The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony

[Wyatt_Derp]

meh, stopped it about 2 minutes in. The idea that "Fallout" was some deep social commentary is ridiculous and quite frankly I'm tired of hearing it. I use quotes for Fallout because I know they're not referring to the first Fallout(I doubt most people who believe this even played it), but some amalgamation of all its incarnations slapped together like a frankenstein monster.

Here's the truth about Fallout, folks:

Spoiler

Get ready for it.

Spoiler

They wanted to build a better laser gun. A laser gun with multiple choices.

Spoiler

Meh, you should read the Planescape: Torment vision document, which is all about babes with big boobs. This kind of thing is exists to convince the dimwit business guys (most of whom had never touched an RPG) to continue supporting your game.

What's wrong with babes with big boobs?

Nothing, so long as the boobs don't conceal poison darts or are used to hide vital intelligence memos.

 

[Jenkem]

I don't get the inhaler thing/eating food.. like there are spaces you can fit food into quickslots but pressing F only ever does the inhaler, the only way to eat food is through the menu. I think you can eat food w/ F if you run out of inhalers but I don't recall ever running out of them. Maybe there is a way to change which item from the quickslots are ready to drink/eat/ingest but I dunno

 

[Adon]

I don't get the inhaler thing/eating food.. like there are spaces you can fit food into quickslots but pressing F only ever does the inhaler, the only way to eat food is through the menu. I think you can eat food w/ F if you run out of inhalers but I don't recall ever running out of them. Maybe there is a way to change which item from the quickslots are ready to drink/eat/ingest but I dunno

It’s easy to miss the explanation, but the short of it is that any consumables you put into the quick slots are actually loaded into your inhaler. So let’s say in your quick slots you have Adreno and Pep Pills — when you use your inhaler, you’re actually using both the Adreno and the pills at the same time. However, the game makes a note that your inhaler will always use Adreno when available.

 

[Immortal]

Man I hate Fallout 76.. don't you guys..? they are so greedy.. oh uh.. yea this game is uh.. well it's bland and soulless in every way.. b-b-but no microtran$actions r-r-right?..

 

[Wunderbar]

Yes entire quest chains like this about turning people to be genetically compatible with local food got cut it seems its not even mentioned in ending screens and game feels terribly rushed past the Monarch too.

yeah. NPCs keep talking about food crisis, but there are apples lying around? and raptidon meat is edible, even though your character is an earthling who never ate something like this before.

 

[Daidre]

yeah. NPCs keep talking about food crisis, but there are apples lying around? and raptidon meat is edible, even though your character is an earthling who never ate something like this before.

As I understood, everything that grows/lives on Halcyon has its chemical make up a bit off. Like eating clay - it goes through digestive tract but there are not enough nutrients, parts that body can assimilate, to count it as normal, healthy food.
I am not sure how biologically viable this kind of explanation is,

Spoiler

especially part about board hiding it for century with appetite suppressors and nobody noticed.

Imho, not that far from "they use mass effect for it" sci-fi's use of science part.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I don't think this game is comparable to Fallout 76. If the only thing Obsidian is guilty of is being too safe, and the game doesn't include microtransactions, pre-order bonuses and all other bullshit, then I don't feel comparing it to FO76 is fair.

 

[Trashos]

The best thing this game has going for it is the comparisons to FO76, actually.

 

[DalekFlay]

Man I hate Fallout 76.. don't you guys..? they are so greedy.. oh uh.. yea this game is uh.. well it's bland and soulless in every way.. b-b-but no microtran$actions r-r-right?..

Weird comparison since Fallout 76 is an always online multiplayer game without any real quests or NPC dialog. That's a big reason Fallout/Bethesda games hate it, along with everything else. Outer Worlds, for all its faults, is NOT that at all.

 

[Haplo]

I don't get the inhaler thing/eating food.. like there are spaces you can fit food into quickslots but pressing F only ever does the inhaler, the only way to eat food is through the menu. I think you can eat food w/ F if you run out of inhalers but I don't recall ever running out of them. Maybe there is a way to change which item from the quickslots are ready to drink/eat/ingest but I dunno

It’s easy to miss the explanation, but the short of it is that any consumables you put into the quick slots are actually loaded into your inhaler. So let’s say in your quick slots you have Adreno and Pep Pills — when you use your inhaler, you’re actually using both the Adreno and the pills at the same time. However, the game makes a note that your inhaler will always use Adreno when available.

Yeah, I actually rather liked that mechanic. I mean it doesn't offer fine control over each substance you imbibe every time... but still... both automation and rationalization how you take several chems at the same time? Cool and creative.

