I just started the game, haven't even started actually playing it because this cropped up while setting the game up, and I noticed three issues.
#1 Controls on PC aren't fully customizable.
Yes, sure, dead horse, but this is an issue that was barley excusable in 2000 and inexcusable in 2010, and The Outer Worlds was released in 2019. This wouldn't be so bad if the fixed controls were sensibly located, but while (I)nventory and (M)ap make sense from thematic viewpoints they don't make sense from a functional standpoint when 95% of all other keybindings are within reach of the left hand when located by the 'F' key. Maybe there are people out there so used to such contorted control schemes that they can hit I to open up their inventory or M to open up a map without having to stop what else they're doing in the game or having to look at the keyboard, but I'm not one of them thanks to all the other developers who allow for full rebinding of game controls.
This issue is worse for people like me who play games with the lights off since that means I need to either get something bright on screen or turn on a lamp to see 'I', 'M', 'K', and the comma keys. Wait, comma? Seriously? That's a hard-coded key binding? O_O
I worked around this issue with AutoHotkey, but that leads to...
#2 The game steals focus from other programs/windows.
I can't Alt+Tab out of the game thanks to (sensibly IMNSHO) using Autohotkey to forcibly rebind Map to the Tab key. Instead I've been using the Windows key. This, however, means I get to hit Windows, click on something other than the game, watch the game steal focus back, hit Windows again, and click on that something a second time in order to actually interact with it. This makes trying to do anything outside of the game while it's running just a bit annoying.
It also lead me to the realization that...
#3 "Fullscreen" isn't.
There is zero difference that I can see between "Fullscreen" and "Windowed Fullscreen." In either mode the game sits there, running away when I hit the Windows key to bring up the Start menu.
When a game runs in a real/exclusive full screen mode the game will be minimized when it loses focus and, usually, execution of tasks/code associated with the game will be paused leading to a halt in music and gameplay and a reduction to 0%in CPU/GPU usage (or at least nearly so for CPU usage) by the game.
As it stands I've got the game set to "Fullscreen," it doesn't have focus, the music is playing on and on, and my GPU is running at 97%-98% clearly showing that it's not actually in a full screen, non-windowed mode.
