The Outer Worlds: "First generation technology, but promising."

[UrbaNebula]

I heard Phineas utter these words and it made me think about The Outer Worlds itself. To give you an idea of where I am coming from, I have sunk around 40 hours into the game at this point. I believe that I am approaching the end of my first playthrough and I have two other characters with a seaworthy (spaceworthy?) Unreliable.

I am in love with this universe. The characters, the art direction and the overall tone. I am hoping that this becomes the first step in a new beloved franchise. While I have enjoyed the game up to this point, I am starting to note a few elements where it feels a little rough around the edges. By refusing to fast travel as I do in every game that offers it, I have traversed the various parts of Terra 2 and crossed Monarch a number of times and to be brutally honest, it's starting to feel like a bit of a slog. There are two things that I feel are sorely missing from this game and I put this down to the scope of the project and the limited budget:

Firstly, variety. There are a number of different armours and weapons in the game, but it does all start to look a little samey after a while. The corporate armours are all simply recolours and other armours are limited. The weapons too are very limited and the customisation that comes with modding is only slight.

Second, the world spaces don't really FEEL alive in the same way as open world games do. Now, I'm fully aware that this isn't an open world game and the devs have said that potential sequels likely won't be either, but even the largest map in the game, Monarch, is a little bit flat and lifeless after you've spent just a short amount of time there. If I can play Devil's advocate and compare this to a Bethesda RPG briefly, if you were to grab a chunk of Skyrim's map that was roughly the size of Monarch's play space (probably about the size of one of the holds), you would find little contained stories here and there. Maybe a cave or a dungeon or two with their own thing going on, not to mention roaming wildlife and even random encounters (NPCs needing help, assassins, faction patrols fighting with bandits, etc etc). Same thing can be said of New Vegas, a game which Obsidian completed on a dysfunctional engine in a much smaller time frame. I know the team has changed since then and they had to build The Outer Worlds from the ground up, which likely accounted for a good deal of the development time and resources.

Bear in mind that this isn't me saying "The Outer Worlds doesn't have these things and it's a lesser experience because of it." This is me saying that I really hope Obsidian use this is a spring board and dive into this franchise head first. I reckon that with a decent budget Obsidian RPGs could be catapulted into the mainstream and become one of those titles that even non-gamers take an interest in!

One final note: Let's say that hypothetically Obsidian Entertainment did not do DLC for The Outer Worlds. If they take the game they have now as a base, build on it and spent two years creating new content and release it as a spin off rather than a full sequel, I would be over the moon. It would be their New Vegas to The Outer Worlds' Fallout 3.

So that's it. I just wanted to spill my guts here.

tl;dr: The Outer Worlds is great, I love it and I am incredibly excited to see how Obsidian builds on this solid foundation that they have laid out.

[Ommamar]

I like the game too but I agree with what you are saying.  No idea what decisions led to the acquisition by Microsoft but this game feels kind of like a we signed a contract to do this game so how can we complete it dedicating the least amount of asset and time to it.  Still they managed to create a solid experience and system that I to hope they continue developing.

[UrbaNebula]

2 hours ago, Ommamar said:

I like the game too but I agree with what you are saying.  No idea what decisions led to the acquisition by Microsoft but this game feels kind of like a we signed a contract to do this game so how can we complete it dedicating the least amount of asset and time to it.  Still they managed to create a solid experience and system that I to hope they continue developing.

I think it's simply that they were developing The Outer Worlds as what Leonard Boyarsky dubbed "The next generation of a throwback RPG."

The fact that Microsoft snatched up inXile at the same time whilst they are developing Wasteland 3 makes me think that somebody as in the company believes that there is some value in the concept of classic RPGs. The reviews and (hopefully) sales/game pass figures for The Outer Worlds will encourage them to throw more money at Obsidian for their next stab at it.

[Ommamar]

5 hours ago, UrbaNebula said:

I think it's simply that they were developing The Outer Worlds as what Leonard Boyarsky dubbed "The next generation of a throwback RPG."

The fact that Microsoft snatched up inXile at the same time whilst they are developing Wasteland 3 makes me think that somebody as in the company believes that there is some value in the concept of classic RPGs. The reviews and (hopefully) sales/game pass figures for The Outer Worlds will encourage them to throw more money at Obsidian for their next stab at it.

I hope so but I take a watch and see stance when big publishers acquire independent game developers who have made past game I have enjoyed playing.