The Outer Worlds (2019)

Playing The Outer Worlds feels like navigating a unique blend of New Vegas, Skyrim, and Mass Effect. It captures the essence of these classics while offering a fresh experience. The game is undeniably enjoyable, although its moral choices can be as perplexing as those in New Vegas.

When compared to Borderlands, which shares a similar Wild West vibe and shooter mechanics, The Outer Worlds stands out in two significant ways. First, running out of ammunition is far less of a concern here, and second, the weapons are more consistent. Unlike the randomized arsenal of Borderlands, The Outer Worlds offers a more predictable selection of pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, and even an LMG, which you acquire surprisingly early.

The game’s design favors well-defined, self-contained areas over a seamless open world, drawing more from Mass Effect than New Vegas. Visually, it differentiates itself from the more muted tones of Fallout with a vibrant palette of pinks and oranges.

Combat is enhanced by a slow-motion mechanic, reminiscent of VATS but without freezing time, which works effectively. The flaws system is an interesting twist, with negative traits emerging during gameplay rather than being selected at the start, similar to traits in Fallout. For example, developing "Robophobia" might reduce your Dexterity near robots but also grant you an additional perk.

One memorable moment was discovering that I had inadvertently done quests in the wrong order, leading to the untimely demise of a scientist I was supposed to rescue. The game doesn't shy away from timed quests, adding an extra layer of challenge.

There's a questline to acquire unique "science" weapons, starting with a hammer that changes its elemental damage with each strike. Another standout is a shrinking pistol, a clear homage to 1950s sci-fi. Impressively, weapon upgrades also alter their appearance, a detail often overlooked in other games.

Obsidian’s knack for crafting engaging sci-fi narratives shines through in quests with names like “Canid’s Cradle,” “Slaughterhouse Clive,” and “Stainless Steel Rat.” While the game’s loot system scales with your level, it also reduces the incentive to explore since better gear is always just around the corner.

The game’s humor is sharp, particularly in quests on Monarch, where the locals deny being cannibals—despite evidence to the contrary. The balance of difficulty is well-managed, making The Outer Worlds a game that remains engaging without becoming a grind.

The DLC, Murder on Eridanos, offers a new mechanic with an investigation scope, similar to detective modes in the Batman: Arkham series. The setting—a megahotel filled with parasitic, happiness-enforcing residents—bears a striking resemblance to We Happy Few. Despite the increased XP rewards, enemies become tougher, sometimes absurdly so.

The second DLC, Peril on Gorgon, feels a bit too familiar, even poking fun at its similarities to the game’s starting area. It does reveal more about the marauders, but overall, it’s less remarkable than Murder on Eridanos.

Companion quests are mostly inconsequential, with a few exceptions, like Nyoka’s. The weapon variety in the late game left me wanting more; a minigun or anti-tank rifle would have been welcome additions. Instead, I relied on the same sniper rifle and LMG, with only the gravity gun-like science weapon standing out.

The final prison break mission is satisfying, especially if you’ve helped different settlements, as they come to your aid in unique ways. However, there are no major plot twists, and the game’s conclusion leaves room for a sequel, hinting at Earth’s mysterious silence and the disappearance of a colony ship.

The thorough epilogue, reminiscent of Fallout, provides a strong sense of closure, making your journey feel meaningful. Overall, The Outer Worlds is a solid RPG with a mix of familiar elements, clever writing, and engaging gameplay.

I love talking with the Vicar, exploring his take on the "Grand Plan", " The Equation", feels like his quest from his past is relatable to our day to day life, since we are born and we are told that there is "someone" looking out for us, and he has a plan but that's not enough. It's scary that some things are not well taught when we are kids and the outside world feels like magic to us. All fades away if you choose to become a Spacer's Choice and not your own Choice.

The Outer Worlds feels like an in-depth exploration of the world beyond your personal perception and when you dig deeper you only find yourself and that all worlds share the same conundrums. Beautiful, just beautiful.

You really need to play with patience and take your time to fully understand the experience.

Almost forgot. It has great art direction, incredible voice acting, really complex dialogs, great characters, all of them in all of their ups and downs. The universe is full of color, dangers and safe places. Really beautiful colors.

