"The Outer Worlds" The Ghost of Bethesda Looms Large

    Look, The Outer Worlds tries, it tries so very hard to be like those Bethesda games you are so familiar with. And it achieves that, to a degree, but after a certain while the allure of playing another  "Bethesda caliber RPG" (for whatever that's worth these days) just rubs off, and you're just left with a story, and a game that doesn't really pull you in as hard as it needs to. I mean I'm not saying the game doesn't try to differentiate itself from the first-person RPG genre, it's just that all of these changes/differences can mostly be ignored, to little effect on gameplay. Also, the game is a lot smaller than you'd think, I mean I only spent about 25 hours of actual time on my save, and judging off of my playtime on Epic Games I'd say I spent about the same amount keeping the game in the background because I went to go do anything more interesting. That's not to say that it's a terrible game for one that's a first iteration, just that it struggles to differentiate itself from the crowd in any sort of meaningful way.

    Let me start right off with one of the more noticeable themes in this game, the whole "corporation running your life/capitalism" angle. My friend personally dropped this game after a couple hours, telling me "it's just not that interesting, too in your face, and frankly not funny". And yes, I understand that, part of the fun with Vault-Tec is that some of the scavengers/dwellers are really stupid so there's some situational irony, but to be honest I never played the Fallout games expecting to be humoured, part of the charm of Bethesda games is that it's funny when the game tries to do one thing and it just ends up shitting itself right in front of you. Frankly, I agree with him, I'd say it's pretty on the nose, and not to be someone who loves to toot their own horn, but I'd say it was pretty easy to make the morally correct decision as someone who roleplays as a good guy. 

    Sure I searched up what would happen if I chose the other option, but there was rarely a time where I felt regret or conflict. Part of the appeal of these games is having all of these different choices/options and being able to (sort of sometimes) justify your decision even if some characters can't see it that way. But in this game it's just kind of comically easy because the entire premise of this game is Corporatocracy turned up to eleven. Like it's really hard for me to justify freezing an entire population but letting the rich people live because everyone's starving so I'm supposed to expect that the rich will solve it all. Especially when the "corpo" path requires you to kill an entire town depending on decisions that you make pretty early into the game. So I'd say if you were going to do a playthrough you'd pretty much either just do really good person or really evil person, with not that much variance to play around with in-between.

    That's not to say it's particularly difficult to be a bad person. I can't believe I'm saying this but this game's stealth system is legitimately worse than Skyrim's, a game in which you at one point could just put a bucket on someone's head and steal all of their goods. At least in Skyrim people will question me when I'm crouching around, or notice when I go into area's I'm not supposed to. The way I quickly became rich in this game is by robbing each and every store, and yes while it is cool that there are methods for the players to be able to rob them (little pathways/shortcuts etc.) there really aren't any stakes/consequences. It's kind of weird to say but other than the companions I think the NPC's in this game feel less responsive/alive than in Bethesda ones, NPC's which have been mercilessly clowned to death I might add. 

    That is not to say that all of the NPC's are terrible, I actually quite enjoyed the companion system in this game. Sure, it may not be as many options as some people want, and you may not be able to romance them (like some people probably want), but I'd say having only six of them to hone in on made it feel more impactful when you chose to bring out certain characters. They'd actually react differently to quests depending on who you'd bring, they'd interact with each other, and you could actually use their skills to your advantage. It was great, and being able to upgrade them and have them all sit in your ship like a crew was fun. My only complaint would be that the companion quests could have been better. It's like they got lazier as they went on? Pavarti and Vicar Max have quests that take you all cross the galaxy, Nyoka's and Ellie's quests are fine if not underwhelming and Felix's quest can accidentally be skipped depending on when you do it (apparently I may have killed his quest giver very early into the game before I even met him). Not to mention his ending is kind of depressing even if you do complete it. Hey at least he got a quest though unlike SAM who I never felt a strong desire to take out, like ever.

    On a similar note, was this game rushed in development? I have no idea. The reason I say this is that there are multiple planets on my map that are just never touched or explored. At some point I had expected Olympus, or some of the other planets to have some sort of significance to the game, but by the time I had reached the end, I was so confused I had to search it up just to make sure I would never reach those planets. This game is probably smaller than you'd expect it to be, and honestly after a while, though the setting remained vibrant no matter where you went, it starts to get a little stale. The maps are small, and as someone who explored practically every inch of every map due to their size, I felt like there wasn't too much of a benefit towards that exploration. Usually it was just bandits, with nothing substantive to add, or perhaps it also involved some quest, and so you'd have to go do the quest then come back to the area for it to have anything of interest. 

    Not to mention, the loot in this game is just so unvaried. This is a complaint I also had in Kingdom Come Deliverance, there simply wasn't enough good rewards, so actually doing quests didn't feel as rewarding as they ought to, especially the random side ones where you just get bits. Especially because, you don't really have much need for money. The most I ever used it for was to repair my gear, because in this game if you kill/explore/loot the maps, which isn't too long or difficult, there is very little point in buying any gear, because it's all the same everywhere. While I do like that you can tinker with items so it's easier to keep certain pieces of loot as you level up, it's done incorrectly in my opinion. Instead of the level-up price being tied to the level you're raising your weapon to, it directly correlates to how many times you've improved your weapon, growing exponentially. The issue then becomes, It's simply too expensive for me to be upgrading all of my favourite, cool, unique items, because the truth is I'd probably be better off just finding a much more common item that's a much higher level off of a random marauder, which sort of defeats the purpose of being able to tinker with your items.

    That sums up a lot of my feelings about the features in this game to be honest. Ok? So what? Like take flaws for example, which provide some serious debuffs for your character, while the descriptions of them are comical, the truth is perks in this game are bountiful enough if you do all the quests, and just in general not helpful enough, to be taking on permanent debuffs, so I never took on any of them. Tactical Time Dilation is cool, it's their version of VATS from Fallout, but it's only really useful when you're super under-leveled. By the time you reach high enough levels you and your companions have such nice loot you can basically have them do most of the work for you. The skill system was decent, but some of the skills being locked behind points allocation did not really help them. Take for example the dodge system in this game, yes you can dodge, no I never used it. You had to put in points to be able to dodge, and frankly even once I did I could barely notice the difference, so I immediately re-specced and never touched it again, just spending everything on the tech/speech trees. The same could be said for the melee system, there's a sweep ability I never tried when playing this game, but also it would have cost me points to upgrade the tree, and way too much money to consistently be upgrading melee weapons so I could stay competitive with the enemies placed out there.

Final Score: 60/100

    I would put this game firmly into the fine, not exceptional/mediocre tier. This is my favourite genre of game, so I played it through to completion. But to people like my friend I could easily see why they'd drop it pretty quickly. I mean most of this was me tearing this game apart, but that's really just what stood out to me. It was a pretty standard first-person RPG that I enjoyed, but was nothing to write home about. Most features they had put in to differentiate themselves was either too small to overlook the other flaws, or just plain useless/could be ignored. I mean if a sequel to this game comes out and improves on everything I'd gladly play it, it's just that as this game stands, it's more of a launching pad/proof of concept for the universe. A lot of people described this game as "Diet Fallout" and I hate to say that they're mostly not wrong. Like, with tweaks this game could have been great, but ultimately it's ambition outpaces the reality very quickly, and players are just kind of left disappointed watching more.