How are you enjoying yourself?

A few hours in, I'm having a good time. Love the set & setting, style, and vibe. Gun-play is solid, characters/dialogue feel interesting. Is there anything you dislike, or bothers you?

Shouldn't my dialogue skill allow me to use a more positive response? It's where I have lumped most of my skill points...

Loving it. New Vegas is one of my favourite games of all time and, although it's not identical of course, I couldn't be happier with it.

I can't wait to get home and play it. Damn full time job.

It ran super bad on my PC when I tried it last night. Gonna do a reinstall to a better drive and fiddle with the settings a bit but not optimistic.

It’s a real bummer, the game looks right up my alley.

I'm only a couple hours in and still testing the waters a little bit. Haven't had to make tough choices yet, although I can see a couple coming up. I got stuck once jumping on a crate and had to reload, other than that everything seems to be working as intended.

I had to get used to the particular mix of RPG and FPS, but now that I found a sniper rifle I'm all good, playing on hard.

It's amazing how quick I got sucked into the world, even without diving into codexes and other lore dumps. The world building is just great. They took 'show, don't tell' to heart and you'll get a great feel of what's what simply by walking around a little bit.

@justin258: It could be worse, I’m taking a day off and working on home projects. I love Obsidian and it’s pre-installed via Gamepass.

Once I’m done with work around the house, I’ll have kids and dogs to take care of!

Seriously, breaking into a new, big game sucks. I feel like my first chunk needs to be about 2-3 hours of gameplay for it to not feel too disjointed, but finding 2-3 hours of spare time is akin to striking oil in my yard.

Microsoft got me to subscribe to PC gamepass just for this. (Creature In The Well & Slay the Spire are a bonu$!) I think it was $1 for the first month and $5 a month after that for some (indefinate?) period of time. Worth it! It took 10 hours to download the 37GBs.. And I've got fast fiber based internet.. So I'm guessing they're saving cash on their end on the bandwidth.. It did say click here to learn about higher speed downloads, so I guess you can pay for faster...

@bigsteve33: No.. no just like any service sometimes the speeds are low.

@efesell: Ahh.. well launch day and all.. to be expected.

Having a good time so far. Mostly just happy to have a Fallout game that hasn't crashed and flip out on me every 5 seconds. I had an absolutely miserable time trying to play Fallout 4 of losing progress to characters bugging out, getting stuck, the dog A.I. going nuts and running off to chase nothing, falling into a hole, getting stuck behind doors I can't open, getting myself stuck going in after the dog, and the game just crashing at least a handful of times.

@brian_: My thoughts exactly. I loved New Vegas and Fallout 3 but so far if the trade off of having a huge open world against it working as well as this I'll take it. The quest and side quest storytelling is great and even my rather humble PC runs it without any noticeable issues.

Pretty much instantly charmed. The descriptions of aptitudes were clever and some were downright hilarious. This gonna be gooots. <3 Obsidian

Very, very into it. Didn't get too far in my first two hours (did a decent amount of the Die, Robot quest, met Reed, Parvati and Vicar Max). I appreciated that you could have been a bartender in a past life, currently being one myself, so I essentially spec'd a character around those attributes (a good talker and perceptive, but not necessarily intelligent or technically skilled with decent physical attributes). Of course, then I immediately started pouring as much as I could into tech so I could hack and pick at things easier. Oh well.

The combat feels a little loose, so I'm glad I didn't take Brad's advice and am playing on Normal. I've already died twice and come close a couple other times. Definitely a hard swerve from all the Apex/Destiny 2 I've been playing recently.

I feel like the lukewarm / it's very good, but sort of takes are coming from people who often play these games, but I haven't played a proper One of These since Fallout 3, which I never finished. Obviously I see all kinds of analogs for myself, particularly Bioshock Infinite and all the games I've played with massive loot/skill systems since, but not specifically this style of game so it's all fairly novel for me and I'm sure that helps.

It's not often that a game convinces me to skip going out with coworkers until last call after work, but this weekend is about to be pretty thrifty. I just want to sit in this world and soak it up. The dialogue and atmosphere is wonderful.

I'm enjoying the writing a lot. I like how many options you get to just lie and create these silly scenarios, like every conversation is a one sided improv session.

Feels like a wonderful amount of freedom, especially compared to Fallout 4s 'agree earnestly; agree sarcastically; fight' options for every single conversation.

Yeah this game is non-functioning on my 1060 since I have to run it on my 1440 monitor and if I bump things down to a more manageable resolution it looks like straight trash.

About 5 hours in and I'm really enjoying it so far.

I've played about four hours so far and I'm generally enjoying myself, but I'm not blown away like I had hoped from something pitched as a New Vegas spiritual successor. It's really well written and the gameplay loops are fun--I'm actually really fond of the combat in a way I wasn't expecting--but it's not quite scratching the NV itch for me the same way it seems to be for a lot of people.

