My take on the game, Review (talking about lore, no story spoilers)

[Lord Likhus]

Supernova, mostly solo

First of all the gameplay is better than most people give it credit for. The Time Dilation and Weakness system is much better than Fallout's V.A.T.S, and the skill system is fluid. It doesn't need to be more complicated than this, choosing skills in this game is meaningful, everything is worth investing in so you have to plan your build to be effective. The gameplay (which I expected nothing of) is one of this games best feature in my opinion.

The perks however are lacking, which makes the flaw system only useful to get the good perks earlier. The flaw system is a good idea however but the perks that is useful to a build is few enough that flaws are not worth it generally. (Flaws gives you a penalty in exchange for a perk).

The game is not perfectly balanced (there are some very OP builds) but this isn't a fundemental flaw. Also shotguns generally suck, don't use shotguns.

The world in itself is quite beautiful, and I like exploring the new planets. The level design on some of them is good.

Freedom: The order of what you do and how you do it is up to you to a large degree. No NPC is immortal, and the game doesn't judge you for your actions (the NPC's might). The world responds well to your skillset, you are rewarded for what you put your points into which opens up new ways, in terms of hacking, stealth, and dialogue skills. However the latter is often just some bonuses on top of a pre-determined or binary outcome. The level design lends itself well for you to make use of your skills, as I have found several ways to tackle problems that you could choose depending on your particular set of skills.

The biggest dissappointment for me was the lore.. My god such a missed opportunity..
I kept reading all the computers and asked all questions from NPC's for a long time.. but nothing.. Little to no depth at all. Even from the major characters you would expect to widen your horizon. Very little extra info to get for you to align yourself with the major players. The best you will experience is if you bring the Vicar to the Iconoclasts to talk with Graham, but there as well it lacks this depth when entering advanced topics, (in other Obsidian games you would get more depth to the philosophies through journals and minor characters, here you must try and deduce it all from a few conversations, even though you are made to decide between these philosophies in faction alignment.) expect everything to be slogans and catchphrase "philosophy".

The Companions are not the best Obsidian has made, but I think they are decent. My favorite is Vicar Max but like the rest of the game, he suffers from the writing in the long run. Even though the characters shows promise, the lack of depth shine through when their story advances, there's no Durance or Eder. I end up being bored instead of engaged the more the story (or lack thereof) reveals itself, quite the opposite of the side quests and companion stories from Pillar of Eternity.

Modernity and feminist influence: This sours the whole experience a little bit. There is, almost without fail, weak men and "strong" women (strong in the modern sense, as in stubborn/rebellious and manly, not how we would deem women strong in real life). You will see women in almost all the leader positions of the factions and on lower levels of hiearchy. In two major factions that are led by men, they are in fact quite incompetent and they have a female subordinate that actually makes things work (and in that sense the women is de facto leader). These women are talented and I have nothing against them, but when something is so consistent throughout the game, it is a choice to make it so. The fluff you read is also littered with these stories, expect a lot of modern inversions of traditional storytelling.

The journals you find, when not an attempt at comedy, is often a meaningless interaction between names you will never read again (and forget soon after), or a tale of female empowerment or something else that you are NOT searching for. It's hard to explain, but it feels like the idea of the game is made by competent people, but they left it for their children to fill out the gaps. The corporate theme with The Board is great, and very realistic in a futuristic setting, as they have become distanced from the people they view as work-ants. I wanted to engage with the story but what I just wrote is the entire depth of it, you can summarize it in a sentence.

The interplay between the Corporations and the revolting and revolutionary groups is fun and what drives the game. But they didn't draw me in like they should, they were too shallow and it becomes apparent the more you engage with them. I couldn't for the life of me understand what drove certain characters, why where they doing this, what in pragmatic terms would they like to achieve.. this is perhaps something I should know before aiding one or the other.
The game needed logical consistency, it needed to take itself a bit more seriously.
There is no Joshua Graham or Caesar's Legion here, even though you are given that impression at first glance.

At one point in a late stage of a side quest, of a faction I had been doing work for and building rep with, things were starting to look interesting and it sounded like a investigative and mysterious quest had emerged. No, it was actually just a joke. Duh, Aliens? Are you crazy?

With all that said I only write this because I actually enjoyed and like the game. But its lack of depth and engaging plots and sub-plots makes it hard to imagine replaying this again. Much of the stories feels Borderlands-level, which is not what I expected from an Obsidian RPG.

[Zarakaï]

Yeah but you're not whining about short hair and ugly whamen so nobody cares.

Just kidding, you got some interesting points, especially about the lack of depth. I stopped the sublight "aliens" quest because it didn't match the alignement of the character I was roleplaying, I thought I would keep that for another playthrough but you're saying it's just a joke quest with nothing really important or interesting.

And that's a shame, but I felt like this the whole game. They didn't push it far enough. They tried to build all that universe and didn't do anything really interesting with it.

Same when I infiltrated the chairman's office for the main quest and saw that big hole in the wall, and the office was actually empty and nobody saw the chairman for some time, and it felt like he was replaced by someone else. I thought "wow, there is some shady stuff going on here" and expected some big reveal, maybe even some Asimov-level of plot-twist with robots actually controlling the Board or something ( to correct human's mistakes or whatever ), but no, nothing, we just find the chairman Rockwell later, safe and sound, and we learn that he's the puppet of a Black woman ( Akande ) who's actually in control of the Board.

Which links to your point about the underlying feminist agenda where it's quite obvious that in this game every man is weak, incompetent or evil, and women rule. It's true in Edgewater ( Reed vs Adelaide ), on the Groundbreaker ( Udom vs Junlei ), in Stellar Bay ( Sanjar vs Celia ), at the Iconoclasts camp ( Graham vs Zora ), and in the Board itself ( Rockwell vs Akande ).

