningful way (I think I lost access to a couple of special vendors or something but that's not big deal as far as I can tell). So ultimately it makes the choice not really matter to you, which is a bummer and hurts motivations for multiple playthroughs.

That being said, the game is worth going through at least once because the writing of the universe is just enjoyable. The biggest flaw is that the combat is really really flat and more of a hassle than anything else. Though I do like how non-combat skills like intimidation can affect combat. I'm such a scary badass that enemies cower when I hit them, that's funny. But it doesn't let me do more damage to them. There are a few bullet spongy enemies and your damage just doesn't feel like it works right.

Still one of the best games of the year easily, and should make my top 5 unless Death's Stranding is amazing. But let's face facts, Death's STranding looks like a bunch of fucking boring open world nonsense.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I actually wasn't planning to buy it. I've never really enjoyed the Fallout games.

Then I fell into a "I desperately want to do some roleplaying" mood and reinstalled Skyrim. Then I saw that one of my essential mods (Live Another Life, gives you alternative starts for the game) now demands you have all the DLCs. Which costs 45 bucks for all of them at the moment. Way too much for an old game, especially since Bethesda are being such greedy pricks right now.

Then, I heard that The Outer Worlds was really great for Roleplaying, and decided "you know what, sure I'll try it".

And I've been loving it ever since.

I love that it lets me play a complete idiot who is also super charismatic (I almost feel like I'm pulling a Luffy with my character). I love that it lets you kill important characters and the story goes on (allowed me to find a creative solution for an early dillemma). I love that even if I take social stats, it helps with combat. I love the characters and vibrant and colorful world and hilariously on-the-nose portrayal of super-late-stage-space-capitalism/corporatism.

I am SO glad the stars aligned in just the right way for me to get this game while I was in this exact kind of mood.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I actually wasn't planning to buy it. I've never really enjoyed the Fallout games.

I was planning on buying it at some point, probably going to wait for a black Friday sale or something to see what happens, but I got watching a YT let's play this morning and am considering a much-earlier purchase. It took me all of 45 minutes to realize it's not so much Space Fallout, as it is Firefly: the Video Game, and I'm about 97% sure when I go out later today I'll be making a stop at the game store.

 

[happyninja42]

See personally, I don't really see the big deal. I'm playing OW now, and it's almost identical to the first person FO games that I've played. The first thing I noticed playing it, was how little innovation they did for...well anything really. In fact they took elements from some of the previous FO games by Bethesda, which I found amusing, like how the inventory screen autopops up when you mouse over it like FO 4 did. Heck the terms used for the various steps of looting are identical too. The changes to companions made me instantly think "Oh, they took this from Bioware and the Mass Effect series." The combat and world design felt identical to FO 4 to me. Basically everything that isn't like the FO games people compare them to, are things they clearly yoinked from other game franchises that have been out ever since New Vegas came around.

I never had bug problems with any of the previous FO games, so I can't really speak to the idea that it's stable and the others weren't, because for me, they've all been perfectly stable and functional.

But, yeah, so far I'm not seeing what all the hype is about. It's a good game, don't get me wrong, but it's no better or worse than the previous installments by them and Bethesda in my opinion. Though I can't speak to FO 76 as I never played it, as it didn't look very good to me from the marketing.

It's more of the same as far as I can tell, and what they did "change" is simply stuff pulled from other games that have been made staple aspects of open RPGs in the subsequent years. *shrugs*

 

[CritialGaming]

snip

I mean to be fair, that's exactly what they wanted to make. A good Fallout game, period. No bugs, no rushed production, none of the bullshit. Just a straight up, good Fallout game again. Which is basically what people have been wanting from Bethesda since New Vegas came out in the first fucking place.

So you are right, if you wanna just say "Oh it's just another Fallout game." Yeah it is. But it's a GOOD Fallout game and that's what makes it stand out.