I know they get dunked on sometimes, but the sprawling worlds and physics-based clutter of Bethesda-era Fallout are major draws for me in terms of immersion and investment. After playing 3, NV and 4 for hundreds of hours, Outer Worlds is jarring--it looks right at first glance, but then everything's glued down and constrained.

Also outside of the gorgeous skyboxes I'm not really digging the art direction or the setting. For something so colorful and clearly full of care and consideration, it still feels oddly generic (so far...I haven't left the first area yet, so maybe things will improve).

None of this is pushing me away, though...I'm really excited to spend all evening playing more. But it's just not quite what I'm looking for from a game that's clearly gunning for Bethesda.

@banefirelord: Two of the things Bethesda's RPGs do better than most is exploration and hoarding, neither of these aspects are particularly compelling in the Outer Worlds.

The writing is better and the combat is a bit more fine tuned but thats about it.

Agreed, but as you say the timing is great, with Bioware and Bethesda both falling flat as of late people are clamouring for a just fine RPG. It's why Greedfall got more attention than Spiders RPGs typically do.

I feel like I'm just going through the motions with this one. I'm fine with it being more Mass Effect 2 than New Vegas (from the team-building to the way the world is presented in tiny little chunks), but I don't feel like there are any stakes. Mass Effect 2 benefited from having a game's worth of momentum behind it, but I find myself going through The Outer Worlds feeling like I didn't get snagged by whatever was supposed to hook me by now. I'm not having a bad time, I guess, but I find it very easy to put it down after a short session.

Bummer. I'm also rocking a 1060, at 1440, everything on high, and I'm getting a solid 30, with it as high as 45.

Hope you get it sorted out!

I like basically everything about it. The only real problem being it came out a week after Disco Elysium, and I have to bounce back and forth between them.

For someone like me who loves traditional RPGs and has zero interest in all the quantity over quality open worlds and online loot shooters currently on the market, this is perfect. Good size, good writing, and clearly designed by people who get RPGs.

I hope it sells and they get to make more,

I'm getting the intense stuttering that seems to be fairly widely reported near as I can tell. I can get those framerates indoors but outside and looking around? A nightmare.

Microsoft bought Obsidian, presumably for them to make more of these types of games, so even if it won't necessarily be with this IP (depending on sales etc...) they will make more.

In addition, with Gamepass Microsoft doesn't seem that interested in sales of its first party games so much as getting and keeping people subscribed. My guess is that it gets a lot of people to play it on Gamepass (I'm doing so) and does well by their metrics.

As for my impressions of the game after a couple hours...

I like it but don't love it yet. I haven't really played the Fallout first person games so my closest analogue is a Bioware RPG, and I tend to love those so I'm pretty hopeful. So far I'm liking the writing and the combat is...fine...but the world hasn't sucked me in. I am enjoying scavenging for materials and whatnot and the dialog stuff. This feels like a game that I will either fall in love with or bounce off of after a few more hours. I really hope it's the former because I've been looking forward to this all year.

I'm so sorry I bought this thing. Took a break from Disco Elysium to play the first planet and boy, that jump did Outer Worlds no favors -- DE's writing is so much more nuanced, funny, and continually surprising, OW just seems flat and cartoonish in contrast. Unlike DE, OW does have running around in first person and action, but both of these are really boring to me (so far) too. The corporate-space-world conceit offers a rationale for why you're roaming around in pre-fab and frequently repeated building layouts, but that doesn't make going through them any less tedious. And the combat doesn't feel much different from the Bethesda Fallouts to me, thick and clunky.

But...that's just based on the first few hours, maybe it gets better???

Still, I'd advise anyone who comes to these games primarily for the writing/story to consider checking out DE instead. In terms of how it handles its narrative and builds its world, it keeps pulling the rug out from under my expectations, where OW feels like a mashup of things I've seen/done/read too often.

I am, of course, aware.

I'd like to think Microsoft will stick with their current strategy for awhile and do right by the studios they bought this year, but ultimately it's all about the money. We'll see how it goes.

@ignatz27: I've seen this comparison a lot and it strikes me as a little strange.

I mean yes the game that is hyper focused on one thing and one thing only does that one thing way better than Outer Worlds.

Don't know about 1440p but at 1080p limiting the FPS to 60 it runs pretty well on my 1060 GPU (a lot of 1xxx numbers here). Unlocked framerate causing a lot of stutters and most of the time just utilizing %100 of my CPU (i5 6600). @efesell maybe if you're comfortable with it, limiting it to 30 might solve the issue? Not the best advice i know. Just check your CPU utilization on task manager to see if we have the same issue.

I envy you people who have the time to play games.

I'll have the time to fall into this k-hole eventually.

