Overview
STRENGTHS
+ A terrific concept that sometimes pays off with humor
+ Several worlds to explore offering creatures, machines and politics
WEAKNESSES
- The RPG elements are not very impactful, acquired gear is
- The characters are shallow cardboard cutouts
The Outer Worlds Information
Release Date: March 25th, 2019
Developer/Publisher: Obsidian Entertainment/Private Division
The Outer Worlds is the spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas and includes all the trapping you’d expect, with humor both light and dark, more vibrant character designs and specific area targeting on enemies. The ability to recruit and take them with you into battle is a great addition, invoking games like Mass Effect and shows like Firefly. It’s all solid, if you like that sort of thing, but the loose controls and blank main character isn’t for everyone.
Story
For a relatively short game, there is a lot of content here. Much of this content can be missed, whether by not choosing to follow a certain path or simply missing it. There are some decent world building narratives and plot expansions but therein lies the rub, the overall story is not compelling. There are so many things going on in The Outer Worlds however they are all pretty shallow. Interconnected sure, but that sometimes makes it seem even shallower. You’ll ask yourself “why would this character happen to know this charater a world apart?” Choice is supposedly an important factor in conversations but at best it's Mass Effect lite and at worse it’s no consequence at all.
There is some promise of fulfilling the raggedy and endearing Firefly fantasies with acquiring crew members. There are an assortment of potential crew members that can join your ship, but not all of them are useful. In many cases it’s absolutely pure happenstance when you find them. Some can have a decent special ability, but their combat skills are dependent upon their gear, which is completely interchangeable between them. Sure you can customize some of their skills, but in the best of battle it mostly goes unnoticed. Even their skills off the battlefield are pointless. It would almost be nice if they fit the stereotypes of a crew; a brash pilot, a dirty mechanic or a scientist always testing out new theories, but really they are all just hitching a ride. Overall, the story is just OK, the characters, while colorful are shallow and there is not enough investment made into them to care.
Technical
The Outer Worlds is bright and vibrant, a nice change of pace compared to many first person shooters. Most of the planet environments feature the same building types and the only variation is the space stations, or towns which don’t offer a ton of variation from each other. Sure, there is a space-Venice, but the canals are the only thing that really change the layout. There is a good compass that tells you where to go, but most levels at least appear to offer shortcuts to get you from place to place. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. If you leave the beaten path, prepare to find a dead end that will require a ton of backtracking, it’s simply annoying because the perceived freedom of travel comes up this way too often.
Character models are fairly rudimentary. Each character style attempts differentiation, but they are simple for the most part. Once everyone is fully equipped with gear, it gets even more basic as all three could literally look the same save for the weapons.
Even with the more vibrant look, sometimes it can even come off as over saturated. Ideally it would be closer to the BioShock series, instead it ends up like Fallout.
Music
It’s difficult to recall the quality of the music, or the style of it at all when not playing the game. That is not a glowing endorsement. Like many other games, just because the music isn't memorable, it is not a direct inference to its poor quality and that is the case with The Outer Worlds. While it sometimes has the facade of a space epic, it isn’t, and it’s fair that the music doesn’t match a motif that isn’t really present. There are plenty of sweeping landscapes and multiple worlds that having specific themes would have made sense. Much of the score is muted to the sounds of the gunfire, but as with any open world game there are plenty of times where traversal is primarily about getting from point A to point B with very little to break up the monotony (especially when passing though areas you’ve already been to and cleared any enemy threat). Better music is always a welcome accompaniment to these slow times and The Outer Worlds is lacking this.
Gameplay
First person shooters are fine-tuned every year, multiple times over. Games like the Call of Duty series, the newest Doom entries and Titanfall have all improved upon shooting mechanics and games like Borderlands and Dishonored have managed to take the genre to different places. The Outer Worlds doesn’t do that. It’s an RPG with real-time shooting that is executed poorly. There are special abilities such as the ability to slow down time, call on your companion which are nice sentiments, but the only really make an impact early on. Over time the character attributes don’t make a huge difference either, it’s the attributes of the weapons the really make. It begs the question, why do I care who may companions are if they aren’t interesting, their special skills are moot and it’s all a matter of getting them the best gear and weapons available? The RPG aspects of The Outer World are very weak. You can maximize most of the primary character’s stats, making conversation skills less impactful, having the best offensive and defensive attributes and using perks to power up these up further.
Despite the simple shooting mechanics and the poor RPG mechanics, The Outer Worlds is still completely serviceable. There are moments where it’s a blast, particularly the last hurrah mission (if you choose to play it that way). There is some choice, but for the most part it probably won’t be something you care about enough to bother. If a stealth mission goes awry you can switch to weapons free and clear anything that stands in your way and still end up a good guy in the end.
The Outer Worlds Review Roundup
The Outer Worlds has a great concept, “Firefly the videogame,” yet doesn’t execute on any of the promise. The RPG mechanics are very simple and not very impactful combined with rudimentary first person shooting. The saving grace could have been the colorful cast of crewman that are assembled, but alas, there is only a couple of interesting arcs among them, including the main character who has no personality at all. It’s all in the vein of Fallout: New Vegas, so if more of that, albeit with a slightly different vibe is to your interest, The Outer Worlds may satisfy that itch.