P.S.: Don't be a Spacer's Choice.

I loved the setting and aesthetics right away! Even the main plot was interesting and I wish more could have been explored in that aspect. On the other hand, the side quests were forgettable and just felt like filler. I did like the gameplay and found it smooth and responsive, although the gun selection was limiting. The lack of romance options/mechanics was a disappointment. I did like the companions/allies, for the most part, some of them were snoozefests. I also found the AI of enemies to be very clunky and filled with bugs as enemies just stood there not fighting back or walked into walls, etc. Overall, this world has a lot of promise for future installments, the gameplay was smooth but lacking in certain areas, and the characters were very hit-or-miss.

I was ready to give this game an average 3 star rating. At first I was like "Yawn... seen all this before. I've got better things to play in my backlog, so I'm just going to get through this one and be done. It's alright I suppose."

But by the end, I genuinely felt guilty about rushing through this. It felt like I'd only read half the book. The characters, and I fear I only met some of the cast, grew on me a lot. The narrator, reading the epilogue of what became of them all and the colony as a result of my decisions by the end, I was almost sad that it was over and that some of the fates were not as happy as they could have been.

Like I say, we've seen all this before, but this is well-written and the cast is good. It doesn't look the best either but it's charm got to me in the end.

I'm keeping this in my collection for now. Chances are I won't pick it up again, but maybe I'll fancy going back and tying up the lose ends, visiting all the places I didn't go and finishing everyone's stories, for a better ending for all.

The Outer Worlds is four parts Fallout, one part Mass Effect, with a splash of Borderlands.

The game gives an amazing first impression with some really great production value. Everything just oozes character and charisma. While the presentation seems Fallout-as-all-get-out, it pulls it off with a lot more style. NPCs smirk, scowl & startle during conversations, instead of droning on with the same dead-eyed stare. You have more conversation choices than just Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes. And combat feels (slightly) better than in Fallout games. Everything has a focused and curated feel to it, rather than just being a jumbled mess of random unrelated side quests.

However, as you approach the end of the game, it almost feels like the developers ran out of time and/or money. What starts as a solid 4-star game devolves into more of a 2-star game. Side quests turn into uninspired "fetch me 5 ____" tasks. And the last few locations you visit seem extremely linear and extremely un-lived-in compared to the rest of the game.

I speced my character as low intelligence, and I'm glad I did. You get extra "Dumb" conversation choices, but you can still level up your conversation & science skills to breeze through dialogue checks. And when it was all said & done, I got ice cream. I like ice cream.

Really good game, i took the advantage of the Game Pass to play this on PC and is really a beautiful game, with a good story and characters you can connect with. The companion system is nice, the battles are easy but enjoyable, the fast travel system is mandatory, the design is wow, but the game just feels static and short.

By this i mean that the world(s) that is created is not very dynamic, characters do not move a lot, you can find people almost ever at the same spots, and the game feels easy and not very long, if you need some id to enter somewhere, probably is on the shelf or body next to the door and took 12h to complete with every side quest i found.

But in the end, you really like the game, and kind of start to miss it when the credits roll... I guess for this to be perfect just needs to be longer, harder and more dynamic. but though, totally worth it to play.

3.5 stars rounded down

In a lot of ways I really loved The Outer Worlds. I connected with the characters. I connected with the sci-fi RPG mechanics. The Fallout-meets-Firefly story was engaging. It recalls some of the things I loved about Dragon Age: Inquisition. A nice, wry humor twines throughout. Really good storytelling through random bits of information you run into in the worlds you explore. I also get the feeling that there are significant decisions that could play the game out differently.

However, it also feels like less of a game than it should be. Now granted, maybe it's not fair to see "RPG" in the genre tag and expect a big, massive game like The Witcher 3 or the aforementioned Dragon Age Inquisition, both games that took me over a hundred hours to finish, but I also think that if you're releasing a top-tier RPG in 2019, it should take longer than fifty hours (I clocked in just a hair over 45h). Nor was I speed running it or anything. I feel like I got the full Outer Worlds experience. I did every side quest I encountered (and I'm pretty sure I found most of them--may have missed a couple, but by-and-large I didn't get the feeling that there was a lot that I should have been doing but wasn't), I did a lot of general exploring of the maps, I killed a lot of baddies.

