With a resumé that includes South Park: The Stick of Truth and, of course, Fallout: New Vegas, do I really have to introduce Obsidian Entertainment? Their unapologetically wacky and satirical development formula has cemented several memorable titles into our libraries, and with The Outer World’s they finally got to unleash their unique style on the wild frontiers of space colonisation.
I have a dirty confession to make: I never played Fallout 3. I was just too deep into all the Elder Scrolls stuff at the time. However, I did give New Vegas a shot and the game’s writing, characters, and overall devil-may-care tone made me play it in big, greedy chunks at a time. Needless to say, I expected The Outer Worlds to scratch that same itch since this game is something like a homage to New Vegas.
After spending my time with Obsidian’s latest RPG, I have no doubt that The Outer Worlds wears its developmental pedigree on its sleeve. There is something delightfully ‘old-school’ about how it handles itself, and even with a few minor grievances, The Outer Worlds has a special experience to offer.
Getting starstruck
I don’t get why so many previews had branded The Outer Worlds as a space opera. Mass Effect (1, 2, 3 and that crappy one) is a space opera because you have all the intergalactic politics, personal drama and aliens from different races mashed into one big epic. The Outer Worlds, on the other hand, is obviously more casual in its execution since you are essentially a space cowboy thrown into the set of 1960’s sci-fi B movie. It is more Cowboy Bebop than Star Trek.
After once again spending a little too much time with the surprisingly decent character creator, the adventure begins and I discover that I am part of a stranded cargo of colonists in stasis, onboard a ship that experienced a malfunction during light speed. A shady-looking fella named Phineas Welles then unexpectedly lands on board and essentially kidnaps one of the pods – namely me– before making a quick getaway just as the authorities arrive.
Turns out old Welles has got a bit of the (mad) scientist thing going on because while most people who spent this much time in stasis pop like microwaved egg upon revival, this guy figured out a way to bring people back alive. He only had enough ‘chemicals’ for one person though, and there is still an entire frozen crew floating back on board, so he abruptly sends the player down to the nearest colony in a pod to get more.
It was supposed to be a quick trip down to Edgewater colony, hooking up with a smuggler, and returning to Welles so he can get to work on the rest of the colonists. Yet from the moment the player stumbles from their escape pod, things immediately turn sour since the ship needed to return to Phineas is missing a crucial component.
Oh, and your contact kind of got smooshed with your landing pod so you are basically on your own. You then become Clint Eastwood – the gunslinger lone ranger – finding himself just passing through a little town but inevitably getting dragged into the bigger scheme of things.
So you do what any resourceful space cowboy would do: Befriend the locals, and help them out with a few mundane favours on their neglected little space colony in the hope that they will give you the parts you need. You gain a few weapons, make some bounty hunting money, convince a tyrannical mayor to be nice and pick up a few stragglers who eventually become your crew. The usual.
In no time, you and your new band of misfits fixed up the ship, leave Edgewater in your rearview mirror, and the frontier of space is now your oyster. Of course, it turns out that Phineas Welles’s motivation for defrosting the crew is to take on a deep space colonisation conglomerate named the Halcyon Holdings Corporation, and he has just found his newest lackey.
Spacing out
If I were to describe the basic gameplay in The Outer Worlds, it would probably read like a review of nearly a hundred other RPG’s. This is a testament to how Obsidian have thrown together something that plays it very safe, and gives The Outer Worlds has a familiar but solid foundation.
Missions generally adhere to the classic routine of you needing something from NPC’s, and they are willing to offer it to you in exchange for a small favour, which usually ends in your guns doing all the talking. It is the old, ‘I’d do it myself, but [insert excuse here] prevents me so would you kindly’?
Obsidian even went for the whole talking head thing against a blurred background from New Vegas, and I could swear they simply extrapolated the same lip-sync technology from Bethesda’s older games. Why is there no anti-aliasing on their teeth though? Did they copy the actual teeth from New Vegas too!? Ew!
As the player moves between the handful of colonies that represent the areas you can visit, and once they get involved with the humdrum of the settlers, Obsidian goes ahead and does their thing. From the conversations you have with NPC’s to the world building at large, everything in The Outer Worlds is wholeheartedly steeped in a sardonic, black humour.
