Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
Late to the party here in both playing this game and I'm sure in posting this opinion, but whatever.
I just uninstalled the Outer Worlds, and as much as it's a shame to say I literally had to force myself to beat it out of a sense of obligation rather than actual enjoyment, which had rotted away by the time I finished Monarch.
As someone who lists Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas amongst my favourite games of all time and in the realm of tabletop adores games like Stars Without Number, The Outer Worlds seemed like a match-made in heaven, so what went wrong?
The setting flags up to me the most, in that it feels like a middling episode of Futurama. It is farcicial to the point where it blasts beyond satire and just goes into cartoonish parody. Which is fine for a few chuckles but it also makes it really fucking hard for me to give a shit about a world that seems like the venue for tired jokes rather than an actual setting. I don't care about the world of Futurama or a sardonic webcomic, and I don't care about the Halcyon Colony, all for the same reasons. Fallout was innately satirical of a specific Cold War zeitgeist but it used that primarily as aesthetic direction and a jumping board for layers of severity and serious worldbuilding that pulled you in as a player. The Outer Worlds is closer to Bethesda Fallout's idea of satire and to be honest at many points I found Todd Howard's version to be marginally more digestible than that of the Outer Worlds.
The only part that approached feeling Fallout-ish was the stuff regarding the SubLight Salvagers and Groundbreaker, not-so coincidentally this was also the parts of the game that had the 'scathing political satire' layered on the thinnest and actually came close to making me feel like a hardy space adventurer exploring a rustic cosmic frontier.
The character development and RPG elements were horrifically dry. The skill system didn't know whether it wanted to go for modern oversimplification or classic style and just ended up going down the middle, and the perks were literally worse than Fallout 4. Just terrible.
The narrative was stupidly repetitive, I enjoyed the first region of Edgewater even though I found the decision to be a little bit shallow and unsatisfactory, only to discover that they literally copy and pasted the narrative premise for Edgewater onto basically every area of the game. Choice A incompetent stupid corporation, Choice B useless trapped deserters, Choice C milquetoast middle-ground presented as the golden third option and clearly the ones the Dev want you to pick. Even though I liked Phineas Welles, the main-story was also yawn worthy and had the same structure of "Go here and do X, oh wait there's been an interruption, now do Y and Z so that you can actually do X" again repeating the basic framework of the Edgewater arc.
Quests in the Outer Worlds feel like MMO chores rather than actual adventurers. There's nothing here that feels like penetrating the defensive perimiter of Nellis in order to court the Boomers tribe, or travelling to Hidden Valley to decide the fate of the BoS. Just dry, irritating fetch-quests blocked up with bland MMO tier mobs.
The companions are cool - on the surface level. They feel like mid-development versions of actually good characters. They're 2nd or 3rd drafts of characters that aren't ready for publish until their 8th. The strongest point of this game was companion interaction with the world however, influencing your skills and participating in dialogue. I just about had a wet-dream picturing a New Vegas where Veronica or Arcade Gannon participate in your dialogue with you.
Just a real shame all around. In another universe there's an Outer Worlds that went through a serious edit, where the satire and saccharine steampunk aesthetic are toned down a number of notches, and the Devs didn't get bored in their quest design after Edgewater. I just wish we lived in that universe, and not our current one where this game is sub-par slop.
Anyway, what did other NMAers think of TOW?
I just uninstalled the Outer Worlds, and as much as it's a shame to say I literally had to force myself to beat it out of a sense of obligation rather than actual enjoyment, which had rotted away by the time I finished Monarch.
As someone who lists Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas amongst my favourite games of all time and in the realm of tabletop adores games like Stars Without Number, The Outer Worlds seemed like a match-made in heaven, so what went wrong?
The setting flags up to me the most, in that it feels like a middling episode of Futurama. It is farcicial to the point where it blasts beyond satire and just goes into cartoonish parody. Which is fine for a few chuckles but it also makes it really fucking hard for me to give a shit about a world that seems like the venue for tired jokes rather than an actual setting. I don't care about the world of Futurama or a sardonic webcomic, and I don't care about the Halcyon Colony, all for the same reasons. Fallout was innately satirical of a specific Cold War zeitgeist but it used that primarily as aesthetic direction and a jumping board for layers of severity and serious worldbuilding that pulled you in as a player. The Outer Worlds is closer to Bethesda Fallout's idea of satire and to be honest at many points I found Todd Howard's version to be marginally more digestible than that of the Outer Worlds.
The only part that approached feeling Fallout-ish was the stuff regarding the SubLight Salvagers and Groundbreaker, not-so coincidentally this was also the parts of the game that had the 'scathing political satire' layered on the thinnest and actually came close to making me feel like a hardy space adventurer exploring a rustic cosmic frontier.
The character development and RPG elements were horrifically dry. The skill system didn't know whether it wanted to go for modern oversimplification or classic style and just ended up going down the middle, and the perks were literally worse than Fallout 4. Just terrible.
The narrative was stupidly repetitive, I enjoyed the first region of Edgewater even though I found the decision to be a little bit shallow and unsatisfactory, only to discover that they literally copy and pasted the narrative premise for Edgewater onto basically every area of the game. Choice A incompetent stupid corporation, Choice B useless trapped deserters, Choice C milquetoast middle-ground presented as the golden third option and clearly the ones the Dev want you to pick. Even though I liked Phineas Welles, the main-story was also yawn worthy and had the same structure of "Go here and do X, oh wait there's been an interruption, now do Y and Z so that you can actually do X" again repeating the basic framework of the Edgewater arc.
Quests in the Outer Worlds feel like MMO chores rather than actual adventurers. There's nothing here that feels like penetrating the defensive perimiter of Nellis in order to court the Boomers tribe, or travelling to Hidden Valley to decide the fate of the BoS. Just dry, irritating fetch-quests blocked up with bland MMO tier mobs.
The companions are cool - on the surface level. They feel like mid-development versions of actually good characters. They're 2nd or 3rd drafts of characters that aren't ready for publish until their 8th. The strongest point of this game was companion interaction with the world however, influencing your skills and participating in dialogue. I just about had a wet-dream picturing a New Vegas where Veronica or Arcade Gannon participate in your dialogue with you.
Just a real shame all around. In another universe there's an Outer Worlds that went through a serious edit, where the satire and saccharine steampunk aesthetic are toned down a number of notches, and the Devs didn't get bored in their quest design after Edgewater. I just wish we lived in that universe, and not our current one where this game is sub-par slop.
Anyway, what did other NMAers think of TOW?