 

[Wunderbar]

It's a stupid mechanic because you don't need to inhale multiple consumables, most of the time it's a quick heal button. When you do need to use consumables, you'd be better off selecting them manually.

 

[Haplo]

I don't think you're intended to spam consumables.
In case you need a fix, perhaps the fight is not going that well... and then why not improve your odds a bit... its not like these consumables are rare in this game. With the medical inhaler at least I use them sometimes, rather then hoard till the bitter end.

 

[Quillon]

Its too convoluted; I can't keep track of what I assigned to it or if I ran out of anything assigned. And combat is too fast paced to notice anything, plus who can see and differentiate the tiny buff icons? Or how much time either of them will be in effect? Does it matter? Nope. Seems like a neat feature from the outset but its unnecessarily over-streamlined and we only used it for restoring hp anyway.

It was better in W3; you ate food & drinks only to restore hp and used potions for whatever without the need to preserve. Streamlining done right

 

[Commissar Draco]

Yes entire quest chains like this about turning people to be genetically compatible with local food got cut it seems its not even mentioned in ending screens and game feels terribly rushed past the Monarch too.

yeah. NPCs keep talking about food crisis, but there are apples lying around? and raptidon meat is edible, even though your character is an earthling who never ate something like this before.

Its even nutritious, I only kept it and stimpacks in inhaller and sold all other shite back, you must admit that crafting is indeed very nice money sink here in this game, I ended game with maybe 2000 thousands bits but at least carried my favorite armor, hammer and gun from start to finale.

 

[Duraframe300]

"more like Fallout 1"

Eh.. the vídeo is p.good and even if dont agree with the tittle, he has entire section to say why.

Btw not even Outer Worlds's own subreddit thinks the game isn't that good and totally dont deserve goty. I guess they arent that brain dead. Pretty funny

https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/comments/e1guzx/unpopular_opinion_the_outer_worlds_does_not/

They still like it but at least theres some voice to obsidian to make next game better asides from here.

It's the general conscious around the internet since after the initial hype went down. Good, with tons of room to improve. So, more or less Tim and Leonard predicted its reception with the hype downplay.

There's not really any game this year though that ISN'T massivly flawed (or sadly suffers the indie cuse, most of us know Disco Elysium should get GOTY) that its going to appear on GOTY lists regardless. Case in point, the canadian version of jeuxvideo gave it Game of the Year (Ahead of Death Stranding and Fire Emblem).

https://jeuxvideo.rds.ca/top-2019-les-meilleurs-jeux-de-lannee-selon-rds-jeux-video/

Edit: Or Android Central where it got best rpg and best new IP + Runner UP GOTY and Obsidian got Runner-UP Studio of the year

https://www.androidcentral.com/android-centrals-best-games-2019-award

 

[Sailor Woedica]

 

[Alpan]

Just finished this (on Supernova) and it was definitely disappointing; I felt like I was merely going through the motions, though obviously coming off the Disco Elysium high has something to do with this.

The combat is easy, character-building options nearly non-existent. The only thing I enjoyed about the core systems was companions being quite viable in combat provided you support them with the occasional stim shot.

This game deserves a review to drive home just how underwhelming it all is. The review should be that of Fallout: New Vegas, and it should laud Obsidian for learning its lessons from The Outer Worlds to make Fallout: New Vegas a much better game. In other words: We need irony, and we need lots of it.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Btw not even Outer Worlds's own subreddit thinks the game isn't that good and totally dont deserve goty. I guess they arent that brain dead. Pretty funny

https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/comments/e1guzx/unpopular_opinion_the_outer_worlds_does_not/

They still like it but at least theres some voice to obsidian to make next game better asides from here.

It's the general conscious around the internet since after the initial hype went down. Good, with tons of room to improve. So, more or less Tim and Leonard predicted its reception with the hype downplay.

There's not really any game this year though that ISN'T massivly flawed (or sadly suffers the indie cuse, most of us know Disco Elysium should get GOTY) that its going to appear on GOTY lists regardless. Case in point, the canadian version of jeuxvideo gave it Game of the Year (Ahead of Death Stranding and Fire Emblem).

https://jeuxvideo.rds.ca/top-2019-les-meilleurs-jeux-de-lannee-selon-rds-jeux-video/

Edit: Or Android Central where it got best rpg and best new IP + Runner UP GOTY and Obsidian got Runner-UP Studio of the year

https://www.androidcentral.com/android-centrals-best-games-2019-award

It sounds that some journalists and game sites want to inflate TOW to a more impressive title than it really is. Some are probably easily impressed, wanting to see more into the game than there really is.

I can't help though thinking that virtue signalling because of some of the content is also part of it.