You see, in the era of space colonisation Halcyon Holdings did what any corporation would do if they had monopoly over settling on other planets, namely capitalise everything, including their employees. As a result, the game acts as a broader satire on preposterous corporate legalese.
Many reviews have mentioned the grave digger you encounter as you enter the first colony who explains that inhabitants of Edgewater literally have to lease their own graves (as a commentary on how the bureaucracy cannot be avoided even after death).
My personal favourite early in the game was chatting to an NPC in a factory where they put something called ‘saltuna’ into cans (apparently it’s not fish). I was supposed to pick up a fee as a favour to the grave digger, but during our conversation I figured out she was sad over a bunch of paperwork. Seems she is the closest living relative to a person who had just committed suicide.
Was it her brother or something? No, she informed me, she was the closest living person relatively speaking when this worker shot himself. Considering that the factory basically owns him, she has to file a report on vandalism to an asset.
It’s Spacer’s Choice!
This little interaction is emblematic of the general tone of black humour that Obsidian have endowed upon their entire game, and it is consistently supported through superb writing. You can see it everywhere from the quirky messages found on random terminals scattered through the environment, or the ridiculous culture of capitalism that has taken over the colonies. “It’s not the best choice, It’s Spacer’s Choice!” is the actual slogan of a particularly large interplanetary goods provider.
Yet the writing shines at its brightest in the dialogue between the player and the NPC’s. Their lines have been composed in a very natural and engaging format, and they have been executed by voice acting that never tries to be overly dramatic.
I felt like I could actually have a proper chat with certain characters, and I even returned to the suicide lady at one point because I couldn’t wait to tell her when I discovered something about her co-worker. She was genuinely thankful for the news too.
Furthermore, players who frequent RPG’s would notice that The Outer Worlds often presents an above-average number of dialogue responses when you engage with NPC’s. You can be the kind and caring, paragon type of captain that always speaks with gentility, or you could basically be Bender from Futurama and be as belittling and demeaning as you want. I even gave a space station engineer the finger that one time… with both hands!
The black hole
If you read my stuff, you know that I glorify the Unreal Engine 4 to a point where most would think I am some sort of undercover shill. However, my admiration has hit something of a rupture with The Outer Worlds as this game needs TLC in the optimisation department.
Visually, the game is above average, decent even. Obsidian have really committed to this spaghetti western meets 1960’s sci-fi B movie look (complete with shrink ray!), so the styling of the levels is very palpable. Aside from those jaggy teeth, the characters have been rendered with surprising detail, and The Outer Worlds manages to feel distinct enough to set itself apart from most RPG’s that have gone this route.
Technically, the game needs some work. The frame rate could/should certainly be much higher, which tells me Obsidian needs economise by culling assets not rendered on-screen. This is further worsened by some really terrible texture pop-in. In some areas I would often wait in one spot for all the visual assets to finish rendering, only to find more pop-in once I started walking forward.
The combat was also insipid at times. The player will be give access to a decent selection of guns, heavy weapons, melee weapons, and armour all accompanied by stats that players can modify or enhance at workstations. You can tell whoever was the designer lead on combat plays a lot of games like Destiny or Borderlands.
In this case, however, enemies just end up feeling a little bullet spongy when the weapons’ fire power is based in stats. You blast them with huge balls of energy from ray guns, or you zap them with crackling bolts of electricity, but their health bars barely drain. Occasionally, their AI also does that ‘Bethesda’ thing where they run to a certain place, and become permanently rooted to the spot while the player is free to empty their entire clip at them.
Space balls
These are more like frustrations, however, rather than total deal-breakers. The Outer Worlds remains an appealing game because RPG’s nowadays rarely invest this much in their moment to moment gameplay. Publishers tend to fixate on the overall experience, which means that the smaller side quests and routine character encounters become generic, bland filler.
As such, The Outer Worlds is the kind of controlled and condensed RPG that I like. This game will set the average player back roughly 30 hours with some change, but there is all the world building, character development and stats manipulation that you can expect in games that are three, even four times longer. Let’s face it, Bethesda has forsaken us, and if Obsidian is the kind of developer that aims to replace them, things are looking up.
