It’s been a while since The Outer Worlds got initially released, but, as it always happens with me and story driven games with DLCs that happen inside the main story, I tend to not play them until the DLCs are out. And now, a year and a half later they are with Peril on Gorgon releasing late last year and Murder on Eridanos just a few weeks ago.
And I’ve had my hopes pretty low, if I’m completely honest – most of the people I know were very underwhelmed by the game at launch and several of them didn’t even finish it because they got bored. Knowing them, I knew that I had to approach this as something far less exciting and story-driven than a typical Obsidian title and more like a simple RPG, a slightly more nuanced action RPG. And yes, while The Outer Worlds is not full-on Borderlands, it’s more or less Fallout: New Vegas, but somewhat streamlined and simplified in some aspects. And given that I really like New Vegas despite itself, it took me a while to adapt and adjust, before I could start enjoying the game for what it is.
The Outer Worlds is a first person RPG with a pretty huge emphasis on combat, but also a wide variety of options for other approaches to solving some problems. Stealth here, for example, is pretty enjoyable both as pure stealth when you hide from enemies and use skills like lockpicking, hacking and pickpocketing and as social stealth in instances where you get a chance to use a holographic “suit” to blend in and explore, while trying not to act suspiciously while on a timer. Social skills are also important, as quite a few big problems can be resolved either partially or even entirely through dialogue, which can involve checks for your skills and attributes or just your prior actions and choices. And exploration/traversal can help in quite a few places, often paired with stealth, providing alternate routes through dangerous places.
Your Attributes, selected at the beginning, will not be upgraded in the game, only temporarily boosted by substances, which is unlike even the original Fallout. So most of the emphasis goes to Skills, which, if you do want to become a master of some particular path, will need to be prioritized. There is a level cap, there are no bonus ways to upgrade skills, so if you want to be the best shot in space, you do need to pump those skillpoints into ranged combat every level up. That said, you can safely get to respectable, if not ultimate, levels of several skill groups and with the help of companions and skill bonuses from them and armor get better skill check bonuses.
Perks are, of course, also a thing, though… If I’m completely honest, a lot of them feel pointless and boring. There are several that, depending on the way you play as, will be almost vital to get, but it’s very likely you’ll get all the perks you really wanted in the first 16 levels or so and for the rest of the game will be unlocking perks because “why not”. Which is especially sad because the game has a neat idea with Flaws – permanent downgrades with specific conditions that you can unlock as you play and taking one gives you a free Perk point. The concept for this is brilliant – get shot at by robots a lot, for example, and get a chance to develop a phobia of all automatons. If you take it (a Flaw is always a choice), you get some penalties every time you fight automatons (and get dialogue options with them to just scream in horror), but also get a perk point. And one of the perks actually gives you a damage upgrade if you have several flaws. Sounds great, but since the perks are so boring, it doesn’t seem sound to take any of the flaws ever, even as a character development concept. It’s just pointless.
Sadly, the companions are also mostly boring and pointless. New Vegas wasn’t exactly brimming with memorable partners, but companions there had at least some semblance of an interesting story. In The Outer Worlds 5 out of 6 characters you can run with get a specific companion quest and they do occasionally banter. But most of those are pretty underwhelming. And the robot companion doesn’t even get a quest, you just need to activate it and it follows you around. Not that these characters don’t have a personality, but there’s not enough of it even in the most memorable ones for me to ever care about what they do or have to say at any point. And pretty much all of them just exist in this story, without much of a personal stake or a want. They also get special abilities but in my experience those are surprisingly crap, so I’m not sure why they were even added.
You might expect me to say that at least the story is good, but no. It’s decent, it works, it pushes the game forward and gives you goals, but it never really expands past its fun premise. The idea of a corporation-run colonization attempt somewhere far away from Earth, where everyone works for some big corporation, everything is full of ads and slogans and catchy jingles while the human lives are nothing compared to the numbers and the bottom line is fun to explore. And it does feel like a continuation on the theme that was started with Fallout, but made even more satirical, balancing the fantasy absurdity with real life absurdity of modern day. Yet it never really goes anywhere fresh. You get your typical villains, your typical heroes and anti-heroes. The plot twists are nothing you’ve not seen before or expected to happen. And the satirical elements sometimes manage to even detract from the seriousness as one of the major fears of the colony in the game is the ability to have enough recourses for everyone, yet people die so flippantly and in such huge numbers that you start questioning if the supply issue can actually become an issue with so much death and seemingly not much birth happening.
And yet I kept on playing and enjoying the game. It’s extremely safe. It’s pretty well put together, apart from occasional bugs. It looks pretty bland, sometimes outright ugly, especially for an Unreal Engine 4 title, yet some of the art direction is genuinely stunning. But most importantly it’s just good. Not great. Not exciting. But not bad or even full on boring. Good. When Pillars of Eternity 2 turned out to be just good I was hugely disappointed as while it still was a good game, it just wasn’t nearly as good and as close to the amazing storytelling of the first entry. But given that this is in a way a continuation of New Vegas, just in a completely different universe? Yeah, it’s good. I liked it. Certainly plays better than New Vegas, now that it’s no longer tied to the horrible UI originally by Bethesda. And the stealth aspect is really neat, if not used as often as I wish it would’ve been.
The DLCs are in some ways even better than the main game, actually. Peril on Gorgon starts out rather horridly with crazily level scaled enemies, lots of combat and the plot that so unashamedly “borrows” from a movie based on a popular sci-fi tv show that I’m shocked they didn’t even try to add anything of their own to it. But as it continues, it does get interesting. It’s far less “safe” in the way it handles the topics and presents dilemmas, the characters and situations are far more interesting than most of what you get in the main game and while it is still a bit too much combat heavy than I wish it could be, it ends up being pretty enjoyable. Oh yeah, also the skill checks in this one get to silly levels.
Murder on Eridanos is an even more interesting concept, as it works as a detective mystery drama. You get hired as an inspector to solve the murder and, of course, as the story progresses you work through different suspects and untangle even darker secrets. For this DLC you’re even given a special tool-gun, which works as a smart-magnifying-lens, so you can feel even more as a classic detective while exploring the locations and solving the main case and numerous other quests. It is also not without flaws, but overall I found this DLC to be the most enjoyable time I’ve had with the whole game. And I wouldn’t be surprised if an entire game designed with this mystery solving aspect in mind, the variety of ways you can deal with problems, stealth and social stealth systems could be far superior to what The Outer Worlds actually is. One can hope, this is the direction they can take the series into.
So, The Outer Worlds is an enjoyable game. It has some good concepts and systems that can occasionally be used in fun ways. It has a good premise and cool ideas, that are rarely explored in interesting ways. It is a shame that Obsidian made a game, helmed by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky at that, that somehow managed to be plain and “just good”. But I managed to get over that and enjoy it. Doubt that I’ll ever play it again, but I was glad to play it this once.