Delterius
Arcane
The Outer Worlds is just a side project and it shows. It is almost like a proof of concept for Microsoft or something. So right out of the gate you're not looking at 'Obsidian's Fallout 3', like New Vegas was, you're looking at 'Obsidian's Demo for a Fallout 3 in the Future'. That in itself was disappointing.
Speaking about my experience in particular. Well, I didn't go into this thing expecting to fall in love with the gameplay. I never do with shooters. But the place where I grew frustrated was with the world's character. The Outer Worlds has something I like to call the Silly / Quirky Effect. It happens when you go for a comedic setting but your comedy is super uneven. Quirky is when one of your main characters is a scientist that sounds like a Rick and Morty character. Silly is when your setting is slightly manic on the background. I don't mind the former, but I really like the latter.
Throught the game I slowly came to understand that Halcyon is a centuries old human settlement whose culture has been so warped by corporate ethics that people even express love and appreciation in a corporatized way. There's a convo in the first area that goes more or less like this:
'PC: I hear Steve killed himself.
Foreman: Yeah, he did. Bad timing. He was a great employee.
PC: what the fuck? is that what you call your friend who just killed himself? Employee?
Foreman, emotionally: 'Well, fuck you! I'll have you know Steve was an ASSET!'
The employee logs in Edgewater also point to this background mania. You can sort of re-structure the history of the settlement and see how and why it couldn't recover. Edgewater was built as a manufacturing town. It was only supposed to process goods from another planet. The proverbial 'grown in argentina, packaged in thailand, shipped to the US' type of deal. Once that monopoly was lost at the source Edgewater started collapsing. Some of the particulars are amusing:
While you can't reconstruct the entirety of Edgewater's history you can feel this progressive decline as you explore the first area. You see each part of the colony that was abandoned. The laboratories that were once used to try and regenerate the soil, the department where the middle managers and marketing people used to live, the sabotaged power plant, the social centers that didn't make sense anymore since the town was dead, and so on. Exploring Edgewater is like walking into Generic American Coal Town That Couldn't Gentrify Itself To Survive.
There's one more instance of this sort of thing later in the game and I enjoyed it as well. But that's it. Edgewater was my high note and it's the first goddamn town. If these sorts of background mysteries were more common then Outer Worlds would have been a very fun game. Or at least one that would be entertaining all the way through.
'PC: I hear Steve killed himself.
Foreman: Yeah, he did. Bad timing. He was a great employee.
PC: what the fuck? is that what you call your friend who just killed himself? Employee?
Foreman, emotionally: 'Well, fuck you! I'll have you know Steve was an ASSET!'
The employee logs in Edgewater also point to this background mania. You can sort of re-structure the history of the settlement and see how and why it couldn't recover. Edgewater was built as a manufacturing town. It was only supposed to process goods from another planet. The proverbial 'grown in argentina, packaged in thailand, shipped to the US' type of deal. Once that monopoly was lost at the source Edgewater started collapsing. Some of the particulars are amusing:
- First the settlement tried to become self sufficient. It failed due to the conditions of the soil and the sea.
- At one point they started using frankenmeat instead of tuna from planet Monarch.
- Locally sourced Frankenmeat is rather poor in nutrients. It can barely keep you going.
- Realizing this the head of marketing wanted to create new unique versions of canned ''''tuna'''' that would be fortified and/or seasoned to be a better product. The response from corporate was 'we are a vertical monopoly and we are not gonna compete with ourselves. Also you're fired and re-hired as a janitor'.
- After quarterly reports collapsed for too long corporate activated it's exit strategy: departments would covertly sabotage one another, causing terrible accidents and triggering insurance claims. Win-win.
- After the town was effectively abandoned to it's luck the middle managers started cannibalizing it. Both metaphorically and literally. The mid-boss in charge is making sure workers punch clock until they die since he's not even aware that frankenmeat is not nutritious. He is mentally incapable of disbelieving the ads about how great they are for your health. The mid-boss who was exiled from town is using the bodies of the dead to fertilize her farms, feeding her followers however she can.
While you can't reconstruct the entirety of Edgewater's history you can feel this progressive decline as you explore the first area. You see each part of the colony that was abandoned. The laboratories that were once used to try and regenerate the soil, the department where the middle managers and marketing people used to live, the sabotaged power plant, the social centers that didn't make sense anymore since the town was dead, and so on. Exploring Edgewater is like walking into Generic American Coal Town That Couldn't Gentrify Itself To Survive.
There's one more instance of this sort of thing later in the game and I enjoyed it as well. But that's it. Edgewater was my high note and it's the first goddamn town. If these sorts of background mysteries were more common then Outer Worlds would have been a very fun game. Or at least one that would be entertaining all the way through.
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