Out of this World Combat

[Frenetic Pony]

See, the title is a pun, get it? Hahaha

And that's the thing, it's a joke. The Outer Worlds is full of jokes. The combat could be full of jokes! Take the "physics!!!" combat of other games like Breath of the Wild, Half Life 2, Bioshock, and just crank the dial fully up until the combat is just as silly as the rest of the world.

Put battery packs and electrical outlets are everywhere, and all that needs to happen for random cracks of electricity that will zap anyone, or any puddle of water, or any metallic body full of electricity. If it's a robot watch it malfunction and squeal like R2-D2, if it's a person watch their muscles contract as they get flung across the room like being hit by lightning!

Carry this over to everything, fire prevention robots spray "Cryo gas" that does cold damage and freezes puddles solid, target the cryo tank and watch the gas shoot out all over the place, causing the robot to possibly shoot out of control across the room spraying everywhere! There's flammable stuff everywhere, because of course there is. Light a human(oid?) character on fire after they get covered in flammable liquid and watch them run around like an over dramatic extra in an action movie, throwing themselves out breakable windows and flailing around like loons.

There can even be an entire series of in game jokes explaining why the world is this way. Why do we have to work around all these barrels of extra flammable spaceship fuel? Well someone ordered 10x too many on a spreadsheet and we didn't have room in the warehouse to store them all. Why are the guardrails to the industrial shredders out? Well see it's fine because we put a "caution, guardrails are out" sign next to them! Please note, the caution sign is now out.

I.E. Make the combat as silly, hazardous, and funny as the rest of the world.

[Frenetic Pony]

Include funny combat barks too!

Shoot a bandit in the crotch and his mate could scream "You're- you're a monster!"

If it's a corporate goon have them yell "For the corporation!" and their mate go "Don't you know who we work for???"

If it's a combat robot it plays "Impressed by X-28's combat performance? Should you survive please contact Stellar Defense Corp to inquire further!"

Plenty of humor to get in with dialogue during combat.