Started it tonight. Strong Obsidian vibes. Strong Firefly vibes. Digging it. Gamepass is proving to be a really cool service.

started on my xbox one x, looked so damned close to New Vegas and ran slow so im waiting now for the PC download to finish. Seems like another one of those, which feels bad to say as someone that has obsessively played every elder scrolls/fallout game and loved them deeply until FO4/FO76. seems kinda trite idk.

I like how 3 of those options are basically the same option and there's no 'it sucks' option. :P

But yeah, I like it and this is someone who thought New Vegas had a slow crawl that gradually became something great, but this one is great from the get-go.

The game starts off really strong and I really enjoyed it, but by the time I was almost done with Monarch I found myself getting kinda bored and really trying to rush things. I'm not quite sure why that is, but the game just seems to drag at that point and it never really recovered for me. Beat it on Hard going down an interesting story path, but by the time it was over I was more happy to just be done. Might mess around in a new play through but I'm not sure yet. I usually love these style of games but when I hit that fatigue wall with this one, it really stung.

I'm loving it. I've never played an Obsidian game nor have I been much of an RPG fan. This game has changed that. My favorite aspect is the challenging decision-making process. Morality is quite flexible and multiple paths are available for exploration. Everything feels fresh and inviting, thus inspiring me to constantly challenge myself in order to fully realize the game's potential.

The world is rich and colorful. The weapons are fun and the lore interesting. There's not much left to be desired.

Digging the return to manageable 'zones' instead of the open world bloat that's become the norm. Reminds me of Mass Effect and KOTOR, bite size areas that are actually fun to 100%.

The biggest win is the attribute/leveling system in this game. Man is it ever robust. You can literally build to an RP archetype without any glaring draw backs or min-maxing. I know that was their pitch for Pillars of Eternity's system, but that one was almost more Min/Max then DnD.

I think they nailed this one.

Probably my only complaint is the coloring... I cant adjust my TV settings to make it look quite right. I'm not even sure what my character's hair color is supposed to be. I was going for Brown and I got metallic dirty red/green/blue depending on the lighting? The future is now!

My take is the random boxes all iver the place almost kill the immersion, it's a personal thing, the Last of Us suffered from it to the point of ruining the game but luckily its not so bad here.

Other than that goddam this is a good game.

PC games are a tricky beast. I have a mid range PC with a 1070. Running great - no issues with stuttering or slowdown that I've really noticed.

I'm having a great time with it. My main issue is that, with the nature of the game it is, I'm actually spending too much time trawling through boxes for items and ammo and crap, when I'd just rather be going through the story.

Only played 5 hours so just made it off the first area. Gave me Witcher vibes in that even the fetch quests were well fleshed out and I was impressed by how the dialogue reflected things that I had already done, or what I was wearing etc.

Kind of wanted to take today off work to just chill out and play more (but I didn't because responsibilities...)

I'm loving it so far. It's so much better than any Bethesda Fallout game to me. The Firefly inspiration is obvious and I think it's the main reason I'm enjoying it so much. However the combat and visuals leave a lot to be desired. The combat feels nearly identical to Fallout 4, so it's a clunky janky mess. The slow motion does help though. Character models look like they were imported straight from the Creation Engine, they are all fairly ugly. Females have it the worst, and they all have these gross butch hairstyles. I guess the artists at Obsidian still can't quite do hair physics correct or something. It's definitely not a deal breaker for me, just would be nice to have some better looking characters.

@sarcasticmudcrab: Agreed. I’d like to see the industry trend toward considering pacing and flow. Too often, I feel like I need to ignore my character’s motivation for the sake of exploring every nook and cranny for upgrades, ammo, collectables.

I get that it’s probably a tough nut to crack, but the whole “racing against the clock to save the wor- HEY, WHAT’S DOWN THAT ROAD!” thing has bugged me for years.

And yes, I know, I’m choosing to explore, but games too often reward odd behavior, like Link rummaging through everyone’s personal belongings and smashing their crates on his quest to save Hyrule.

It's way better than Bethesda's Fallouts ever were, that's for sure.

The game benefits a lot from a great first impression (although in retrospect, Terra 2 is way gloomier than just about every other place you go to), but like people have mentioned it almost wears out its welcome towards the end.

Monarch ends up dragging on for a while, mostly due to 3 different mission hubs that keep sending you in circles around the place. Especially since a few of them send you off world and back again.

The combat is fine, but suffers from lack of weapon and enemy variety. Instead of proper 'second tier' weapons, you find same ones with arbitrarily higher stats and Mk2 slapped in the name. And every single planet pits you against same marauders and robots, each coming in 3 types.

That might be the biggest overall issue to throw at the game - its clear that with an engine switch (previous Obsidian games were Unity with Pillars and Tyranny) and higher asset quality, they didn't have time to vary the environments, enemies and weapons.

