Disappointed Expectations and Suggested Improvements

[Dmitry Vorobyev]

Despite eagerly awaiting the second part, I have to express my disappointment with the first chapter. My anticipation was sky-high, especially considering the reputation of the developers. However, I was met with a game featuring a small world overwhelmed by sarcasm. There was so much sarcasm that it became tiresome, and I found myself ignoring it altogether. The game only had two truly memorable and serious moments for me.

The first was when the doctor, who revived us, expressed his solitude and anguish over previous failed resurrection attempts. That scene was emotional and authentic, and I genuinely felt it. The second was during a visit to a radio station, where we discovered that communication with Earth was lost, leading us to presume Earth's demise. These were the only two serious parts in an otherwise sarcasm-laden game. While I understand that humor is central to the game's concept, when everything is a joke, it ceases to be funny. This is a major reason for my dissatisfaction.

Another aspect that fell short was the visuals, particularly the main planet where most of the game takes place. It was lackluster not only in terms of level and art design but also in landscape complexity. Any randomly generated planet in "No Man’s Sky" appears more vibrant and diverse compared to the handcrafted environments in this game, which is perplexing to me.

Additionally, the world felt overly compact, leading to unrealistic scenarios. For example, while speaking with a guard who won’t let you pass without a passkey, you’re offered choices: kill the guard, find the passcode, or sneak in through a ventilation shaft. These immersive sim elements feel forced and unconvincing because everything is crammed into one small area. You can literally see the ventilation shaft while engaging in dialogue, making the experience disjointed.

I completed the first DLC and encountered a similar issue. There is a storyline involving a mother and daughter where you have the opportunity to mend their relationship. Despite having gathered the necessary documents and information, I was unable to use them in the final dialogue because my character’s stats were too low. This limitation, despite having the evidence, was incredibly frustrating. The inability to use the resources collected due to insufficient character points feels unfair and quite discouraging.

Overall, while there were moments of potential, the game's execution leaves much to be desired. I hope the developers consider these aspects for future improvements.

[Mookashea]

I was also disappointed in the first game. Overall the whole game felt so small and limited... with the limited selection of guns while having an abundance of miscellaneous health items just made it feel smaller. I hope to see better balancing in the next game since having one of the hardest mobs on the tutorial planet and not anywhere else is an odd choice. I really loved the murder mystery DLC more then the base game story so I hope to see more of that as well. Overall this looks like a wait till reviews come out and maybe even a wait for sale.

[monster_urby]

I think the first game had a lot of potential but fell short in a lot of areas due to the very limited budget. This was the first full 3D game Obsidian made since they almost went bankrupt in 2012, and as such their budget was incredibly tight even by AA standards.

As such, the game had a real sense of compromise running all the way through it. Areas in the announcement trailer were cut from the game. There was a major lack of variety to the armour, weapons and enemies you would come across. The worlds were static, right down to the motionless planets in the skybox. Enemies hung around in small clusters and only fought one another during scripted events. You couldn't even lead one pack of enemies into another as they would rubberband back to their spawn location after chasing you for so long, like an MMORPG. What's more, you always seemed to enter areas AFTER some big disaster or battle had taken place. You'd be told about some upcoming clash between factions and it would happen off-screen just before you arrived.

Also yeah, while the story itself was fine, the tone leaned a little too far into goofy territory for my liking, It lacked the dark comedy that made Cain and Boyarsky's original universe, Fallout, so memorable. In fact, a lot of the characters in the game were ignorant to the point of stupidity. The outlandish hyper-capitalism was normalised for every NPC, with the player, a blank slate with no real character or voice, the only one playing the role of straight man.

As for the DLC, Peril on Gorgon suffered a lot of the same issues the base game did. Asteroids just aren't interesting to explore and the new enemies were... pink versions of those in the base game. To give Obsidian their due, Murder on Eridanos was MUCH better in the sense that it was heavily dialogue focused. The tone was a little darker, with the mind controlled staff being downright creepy at times.

Personally, I always saw The Outer Worlds as a necessary stepping stone for Obsidian. Something to get their name out there again as a first person RPG developer and attract some attention from both players and investors. In spite of it's lacklustre reception, a LOT of people seem to be excited for Outer Worlds 2. I hope that with a larger budget we will get a much more fleshed out set of worlds to explore with a more balanced comedic/dark tone.

[Icevenom]

Look at the trailer man.
Does any part of that hint at a dark serious tone?
I'm pretty sure from that point of view it's going to be exactly the same as 1.

I'm kind of turned off the the everything's-a-joke vibe myself (didn't even finish part 1) but eh... i guess there are worse things out there. If the gunplay is better (which they are directly promising...) i will play it mindless mode.

[monster_urby]

Oh, the tone was by no means a deal breaker for me and I saw the original game through to the end three times. It would just be nice to have a better sense of the lingering/overarching threat sooner than the last third of the main quest, and therein be at least a little bit darker in tone.

There's the rifts mentioned in the article that are causing havoc and the factions that want to handle them in different ways. That at least seems a little more tangible than TOW1's uhm... creeping malnutrition plot?

