Doing a "renegade" quick playthrough for my 2nd run just basically doing all the opposite choices. I'm going to guess this is supposed to be part of the sub-text of "Fuck the board" but holy shit. I turned Welles into the Board and all they gave me was 3k bits (not even enough to buy one of the rare weapons)

How is the guy public enemy #1 yet the board can only scrounge up a measly 3k for his bounty

I also encountered a bug on Monarch that involved Nyoka and prevented me from doing the main quest, I had to reload and lost a bunch of progress. (I didnt get the quest "Passion Pills" when I should have)

I was pretty lukewarm on Fallout games, and this is hitting the same kind of spot for me. But it's definitely well-made enough to keep me coming back. I'm prone to spending way too long picking up everything in sight though. And then stuffing all of it in the infinite lockers / fridges on the ship (why oh why couldn't they make mods weightless?)

Only notable problem I've had is that I can't use 6x scopes. When I fit one and try aiming, I just see almost a solid color. That said, the 2x scope on an assault rifle seems to be plenty sufficient for my play style.

Weird, I could have sworn I read something in-game that said the inhaler does what you want it to do. Maybe there's a bug? I only recently unlocked the extra slot so I haven't actually run out of the food item to test this out...and now I have the perk that heals on kill (and I'm playing on normal) so I'm not sure I ever will use the inhaler enough times to see that.
You *can* consume food outside of the inhaler which is what I was doing for a bit: I initially spec'ed my character to have 0 health regen so drinking alcohol would temporarily give me regen back.

Overall I agree the way these items are handled is a bit annoying. You can't even sort by effect.

Damn, I was surprised the credits rolled so soon. I did every quest in the game, spoke to every named NPC, looted/explored every single building and finished the game on hard mode in 21 hours. There were some really memorable (albeit short) quests, and I loved talking to everyone as they're so different from each other; Felix bored me to tears and Sam was pointless, but the rest of the gang and ADA were pretty great. I laughed out loud plenty. I loved being a dick to Max, mollycoddling Parvati, and encouraging Ellie and Nyoka's vengeful schemes. I didn't want it to end.

Outside of a couple dozen great characters, however, it didn't give me much in its world-building to actually sink my teeth into. Halcyon is an intriguing system, and the Wizard of Oz influences on its design are profoundly stunning, but it feels like it has no real history to it or sense of depth. I wish it was more like a Fallout game in terms of scope and truly carving your own experience out of a dense world, not in this odd in-between nook, because I realized it really wasn't one of those by the time I finished. The Mass Effect 2 comparisons are far more accurate to me; it doesn't quite have that depth, even, but it certainly has a similar structure and scale. It's a tight, neat package of RPG fun, and that's a great start. They will build off of this strong template for the sequel, and I can't wait. Some DLC in the interim would be nice (those unvisitable planets in Halycon?)

The gunplay is decent. I loved hitting weak spots and felling giant beasts, but it felt like there were only 7 or 8 true enemy types, if that, and it got tiresome by the last two planets. More interesting mods could have made it great, though. Making enemies hemorrhage cartoonishly, suspending them in bubbles, magnetizing them to each other, etc., the list is endless. It felt too simple and serious compared to the rest of the game. They could have added some more shooty fetch quests if that variety was there, rewarding you with crazy mods at the end of dungeons and abandoned factories.

It's a fun game, I enjoyed it a lot, but it went from an easy 9/10 to a very strong 7.5 in the last few hours, for me. It's like I was in the middle of eating my main course when the dessert arrived and then it was over, you know? Well worth playing, either way.

-

Technical stuff: I have a 6700k & 1070 combo on a 1440p monitor, and I achieved a steady 60fps with textures on high and everything else on medium. It still looked pretty. I tried everything high on 1080p, but it was a blurry mush.

@therealturk: wow those are great points you made there !
i agree with everything you said ! thanks for your input.

As I've played more, the initial charm has dulled a bit. I'm definitely beginning to understand what people more well-versed in this type of game have been pointing to as maybe not flaws but decidedly just fine. I finally read Rob Zacny's review and I can see what he's saying, or at least I think I can (RIP editors on the internet). A lot of this game has begun feeling like a slightly unfulfilled promise.

