The Outer Worlds: objective criticism of a sub-par Obsidian game.

[Tamaster]

Since I can't review this game, I can at least make a fair criticism of it for those interested.

Obsidian always had excellent quality standards, that's a fact. From Pillars of Eternity to new Vegas, its RPGs were about as good as it can get. Every single time they nailed it.

Then came The Outer Worlds, which is not a terrible game, but for what is to be expected from Obsidian, it's mediocre, sub-par at the very least, light-years away from any other production of this dev.

The Outer Worlds falls short in the following elements:

1. The lore:
At a first glance, and visually even rightly so, the world of this title may appear as a dazzling, vibrant mix of modern and antique, much as seen in games such as Bioshock (Rapture) to make a close example, where advanced tech mixes with retro-style. But, Obsidian falls short on building the lore of this world: first of all, it uses an overly clichè, stereotyped, and very exaggerated "dystopian corporate ruled future" as a baseline, then proceeds to fill it to the brim with situations, events and happenings which are, at best, mind boggling, or outright ridiculous, utterly unrealistic in anything but a straight up comedy.

The way corporations have shaped society, interact with worker-citizens, and act as political social and military rulers all in one is extremely exaggerated and honestly, for a game that wants to have a "dark" background tone in depicting the evils of corporate power, does so in a way so overly-inflated that just results comical, if not sad. Besides this, there isn't just much lore or depth about the world itself, the best source of such lore are dialogues and found documents, which even if read very attentively, do not disclose at any point many elements of the lore, particularly technology, history and social evolution to the current situation.


2. The role-playing choices:
Most if not all quests will propose to the player just two ways to act, one which is clearly "right" and one which is clearly "evil" - only a few ones do blur a bit more the confines between black and white - but generally this does not happen. If you want an RPG that gives you many faceted choices to solve a situation, this is not for you. Compared to the multitude of choices seen in Pillars or New Vegas, this game absolutely pales, proposing a dumbed down, diluted roeplaying experience nowhere near Obsidian's previous works in depth or branching.


3. The gameplay, combat in particular:
The base character progression system, regarding skills (and skills only) with scalings and everything, similar to New Vegas, is pretty good - but that's it.

First of all, the removal of deep attributes and dumbing down to Personality, Body and Mind "skill groups" is really a blow, then adding a selection of uninspired, generic perks which do not even depend on character skills to be unlocked is another nail in the coffin, which removes depth even more.

Combat has been as well dumbed down with 3 generic ammo types for all weapons, quite limited weapon variety, very few really unique weapons (while most are just overly modded named ones you can make yourself...), only 5 damage types, two of which are basically useless also, while borderline useless companion active skill system and "slow-motion" o emulate Fallout's VATS - generate a combat system which is very "Fallout 4 Like", simplistic, chaotic, approximative, and really not what is expected from obsidian in their rpgs.

Supernova, the "hardest" difficulty, is basically a joke simply because of how utterly idiotic companion AI is, and since they can permanently die, i leave to you the conclusions. Supernova does not make enemies harder compared to Hard, only adds some good mechanics such as survival needs, which are good, but also removes fast travel which is a stupid design choice given how empty and bland the world generally is - it's just asking for even MORE filler. Hard difficulty is definitely too easy instead, balance is so broken i can't even begin.

The open world has been filled with 60% meaningless filler areas. Forget the detailed, unique handcrafted dungeon of new vegas as example, here there are just some generic buildings and areas filled with enemies and some crates just thrown there, very few really meaningful or unique locations outisde of quest related ones. Exploration won't be nearly as satisfying or deep as you could expect.

Modding of weapons, armors, repairs and management are also very simplified with Armor and Weapon parts generated by scrapping unwanted gear, and used for repairs, while most mods are gimmicky / useless, same for perks, and only a few are the really good ones.

Bottom line is, gameplay in all its aspects has been casualized, simplified, watered down to cater to a casual playerbase.