 

[Fappy]

See personally, I don't really see the big deal. I'm playing OW now, and it's almost identical to the first person FO games that I've played. The first thing I noticed playing it, was how little innovation they did for...well anything really. In fact they took elements from some of the previous FO games by Bethesda, which I found amusing, like how the inventory screen autopops up when you mouse over it like FO 4 did. Heck the terms used for the various steps of looting are identical too. The changes to companions made me instantly think "Oh, they took this from Bioware and the Mass Effect series." The combat and world design felt identical to FO 4 to me. Basically everything that isn't like the FO games people compare them to, are things they clearly yoinked from other game franchises that have been out ever since New Vegas came around.

I never had bug problems with any of the previous FO games, so I can't really speak to the idea that it's stable and the others weren't, because for me, they've all been perfectly stable and functional.

But, yeah, so far I'm not seeing what all the hype is about. It's a good game, don't get me wrong, but it's no better or worse than the previous installments by them and Bethesda in my opinion. Though I can't speak to FO 76 as I never played it, as it didn't look very good to me from the marketing.

It's more of the same as far as I can tell, and what they did "change" is simply stuff pulled from other games that have been made staple aspects of open RPGs in the subsequent years. *shrugs*

I think the hype is just a by-product of the traditional AAA western RPG drought we've been experiencing lately. Bethesda hasn't had a decent RPG since Fallout 4 in 2015 (which was mediocre next to Skyrim tbh) and Bioware's last RPG people actually liked was Dragon Age Inquisition in 2014.

Sure, plenty of amazing RPGs have come out between 2015 and now, but none of them offered the distinctive flavor of modern Bethesda or Bioware RPGs until The Outer Worlds.

 

[happyninja42]

snip

I mean to be fair, that's exactly what they wanted to make. A good Fallout game, period. No bugs, no rushed production, none of the bullshit. Just a straight up, good Fallout game again. Which is basically what people have been wanting from Bethesda since New Vegas came out in the first fucking place.

So you are right, if you wanna just say "Oh it's just another Fallout game." Yeah it is. But it's a GOOD Fallout game and that's what makes it stand out.

I think you missed my point, because the other games are just as good in my opinion as Outer Worlds. Or at the very least, it's not any significant degree better than the previous installments it's liberally borrowed from, to warrant the harem level of devotion and praise it's fans seem to lavish on it.

It's about on par with my experience from FO 3 and FO 4, and frankly, I found New Vegas incredibly boring. It seriously took me 4 attempts, spread out over about 2-3 years to force myself to finish that game. I just couldn't give a crap about any of the groups in question and their struggles.

Outer Worlds feels just like FO 4 to me, with a coating of Mass Effect paint when it comes to the party size, and the interpersonal conversations. All of it under a Firefly skin, that is painfully obvious. Not a bad thing mind you, it's just, everything that I've seen so far that is different from the previous FO games, that are constantly compared to this, aren't anything new or revolutionary. It's just other mechanics and themes Obsidian obviously took from other games, and stuck in what feels very much like a Fallout game. The mountain climbing is still just as janky as the previous ones, with you being able to get stuck in terrain if you try and explore. The combat feels the same, the dialogue and "wacky" humor feels the same, the dialogue options feel more like Mass Effect, they even have the same locations of Top of list = Nice responses usually, Middle of List = Neutral, Bottom = Asshole.

I mean, I like the game just fine, it's fun, I'm enjoying it, but nothing about it is making me go "Wow, that's the Obsidian touch right there! Unique to any other developer before them in this franchise! Totally unique to them and not at all just re-purposing stuff from others games" Though I find the writing only slightly better than New Vegas (which I didn't think was very good), especially when it comes to things like the "morality choices" they present you. The "dilemma" in Emerald Vale is laughable for how one sided it is. I mean they even try and give each side a "dark element" to them, but it's pretty lopsided given what we are shown from the opening moments of the game.

 

[CritialGaming]

snip

I mean to be fair, that's exactly what they wanted to make. A good Fallout game, period. No bugs, no rushed production, none of the bullshit. Just a straight up, good Fallout game again. Which is basically what people have been wanting from Bethesda since New Vegas came out in the first fucking place.