Forget about lesbians, short hair and ugly women, the real agenda is more subtle and insidious.

But it's called the Outer WorldS, with an S, and even if technically there are several worlds in this game, there are also hints that other colonies exist elsewhere in the universe, and maybe they'll make an Outer Worlds 2 on one of those colonies. I just hope it'll be better than this disappointing game. And that we'll learn more about what happened to Earth ( another big thing that is teased and never concluded ).

[Lord Likhus]

Publicado originalmente por Zarakaï:

Good remarks

Interesting idea you had there with the Board replacement, one of many hopes this game can give you, since the premise and the universe on the surface is very interisting and sparks the imagination. Which makes me wonder how they couldn't do anything with it.

[kmanitou81]

Publicado originalmente por Zarakaï:

Which links to your point about the underlying feminist agenda where it's quite obvious that in this game every man is weak, incompetent or evil, and women rule. It's true in Edgewater ( Reed vs Adelaide ), on the Groundbreaker ( Udom vs Junlei ), in Stellar Bay ( Sanjar vs Celia ), at the Iconoclasts camp ( Graham vs Zora ), and in the Board itself ( Rockwell vs Akande ).

Forget about lesbians, short hair and ugly women, the real agenda is more subtle and insidious.

The two angles are not unrelated. As women are given more and more authority by the rulers and push men away more and more, men stop caring about a family and their rights, society descends into tyranny and oppression, and in time chaos and annihilation, like in this doomed colony. I was trying to play the storyline and pay attention to the factions, but eventually I realized everything was a bad joke so I just killed everyone and dashed to the finish line so I could uninstall this waste of SSD storage.

[Lord Likhus]

Publicado originalmente por kmanitou81:

Publicado originalmente por Zarakaï:

Which links to your point about the underlying feminist agenda where it's quite obvious that in this game every man is weak, incompetent or evil, and women rule. It's true in Edgewater ( Reed vs Adelaide ), on the Groundbreaker ( Udom vs Junlei ), in Stellar Bay ( Sanjar vs Celia ), at the Iconoclasts camp ( Graham vs Zora ), and in the Board itself ( Rockwell vs Akande ).

Forget about lesbians, short hair and ugly women, the real agenda is more subtle and insidious.

The two angles are not unrelated. As women are given more and more authority by the rulers and push men away more and more, men stop caring about a family and their rights, society descends into tyranny and oppression, and in time chaos and annihilation, like in this doomed colony. I was trying to play the storyline and pay attention to the factions, but eventually I realized everything was a bad joke so I just killed everyone and dashed to the finish line so I could uninstall this waste of SSD storage.

Whatever the reason, insidious intent or incompetence (I think the latter), western RPGs are as good as dead with Obsidian the last nail in the coffin. Eastern European RPGs are on the rise though.

[thorgaard]

Publicado originalmente por Lord Likhus:

...
The interplay between the Corporations and the revolting and revolutionary groups is fun and what drives the game.
...

Speaking of the corporations, the idea that the divergence in this game starts with the non-assassination of McKinley is hard to believe.

[The Badman]

They should've made a system shock clone set on the Hope. Or deus ex clone on Monarch. Still plenty of REEEEiiinnnngg about corporations just in those parts. Chris Avellone has always wanted to make such games but obsidian never let him. Guess the senior designers dont control the company but the narrative """"designers"""", who could write nothing but YA romance.

[Lord Likhus]

Modern corporations do deserve some reeing if you ask me.

[Lord Likhus]

Problem is they don't give any other roleplay options, you are stuck on the ree

[The Badman]

You have the reeee corporation, reeee working class and reeee everybody modes

[kirill-busidow]

Publicado originalmente por Lord Likhus:

The world in itself is quite beautiful, and I like exploring the new planets.

All 3 of them?

Publicado originalmente por Lord Likhus:

The level design on some of them is good.

"Some of them"? Means 1 or 2? If you enjoyed all 3, you would write "all of them".


You make it sound as if game is not very small, featuring only 3 planets (Monarch, Terra2 and Scylla).

[Lord Likhus]

Publicado originalmente por kirill-busidow:

Publicado originalmente por Lord Likhus:

The world in itself is quite beautiful, and I like exploring the new planets.

All 3 of them?

Publicado originalmente por Lord Likhus:

The level design on some of them is good.

"Some of them"? Means 1 or 2? If you enjoyed all 3, you would write "all of them".


You make it sound as if game is not very small, featuring only 3 planets (Monarch, Terra2 and Scylla).

I liked Groundbreaker. Emerald Vale and Monarch. With "planets" I meant levels, including Byzantium, which was a dissappointment along with the rest of the end game. Felt like the game wanted to push me out the door and get it over with at that point.

[ULTRA]

Obsidian are allergic to making levels with interesting routing. When I was on the Groundbreaker all I could think of was Butcher Bay and all the little secrets it had.

[Revolucas]

Why do you think shotguns suck? They one-hit kill to head for me and in my opinion a better stealth weapon than a pistol or melee weapon.

[Lord Likhus]

Publicado originalmente por Revolucas:

Why do you think shotguns suck? They one-hit kill to head for me and in my opinion a better stealth weapon than a pistol or melee weapon.

Because you have to be in their face, and there is no scope mod to get less spread.

Stealth is based on radious from weapon, the longer away you are from opponents the better. You can oneshot any enemy with a sneak attack using Hunters rifle mk2, with the right skills and perks. It's expensive to tinker so get science to 100, tinker it, then respec away the science skill.

[Revolucas]

With a suppressor you can shotgun enemies one-by-one practically since most enemies are spread out further than 10m.

Hunting rifle is no fun. The AI isn't set up for it. They just walk to dead friend and you can just continue the cycle.