Perhaps an unpopular thought from someone who enjoyed this game

[Exitwounds]

I've put in about 30 or so hours into the Outer Worlds (PC), I've beaten the main story line and have done all my companion quests and as many side quests as I could find. Let me start by saying my thoughts come from the perspective of someone who's never really delved into the RPG+shooter genre, I generally stick to indy FPS games, so this was a new experience for me.

I absolutely loved the story telling, this was made obvious to me when I walked into the first town and had my first dialogue with a bartender. What I would usually expect to be a mundane conversation of "hey, I need this, go get it for me and bring it back", I was instead met with an engaging conversation that made me genuinely curious about this person, this place and the people around us. I also loved that companions reacted to what I was saying, and would even contribute to the conversation. I also enjoyed doing their story quests, the different characters you end up encountering along the way and the interesting places you end up going to, these were all really good moments. Overall, I think most of us can agree that the RPG parts of this game has been done pretty damn well.

Here's where I think the game falls short: Combat. I realized this as I was progressing through the game, at this point about level 27 with ultra grade weapons and armor that suited my build. As I was playing, I kept thinking to myself, there's gotta be more weapon variety than this right? I was mostly a long gun user, with a heavy weapon in my 4th slot. I also tried reskilling into a melee build, but it seemed like the science hammer / science build overpowered any other melee builds and was the most entertaining to use. Without getting into the weeds, there just isn't that much variety when it comes to combat. I see what they tried to do, making more options by giving us different types of ammo, but even that offering feels limited. I'd love to see more creative weapons like science ones and overall an increase in gun variety, melee weapon variety and damage type variety as the game grows over time (I'm guessing there will be expansions / updates).

Anyhow, I have more to say about what I loved and what I disliked, just wanted to get this out and see if anyone else felt the same way. I watched a few reviews before this and saw that all the reviews were super positive, which makes me happy - but at the same time, I think there's a bit of rose tinted glasses going on. Not because the game isn't good, it's great, but I think we're ignoring some of its shortcomings and the devs aren't hearing everything they need to hear to improve this game further.

 

[Wormerine]

Combat isn't very interesting, but then again, it never is in those kind of games. 

So far I am quite satisfied, having my expectations low due to it being first in IP and warning from devs that it is not a sprawling game, but overall setting and characters are better then I expected, even from Obsidian. 

The wishlist I would have for the sequel, would be to put a bit of this Fallout/Arcanum Tim Cain magic - use consistant system to allow us to solve quest in more ways and allow us to create characters which interact with the enviroment in a more individual way. I can't express my disappointment when I overheard a handoff of an item I was activelly looking for, but then I pickpocketed said person, she didn't have it on her. 

[Frag Maniac]

For me, the problems with combat come down more to issues with AI and other scripting than weapons. Stealth kills are so broken they're practically non existent. The companions are hard to keep from getting downed or killed in tough battles, and the enemies, though relatively easy to sneak past, are bee lining toward you with rage until you've got the last one down to near death (especially Cascadia). Aside from that, the TTD system is nowhere NEAR as effective as VATS.

I'm only in far enough to not have used anywhere near all the weapons, yet this sticks out like a sore thumb. Because of these problems, the game comes off as schizophrenic. At one moment you're enjoying the conversations and game world in what seems like a less fleshed out FO themed game (cartoon color palette, lengthy dialog, no workshop building, etc), and then suddenly it turns to a chaotic mess in combat. And this is just on Normal mode.

As a result, I quickly grew tired of the gameplay, despite taking interest in where the story was going, and it caused me to go back to Gears of War 4 for now to try to finish where I left off trying to beat it on Inconceivable. Now I know it may seem odd that such an attempt wouldn't be just as hard if not harder, but the challenges in GoW 4 are equally balanced with ways you can use the Fabricator, environment, and even squad AI, despite some claiming the latter to be useless.

What I'm saying is, this game seems rushed, and/or it's design assumed to succeed on story/dialog merits alone. I'm not a huge RPG fan, there's only certain ones I'll play, but any shooter, RPG or not, HAS to have good combat that has not just a variety of ways to use it, but also enough balance to be effective and fun to engage in. As far as combat not being expected to be good in "these types of games", I still feel despite being different in key ways in design from FO, it still shares enough similarities to expect good combat.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Frag Maniac

[Exitwounds]

Ah, I remember when one of the guards took my bribe and said sucker and didn't let me through. Obviously I had to shoot him for it, but the bits I lost was not on his body.