What's really started to bug me is how little the game leans into its corporate structure past the opening gigs, and as the characters become more self-aware, earnest and/or "normal" the game starts feeling less and less unique. I have to say I was super excited to get out of Edgewater and dive deeper into the weird work-as-religion themes the game was setting up, only from Groundbreaker onward the game almost exclusively presents the world from a rebel uprising's point of view. You're no longer the black sheep dropped out of the sky and incredulous at the world around you, but simply the agent of change all these other agents of change were waiting for. It's as generic as game design can get; the game also seemed to get less comedic the more normalized the conflict between individualism and corporatism became.

Aside from that, the loot in this game is almost uniformly garbage, and on Normal arguably pointless. I find myself wishing characters just had skill tables you dumped points into, to the point I started just tinkering with their original clothing sets so we didn't all look so silly all the time. All the food and drugs are either redundant or unnecessary as well; a lot of the RPG factors beyond the conversation and tech trees feel rather flabby, to be honest. I've also found Monarch to be a bit too sprawling for the ambitions of this game overall, and it's also the first time I've embarked on quests only to hit a dead end and I can't tell whether it's me or the map causing the problem. On a map of that size, there should be way more reward for wandering around.

Having said all that, I'm still enjoying my time. Like I said in my first post a few days ago, I've basically not played a game like this since Fallout 3, so the layers of that style of game feel refreshing for me in a way I understand they don't for most. I like all of the characters, particularly Pavarti who I've been really impressed by. The music is uniformly great (I really like the theme for Roseway in particular) and once you've built up your party a bit the way you can just mow through levels is a decent power fantasy, if a bit flat since the actual gunplay is so sketchy. I've mostly leaned on my companions and melee to curb the negative feedback of ranged combat.

In a year that's been defined mostly by grinding Apex and MLB battle pass levels, I appreciate that both games I've broken up that monotony with (the other being Control) have been supremely charming, ultimately flawed experiences that remind me why I love single player gaming experiences so much, but also that these things are always an absolute wonder that they work at all, let alone that they sometimes come out as incredible as a Spider-Man, God of War, Red Dead Redemption II or Horizon.

I've enjoyed it. It's a nice distillation of a lot of the good parts of the Mass Effect and Fallout RPG formulas, but it's certainly not without flaws.

Mechanically, the shooting feels good, but the difficulty needs some balancing - normal is too easy and hard can be a bit too hard. There's also just way too much junk to pick up littered around every single environment, to the extent that it becomes a distraction.

The characters and writing in general are solid, but I can understand the criticism about the tone and messaging of this game not quite hitting the mark.

Playing The Outer Worlds alongside Disco Elysium, an RPG that took a much bigger swing, does highlight how relatively safe Obsidian played things here. That said, I'll take a satisfying 30 hour experience like this over a bloated 100 hour Fallout 4 any day of the week. Hopefully Obsidian uses this as a foundation for producing more great RPGs, and maybe the financial support of Microsoft will allow them to take some bigger risks in their next outing.

I just recently started The Outer Worlds, after I picked up 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate for the price of 1 month.

I've never played a Fallout or Obsidian game before, so I'm pretty new to this kind of game. I'm really enjoying it so far but am easily getting distracted by side quests! Also, I'm continually pushing my limits to see what I can and cannot do. For example, in Edgewater, after talking to Reed I tried to kill him to see if it's possible and what would happen (after I saved). I was laughing out loud because the companion character immediately was like, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! I've never played a game that has that kind of thing, or has quests change midway with other characters interacting with you, like a medicine quest early on.

I just got off the first planet. Talked to a few people on the next planet and the amount of side quests that are in my active log now is kinda intimidating. I dont even know where to start lol

I just completed the first major quest/choice in The Outer Worlds, in which you decide to give power to Edgewater or the deserters living at the greenhouse. When I play a game with lots of choices like this, I usually do my first playthrough as a character whose views more or less align with my own. (Minus all the shooting and stealing.)