4. The political agendas.
Let's face it: this game markedly wants to promote CERTAIN political agendas, namely leftist ones, SJW culture, and so on. It does so noticeably but at least does NOT become ridiculous with it - it's bad sure but i've seen worse, they somewhat restrained themselves in this aspect, the SJW one at least.

What they didn't restrain in at all instead is the marked anti-capitalism propaganda they want to make, exaspertaing, exaggerating to ridiculousness the even true disadvantages and evils of a corporate society. They will put players through such situations, and such events that simply could not be plausible even in the most deranged future society. This factor takes away all seriousness or any dark tone from the game because after a whille most players will just say" come on this is ridiculous" and just have a laugh about it. If this was the intention of the devs it is even worse.

Doesn't matter if you are PRO or AGAINST this type of agendas: the sole fact they use a game and its lore, worldbuilding, characters as deceptive tools to make propaganda about real-world politics THIS much and THIS markedly, more or less subtly, is a no-go objectively.


5. The characters.
Companion personalities are a straight track, forget multi faceted, complex, meaningful, evolving characters you were used to from obsidian... you will not find this here. Instead be prepared for generic, uninteresting companions, which are simple minded, one-tracked characters that won't change much no matter what happens. Their quests are all bland, uninspired, and barely change them at all even once completed. Automatons.

General NPCs are the same. Hell, I am playing this game right now and can't even remember 3 NPC names of main story or important side quest ones. This should say a lot about how generic they are.

===

These are about all my points.

Opinions?

[Arden]

My opinion is that you nailed all points. The only thing I can add is the short duration of the game. I clocked 35 hours on supernova while exploring everything. I mean I get it. They decided to polish what they have instead of releasing more content with a lot of bugs. While this decision (regarding the bugs) is commendable the game is too short for my liking.

[Tamaster]

Arden님이 먼저 게시:

My opinion is that you nailed all points. The only thing I can add is the short duration of the game. I clocked 35 hours on supernova while exploring everything. I mean I get it. They decided to polish what they have instead of releasing more content with a lot of bugs. While this decision (regarding the bugs) is commendable the game is too short for my liking.

35 hours? Damn. I didn't finish it yet.

Edward Carnby님이 먼저 게시:

This is definitely the best evaluation of the game I have seen so far. I haven't finished yet, but right now this seems like an accurate assessment.

The corporation really bad message is like they strap you into a chair and then scream that message in your face for hours, and I am at the beginning of the game.

If they ever name the age we live in, I think it will be called the Age of Hypocrisy. Corporations saying corporations are bad. Hollywood saying capitalism is evil. People flocking to Starbucks with their latest smart phone and laptop to buy exorbitantly priced drink and food items while they blog about socialism and the evils of capitalism, People spending billions on Amazon while they preach anti-consumerism. People driving around in their gas guzzling SUVs and flying off to countries far away for their holidays, and then screaming about climate change. People preaching love and tolerance while spewing hate at everyone who doesn't agree with them 100%. Perhaps the worst one of all, the constant and never ending virtue signaling. All of this has made it's way into games. In fact, it would appear that some games can't even get a good review anymore unless they put an appropriate political message in their game.

Wouldn't it be nice to play a game like this where the sole focus of the developer and publisher was a great game and a story? I'm not so sure we can call gaming a form of escapism anymore.

Yup. Hipocrisy at its finest as well, good point.

As games become more and more polarized to promote whatever agendas, they will be less and less a form of escapism. More like a form of hidden plagiarism (plagiarizing the players). Not all games, for now, but surely a consistent part of them.

Dark times are ahead.

[deserthamster]

good post. nailed it fully. i am sad that obsidian is taking the bioware path.

[Tamaster]

deserthamster님이 먼저 게시:

good post. nailed it fully. i am sad that obsidian is taking the bioware path.

Sad.

Also: imagine those poor derelict souls of the "OFFICIAL PRESS" giving this game 8/9/10 ratings and saying it's "an instant classic" because they have to lick publishers' boots until they shine or else get fired.

Poor sods. Wouldnt do that for a million bucks.

