The Outer Worlds

[h2]TLDR:[/h2] A technically-sound RPG featuring enormous potential undone by its low-effort execution. [h2]GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW:[/h2] The Outer Worlds (TOW) opens with the player being defrosted from a cryo sleep by a sketchy scientist, who asks the player to help him rescue the rest of the frozen colonists on the ship. After going through a pretty basic character creator, the game is off and running. TOW features pretty standard RPG mechanics, including leveling, skills and attributes, perks, inventory management, factions, quest logs, exploring maps, companions, and the works. I think most players will grasp the basics pretty quickly. One unusual aspect were flaws, which are sort of inverse perks, providing a negative effect instead of a bonus. Flaws accumulate during gameplay, like scar tissue, such as when a character takes too much explosive damage and becomes more vulnerable to it. The player starts near the industrial slum town of Edgewater, where they are stuck until they can repair their (somewhat) inherited starship. Once that's done, more planetside and in-space locations around the solar system begin to open up, allowing the character to move freely between colony locations. The game is essentially a semi-open world, with numerous zones of different sizes connected by jumps in the player's spaceship. The colony's inhabitants vary from miners and factory workers, to sniff-necked bureaucrats, to corporate drones, to bandits and killers. A decent number are unique, with full dialogue trees. Between conversing and reading memos and letters on computer terminals, there's a fair amount of background lore, and it all fleshes out the cynical semi-hopeless nature of the overly-capitalist nature of the colony. https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/9899993847476637258/B47B2A1E1B91E133FA1A06A3B9A29DC29D9B04AC/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false A typical scene with your companions. The player is presented with a decision early on, as to whether to assist the sketchy scientist, or to turn him in and go to work for the corporate board of the system (essentially the government). It's not a black or white decision, with each avenue having its own potential benefits and pitfalls (for both the player and the colony). In terms of set-up, the direction of the game has excellent potential. Unfortunately, most of that potential is squandered. Depending on the choice you make above, the main quest has different objectives and gets to the end via a slightly different path, but every other quest is forgettable. After finishing the game, I couldn't recall any detail from a single side quest. Nothing stuck with me. And despite the colorful layout of the worlds, TOW ruins its own immersion with sheer laziness. NPCs are static, with no routine, even on planets with an obvious day/night cycle. If a storekeeper is at the counter at noon, she'll be there at midnight. No one sleeps or is ever away from where you first found them (other than for quest-driven reasons). Not a single character, regardless of gender, has long hair, as if Obsidian was terrified of hair physics. The same four or five species of hostile animals inhabit multiple planets with completely different biomes. The variety of loot is essentially cosmetic, with numerous foods and medicines providing the exact same effects. Numbers and types of weapons/armor aren't much better. Explosive crates are found literally everywhere, including in active residences, corporate offices, and lying unattended around space stations (where explosive decompression is a thing, in the event of a ruptured hull), none of which make any sense. The final wrap-up cutscene described my character as "he" even though I had chosen a female character. In short, the game functions well but the content just feels sloppy and careless, like whoever built it was just going through the motions ... and ultimately, that's how I felt playing too. One positive element I should call out are the companion characters. The player can recruit up to six different potential supporters, all of which come pretty early in the game. In contrast to the rest of the game's script, the companions are pretty well-written. They all have varied character arcs and quests, and their own special attacks. They provide some color by bouncing questions and conversation off each other, and comment during conversations with other NPCs. A player can take any two with them at a time, and I mixed up which companions I had with me to hear some different discussions. It helped but wasn't nearly enough. [h2]STORY / WORLDBUILDING:[/h2] The colony of Halycon is made up of a number of planets, moons, and spaceships / stations. There's a decent visual diversity between the layout of planets and settlements, such as the contrasting industrial-grunge slum appearance of frontier town Edgewater, versus the upscale sparkling modernity of the elite city of Byzantium. Same with the appearance and dress of NPCs. Unfortunately, the in-space locations all look pretty much the same. Every explorable location also features a breathable atmosphere and Earth-equivalent gravity, which felt like lost opportunities. And it's all window dressing anyway, as each location handles pretty much like every other. OW's central tale is, like so much else, functional without standing out. The story is heavily critical of capitalism and consumerism ... which would be fine, if the game didn't insist on clubbing the player over the head with it every two seconds. By the time you've heard about the sixth rapacious company turning its downbeaten employees into food for other employees, it loses its impact. Just about every corporation in the game is portrayed as a malignant entity, without much shade or nuance. It all feels very forced. Finally, the writing has a lot of attempted humor, most of which I'd call try-hard and over the top. Like the game's central themes, none of it is very subtle and I spent more time rolling my eyes than being amused. [h2]DLC:[/h2] OW features two major DLCS, Peril at Gorgon and Murder at Eridanos. Gorgon involves a wrecked research base with a dark secret gone wrong. Murder, as the name suggests, plunges the player into a homicide investigation. Ironically, I found the DLCs more enjoyable and better-written than the main game. For one, both dialed back the humor quite a bit and felt much more serious, especially Gorgon. Both feature interesting (if predictable) plots, with sympathetic NPCs, and dubious, morally gray choices to be made. The DLCs each add 7-10 hours to a full playthrough. Both are intended for high level characters and neither outstays their welcome. [h2]TECHNICAL ASPECTS:[/h2] The game runs well enough, without any glitches or serious problems. There was a bit of graphical blur on rapid turns, especially after talking to an NPC, which was odd for a 5-year-old game with ancient minimal system specs. No specific issues with the audio, save that it was average. Background music was decent, if forgettable, though ambient sound was pretty good. Voice acting was (again) adequate and unemotional. The UI was intuitive and easy to navigate. Completing all Steam achievements means finishing on the highest difficulty, multiple endings, and doing a lot of specific weapon kills. I wouldn't consider this a good game for cheevo farming unless someone was really enjoying it. [h2]FINAL WORD:[/h2] I wouldn't say Outer Worlds is a terrible game. It runs well enough and is something to do. I also wouldn't say it's a very good game, and there are simply too many similar and better sci-fi RPG and RPG-adjacent games that I would recommend over this one. [quote]Follow our Curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/]Summit Reviews[/url], to see more high quality reviews regularly.[/quote]