My personal, IRL view is that withholding health care from people who don't "deserve" it is fucking inhumane and that was the largest factor in getting me to side with the deserters. The leader of the deserter community is an eye-rollingly obvious parody of a tree-hugging hippie who doesn't care about anyone in the town who gets hurt. I was discussing this with a friend who chose differently, but was able to peacefully deal with Reed and get Adelaide to take over the town. I didn't even think that would be an option, so I didn't pursue it.

I always find myself thinking about the limits of these games--the way I envision my character, I would acquire another power core elsewhere in the system, along with a huge supply of medicine, and return to Edgewater. Or maybe, I dunno, hire someone from the big city to help them set up solar panels so they could become self-sufficient.

This is a limitation of choice in video games, and of course me thinking about what I'd REALLY do in a truly open-ended system is a testament to the quality of the writing and story overall. I'm thinking about things! I'm feeling things! Finally, I can prove that games are art!

Those are my impressions of the story and writing after 6 hours and getting my ship ready. The gameplay is better than any Fallout game. The weapon variety is lacking, while the variety of consumables you can pick up seems excessive. I've installed a few weapon mods already, so I'm expecting that to help differentiate the weapons a bit.

@quantris: Yeah, I saw that tooltip too. It must be bugged, because that's definitely not the way it's working for me. I agree about the sorting options, too. Ultimately, it's sort of a minor complaint, but I'd really like to see stuff like that get patched.

Okay, the shrink ray is a pretty amusing weapon.

Latest Nvidia drivers (appear to) have cleared up the horrible stuttering I was having so now enjoying it quite a bit more.

I'm rereally enjoying it. Glad ive been able to turn off the chromatic abberation as that's one of the shittest effects in gaming. There's still some bad post processing AA muddying things, but it looks better at least.

I encountered a reocurring crash bug on the last mission which soured the end of the game a bit for me but overall I enjoyed it. It didnt hit the highs of KOTOR or Fallout but it was a decent RPG in an age of action RPGs and pseudo MMOs. (at least amongst AAA games) I'm not using the term 'live service' since that could be applied to almost anything these days. (fighting games, mobas, battle royales, fps's etc.)

I did a review on TOW after 25 hours of gameplay and here are my toplines thoughts:

1. Game is based on the “free will” concept. Shoot whoever you want.
2. Game has a detailed RPG gameplay.
3. You have a crew/companions.
4. Big variety of weapons, armors, items…
5. Story and shooting have the “time weights” on the gameplay, always depending on how you play.
6. Game is polished with minor bugs.

Shoot whoever you want.

BE whoever you wish to be.

TELL your own story.

​How many FPS shooting games can offer you this? :)

I've played quite a bit of this game, I'm level 17 and I've been wandering around Monarch for quite some time now (Gee, this place sure seems bigger than any of the other places I've been).

So I really, really like this game. I haven't played a good one of these first person RPG's since Skyrim. I don't think there has been a good "one of these" since Skyrim. There are some days where I'd say Fallout 4 is a decent one of these, but that game just feels uninspired and boring too often for me to include it.

I've found it pretty easy to lose myself in this game over the past few days. It's bleak and sarcastic and has a tone and attitude that's really sucked me in. I think the world is pretty cool to explore, I think the quests and writing have all been pretty good, and so on and so forth. You guys know where this paragraph leads...

...which brings me to what most people have complained about with this game. It doesn't really do anything new. I think it sets a new standard for first-person RPG combat, but that's not a very high bar to cross and when compared to actual FPS games it's still kinda meh. You could probably get all these disparate parts elsewhere, sure, it's just that this game combines them all into something pretty cool. It ticks a lot of boxes that I really enjoy seeing ticked. It just isn't going to revolutionize anything.

I do have some real complaints, though, and they mostly have to do with inventory. Whenever you hover over an item in inventory, a big box pops up that takes up a large portion of your screen detailing the item. This is how Western RPG's have been doing inventory management for twenty plus years now and I despise it. If I'm going to spend a lot of time sorting through inventory, I don't want a new box popping up every time I mouse over something. I'd much rather see that information come up in a dedicated box on the right side of the screen. Ideally, I really just want to see every inventory system copy SkyUI. Have you ever seen SkyUI? It's elegant, informative, intuitive, and vastly superior to every other inventory system in every other game out there. And it's a mod for Skyrim. Please, for the love of God, take note of this system.