[Grebo Punter]

The game pushes no more political agenda than the Half Life games, its just a classic dystopian setting with humor. Mocking rampant consumerism and runaway corporatism in games like Borderlands or GTA never sent people foaming at the mouth about a political conspiracy agenda - that I know of. These days probably there are some trying.

Finding secret agendas in games is like the 80's heavy metal scare where the same breed of rabid fundamentalists were claiming secret messages from Satan in rock music to corrupt the youth.

Probably some nutbag lunars out there are selling the idea that Red Dead Redemption is cultural marxists brainwashing people into something for some ridiculous reason, or the subliminal messages in Dark Souls or Monster Hunter World designed to make people change identity because reasons.

Conspiracy theorists seek out the most benign details in games now, or movies or anything really, to support their crazed theories about a sinister all-powerful global conspiracy where they personally are the victim. Oh no, the physics limitations on hair models polygon counts secretly is a sign that means blah blah blah, the Illuminati is coming to get me. The mindset just makes these fools ripe for manipulation and distracts them from real world issues.

It is so beyond dumb at this point and tiresome, like a dried up old meme that you can't remember why it was funny in the first place, and since half are trolls anyway, trolling these simpletons ends up in a circle troll of trolls trolling-off trolls.

[Tamaster]

Grebo Punter님이 먼저 게시:

The game pushes no more political agenda than the Half Life games, its just a classic dystopian setting with humor. Mocking rampant consumerism and runaway corporatism in games like Borderlands or GTA never sent people foaming at the mouth about a political conspiracy agenda - that I know of. These days probably there are some trying.

Finding secret agendas in games is like the 80's heavy metal scare where the same breed of rabid fundamentalists were claiming secret messages from Satan in rock music to corrupt the youth.

Probably some nutbag lunars out there are selling the idea that Red Dead Redemption is cultural marxists brainwashing people into something for some ridiculous reason, or the subliminal messages in Dark Souls or Monster Hunter World designed to make people change identity because reasons.

Conspiracy theorists seek out the most benign details in games now, or movies or anything really, to support their crazed theories about a sinister all-powerful global conspiracy where they personally are the victim. Oh no, the physics limitations on hair models polygon counts secretly is a sign that means blah blah blah, the Illuminati is coming to get me. The mindset just makes these fools ripe for manipulation and distracts them from real world issues.

It is so beyond dumb at this point and tiresome, like a dried up old meme that you can't remember why it was funny in the first place, and since half are trolls anyway, trolling these simpletons ends up in a circle troll of trolls trolling-off trolls.

Half Life, Borderlands and GTA (GTA? Wait what?) did not, as a commenter said in this thread, very correctly, "strap you to a chair and scream at you the 'corporations are bad'" message over and over again for 30 hours. The outer worlds does exactly this instead.

It's no conspiracy theory - that would imply there is some hidden agenda - but instead this propaganda is in plain sight, you should pay more attention to the game's topics, themes and dialogues if you did not extrapolate such agenda (assuming you played the game, which i do not know).

I'm no "conspiracy theorist". This game clearly has agendas brought to an extreme in the regards of 1. anti-capitalism 2. SJW culture promotion - I suggest you take a better look at the numerous instances where this is evident. Watch some videos, play the game more if you have it.

I am not saying to be against or in favor of such agendas, deosn't matter. Regardless, pushing them to such an extreme as i detailed in the OP, is plain wrong, ridiculous and stupid. It ruins the game's story, lore and atmosphere because you can definitely notice at every corner how highlighted and marked these agendas are in any topic borught up during quests, companion dialogues, lore entries and such. To the point of becoming obnoxious.

The games you mention as example do not do this even remotely as evidently, as frequently, and plus have built a far more solid lore / storyline to justify the partial political / ideological agendas they may have in their themes. Outer worlds does not do this, or does it poorly.

Addendum: Even if you completely wanted to ignore the political / idological part of my criticism, that would not remove the other gameplay / design / balance problems I described.

[Wyrtt]

I can close my eye on lots of things. But awful writing salted with preteen level jokes and broken combat are too much for me.