- Excellent writing
- Black humour
- Variety of environments
- Character interaction
- Never overreaches itself
-
- PC optimisation
- Slightly repetitive
- Combat AI feels dated
- Guns lack power
- Useless loot
PC Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM
Pieter hails all the way from the tip of southern Africa and suffers from serious PC technophilia. Therapists say it is incurable. Now he has to remind himself constantly that gaming doesn’t count as a religion even if DRM is the devil. Thankfully, writing reviews sometimes helps with the worst symptoms.
the outer woke
the outer soyworlds
“Mass Effect (1,2,3 and that crappy one”
It’s call Andromeda and yes it may not have turned out the best, but how about some professionalism in your work.
Just calling out the things as they are. Very rare in modern world.
Sounds about right to me. It is the crappy one.
(1,2,3 and that one with the terrible writing, absolute bug infestation, disgustingly designed characters made by a production team that hates gamers).
Here fixed it for you.
That’s what I meant!
The first few hours I was thinking it was game of the year material.. eventually once I got to about 70% of the game I just kind of lost interest and uninstalled it. The planets/worlds have this really unappealing level design that makes you not want to explore. I know these are supposed to be alien planets but the colors and art style were a bit of a turn off/uninsteresting. Then there was the loot… I never once felt the need to use any of it. The forced graphic options were terrible. Thankfully you could edit a config file for this game in game pass to disable the horrendous chromatic abberation, dof and other monstrositys. Im not one to care about gender or sexual orientation but damn… this game just felt like the dev team was all feminazi, woman empowering, men hating feminists. it was over the top. almost every npc in the game is female, you got your companions lesbian relationship. it felt too in your face/forced/annoying. you eventually get a guy companion and you discuss with your other companions how he is a dumb guy. some more variety aka aliens/robots/dudes would have been interesting. Overall… I’d add it to the list of disappointing hyped 2019 games aka Metro Exodus and Gears of War.
It has potential for a sequel down the road. 5/10
“Im not one to care about gender or sexual orientation but damn… this game just felt like the dev team was all feminazi, woman empowering, men hating feminists. it was over the top. almost every npc in the game is female, you got your companions lesbian relationship. it felt too in your face/forced/annoying”
It did ill post pictures to prove it but every man is a pathetic weaking every woman is strong and respectable and has a masculine role all women are ugly and have short hair with weird colors on them, the character you got is a brown female mechanics is is a asexual lesbian because her father abused her. Cant get any more sjw than that.
WAIT YOU CAN, if you play as a female character most women hit on you but as a male they dont.
Its a game made by asexual butch faced lesbians with neon hair for asexual butch faces lesbians with neon hair
It was quite a turn off. Thankfully it cost nothing to play on Gamepass. I would hate to have spent $60us on this trash
i was saying this ever since the first screenshots appeared, it might be a nice rpg but the wokeness and art style keep will keep me from ever playing it
Obviously I’m not a fan of the ideology, but the feminism was ridiculous in this game. To the point where I can objectively say it ruins the immersion, regardless of your view point on the matter. Its worse than a 4th wall break.
If it were a world I genuinely found interesting, as opposed to 50’s sci-fi nostalgia, I still wouldnt be able to ignore it. It’s Wolfenstein: The New Colossus bad at times.
“To the point where I can objectively say it ruins the immersion, regardless of your view point on the matter. Its worse than a 4th wall break.”
Lets be objective here.
-The majority of the characters are women with short hair with neon colors all of which have masculine roles while men are pathetic and weak.
-The game cant decide wherever its a 50s style retro sci fi, a cutting edge sci fi or a victorian era sci fi game. There is no consistency in the world, its like you are playing a fallout game with different mods that are not lore friendly
-the dialogue is post ironic to the point of not taking itself seriously constantly breaking the 4th wall with things like “secret lab” on top of a building where you go to find “diet toothpaste” and no one takes anything seriously, people are dying things are horrible, lets make another post ironic joke while we look for diet toothpaste in the “Secret lab”
It just cant be taken seriously at all.
Diet Toothpaste!!! OMG!!! HAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA I am definitely gonna steal that to use in jokes with friends. GOLD!
