One of the many games I reviewed recently was Fallout: New Vegas, an open world RPG developed by a studio named Obsidian Entertainment which was composed by a few developers who worked on the original two Fallout games. New Vegas was originally supposed to be a partnership between Obsidian and the current owners of the Fallout franchise, Bethesda Softworks. Seeing how Obsidian had experience with the series, Bethesda struck a deal with them and tasked them to make a Fallout game using the same engine and assets from Fallout 3. Bethesda stated that if Obsidian’s new title is received better than Fallout 3 and gets a Metacritic score of eighty five or above then they would give them a huge paycheck and allow them to continue working with them on the Fallout franchise. Maybe even be given the rights to Fallout. Well that’s a really specific goal to meet, but Obsidian Entertainment was willing to take on the challenge. The studio is composed of developers who know how to make proper RPGs, so what could go wrong with Fallout: New Vegas? Everything was going as planned until the release of the game. When Bethesda decided to stab Obsidian in the back.
New Vegas was filled with a lot of bugs at launch, there were technical issues that made the game crash entirely, and the game was practically unplayable. Bethesda ended up splitting the deal, Obsidian never got their paycheck, never made another Fallout game, and both studios set out to make their own games. However, once Fallout: New Vegas was patched into a playable state many fans of the Fallout series ended up falling in love with the game. Turns out Obsidian Entertainment made a lot of smart design choices with New Vegas, staying true to the RPG roots the original games had. The stats the player chose to level up actually affected how they approached both combat and dialogue. Quests were dynamic and had branching paths. Nevering making it obvious what outcomes were the right or wrong answer and wanting the player to decide what they thought was best. The learning curve of the game was steep but consistent. The story was spectacular, possessing some of the most intelligent writing the series has seen. And the political ideologies the game tackled were both believable and defendable in some ways. Some hardcore RPG fans consider the game to be one of the best modern western RPGs to be ever made and one of Obsidian's greatest achievements. You know what readers? I think so too.
I had a lot of fun when it came to playing through New Vegas and I sunk quite a few hours into the game. Obsidian set the standard for how modern Fallout games or games of a similar format should be made, and it saddens me that other Fallout titles developed by Bethesda downgraded upon the design choices of New Vegas. After Obsidian departed from Bethesda Softworks they went on to make other memorable RPGs including Pillars of Eternity and South Park: The Stick of Truth. People began to realize that Obsidian was on a roll by themselves and over the years fans continuously asked them if they would ever go back and make another Fallout title. Sadly and obviously the answer was no, but in late 2018 it was announced that Obsidian was developing a game that would serve as a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas.
Revealed as a surprise at The Game Awards, Obsidian showed off The Outer Worlds, a sci-fi western RPG that took place in the far reaches of space and had you fighting against a cartoonish space corporation hell bent on ownership and money. It would have a more goofy tone than New Vegas and aimed to be a brighter experience. When people saw the reveal trailer for The Outer Worlds they were hyped. They wanted another western RPG similar to the cult classic they knew as New Vegas. This hype could also be because of how Bethesda published Fallout 76 earlier that year, one of the most shameful scams to ever be released in the video game industry. So everyone was hoping The Outer Worlds would resemble the Fallout they loved. You know what reader, again? They had the goddamn right to be this hyped!
When The Outer Worlds finally came out in 2019, fans got exactly what they expected. A well polished western RPG somewhat similar to Fallout: New Vegas and fulfilled the needs players had all these years. Not only did The Outer Worlds live up to the hype, but it also became one of the well acclaimed games to come out in 2019. It's being nominated for multiple awards and put on a lot of end of the year lists. Recently I just played through the game and before I go deeper into this review I just want to say one simple thing. Thank you Obsidian Entertainment. Thanks for making one of the greatest games I've played this year and showing how dedicated you guys are towards making a good RPG. It may not be as vast or politically in depth as New Vegas, but you somehow still made a story with deep themes that stuck in my head. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved The Outer Worlds and why it deserves your attention. Well let’s drink up some Zero-Gee Brew, hop aboard the Unreliable, and set sail across the colony.
