I have not played TOW yet but I see it looking back at me on gamepass each time I am scrolling to see what to try next. What is so terrible about TOW?
It's the blandest game in the world but the big issue is the writing and worldbuilding, which is just absolutely shocking. I could write about it all day but to summarise, it's an extremely heavy-handed satire made by people who have nothing useful or funny to say about the topic at hand, every character is an irritating caricature (and half of them exist to tell you sub Rick & Morty jokes), the central conflict is completely black and white and the "corporate" faction are demonised to the point where the game repeatedly tells you outright that there's no advantage to siding with them and everyone you meet from that faction is not allowed to possess any nuance, the companions are all absolutely
awful (except Nyoka, who's merely very boring). It's also very tonally confused, it's ostensibly a wacky satirical comedy but it also feels very dour and serious and up its own ass. I'm saying all this as someone who is, theoretically, a good target audience for a big extended whine about capitalism, because I'm left-wing economically, but even I thought TOW was brainless fucking shit.
Outside the writing, though, it's like a Bethesda game that's somehow worse than any Bethesda game. Just big open maps that are mostly empty and filled with scattered bandit/animal mobs, a character system which doesn't really feel consequential (including the least exciting Perks ever devised for a videogame), combat and stealth mechanics that are passable but deeply uninteresting, etc. Dungeons are about the quality of something like Fo4. Quest design is theoretically fine but there's just no motivation to be messing around with alternate routes and shit when the simple act of playing the game is so draining.