???? Dude, that is a mission in the game i didnt make it up.
Nice mini-review! I agree with the loot thing, but thankfully I did not notice the feminazi stuff too much. I watched in horror as I saw all the tweets about the writers insisting on inserting vapid identity politics into a video game, but I did not really notice it thank goodness. Maybe I just don’t care enough for all that that it kind of went over my head.
Sjwpoilers: You will get a robot as a companion later
I quit before that. No interest to go back either
This isnt anywhere near as good as new vegas, its more polished but its short, repetitive, lacking in weapon variety, the character design is basically sjw, all men are weaklings and stupid or clowns all women are strong independent powerful wamman who need no man. Its basicly genderswap. Tough cowboy played by a woman, engineer or mechanic played by a woman, sheriff or guard played by a woman. All of which are very ugly and masculine with scars, short hair and colored hair. Meanwhile most men are scrawny weak old scientists who need help or fools. That goes for nearly every single character, this lack of character types kills it for me since essentially every character is the same and its written by sjw feminists. Dont believe look up the writers. Heck if you play as a woman nearly every female character hits on you.
This isnt written by Chris Avellone and you can tell. It lacks that that focus. Id argue the characters lack variety since all of them look sound and behave like stupid milenials. If you want more proof Pravati the first partymember is a brown female engineer who is a asexual lesbian who sounds like a stupid insecure girl and the loyalty quests involves getting her a date with the only feminie looking female character in the game. The one from the trailer, who now has sht smeared over her face to look uglier. Every character in this game looks like it has a gender studies degree even the computer ai. On top of that the story of the game goes nowhere ad no one takes seriously anything that happens, everyone laughs it off that things are dire and are getting killed its like borderlands but less edgy cringe and more awkward cringe .
I just cant get immersed and take this seriously if no one does. So i was like what the heck, might as well have fun with it, started a new character made her stupid and called her femina….z wait, i cant name my character that along with many other things including “pakistani” wtf? This idiotic censorship is getting ridiculous. Cant name a class assault or say assume in modern warfare because it has a and ss in it, now this. Wtf is wrong with these modern devs they are like leftist puritans. I used tricks to get the name i want, with changing the i with a small L, and there we go. Well playing stupid is underwelming no one near as good as new vegas, in fact the entire dialogue system and choices might be better than the trash and abominations that bethesda and bioware released lately but that doesnt mean much. Still its underwhelming and mostly smoke and mirrors, eg in a the beginning you can tell 2 npcs to attack some marauders or trick them by calling them cowards but they gonna attack the marauders anyway if you engage so whats the point? If they die in combat or you kill them, another npc pops up and says “so what happen to these 2? and you can lie or tell truth that they shot themselves and died in a accident…and the other npc believes it and says “third time this month?, Oh well” and he believes it. It so stupid i cant take it seriously. Another example is a mission with a robot that if you have high enough repair science skills or whatever you can fix it but if you dont and you are stupid you can smack it like an idiot and that fixes it. I just cant take this seriously its so stupid on top of the role playing being smoke and mirrors so most of the time you will be able to solve a quest by getting the same result no matter which skill you use. Its all smoke and mirrors its nowhere near as deep as it claims to be. Also there is a lot of combat in the game.
The combat is your typical bullet sponge enemies and i would say the combat mechanics are more simplistic than fallout 4 when it comes to aiming firing, recoil etc etc. There are very few weapons which means you keep using the same weapons but on different levels. Why have leveled weapons, why new vegas handled weapons fine, but on top of that they degrade and need repairs. Why? This is sci fi not post apocalyptic. Speaking of which, the game’s style makes no sense at all. So you got sci fi elements, then you got retro sci fi, then you got some victorian influences but every npc looks like they came straight out of tumblr. This is very weird you got some weapons that look retrosci fi, some look high end sci fi and some look like they came from the 1920s or something. The style makes no sense, in fact i would say it has no style at all, unless abusing your eyes with chromatic abomination is a style.
Finally the game is short with a underwelming story that goes nowhere, too repetitive with bulletspongy combat, nowhere near as many choices as new vegas and i just cant take it seriously, i mean you are told to go to a “secret base” which has “secret base” written on it with big letters in the middle of the map and your task is to find diet toothpaste….come on, might as well use a random world generator to write the script.