Story
“Welcome to Halcyon, one of the greatest space colonies established by the human race! Here you may enjoy the fruits of labor and work diligently day and night, so that you may one day prove your worth to the megacorporation that dominates over you all. Remember, your death and complaining only hurts the family.” Yeah, not that great when I say it out loud? Well how do these people come to Halcyon? Simple, by using massive ships that put people into cryosleep chambers and transport them across long distances. Hundreds of lightyears can feel like a few days when you're frozen in a pod and drift easily through the star. Yet not everything coming to Halcyon is supported by The Board, a corporation that dictates all the businesses run in Halcyon and how the people live their daily lives. Your carrying vessel known as the Hope is shut down and left drifting off into the far reaches of space. It was composed of some of the greatest minds and talented individuals the world has known, but The Board didn't need any of you to meddle with their plans. You were abandoned because you were not needed.
Several years pass and hundreds of colonists including you are left freezing inside the Hope never to be rescued. Until a mad scientist named Phineas Welles helps you out of deep freeze and flies off before you're both captured by officials. Phineas states that he only had enough supplies to unfreeze you, and the rest of the colonists are left trapped within Hope now filled with Board officials after he got you out. The Hope may contain the people who will help bring governmental balance back to Halcyon and end the rampant corporatization spreading like a disease. You're the only way to unfreeze them from cryosleep, so Phineas sends you down to Terra-2 to meet up with a man named Captain Hawthorne. He hopes together you two can fight against The Board, but once you drop down onto Terra-2 you accidently kill him by landing your pod drop pod directly on him. Crushing him and leaving a pile of meat behind.
You find Hawthorne’s ship lying in the middle of a majestic field and since Hawthorne is dead you are pronounced the new captain of his ship, The Unreliable. The ship’s power is down so you have to journey into a nearby town to find a new power source. The corporation owned town of Edgewater is suffering from a mysterious plague and wants you to go to a nearby factory to reroute the power back to them, because they are going through some energy problems. Meanwhile, a group known as the Deserters live miles away from Edgewater and consist of individuals who were kicked out of the town or got fed up with the Board. They grow their own crops and somehow they aren’t suffering from sickness like the folks in Edgewater. However, they require power as well to maintain their greenhouses. With the help of Parvati Halcomb and Vicar Max who are citizens of Edgewater who wish to maintain balance between the two factions, you may either bring peace to both of them or choose one over the other. Afterwards you get the supplies needed to refuel the Unreliable and prepare for an epic space adventure.
Parvati and Max wonder if they can join you on your little crusade, and once you agree you form a little gang to take down the Board. Along your journey you also gain the help of a ruffian doctor named Ellie, and a young man named Felix who also seeks adventure. Now you must embark on an epic journey to gather up some unlikely allies, get the resources you need to unfreeze the people aboard the Hope, figure out what The Board is planning, and finally bring balance to Halcyon. Your choices will affect the future of each faction and whether Halcyon remains to be a peaceful solar system.
Sell them the sky and the stars. Now they gotta push it too far.
Ain't no profit in my pride, you can’t put a price on me.
Gameplay
The Outer Worlds is basically a more accessible version of Fallout: New Vegas. It’s more well rounded, tighter in scope, and easier to comprehend than some of the mechanics seen in New Vegas. The world is much smaller and the main story is more linear than New Vegas, but unlike most games where being streamlined only downgrades the series, making the gameplay and mechanics easier to understand is actually beneficial for The Outer Worlds. You travel across each planet, exploring small sandbox-like areas, discovering towns, and helping out NPCs by doing quests assigned by them.
Most quests can play out in different ways, but there are multiple solutions to obtaining one of the solutions. Maybe you want to do optional quest marks so that you can reap the most benefits and rewards from a quest, interact with your surroundings and make some areas much easier, or maybe you want to find the most peaceful solution so that not so many people get killed at the end of the quest. Helping as many people as possible will sometimes be better in the long run. However there isn’t a right choice. You have to go off of what you believe is the best solution. For example, one of the first major quests in the game which I was just describing in the story sections has you determine whether you send power to a town of struggling workers or a small far off independent village of outcasts using that power to harvest crops. The fishermen work for a big corporation, but their food is polluted leading to people dying from random diseases. The village of outcasts are peaceful and have good hygiene, but they use dead bodies as fertilizer for their crops. There’s also an option where you can unite both of them together, but it requires more thinking and planning. Much like New Vegas and its multipathed questlines, The Outer Worlds wants the player to decide on their own.