[Inquerion]

Glad to hear that I wasn't the only one tired of all that sarcasm in Outer Worlds 1. Thanks, Dmitry. Perfect review.

I enjoy SOME sarcasm and politics from time to time (like in Fallout), but when almost every NPC is making sarcastic jokes (mostly about how capitalism is bad) game is getting tiresome and boring quite quickly. I barely finished base game and never tried DLCs due to that.

I expected a lot more from creators of FNV and KOTOR2.
I think that we should just accept that old Obsidian is dead (just like old Bioware).
Most talented veteran devs left the company years ago.

My current expectation is that Outer Worlds 2 will be another mediocre game, but this time it will actually sell quite poorly. Why? Many people bought Outer Worlds 1 because they thought that Obsidian is making space New Vegas or at least a better Fallout 4.
These people got tricked, because we got small, limited and short 20-30 hrs game instead.
Yes, it had some good parts, but it was mostly mediocre. Not a big hit like previous Obsidian games.

[Monomyth]

You bought the wrong game then played all of it and the DLC then came here to say how much you didn't like it.

[merusalem]

Originally posted by Dmitry Vorobyev:

the game's execution leaves much to be desired

Unfortunately, this has become Obsidian's business model. They built their entire production pipeline around it. Quite ingenious from a money-making point of view, actually.

1. Stop development after delivering an untested 80 to 90 percent of a game.
   
   
2. Then shift the developers to the next project, so that Obsidian can make as much money as possible, as fast as possible. No more "unproductive" developers whose money-making potential is wasted by having them fix bugs. Sure, they know the codebase best, but let us keep our priorities straight, i.e. making money.
   
   
3. Have customer service "done" by sending canned replies when thousands of people report the same game-breaking bugs. All of these just reading "My, we never heard of that! Make sure this is prioritized by sending a detailed report to,,,"
   
   
4. Make it the responibility of a different team, if possible a different company, to pretend fixing the bugs. Which quite obviously cannot be done in many cases, because the bug is caused by a component so deep inside the game engine's code that you would do more harm by even trying to fix it. So, please do not blame individual devs in that non-bug-fixing team. They are as much vicitims of Obsidian's business model as us players are. Besides, the original developers whose (mis-)interaction caused that bug have been moved twice to a new project anyway. If they are even still working for Obsidian.
   
   
5. As soon as a bug-fixer has reached a basic level of understanding for the code, move them out of the bug-fixing team into a team that makes Obsisian actually some money, i.e. put them into one of the actual development teams. If needed, cancel contracts with the bug-fixing companies or teams and (re-)hire the devs.
   
   
6. Blame someone else when caught producing software that does not work. That is made a lot easier by having the "distributed responsibility" I described.

Granted, it took me quite a while to catch on, as a player (and a previous dev). So, continuing to buy Obsidian's games is entirely on me.

It took me experiencing (I carefully selected this term, because any other actually appropriate alternative would be considered spiteful) Outer Worlds 1, Grounded, and the pre-release information about Avowed to see the pattern.

As a business owner, you do not change how your production pipeline works just because some cooks on the Internet like us complain about low quality. As long as you get premium payments each year for fooling consumers. It is pretty obvious that Obsidian management's mantra has over the years developed from "Let us make games that are as good as possible" to "Let us make sort-of-OK games as long as it pays enough to cover our compensation. Let us learn from EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, and CDPR."

As I said, it is entirely on me that it took me so long to understand this. Once I did, though, I decided to support indie studios instead who are still in their infancy.

[Mookashea]

Originally posted by merusalem:

Originally posted by Dmitry Vorobyev:

the game's execution leaves much to be desired

the years developed from "Let us make games that are as good as possible" to "Let us make sort-of-OK games as long as it pays enough to cover our compensation. Let us learn from EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, and CDPR."

I think its a bit worse then that. Their whole marketing is "Hey you know that beloved game franchise ? Yeah we are making something JUST like that maybe even better! Trust us!! Like the pitch for The Outer Worlds was "Hey remember Fallout? Yeah well look at how much like fallout this is? but but but in SPACE yeah check that out! We got the guys from fallout to do this btw ya know fallout "

[Cryptie]

I'm having a freaking blast with the 1st game so far ...

[Mookashea]

Originally posted by Cryptie:

I'm having a freaking blast with the 1st game so far ...

Thats really cool and great that you are having fun with the game I mean this genuinely. However what does that add to the topic? Or really what does that add?

[merusalem]

Originally posted by Mookashea:

Originally posted by Cryptie:

I'm having a freaking blast with the 1st game so far ...

Thats really cool and great that you are having fun with the game I mean this genuinely. However what does that add to the topic? Or really what does that add?

I guess in this day and age, you need to know where your pitchfork is, so that you can take it up on a moment's notice.

So, I took the remark as a mumble of "I know where my thing is. The thing I do things with when someone says a thing."

If I had not, I might have asked what you did. So, thanks, for taking that load off me. :D

[DrZann]

I also enjoyed the game.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

It had fun aspects, but yes. I would also agree about "compact" and "limited". An not having the option to switch to third person was also foolish.