Time for a collection of thoughts.
I like the main title theme, but overall the music is way too serious and feels tonally inappropriate. Justin Bell should have used Brazil's soundtrack as inspiration. Instead we have Skyrim-serious music in a silly world.
Tim Cain said:
We had a lot of discussions even before the base game shipped, that especially among consumables, we had too much loot to track.
Damn right you did. There's too much loot in this game. I think it's funny how Cain fought so hard to preserve ammunition from getting cut, when the compromise he came to resulted in it being practically-unlimited anyway. Never had to think about ammunition once. Once I felt I had enough to coast through the remainder of the game, I stopped picking up a lot of crap to reduce the loot fatigue, but I'm sure a lot of people are incapable of that self-restraint and just make the game worse for themselves.
I praised Megan Starks too quickly without firsthand experience. Boyarsky did in fact fail to rein in her extremely-feminine writing style much like Sawyer and MacLean before him. I could tell that Monarch was her area immediately, it was so grating. And of course her area was the one with the cliched cannibal family (I assume Cain reluctantly agreed to this with the stipulation that there be no cannibal quests in future Outer Worlds games).
I was amused by two quests in Byzantium that were pure padding when it came to content, but the narrative pay-offs for both made them worth it. And while I loved Hortense like I thought I would, her quest was so disappointingly predictable. I really wish they had included a high-intelligence "You know, with the state of things around here, they're probably just killing them, right?" dialogue option. Make me do the quest anyway (with a follow-up "Told ya so"), but don't insult the intelligence of my high-int character.
It was pretty swell how I was able to complete the final areas of the game without killing a single person. Cain/Boyarsky redeeming themselves for Bloodlines's end game.
And like I mentioned earlier, the idea that this is some woke anti-capitalist game is overblown. They have the writer's pet ask you not to cut power to the corporate town, and doing so results in the most happy ending possible (otoh if you're a violent anarchist you won't mind the deaths of all those bootlickers). The leader of the Groundbreaker, who inherited a family business thanks to a really good contract, has brought that all to an end thanks to being a childless lesbian, and that entire place would fall apart if not for your intervention. When Parvarti told me about the cringe poem said person sent her, I told her to stick to her job, and that ended the quest right there, so I never had to experience any obnoxious speech about lesbian asexuality or waste time buying a dress. The most anti-corp guy in the crew is a dummy with no self-control who doesn't actually read any of his commie literature (I loved that detail). With the final conflict, I could understand the Board's criticisms of Phineas's plan, as well as Phineas's criticisms of the Board's plan (ultimately went with him because I didn't trust in the Board's ability to solve the problem). And of course the anti-corp solution to the problem requires trusting in the abilities of Exceptional High IQ people which is against the "everyone is equal and thus fungible" ethos of commies and modern-libs.
Overall, I liked it, but that's not too surprising. I enjoy playing sneak'n'speak shooters regardless of their flaws (Deus Ex, Bloodlines, Alpha Protocol, New Vegas, Human Revolution) as long as there's not something about them that puts me off from ever trying them out in the first place (Invisible War, Fallout 3, Mankind Divided, Fallout 4).
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