AI can even follow order. It will still teleport and move on its own if you order to hold ground. And that ♥♥♥♥ manages to die from 2-3 hits for no reason.

[DeadBeat]

Personally, I found shopping for soap to be the most rewarding of all. :)

[The Badman]

The outer world devs said on interview that satire of corporatism was a main theme in the game. It isnt even a conspiracy.

I dont have anything against supporting any political cause with your product. But if people dislike it and not buy your product, dont go around guilting them, it's bad business. And lo and behold, obsidian actually has the sense to not do it, even their employees havent done anything of that sort so far.

I dont agree with certain criticism of OP though:
Mind/Body/Spirit are only category. There are actually 6 stats you must level separately. They arent even like skill category (melee, range...) where put point into one put point into all. NV has 7 stats. To be a certain character archetype (brawler, talker, ranger...) you level 2-3 stats higher than the rest which is also the case in this game. The only thing missing is luck, but considering the scope of the game, it doesnt need that stat.

Companions skills are useless or not depend on your build and difficulty. I tried a low combat leadership talky build with light armor and no stealing on supernova. And they are life saver a lot of time.

The rest is about right.

[The Badman]

Also one thing: skill category go up too high. Cap it at 30 or so. So you actually has to consider companions, skill bonuses and consumables in the majority of contents.

The perk that let you revive companion should be presented at tier 1 or 2, esp on supernova. Or make it a 60 leadership skill reward

[Wyrtt]

Its not really agenda. You give Obsidian too much credit. They just choose hottest trend to follow and based story on it. Everyone loves meme joke kekeke plots. Look at the borderlands and other games like that.
Imagine if game actualy tried to tell a serious story. Not that many people would buy it, No one likes to think too much in their one button FPS games.

[DarkFenix]

Spot on OP, pretty much sums up my intent in all cases. Nothing egregiously bad about the game, but few things done right either. Every facet of the game watered down to the point of being devoid of anything interesting or notable.

While many will rail against critique of the politics pervading the game, I think it's an entirely fair criticism. This is an entertainment medium, a global one no less, yet here is an American studio really quite obviously dumping their personal political views into a game. I honestly couldn't care less which political views some American fanatic has, I just don't want them thrown in my face. And it's not about agreeing or disagreeing with those views (I'm not American, I couldn't care less about that nonsense), it's about just how completely inappropriate it is for them to be here in the first place.

Other media (TV and movies spring to mind) have become rife with politics in recent years, to their great detriment. Obsidian so blatantly doing the same to a game should not simply be let off without comment, it should be criticised.

[Simon Bar Sinister]

I miss the music. Not saying they should have a pipboy radio thing but the music was one of the things that always brought me back to keep playing the fallout games

[The Hat]

The Badman님이 먼저 게시:

The outer world devs said on interview that satire of corporatism was a main theme in the game. It isnt even a conspiracy.

Corporatism is not Capitalism.

I can't comment further as I haven't played the game, but being careful with the wording if you are speaking about this is important.

[Grebo Punter]

The only agenda I see on many gaming forums is some people ranting about the imaginary SJW straw man meme. It's pure projection, who really has the agenda here?

This game is no more heavy-handed in its themes or diversity than New Vegas, or the other games I listed that also have satirical elements. You can use satire without it being some sort of fad politics of the day. If this game was released prior to 2014, people would not be crying over video game hair cuts as if it was some personal terrifying threat against their masculinity somehow. When New Vegas came out there weren't culture warriors lurking on every forum looking to push their agenda where everything is part of the SJW conspiracy.

And for the sake of argument, when in the last five years did the archetypical runaway corporatism long employed in fiction suddenly become so politicized that depicting it has an agenda? It's a long-used universal trope, like crushing bureaucracy, or prison food or zombie outbreak. It's not like the original Fallout games from the same directors don't explore the same things. The stories haven't changed much over time, just how some are reacting.

I suppose we will have to sit through the same nonsense trollubation over Cyberpunk 2077 for also having a corporate faction and weird threatening hair cuts.