So you are right, if you wanna just say "Oh it's just another Fallout game." Yeah it is. But it's a GOOD Fallout game and that's what makes it stand out.

I think you missed my point, because the other games are just as good in my opinion as Outer Worlds. Or at the very least, it's not any significant degree better than the previous installments it's liberally borrowed from, to warrant the harem level of devotion and praise it's fans seem to lavish on it.

It's about on par with my experience from FO 3 and FO 4, and frankly, I found New Vegas incredibly boring. It seriously took me 4 attempts, spread out over about 2-3 years to force myself to finish that game. I just couldn't give a crap about any of the groups in question and their struggles.

Outer Worlds feels just like FO 4 to me, with a coating of Mass Effect paint when it comes to the party size, and the interpersonal conversations. All of it under a Firefly skin, that is painfully obvious. Not a bad thing mind you, it's just, everything that I've seen so far that is different from the previous FO games, that are constantly compared to this, aren't anything new or revolutionary. It's just other mechanics and themes Obsidian obviously took from other games, and stuck in what feels very much like a Fallout game. The mountain climbing is still just as janky as the previous ones, with you being able to get stuck in terrain if you try and explore. The combat feels the same, the dialogue and "wacky" humor feels the same, the dialogue options feel more like Mass Effect, they even have the same locations of Top of list = Nice responses usually, Middle of List = Neutral, Bottom = Asshole.

I mean, I like the game just fine, it's fun, I'm enjoying it, but nothing about it is making me go "Wow, that's the Obsidian touch right there! Unique to any other developer before them in this franchise! Totally unique to them and not at all just re-purposing stuff from others games" Though I find the writing only slightly better than New Vegas (which I didn't think was very good), especially when it comes to things like the "morality choices" they present you. The "dilemma" in Emerald Vale is laughable for how one sided it is. I mean they even try and give each side a "dark element" to them, but it's pretty lopsided given what we are shown from the opening moments of the game.

The problem is that this is coming right out of a disaster of Bethesda's last releases. We haven't gotten a good Fallout-like game in a long time and people have been hoping and hoping for Bethesda to get their shit together, which clearly isn't happening any time soon.

So to have this come out and deliver, yeah people are gonna be stoked about it.

I am like you, I didn't like any of the previous Fallout's really, not even New Vegas. But the fact that I like THIS game, is saying something pretty significant. Because if I like it, then the people who normally like Fallout games must be over the moon for it and they are.

So I get that you aren't hyped and happy about the game, but you are enjoying it fine enough and that's cool for you. But to deny that there is any reason to be hyped for it is just missing the boat.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I was/am a huge fan of the Fallout franchise (probably because I've avoided 76 entirely), particularly New Vegas, and Obsidian's work in general. So Outer Worlds seemed like a game right up my alley, what with it being a game that seems to capitalize on Obsidian's strengths and covering for their weak points (limiting the scope, spending more resources on polish and QA etc.). Now, I don't think Outer Worlds is a bad game or anything, seeing as how I've spent almost 20 hours with it over the last 4 days, but I don't think it is all that great.

Part of that is due to what Happyninja42 described, namely that OW feels a lot, spiritually, like Dungeon Siege 3. It is an Obsidian game that more or less cribs all its ideas from other, better, games and keeps a strong story. Nothing really stands out as being really great, despite the game having some really cool new features (like the way social skills influence combat or how companions skills gets added to the PCs). The setting is cool and all, the story is passable if badly paced (first you spend about half the game trying to find a guy to help you locate a MacGuffin and once you know where it is the game basically rushes the last third like a maniac) and the NPCs range from passable to cool. On the other hand the combat is kind of bad, the color palette does a number on my eyes (I've never gotten so tired in my eyes as I do playing OW) and through all the game I didn't find a single piece of loot that I felt was really cool, which wasn't helped at all by the bad descriptions of what the "science weapons" actually did.

