The Outer Worlds: Was it good?

Maybe?

I've spent about 30 hours with this game, and sometimes I was loving it. There would be moments I opened a door and saw a sprawling panoply of lights, activity, and things to explore.

This feeling of awe quickly dissipates though as you realize what looked like a large vibrant living district, is in fact very shallow, and not just physically.

I think the most frustrating thing about Outer Worlds was that the clear and ready ambition makes every letdown feel that much worse. There would be moments where I was genuinely invested in the impact my decisions would have on the game world.

After spending so much time with Parvati early on my journey through Emerald Vale, I legitimately had to pause and think deeply about the first big decision I had to make.

There were more quests for the main town than there were for the outcasts, so I knew them better, perhaps I hated them more for that, but clearly there was a right and wrong choice here right?

The problem is even though my gut was personally tied in knots about this decision, once I'd made it...nobody seemed to care. There were some set piece scenes in various places, but nobody was accusing me, the only stranger in their midst, of any nefarious deeds. My own companion, Parvati, who had strong opinions of her own, quickly forgot her misgivings upon seeing my badass ship.

It made the world feel dead to me, and I couldn't completely escape that feeling for the remainder of my time in this universe. Even things like design decisions struck a wrong chord with me. We have plenty of modern day corollaries to what is happening in game, but they chose the 1950s ad man bubble building aesthetic. Look, I understand this team wanted to say, "Hey remember that Fallout you really liked? We're the team who made it!" But did they really need to make this game feel like a more colorful version of that world?

This wasn't a post cold-war apocalyptic earth. It was a brand new universe, and the blind adherence to jingle laden advertising fell incredibly flat for me. We have modern issues with what capitalism can do to a society, and I felt that the choices in aesthetic made were cowardice. It was a sense of trying to avoid the direct comparison to the problems corporations pose for society right now.

The whole game suffered from this. It felt like that friend who giggles and tells an awkward joke when they feel that the situation is too tense.

The story, though was really good. Don't get me wrong, the payoff at the end of the game was definitely worth the ride. And even completing all of the companion quests, which genuinely felt like tacked on side stories that didn't affect their behavior towards me and others during main missions, even those had a nice epilogue scene you earn by completing them.

But there's more to a game than story, and here Outer Worlds ambition also seems to get in its own way. There is a disgusting amount of variety in consumable items, and I genuinely feel bad for whoever had to design them and write up little blurbs on them, because you probably won't use any of them in a play-through.

I found out there were beds about ten hours into my play. There's literally an entire game mode that requires you to eat, drink, and sleep, and it's not a default game mode. There are hundreds of items, an entire mechanic, that you likely won't even see on a normal play through.

The variety of weapons feels good at first, and on more difficult modes some of the different types/weaknesses actually matter, but for the most part you'll be playing with the weapons that fit your play style. I will say that the variety of weapons including plasma launchers, shotguns, snipers, assault rifles, and more are actually distinct enough that this works.

Armor similarly plays a key roll in the game. Some times you do want to have some protection, but more often than not I found myself collecting top hats, and goggles, and more for perks to my dialogue options. I found myself changing clothes regularly to complete different tasks, which did feel silly (wearing stealthy glasses and jumper to complete a hack, and switching to something a little more intimidating to threaten the person whose terminal I just hacked).

All that said, I finished The Outer Worlds. A strange statement, but for me a significant one. I haven't really beaten a game all the way through in almost a decade. Despite the flaws the game kept calling me back. There was something about the world that made me want to take the next step in the journey, and I do wish there were some changes that could have made it even more engaging, but it's a fun game...maybe just not $60.00 fun.