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.

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These are about all my points.

Opinions?

[alamoscouts]

for me it was just a PITA to play compared to other RPGs

[Babbles]

Nguyên văn bởi alamoscouts:

for me it was just a PITA to play compared to other RPGs

Yeah I recently brought it because I demoed it a couple of times, both times I go bored pretty easily - the zoom in on characters face to hash out 10 lines is kinda getting stale too, BG3 and Cyberpunk does this cinematic full voice over thing much more proficiently.