The Outer Worlds

Epic Games released their own digital games store and launcher about a year ago. Epic's approach to competing against Steam's massive market share on PC has been simply to offer a game library -- a reason to stay on the platform. One half of that tactic has been giving away weekly freebies of already released games and the other half -- which has caused considerable ire -- has been paying developers/publishers for timed exclusivity of their new titles. One of those titles has been The Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment.

Epic's exclusivity deals haven't been as much about having the games solely on the Epic Games store rather than just keeping them off Steam -- The Outer Worlds released on the same day on the Microsoft Store (and the Game Pass) as well. Some thought that was because Microsoft bought Obsidian this year but there have been others, such as Metro Exodus, that appeared on the MS store. And Obsidian's publishing deal with Private Division (a Take-Two Interactive subsidiary) and their deal with Epic were likely made before the Microsoft acquisition.

Overhyped Fallout-like

The Outer Worlds is a first person scifi shooter/roleplaying game with many similarities to the Fallout franchise. The involvement of Obsidian's people in creating the original Fallouts and developing Fallout: New Vegas was used in advertising and that hyped up the game a bit too much, I think. Fans were hungry for a good Fallout game after Bethesda's Fallout 76 farce.

However, Private Division publishes games from smaller studios, meaning the budget of The Outer Worlds was unlikely to be large enough to allow the game's scale to be comparable to a full Fallout title. Also, the last time Obsidian had made a first person game was the already mentioned New Vegas back in 2010. Thus I wasn't personally expecting anything huge, something that could be regarded as a game of the year. (It was nominated for such in The Game Awards.) I still welcomed the game though for there aren't exactly many of its kind around.

From the get-go, the visuals of The Outer Worlds made it hard for me to like. They reminded me of No Man's Sky which similarly looks like it was designed by a color-blind person or alternatively by someone who has one twisted taste in colors. The palette is garish. I reckon Obsidian was going for outlandish looks but they definitely could've done it in a more pleasing manner. Not make the game look like they had taken Fallout's retro-futuristic environments and thrown a random selection of paints all over it. I thought disabling chromatic aberration might help (done with an .ini edit since no in-game option) but the game remained obtrusive.

Curiously enough, shortly after release Obsidian's Josh Sawyer tweeted how the game doesn't use color information in its interface because one of its directors, Tim Cain, has a condition nearing monochromacy. I don't know how much Cain was involved in the game's overall visual design though.

Also, I find that to be a stupid approach. To reduce things to the lowest common denominator and make things worse for the majority. By using heavily contrasting colors you could have the increased readability and discernibility, that comes from color-coding things such as item rarities, while still keeping the game playable for those with reduced ability to perceive colors.

Discerning unique items from standard stuff is bothersome as the only difference is a slightly fancier tooltip background that is of the same hue as everything else. The game is also bad at informing what exactly is special about the unique items. Some have a hint in their description but to really know the difference you'd need to compare them to a standard version of the item. And you can't even open the long, detailed stat lists of two items side by side.

Generic shooter combat

That information is not that crucial however as The Outer Worlds isn't the most challenging game. I wouldn't call it super easy at the start but around the time I started unlocking the final, third tier perks I was no longer in real danger of dying on the Hard difficulty. There's a higher setting called Supernova but I felt it would merely add annoyance. It's like the Hardcore option in New Vegas, giving your character survival needs such as hunger and companions being able to die permanently. It also limits manual saving to only on-board of your ship which was why I didn't bother to play on it.

Skill system is reminiscent of Fallout 3 and New Vegas but lacks the same depth. Perks in particularly could've been more interesting; there are no quirky ones. There's also a bit of weirdness copied from Obsidian's late isometric RPGs in how attributes somehow affect the weirdest things. I maxed Intelligence and Perception as they both affect Long Guns which I used. The rest I left at default. Lowering anything to minimum didn't seem worth it due to the penalties. Below average Intelligence might be worth it for laughs -- it unlocks special dumb dialogue options.

You probably shouldn't worry about maxing any particular skill unless you really want the topmost threshold perks. Your party members grant you a portion of their skill levels and most of the armors and helmets in the game have skill bonuses too. By swapping things around you can pretty much make every skill and most dialogue checks with any build. True to Obsidian's style, dialogue checks are static and don't require random rolls to succeed in which is nice.

Having to lug 10 sets of armor with you for skill bonuses is not the best thing ever though. Even without the armor pile, inventory weight management is a big issue in the game. Exploring everywhere and looting everything gets you overburdened in no time. Ammo weighs. Weapon mods weigh. There is a stupid number of different food items and many of them are identical in effect too. They really should be color coded or something. Taking every single carrying capacity increasing perk feels like a must.

I also took every perk that affects Tactical Time Dilation because I thought I might as well. TTD is a less powerful version of Fallout's V.A.T.S. It is less jarring too though as it merely slows down time instead of giving you a targeting menu. While TTD is on, shooting body parts afflicts the target with different debuffs. It didn't feel that effective to me, not essential for success. But blinding a dangerous enemy for few seconds early on does help.

When you've taken enough damage from a certain type of thing or enemy, you're prompted to gain a trait that makes you more susceptible to it in turn of a extra perk point. I accepted such a trait only a couple of times. There aren't enough good perks to justify more, in my opinion.

Uninspired plot

The story of The Outer Worlds is mediocre like I was expecting. A mad scientist type of guy wakes you up from cryosleep and pushes you onto a mission to save the rest of the passengers of your ark ship. Something apparently had gone wrong and all the bright minds, that could have helped the Halcyon star system's barely surviving colony, are still sleeping.

Your character isn't necessarily very motivated to do that, considering there are bandits, evil corporations, and local fauna (same creatures on every planet as is tradition) to go through first. I suppose there's eventually motivation for a more selfish character too -- or even earlier as there appears to be some quest branching based on your choices. But before that it's kind of hard to disagree with one of your possible companions, Ellie, who questions your hero's journey.

Ellie's my favorite crew member though, even if she's terribly cynical at times. Her banter is funny and she seems quite unusual for a medical doctor. Victoria Sanchez's (Alex Vega in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided) voice also really fits the Ellie's looks. That is in fact the case with every character in the game. Obsidian nailed the casting for The Outer Worlds.

I encountered two notable bugs during my playthrough. 1) Rebinding keys seemed to display-wise have trouble overwriting old buttons (hence the double LeftControl on my HUD). 2) Respeccing my crew made them lose the perks they had gotten from completing their personal quest, instead giving them an additional point to spend on their visible perks. Thus nothing major. The game also ran a tad poorly at times but that could've been just my PC. Textures sharpening before my eyes reminded me of older Unreal Engine titles.

I might eventually pick up The Outer Worlds on a platform that doesn't hide game files (Steam) and do a second playthrough even if the game was just okay. Obsidian recently announced story DLC to be released for the game too.