I somewhat feel the same way about companions. Their individual quests are pretty good, but outside of that, they end up having very little to say or talk to about. Ellie in particular has her entire arc happen in like 5 minutes near the very end of the game.

I still really like the game and there are lots of great moments, but its clear Obsidian didn't have the resources/time to really push it.

On that note, I've seen a lot of people mention that smaller scope makes the game more replayable, but I almost feel the other way, since the small scope means there is inherently very little difference between what you can accomplish, unlike the New Vegas or Obsidians previous games.

i'm having a hard time with the difficulty seriously.
i heard from all over the place that "Medium is too easy and Hard is way too hard" but decided to ignore this because difficulty is a weird subject and can be subjective.

But God Damn, Hard is wayyy too hard for me, and i feel like i ain't using any of my habilities in Regular!
is anyone having the same problem

I want this game.

I think the game is fine, fine if you're really looking for a game like this. It feels paint-by-numbers, but with some decent writing to prop up its mostly empty world. The world is extremely static. I feel like I'm interacting with notice boards with how static the quest givers are in this game. And the close-up conversations make me feel claustrophobic in a weird way.

The worlds aren't particularly interesting to explore. There's no mysteries to uncover while exploring, really, at least not in the 5 hours I've played. Gunplay is extremely weak, and the AI is atrocious. Gun variety is weak, guns aren't fun to shoot in general. Too much focus on random looting, which I suppose isn't unique to this game, but it also feels necessary to loot for ammo so I'm kind of forced to do it.

All the story is in the dialog with characters. World-building outside of dialog is extremely weak aside from the over the top corporate dystopia visual theme they've got going on. Honestly, everything "impactful" happens in dialog. With Edgewater, you can make your "big choice" but it doesn't really have any impact outside of something you read. And the writing ain't that good, guys! If it was a visual novel, I'd be bored, but I'm honestly bored with the gameplay of this game because all I do is run from waypoint to waypoint, engaging in some bad shooting with terrible AI, and then run through a dialog tree. Rinse and repeat.

I honestly think this game is boring as hell. Didn't love Fallout 4, but I found it way more engaging than this. And this game has nothing on New Vegas. Such a weird dialog and hype around this game. Give it a year and no one's going to think this game was very good.

@instinct666 said:

I'm playing on Hard. It's definitely tough, but I think a lot of that has to do with a severe lack of feedback in the combat rather more than anything else. I've had several fights were I look up and see that I'm nearly dead but have no idea what hit me or when.

Having said that, I'm generally enjoying the game. It's colorful, the writing is really good, its unusually bug free for an Obsidian game and I really dig the smaller zones and greater focus. Really the only things that are bugging me so far:

1. The already mentioned lack of combat feedback.
2. It's way too easy to get really powerful by simply stealing everything that isn't nailed down. The NPCs are pretty unaware and you can just close a door in their face and be 100% fine jacking everything in the room. On the one had, I find it kind of refreshing that there isn't really any arbitrary morality meter tracking when you steal stuff. On other hand, it feels like an exploit the way it's currently set up.
3. There's some minor usability stuff that I'd like to see fixed. For example, you don't "eat" the food but instead add it as an effect to your health inhaler. However, even though a lot of the food items have a similar effect (e.g. +200% base health for 30 seconds), the game doesn't automatically swap to an item with a similar effect when you run out. With the way it works, I'm interested in the effect, not the specific item, so it would be nice if it automatically reloaded the inhaler with items that share an effect rather than making you dive into the menu to replenish it.

My only complaint is that I wish there was a toggle for chromatic aberration separate from the other post-processing features. The game looks great except for that. It makes me feel like I need glasses or something. It looks like there's a simple INI tweak for that on the PC version, at least.

I'm having a blast! However, I've run into a bug that auto-fails a companion quest while I'm talking to the companion. It says the companion is dead and I failed the quest as that companion is asking me to help them. Super bummed about that. :( I loaded a previous save, and I'm just avoiding having a convo with the companion in hopes it will get patched soon. I'm also playing on normal, so the companion shouldn't even be dying? So strange. Anyone else running into these kinds of bugs? I'm playing on a PS4 Pro.

@jen1220: Could you be more specific? Perhaps in a spoiler box. I haven't encountered it myself, but I've read the same from others.

I'm having so much fun. I played New Vegas so many times, and later with countless mods, and this really scratches that itch. On PS4 now,but I'll definitely but it again on PC if it gets good mod support.

Yeah, it's basically the second part of Parvati's companion quest. When she wants you to help her on her date. When I'm talking to her and accept her quest, I get a pop up saying she died...even though I'm talking to her.

I guess quite a few people have been having this issue, as stated on an Obsidian tech support forum. It seems to be happening across various platforms. Hoping that they fix it soon since that companion quest seemed really interesting. :(