But mostly, OW is soured by me playing Disco Elysium just the week before. DE is the superior roleplaying game in every possible way, save for freedom to choose the PC. I was utterly blown away with how well characterized the NPCs of DE were, how my stats and skills influenced everything I did in game, down to the game opening or closing quest paths based on which skills were dominant. In DE I as the player felt genuinely smart when I managed to get ahead of the game and could find clues by visiting places where I figured they might be. OW, on the other hand, showed its hand early and often. I kept seeing the stacked boxes where I could jump to get up to roofs, the vents for the Sneaky players, the security terminals for the tech players etc.. Worse still, I was almost perpetually overleveled and overstocked and had so many skillpoints distributed that I could often just brute force any situation. Maybe sneaking works better on the highest difficulty level, but I kept shooting shit dead if it wouldn't talk to me and I ended the game with 3000+ rounds of all 3 ammo types and something like 250 adreno's.

Simply, OW is a mediocre RPG/FPS hybrid if compared to other games in that genre (Borderlands does guns and shooting better, Fo4 does most things better then OW in terms of FPS combat) and after the Tour de Force that is Disco Elysium its RPG aspects also feel pretty mediocre. I would probably have loved OW had I not come straight of DE, but as it is DE beats out OW in all the areas where OW had a potential to shine.

 

[happyninja42]

The problem is that this is coming right out of a disaster of Bethesda's last releases. We haven't gotten a good Fallout-like game in a long time

You do know that saying we haven't had a "good" FO game is just an opinion right? That's not an objective fact, because enjoyment isn't quantifiable, and varies from person to person. Because I found FO 4 to be a very enjoyable game. And I'm not sure what you consider a long time, but a handful of years isn't really that long.

So to have this come out and deliver, yeah people are gonna be stoked about it.

Being stoked is fine, but the level of discourse and hyperbole coming from the OW camp is rather silly. They almost orgasm just mentioning the game, while equally vilifying anything prior to it as absolute trash. And it's just all very silly. If the discourse was just "This game is super fun and I'm enjoying the hell out of it!" I'd have no issue. But it's not just that, and your very own thread is an example of it. The "Not only is OW the greatest thing since orgasms! But it also totally validates every criticism of Bethesda and shits all over everything they've ever touched!!" tone of a lot of these discussions is just a bit extreme in my opinion. It's just a fucking game. Disclaimer: Not saying yours is stating to that level, I'm generalizing the tone of a lot of them, but there are a lot of articles and threads out there, that ARE that level of extreme with their criticism.

I am like you, I didn't like any of the previous Fallout's really, not even New Vegas. But the fact that I like THIS game, is saying something pretty significant. Because if I like it, then the people who normally like Fallout games must be over the moon for it and they are.

Not sure if this is due to a typo, or if you totally missed my stance in my previous posts, but you are not like me, because I DO like the previous FO games. In fact, New Vegas is my LEAST enjoyed game. I thoroughly enjoyed FO 3&4, and found New Vegas (the other golden child of the Obsidianites) to be incredibly bland and dull. To reiterate, I got so bored with NV, that I quit playing it multiple times, and restarted from scratch because when I picked it back up later, I felt I needed to start again to remember what was going on. And then I'd get bored again...and drop it...etc. It took me roughly 2-3 years, from when I bought it, to when I beat it, and that took multiple tries because I just couldn't give a shit about what was going on.

I am like you, I didn't like any of the previous Fallout's really, not even New Vegas. But the fact that I like THIS game, is saying something pretty significant. Because if I like it, then the people who normally like Fallout games must be over the moon for it and they are.

Well I'm someone who does normally like FO games, seeing as I like FO 3&4 (which oddly enough puts me in the minority if you listen to the discourse), and I'm not over the moon for the game. I find it just fine. Simply put, I don't see what all the praise is about. People talk it up like it's this quantum leap forward that leaves the Bethesda FO games in the dust! And I'm just not seeing it. It's on par with all the others that came before it. It's different only in it includes game elements that haven't been in any FO game, but again, they are clearly pulled from other games instead. Which, I mean if we're going to praise Obsidian for taking ideas from other people, and that's ground breaking? Umm....ok I guess? *shrugs* Doesn't seem very revolutionary to me.