The player will get caught into a lot of fights along their journey and they have many weapons at their disposal to defend themselves. Most of these weapons are found out in the field or are looted off of enemies, but one thing I like about this game more than New Vegas is how the gunplay is much tighter and easier to control. Now, you don't really play these games for combat, but it's pretty hard to ignore when anything outside a township wants to kill you immediately on sight. The combat in New Vegas would have been more enjoyable if the hitboxes responded better and you weren't given such a tiny dot to respect your weapon shots in the middle of the screen, but then again I didn't craft or purchase any tactical scopes across my playthrough which could explain why. That and I didn't download any mods to improve the gunplay, but yet again why would I want to download mods when I'm trying to judge the core experience how it was originally intended? The Outer Worlds doesn't have the best combat in the world, but it does have some of the tightest gunplay I have seen from these types of games. This refinement allows the player to have an easier time to aim and shoot weak points on enemies which The Outer Worlds puts a better incentive on. By shooting the weak points on an enemy you may have the chance to stun, cripple, blind, land a critical hit, or slow them down making it much easier to defeat them. There’s even a mechanic in the game that allows you to slow down time for a limited duration. During this slowed down period of time you can dodge enemy attacks easily Superhot styled, reposition yourself, and discover what parts of each enemy are weak.
Everytime you complete a quest or kill an enemy you gain experience points and with enough experience points you can level up. By leveling up you can put points into categories, which allows the player to create a playstyle that fits them best. You can be a sneaky psycho that attacks up close and never gets spotted, or a smooth talking engineer that is good at persuading others and forging better equipment to use in battle. If you level up certain categories to a specific point you open up more dialogue options with characters or ways to interact with the world. Some of these dialogue choices can even turn the tides of a conversation and open up new ways to solve whatever quest you are doing at the moment. You are trying to help out as many people as possible on Halcyon after all. I don’t think you want to pick a fight with everyone you meet, or be forced into a fight even though you are picking the kindest and sincerest options. Cough cough Fallout 4. There's a newly added system known as Flaws, and they are triggered whenever you receive too much damage of a specific type. By accepting a Flaw you will gain an extra perk to put into a skill, but the downside is that you accept more bonus damage from the type you took to receive the Flaw. Skills, otherwise known as Traits in New Vegas, have gone for a more perk system approach like Fallout 4 which is my only downside with the gameplay. What made Traits in NV interesting is that they either rewarded players for aiming for specific builds or were a risk reward system. However, Skills have very minimal effects on your playstyle so that makes them kind of useless. At least the other elements add up.
This pretty much wraps up the gameplay section. The Outer Worlds is more of a simplified version of New Vegas and some people may not like how easier the game is, but making The Outer Worlds more accessible didn’t dumb the entire game down. The Outer Worlds is, much like New Vegas, still a great way to get into games that are styled like classic RPGs. Hopefully you can take down the Board and bring peace to Halcyon.
Thoughts
The Outer Worlds is a brilliantly designed game that is a joy to play from beginning to end. There is a lot I can say about this game that it does almost equally, maybe even better than New Vegas, but other things that it still does are alright but in certain ways NV did way better. However, the overall product is still fantastic and way better than some of the other Triple A releases we've seen this year. The environments are highly detailed, each location you visit is stunning to gaze at, and glimmers with vibrant colors that pop towards the player's eyes. New Vegas kind of lacked a good color pattern although it took place in the desert, but I'm glad The Outer Worlds is more colorful. We need more games with interesting artstyles that do what they can to attract players.
Characters are well written, funny, and never come across as annoying in my mind. A lot of people complained your companions don’t have the same amount of depth your companions in New Vegas had, but I still liked them because they were funny, quirky, and had interesting plotlines. Parvati I really enjoyed being with because she’s the most relatable character in the group. She’s shy, has short panic attacks, is very optimistic when she wants to be, and tries the best during the most stressful situations. The story is charming and feels like something you would see in a saturday morning cartoon from the 90s. Some people tried to compare it to this one show I never heard of called Firefly, and if The Outer Worlds get compared to a show I never watch then I guess I have to check it out one day. It's entertaining to say the least.