The worlds themselves are kind of... small. You've got a whole universe to explore, except only about 2/3rds of the objects on your universe map can be flown to. Once you're at an object--which range from worlds to spaceships--there's between one and three locations you can travel to. And while some of these locations have heft to them--multiple towns and other places of interest--other locations are little more than a few buildings with some surrounding atmosphere. And while the different worlds have some variation in their aesthetic, they're occupied by the same pre-fab buildings, the same handful of animals, the same mixture of marauder and machine to soak up your bullets.

And you will be shooting a lot of bullets. I didn't mind it at the time, but in hindsight you realize that there's not a whole lot of variety--walk to location, clear it, loot it, walk to new location. Going off path, hunting every nook and cranny, rewards you with more loot--yay!--but it's loot for loot's sake. By the midpoint of the game I wasn't gaining tangible benefits to looting--it was just more shit to shove into my closet and hoard "just in case."

But for me the real joy is navigating conversations. I worked hard at leveling up my dialogue skills so that I could maneuver conversations in the most appealing ways. In fact, I would argue that failing to keep up with putting your points into dialogue will significantly impact your enjoyment of the game. I was frustrated every time I encountered a dialogue branch I couldn't access because I didn't have enough invested in that particular attribute. It's the same frustration when I encountered a door that I didn't have a high enough lockpicking skill to open or computer where I didn't have a high enough hacking skill to access.

It should be said (or repeated) that in-game, I had myself a ton of fun working my way through The Outer Worlds. I'm not even someone who typically likes the Fallout-type of game, but I quickly acclimated to The Outer World and what it is laying down. But the ending comes unexpectedly fast--not just hours wise, but the way the story arcs--and as the credits roll, the whole experience ends up feeling slight. Hard to complain since I got to play via Game Pass, but if I had laid out money for this? I think it would have left a bit more of a bitter aftertaste.

The Outer Worlds recipe

• Take a Borderlands-ish lootshooter
• Add 2 teaspoons of Mass Effect teammates
• Slather in Bioshock's criticism of extreme capitalism
• Mix with 500 grams of Fallout dialogue skillchecks
• Heat to 150 degrees in a Firefly-class oven
• Good news everyone! It's a game!

Intro

So yeah, TOW feels kinda derivative. This is both bad and good for the same reason - it reminds you of stuff you (should) like. I'm desperately trying to keep this review short for once.

The Good

• Great dialogue.
• Mostly interesting world-building.
• Generally nice monster design.
• Neat alien worlds.
• Lots of stuff to discover and explore.
• Made me laugh quite a few times.
• Problems tend to have multiple solutions.
• Skill system is quite clever.

The Bad

• Too many copy-pasted environments.
• Clumsy, messy combat (not in a good way).
• Tinkering cost is based on times tinkered instead of item level.
• The whole "corporations are bad" thing feels very one-note after 20+ hours.
• Parvati is the only interesting companion.
• Bonus damage for sneak attacks. Stop making me sneak in every game, please.
• XP rewards for hacking/picking/dialogue options. The result should be the only reward.
• Levelled weapons/armor.

The Ugly

• One of the worst inventory interfaces in the history of gaming. When equipping your companions you can't sort by damage/armor...
• Constant item-switching to hack/pick/talk/fight/repair.
• Levelled items & tinkering means you use the same stuff for half of the game.
• Travelling between planets is a chore. They should have allowed you to travel to checkpoints on planets instead of just landing pads.
• Bonuses from items/companions are so big that the related skills are worthless.
• 100% pointless weight limit. Just exists to annoy you into taking related perks.
• Buying/selling items scales past having 100 in a dialogue skill.
• There's almost nothing worth buying. I spent ~$180.000 on tinkering instead.

Conclusion

Obsidian was overly ambitious - again. They designed an interesting world with a ton of 'options' and lots to read/talk about, which is great. But skill checks are too easy to pass simply by switching items/companions and story-influencing choices are limited by having everything voiced. They should also finally hire someone to fix the QOL in their games. Almost everything related to the inventory is awful in this game. This really detracts from all the positive aspects.

TOW is definitely worth playing but it's hardly a "Falllout-killer".