So I get that you aren't hyped and happy about the game, but you are enjoying it fine enough and that's cool for you. But to deny that there is any reason to be hyped for it is just missing the boat.

You don't get it, because I am happy with the game, but it isn't instilling orgasmic levels of glee in me like people seem to think it should. And I didn't say there wasn't a reason to be hyped, hype is it's own thing. It's the reaction to the hype that I find tedious, and not matching the received product. It's a finely made game, and it's fun, but it's not as amazing (to me anyway) as people are making it out to be, ESPECIALLY when they keep comparing it to previous games that it is on par with in my opinion.

Let me break it down.

Obsidianites: Bethesda = Festering Pile of Shit from the Anus of Satan Himself!! Obsidian = The Orgasmic Juices from Jesus and God, raining down upon us in our time of greatest need!

Me: Bethesda = Eh, the FO games they've made are just fine. They've been fun to play and I have no issues with them, especially not when compared to New Vegas. Obsidian = Eh, New Vegas was pretty bleh for me, and Outer Worlds is perfectly fine as a game, but it's not very different from it's predecessors that everyone keeps lauding it over.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Well after another 12 or so hours with the game I wanted to give and update on the impressions I originally had.

Namely, combat is not great. It's actually kind of bad imo. The gun play nor the melee is fun enough to want to actively do combat and I found myself letting my companions do all the work because I simply can't be bothered, also they do way more damage than I do for some reason even though I'm upgrading my equipment and barely giving them anything. So I really don't understand that. Also explain to me how my 81 dps mace deals way more damage than my 320dps handgun? Can anyone explain that shit? Because all my damage stats are in guns, so why do the guns suck? I don't get it.

Additionally I've made several choices in the game, as I stated before there are loads of quests that give you options to deal with them different ways. Power the corporate city or the hippy community, for example. Which in the context of the writing is an interesting choice because the corporate wants you to steal the hippy's power not to kill them or anything but to force them to come back to town and get back to work. The city needs the workers and is suffering because of it for reasons I wont spoil. And if you go talk to the hippy's they of course want you to give them the power so they can keep growing pot and singing around campfires I guess. But the community just bitches at you that work is hard and they dont wanna work. Which makes the game feel real to me. Like it definitely is a satire commentary on capitalism but it also illustrates that capitalism is the best economic system we've invented so far.

The game does a good job of showing you that capitalism isn't perfect, but it also goes out of its way to show you that other systems are worse, and it does it in a brilliant satire that never makes it feel political, or that it's trying to push any message to you, instead it is merely presenting the player with this world and you make you own opinions about it. Which is dope.

The problem with the quest I mentioned above. Is that no matter what choice you make, it doesn't affect anything in your playthrough. It basically just changes the person you turn your quest into and that's it. Supposedly there is a reputation system but I haven't seen that matter in any meaningful way (I think I lost access to a couple of special vendors or something but that's not big deal as far as I can tell). So ultimately it makes the choice not really matter to you, which is a bummer and hurts motivations for multiple playthroughs.

That being said, the game is worth going through at least once because the writing of the universe is just enjoyable. The biggest flaw is that the combat is really really flat and more of a hassle than anything else. Though I do like how non-combat skills like intimidation can affect combat. I'm such a scary badass that enemies cower when I hit them, that's funny. But it doesn't let me do more damage to them. There are a few bullet spongy enemies and your damage just doesn't feel like it works right.

Still one of the best games of the year easily, and should make my top 5 unless Death's Stranding is amazing. But let's face facts, Death's STranding looks like a bunch of fucking boring open world nonsense.

So, while I'm gonna go on a limb since I don't have the game yet, I do think I read that there's weapon types of damage and certain enemies are more susceptible to different types. So whatever your mace is hitting is weak to maces (blunt damage?) and resistant to guns.


Think kinda like how in fallout robots are weak to plasma damage and resist normal bullets.