Note: This review contains mild spoilers, if you're sensitive to it -- but nothing major.
Part of me really wants to rip in to The Outer Worlds. The Bethesda-type RPG has seen a severe fall in quality since the heyday of Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas (sure, and Skyrim, but Skyrim always felt like an amazing game that exemplified everything wrong with the Bethesda RPG, but maybe that's just me). Fallout 4 may have sucked 60+ hours from me, but failed to be anything but a mildly enjoyable shade of some of my favorite RPGs of the past 15 years. And while Fallout 4 certainly has an important place in this narrative, it is the travesty that is Fallout 76 that really makes The Outer Worlds shine in the public eye. And truly, The Outer Worlds feels far more the successor to Fallout: New Vegas than either of those missteps, but I think that the context of the game's release has out shown the actual quality of the game. I'm getting ahead of myself here, because despite my reserved tone thus far I actually really enjoyed The Outer Worlds. The Outer Worlds boasts an interesting world, fun and unique characters, and a rather skillful threading of multiple genres and styles (thematically that is, not so much gameplay-wise).
The basic plot has crazy scientist Phineas Welles finding you adrift in space on a ship full of thousands of frozen would-be colonists from Earth, traveling towards the Halcyon colony, a corporate run solar system, as reinforcements of scientists, engineers, etc. You are one of these would-be colonists, but, as Phineas explains, something happened to your ship (called the Hope) en route to the Halcyon colony, and by the time the Halcyon corporation found you the colonists where well past their unfreezing date. If they were to unfreeze any of you, you'd turn to jelly, and to invest in the technology to unfreeze you all safely is considered a waste of resources by Halcyon. Phineas plainly disagrees with this sentiment, deciding to defect from Halcyon and research how to unfreeze the colonists himself. But he only had enough of some McGuffin liquid to save you, and now you must find out where more is located and then how to get it in order to save the colonists and thus save the colony.
Much like Fallout before it, The Outer Worlds is dripping with satire, this time replacing U.S. government MKULTRA type experimentation and cold war era ultra patriotism with corporate structure gone wild. The Halcyon colony is owned by the Halcyon corporation, a holdings corporation made up of ten smaller corporations, and every facet of the colonists' lives are controlled by The Board, which is exactly what it sounds like. The game immediately makes this apparent by dropping you onto the planet Terra 2, specifically in a little factory town called Edgewater. The first person you meet here is a young man who has been severely wounded, and when you try to help him out with some of your medicine, he quickly rejects your offer stating that he works for Spacer's Choice, and that his contract only allows him to receive Spacer's Choice branded medical treatment, of which your healing goods are not. You can choose to ignore him, which he will thank you for, but ask you not to mention it to his superior. So yeah, this is the game you are in for. The satire in The Outer Worlds ranges from wildly funny (such as the absurdity of how grave costs and collections are done, and how they are doled out) to being over the top and heavy handed, like choosing whether to reroute power to the defectors from the local factory, or the obviously evil corporation -- with little knowledge about the history of this place. Basically, it's a shitty version of the Megaton nuke from Fallout 3, but with the heavy impression that what you are doing is something morally ambiguous, even though the game screams at you what is and isn't moral and likewise makes you the chooser of this town's destiny despite having arrived not but maybe a couple days earlier. Overall, I'd give The Outer Worlds more of a positive score than negative on its satire, although part of my issue is an issue I have with the game as a whole.
The Outer Worlds feels frustratingly shallow despite how hard it is trying. Its subject is ripe for parody, and its world has the potential to be a believable and complicated world, but the game does just enough to give the impression of these things without truly digging into them. The closest it gets is with the planet Monarch, which takes up a bulk of the game. Monarch was abandoned by the Halcyon corporation after one of its cities on the planet was overrun by space pirates. It didn't hurt that the planet's air is thick with sulfur (which was wearing down all the machines on the planet) and the land full of extremely dangerous and hostile creatures. The whole planet was just rather unwelcome. Two individuals, working for the Monarch corporation, found a loophole where if all other corporations left the planet then they could claim it for their own, and would have to be recognized by the board as an independent corporate planet. Their reasoning was twofold, where one, named Graham, wanted to start a cult of sorts that focuses on the individual and what the individual wants, and the other, named Sanjay, wants something like workers rights, allowing weekends, paid time off, and limits on working hours per week. Either way you want to cut it, The Board doesn't much like these ideas coming out of Monarch, and thus demonizes the entire planet through propaganda and restricts the distribution of travel passes. Inevitably, the two radicalists on the planet have separated and each have their own towns. You can help either of them, but there are also several other encampments and towns that complicate the synergy of the planet's economy you can participate in. Monarch is the greatest example of promise The Outer Worlds' premise has. The internal complexity of the different communities, their beliefs, and their reliance on one another told a story not just through questing, but by the mechanics of the relationships between characters, place, and culture. In subject and in themes, I found Monarch both the most interesting and most immersive of the planets (Monarch is actually the least realistic looking planet, however, looking far too strange and with unrealistic lighting (particularly at night) to be convincing as anything other than a videogame level. Granted, I get it is an alien planet, but I couldn't help but feel a bit unimmersed by the wilds when I was there.) Unfortunately, there isn't anything else close to the complexity Monarch shows.