Character progression has been improved, giving more options for the player and allowing them to have an easier understanding over how to forge the playstyle they want. Quest design is varied and never gets tedious. I remember this one quest where this poor old mother asked me to find her child only to figure out her child was a grown man who joined a tribe of nomads and didn’t want to move back home. So we came up with a plan to lie to her saying he died in battle, but I felt bad at the last moment and decided to give her his son’s ring and tell him we were planning to lie in the first place and he doesn't want to move back home. May have made the scenario worse because the mother was now traumatized for life, but at least I got a somewhat funny outcome. There was a quest where I had to get a guy an autograph he didn't get in the mail, a quest that involved chem addicted cannibals, one where I auditioned for a show, and even a quest where a woman asked me to find aliens of all things. None of the quests are forgettable and have interesting tales to tell which add to the world.
The game overall is really f*cking good. Never have I had this much fun with a video game this year and it has a high amount of replay value thanks to its multiple quests, moral choices, outcomes, and endings. The main question you are probably asking right now is if The Outer Worlds is better than Fallout: New Vegas? Well most people are going to say no, but personally I don’t know whether or not this game is better. While I highly recommend both games there are a few problems that make The Outer Worlds a slightly lower experience than New Vegas. While the story was charming and hit the right beats for me, The Outer Worlds’ plot lacks the political depth New Vegas had.
New Vegas focused on political factions that were getting ready to go to war and the player was forced to choose which one to side with. An American styled government, a Roman styled dictatorship, a revolutionary who wishes to push society forward, or independence for the people. They even had to forge bonds with the smaller factions to help them with the final battle of the game and decide what fate lies for the wasteland. They had to choose what would make a better world. Meanwhile, The Outer Worlds is focused on a flawed society. A mega corporation dominates an entire solar system and the game is showing the side effects of an extreme capitalist society where it’s all about the profits, ownership, and the stock market. Where a corporation can own your entire childhood and life going forward. There's a quest early on where an employee to a company commits suicide, because for the rest of his life he would be in debt to a company and he wasn't willing to face the struggles that was set up in such a way where there was no way around. Then once that is over the company asks the rest of the employees to pay for his death, because to them he was a tool. An asset the company can use as a reason to sue and then replace later with another employee, otherwise an asset. Many people took this game as Obsidian getting back at Bethesda for screwing them over by making a villain which represents them, but I firmly believe they were addressing economics and corporations. Sure, there aren't that many politics or factions to think about, but the main story is still brilliantly told.
The smaller multiple sandboxes make navigating the world much easier since you're not running across big empty fields, but they are more restrictive than the open ended Mojave Wasteland. My friend commented it was a lazy design choice, but I can understand since Obsidian is basically on their own now without a company funding them. I like how the game is more accessible with combat, but it can be very easy at times depending on what play style you forge. New Vegas challenged the player by nailing them with tough encounters and forcing them to learn the rules of the world. Meanwhile here in The Outer Worlds as long as you have a gun with a high damage number and put a good amount of points in the types of weapons you like you can beat the toughest beasts. Unlike New Vegas where ammo was scarce and you had to ration out each bullet you had to make every shot count, here in The Outer Worlds they shower you in ammo. However, this isn’t a survival game and some action sequences can feel really badass. The perks you get aren’t the unique perks that New Vegas had, they’re like the perks from Fallout 4 which sucks because they had minimal effects.
Finally The Outer Worlds is much shorter, being about half the run time as New Vegas. Yet, I pumped 25-30 hours into this game so it really depends how much of the side content you do throughout a single playthrough. Besides these several complaints I still enjoyed my time with The Outer Worlds. It’s one of the better Triple A games to come out this year and if I really had to simplify my description for The Outer Worlds it’s Fallout Lite. If you're looking for a good western RPG that doesn’t overstay its welcome then hyperdrive into The Outer Worlds. Afterall, The Outer World is out of this world! I highly recommend picking this game up in the future whenever you can and if you're a big fan of Fallout: New Vegas then you’ll definitely enjoy The Outer Worlds. In the end I am going to give The Outer Worlds a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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