Is it better than fallout 4 and 76 or mass effect andromeda and anthem? Sure but those games did not have any roleplaying and were broken underwelming trash. So this game is better than those and after eating so much trash we know thing this is high end quality dinner but its just a cheap burger..with soy sauce in it.
Stand by as i post some interesting pics
Can’t upvote 2 times sorry lol, what a review !!
could add more like how its not as nonlinear as new vegas in enviroments but its more like kotor with bigger maps, how there are too many enemy spawns, cant remove mods from weapons so if you put a scope on your pistol, you are stuck with it, or how if you are caught stealing you can say “i wasnt doing anything” and they will let you go.
Overall its better than fallout 4/76 and what bioware has become, but the old obsidian is over, they are now on par with bioware with mass effect 3 and they will get worse. The last 2 games obsidian made were not a fluke, they are becoming bioware, that is new bioware not old bioware.
Oh and something else, the entire game is “corporations are bad and incompetent” but obsidian was bought out by Microsoft.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Be ready to be called “incel”.
obviously anyone who doesnt agree with leftists is a incel, but as everything with leftists, its projection, incel screams the male feminist that doesnt get any, incel screams the cat lady whale strong and empowered woman who will die alone.
Being better than FO4, an especially FO76 doesn’t mean anything, the both are awful, seeing what they done with Pillars of Eternity 2 (an interactive SJW propaganda) i lost all hopes.
This is absolutely ridiculous, we’re left with multiple cancers in gaming (Microtransactions, store exclusivity, launch day problems…) but this SJW stuff is the most annoying cancer ever, you can’t just ignore it and play, or wait for a patch or something like that, once it’s filled with it, it’s for life, i hated that cowboy short hair female character and the overall atmosphere since the first trailer, and i was shocked by the the people hyping it, if this is going to be the next RPG big dev, we’re doomed…
” seeing what they done with Pillars of Eternity 2 (an interactive SJW propaganda) ”
like i sawed in the pics i posted….same writers.
“, i hated that cowboy short hair female character and the overall atmosphere since the first trailer, ”
well guess what every character looks like that but their hair are various neon colors and some of them are black…with red hair.
However in that trailer that asian woman looked feminine, in the full game she is the head engineer of a town/ship area and she has sht smeared on her face to loook uglier.
Hell… And add that Epic exclusivity and we’re f*cking done… It’s really sad to witness the guys who almost saved Fallout fall into this leftist garbage…
20% of them worked on new vegas, most have left…and now the studio is owned by microsoft….obisidian in name only.
Wow I liked reading that thank you! Like I said above, I am horrified by the idea of identity politics being shoved into video games for it’s own sake. Those pics you posted of those tweets from the devs were terrifying, but thankfully I did not really notice it too much during gameplay. I dunno, I guess I am just more apathetic so my experience would probably not reflect that of others.
i dont think the game is bad but its small its short, most of the choices result into the same thing, its like smoke and mrrors, its too easy no matter what you do and the story goes nowhere, its like they run out of time or something. Finally the combat is bulletspongy messes with both leveled weapons and condition so they need repairs. The art style makes no sense its like they mixed 3 settings together but have no consistency, alt east elex had different styles for a good story reasons and the factions were different not everything mixed together. Then you got the npcs and the writing, it feels like someone took tumblr milenial post ironic jokes that constantly break the 4th wall and mixed them together and a ai shot them out and now we get to play this game.
Like i said, a old man who talks like he came from the 1920s is sending you to a “Secret base” that says “secret base” above the main door to find “diet toothpaste” as you save a red hair tough woman who needs no man…and by save i mean agree to help here not save because she aint no damsel in distress just like the other short hair woman with red hair who also you need to save but she inserted herself in the group of marauders because she is tough and edgy…and if you decide to shoot them and be done with them, they gonna take a bazillion of bullets because they are high level and they are TOUGH, get it? So even the combat is meh.
New vegas: different groups with distinct ideologues who view the world different, quests that intertwine with each faction, Hegelian dialectics, you decide the future of mojave, side with a faction or take them all out.