 

[Daidre]

I can't help though thinking that virtue signalling because of some of the content is also part of it.

I think it is kind of knee-jerk reaction to market's over-saturation with GAAS, micro-transactions and 60$-betas for major multiplayer tittles that do not survive until their proper release.
So virtue signaling is not for some content in the TOW in particular, but for single-player story-focused content/feature complete games in general.

 

[Alpan]

I think it's a bit of both. It is rather refreshing that TOW is more or less feature-complete (even though the features are rather meh), but also there's the desperate grasping by some reviewers to treat the game's subject matter as a nuanced take on hyper-capitalism or whatever, because All Games Are Political.

 

[gestalt11]

I think it's a bit of both. It is rather refreshing that TOW is more or less feature-complete (even though the features are rather meh), but also there's the desperate grasping by some reviewers to treat the game's subject matter as a nuanced take on hyper-capitalism or whatever, because All Games Are Political.

IMO its mostly two things.

1) Because FO76's $100 dollar fiasco was so close to its release people latch onto OW as an example of a similar game that doesn't need to be such a ridiculous scam but also be a decent game, to bolster this they exaggerate how good of a game it is. This is essentially how the media has worked for about 20 years. Come up with a premise and then adjust everything by degree until that premise is plausible.

2) Over the last 10 years, but part of university pedagogy for 30 years, there has been a major push to backfill Marxism into popular economic thought by pushing the idea of "late stage capitalism", i.e. they are trying to inject Marx's theories about the progression of economies from one stage to another as if they are wholly accepted and make perfect sense. Again this is a common tactic of the media over the last 20 years, they do this for any concept they need to skip any criticism. This idea failed to pass such criticism in the past so they just shoehorn and backfill it into the popular unconsciousness through repetition and fake authority. The idea itself is stupid and is one of the reasons I found Marx's version of communism to be rather silly. And yes there are versions of communism and yes anarcho-communists had plenty of critiques of Marx as his contemporaries and wound up mostly correct in their criticism, this is another thing this cabal of douchebags likes to hide. In this case its not "intentional", these people have been indoctrinated in universities and actually think this is just good information that the ignorant plebs need to know. So when they see OW's trite bullshit they latch onto it and promote it and say "see late stage capitalism is a thing cuz I r smurt". Too bad people don't understand history doesn't bear out that the concept has any merit at all and that communism already exists and has for a billion years. All multi-cellular systems are essentially communism and there is no fucking way in the world any human would ever want to live under such a system. In such a system you have programmed cell-death, you die when you are told to die, and when this breaks down we call it "cancer" and the system dies. Only species like bees, whose DNA gets passed on as the colony itself sustain such things. Humans can never become communistic, their DNA will never let them and if any population of humans are ever shoehorned into something like it, they will destroy it and themselves just like all cancer ridden multi-cellular animal systems do. The idea that late-stage capitalism prgresses into communism is asinine and that is why they need to slide it in in a way that it will just be accepted on authority.

 

[Wesp5]

So virtue signaling is not for some content in the TOW in particular, but for single-player story-focused content/feature complete games in general.

Indeed! Also remember that most of you here are hardcore RPG gamers, and this is the first non indie-like isometric RPG that Obsidian made since Alpha Protocol.

 

[JDR13]

So virtue signaling is not for some content in the TOW in particular, but for single-player story-focused content/feature complete games in general.

Indeed! Also remember that most of you here are hardcore RPG gamers, and this is the first non indie-like isometric RPG that Obsidian made since Alpha Protocol.

Not quite. Apha Protocol was released before FO:NV.

 

[Wesp5]

So virtue signaling is not for some content in the TOW in particular, but for single-player story-focused content/feature complete games in general.

Indeed! Also remember that most of you here are hardcore RPG gamers, and this is the first non indie-like isometric RPG that Obsidian made since Alpha Protocol.

Not quite. Apha Protocol was released before FO:NV.

Oops, in that case it was FO:NV then. Still it has been a long time since Obsidian made something not isometric for the masses !

 

[Adon]

Finally finishing up my playthrough of TOW, and must say I'm impressed at how much I ended up liking Nyoka. She ended up turning out to be a far better companion than Ellie whose personal quest ended up being pretty lame. Nyoka and Vicar are the only ones who end up feeling like they're characters of any kind of substance compared to the rest of the companions. Parvati had potential, but then her quest takes a complete left turn into something totally unrelated to her background as an engineer, or the set up with her mom having to leave Parvati and her dad at a young age; which would've been 10 times more interesting than what we got. Felix might be alright, but truth to be told I hardly ever have him around since his companion ability is literally just a drop kick and in comparison to everyone else, totally not worth the hassle of having him around.