Mechanically, the game also suffers from being unfortunately shallow. Skill point allocation has some fun secrets hidden within (try a playthrough with the lowest intelligence possible, for a Fallout throw back), but in general isn't very substantial. Putting points in anything outside of the Tech, Stealth, and Dialog sets of skills is virtually useless on normal difficulty because combat is painfully easy throughout. Until the very last boss of the game, I was able to loot the battlegrounds while my companions aggro'd the enemy (or I ate bullets) before killing everyone in mere moments. The only time I had any trouble during the middle section of the game was before I realized what gun type is good against what enemy. Once realizing that, the game became a cakewalk. Skill points in Tech will increase your damage for Science guns, increase healing abilities, and allows for some neat dialogue options. Stealth points will get you into locked computer terminals or doors for neat loot or quirky side-story stuff, but its the Dialog points that really give you the most bang for your buck. And that is because this is where The Outer Worlds really shines.
The Outer Worlds knows that when playing an RPG you are usually doing one of three things: trying to become an all-powerful God character, exploring a wild world full of adventure and sandbox-type play, or to follow a story as a participant. The Outer Worlds tries all three, but really only succeeds to any great degree in the latter. The story itself, as I said, is unfortunately shallow, but it is so well written and with such interesting characters that the game's shallowness is disappointing, but far from defeating. Talking to characters, getting to know them, and sometimes digging in too deep into their secrets is where the game and the world really start to come together. Zara, right hand woman to Graham on Monarch, has ties to an abandoned factory, and learning this can help with brokering a deal between Graham's people and Sanjay. Likewise, talking to Sanjay can give you insight into how he may have not been the favorite employee of Monarche's old leaders. These little plot details are unearthed through the character's charismatic quirks and personality. Zara is a tough but focused worker, whereas Sanjay is obsessed with structure in and of itself, regardless of how structure can be used. The dialog really shines when talking to your companions. To be honest, your companions are as much a criticism as they are a praise. Characters like Felix are absolutely awful, annoying, shit-head cliche's with no redeeming qualities and too shallow a quest line to even get close to making something of their waste of a companion slot. I'm not trying to get a bit to . . . impassioned here, but when insanely, insultingly boring Felix is allowed the same category as Parvati, one of the best side characters of the decade, I have issues. Parvati is smart, awkward, shy, and full of romantic problems. She feels real, relatable, and like the type of person who would realistically exist in this world. She is also debatably the best representation for asexuality in a game, or any medium really. It's believable, and taking her out for a beer to discuss it and her love life problems is a highlight of the gaming year. Her side quest is sweet, as much of it as I was able to play since the quest is bugged and failed for me halfway through (I'm not knocking the game points for this since it will most definitely be patched, but its easily the most devastating part of my entire playthrough). Several of the other characters read as dull at first but became much more interesting over time. Nyoka had a sad story that surprised me in how it affected me, given it isn't much outside of the cliche. Ellie, although cartoonish in her side quest, became the character closest to my play style over time, and my second favorite companion in the game. Max, the Vicar, was complicated, a man I didn't like but for well written character reasons, not due to poor writing like Felix. All-in-all, the companion characters were incredibly successful in giving me that Firefly-esque feeling of a makeshift family trying to make their way in the universe. I wish the side quests with these characters were much longer, more involved, and maybe even a couple of them folding into the main plot or the local plots of various places, but I know that asking so much of a developer isn't really a proper criticism. The only companion I didn't spend any time with was SAM, the robot, and that was because of the flaw system.
The flaw system is an interesting mechanic that feels a bit undercooked. On occasion, you will be offered a flaw to your character which basically results in a slight debuff to a few stats under certain conditions in exchange for a new perk. These conditions are things like fear of certain enemies giving you a damage debuff. One of these conditions I accepted was a fear of robots, which locked me out of SAM's side missions. If you think I'm about to criticize this, I'm absolutely not. This is actually what I would rather the flaw system be, a way of giving your person that you are roleplaying as an issue that you have to work around, making a playthrough dynamic and interesting. Maybe one flaw can be that you have a likeness to a famous criminal, giving you issue with authorities. Or you lost an arm and so you must repair your robot arm for better crits and accuracy than normal, but it will break down over time, making you below average. Instead, the flaw system is almost always a mild debuff, of about -1 points for up to 3 skills under conditions that are usually "you are around enemy X". It is still a neat mechanic, just one that could use more tooling around with.
My real concern with The Outer Worlds, funny enough, isn't really a problem with The Outer Worlds so much as it is with the Bethesda RPG as a genre. The mechanical, amusement park style of RPG world layout is no longer novel, and works against your immersion in the game. While I understand studios can't be expected to have Rockstar style of animation or world programming, having a character stand in place, looping animation for days on end feels extremely unreal. Oddly enough, this was something handled much better back in Oblivion which famously gave each character a daily schedule. Likewise, dialog allowing me to be cruel one minute, then nice the next without repercussion is frustrating. Look at Divinity: Original Sin II, which has characters remembering what you've said and locking you out of certain dialog threads. I think the issue here may be more my own relationship with this genre of game. They are games I love to play, but always feel somewhat cheated by. Games as a medium are developing more and more in their approaches to communicating themes, story, and character, and this style of design feels far more narrow. It is game designed to work around the player's possibility for choice, rather than as reaction to player choice, and I find that more frustrating than I do empowering. Empowerment means nothing if fucking up doesn't set me back.
Still, The Outer Worlds was very fun, and its brief runtime for a game of this type (about 40 hours for completionists, 25 hours for a simple run through) is extremely welcome in a time of long game fatigue. Most importantly, The Outer Worlds feels like a promising first step into a new franchise, establishing ideas and a sense of place that I'm excited to see expanded on in the future. I don't know how much more patience I have for this type of RPG as it is without considerable development, but if this ends up being my goodbye, it was a good way to go out.
7.5
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