The outer soyworlds: lolz wamman stronk men stupid, post ironic buffy humor, look at my neon hair, by the way i am asexual, corporations bad but we were bought out by microsoft, go to the “secret base” ahahha its not so secret after all…to find “diet toothpaste”…ahahaha we are so funny.
“gunshut sounds to someones head”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EI95_SQVUAE7y3c.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EI96KHOU8AAp2QI.jpg
Its not your imagination, it is made by sjws and like i said if you play as a woman every woman with hit on you.
Thanks for the warning.
Fine detective work here!!!
“oh but its made by obsidian blah blah blah”
Only 20% of those who worked on it and did not do the writing
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EI96qqDUYAEcSC0.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EI96qrDVAAAsl2E.png
Obsidian in name only.
I need more of this stuff, I like it.
dont know what to tell you man. New vegas has a ncr lesbian who got raped by a raider and you can go to her and be like “i like tough women wanna date?” Meanwhile in the outer SOYwords you hook up a asexual lesbian with another one and you get friendzoned.
It’s clear from the pics you have posted what a SJW shitstorm it is. I like all the clear things that happened in the game and doesn’t know what to be or wants to be. Meanwhile on reddit every post is “tOW – GOTY” The game is mediocre at best. Whoever disagrees or posts that the game is just ok get downvoted to oblivion so it doesn’t appear on the front page.
we talking about people that are milenial soyboys who kept on playing flopout shttysix despite how much of a dumpster fire that doesnt go off and keeps catching on fire, that game was.
There are a ton of things you cant name your character, this is one of them,
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EI96qqHU8AE0uMy.png
https://i.imgur.com/KyUjDW2.jpg
There was another one that was a sjw on twitter complaining that if she played as female character all the women hit on her but i cant find it right now.
Censoring character names in a singleplayer RPG? F*ck this clown world.
do you miss the old fallout writing i sure as heck do
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F0grTfT8.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzkb6wuj3ana21.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fe5T5ot0.png&f=1&nofb=1
I found the writing to be really average.
Whaaaat really!? It was my favourtie part lol
it wasnt average it was millennial cringe. Of course the fact it is different than most generic games made it more interesting and unique…but you got to understand…these kind of people write everything this way. Every game they gonna make is gonna be like this, breaking the 4th wall self referencing post ironic, it will get old.
I don’t know man, I was play Disco Elysium in between, and the difference was really noticeable. I wasn’t engaged at all. Who are these people on my ship? Who cares about their problems I just met them 5 min ago.
Nah there is nothing here guys, its just so happen this game has post ironic humor like it was written by millennial who never grew up and the narrative/character writers are feminist sjws who made a asexual lesbian brown mechanic who was abused as a kid and most of the characters look like they came out of tumblr and if you play as a woman all those abominations hit on you.
https://i.imgur.com/4ks4Ww8.png
feminism the videogame
Pickle Rick’s Borderlands New Vegas: Soy Edition.
Hahahahahaha!
Not great, not terrible?
Great review Pieter. The game was pretty good, it’s been a while since I enjoyed a fpp rpg. Keep it up!
It was four short maps + rushed finale. I wouldn’t call it a game per se. Prototype probably.
yup everyone is comparing it to modern trash not old good rpgs
Thanks for reading!
Damn, the more I hear about this game the happier I am that I didn’t care much for it to begin with.
While I would prefer a darker game from Obsidian, I may check this out when it heads to steam and goes on sale with low expectations.
for increase performance enable vsync and triple buffering on nvidia control panel
While I would prefer a darker game from Obsidian, I may check this out when it heads to steam and goes on sale with low expectations.
I took advantage of the cheap xbox game pass thing for PC, and I got 10-15 hours into the game before it got too boring. Characters are cardboard cutouts, the dialogue is cringy and woke, and it really doesn’t look that good. I got tired of the strong, independent womxn thingy quite quickly.
All Men in TWO are villains and/or idiots. All whamens are strong brave and independent. There is one normal female in this game – secretary in second planet but she is stupid and infantile. Sheriff Yes female boss of biggest space station? Lesbian whamen ofcrs. Space station chief of Police. Black Woman her deputy? Stupid beta ma?e soyboy.