Beyond that, I don't think this game has the scope necessary to justify carrying around a million different kinds of consumables. How about this - instead of having a different inventory slot for every item that gives you +200% health for 2 minutes, why don't you just stack every item with the same effect in the same slot? That would make the inventory much easier on the eyes, that would allow you to fill the world with a thousand different items to make it feel more lived in or whatever, that would streamline the inhaler health system you've got going on, and I wouldn't be tempted to just sell everything that isn't an adreno stick because even on hard mode none of the buffs are necessary.

I also wish the game would do something else with its mechanics. I'm fine with having a list of different skills that you can put points into, but the gameplay here certainly does not warrant having an Attributes page, a Skills page, and a perks page, especially since most of the perks are little more than boring buffs. I don't need a Mass Effect 1 -> 2 style progression, where most of the RPG mechanics are ripped out, but I've ignored level up points before because nothing in this leveling system is interesting.

I would like to see some things added for a sequel, while I'm at it. Better character customization would be nice. An option for your party members to keep their snazzy default outfits while also gaining the benefits of newer armor. An option for you to wear a snazzy, cool-looking outfit instead of having to slap on whatever armor you find because it's got a higher number than the other armor you had (all of the armor looks boring at best, by the way). Some gun customization would be cool, too. I jumped out of Destiny 2 to start playing this, so maybe that's the problem, but even without participating in microtransactions in Destiny 2, things can look cool. A small sample of that here would be fun, mostly because the aesthetic in this game is colorful and interesting enough to warrant it.

I would also like a better mod system for guns. Allow me to slot mods in and out. Allow me to change up different aspects of different guns. That's here, to some extent, but it could be greatly expanded.

I'll end with this - I have played two other games this year that I couldn't pull myself away from - Resident Evil 2 and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I actually beat both of those games twice, something I almost never do, and I might wind up doing that for this game. I can't seem to get enough of it. But of those three games, I think The Outer Worlds has the most room for improvement and I would love to see Obsidian get another go at this thing with a bigger budget and more staff.

@justin258: I'm a die-hard Obsidian fan, I'm playing on hard, and I agree with your criticisms here regarding inventory in this game. One of the first things I do in games like this is make it so my inventory limitations don't matters mods. In this case, I'm playing via Game Pass for PC and I don't think that allows mods. I think there's a total of 6 or 7 perks relating to carrying capacity. Perks like that are, IMO, wasted.

As far as the gameplay goes, I'd much prefer a skill system that gives me abilities/powers rather than percentage increases that don't affect gameplay in a visible way. Borderlands does the same thing for the most part, as does Mass Effect.

Not being able to easily pull mods out of gear is a huge pet peeve of mine, especially in a single player game. Aside from being pointless, it makes no sense in a sci-fi world when any modern gun with a rail system is fairly customizable.

I'm still enjoying the game and the setting so far.

I finished it last night and it's a delightful little romp through a well crafted world in a first person kinda gameplay loop. It isn't up there with New Vegas in terms of writing or scope, but the proof of concept is solid and they should make more and flesh out that world. Great companions, quests, and I enjoyed the build variety which allowed me to get a little creative in how I tackled stuff.

To weigh in on the great RPG debate of the year I started Disco Elysium today and after a few hours, the writing and choices are way better but I don't think it's fair to compare the two just because they came out in the same month.

Comparing Planescape: Torment to New Vegas, for example: two RPGs with the same head writer, but with vastly different gameplay mechanics. The writing in P:T is a lot stronger on the whole and it deals with heavier themes (while having shitty combat), while New Vegas has more of an even split between gameplay and writing. I'm only 5 hours or so into Disco Elysium but it's clear they don't care about combat AT ALL, while I'd say combat builds and gunplay are a part of the draw to Outer Worlds. I had a lot of fun just running around and doing quests while shooting monsters and marauders, something DE can't give me.

All I'm really saying is they're both very good games with different strengths. If DE sticks the landing it'll probably be my GOTY. From what other people are saying though I'm glad I finished Outer Worlds before starting DE, because bouncing between them sounds miserable. I try to avoid doing that with RPGs.

I'm running around on Monarch and doing quests for MSI and the Iconoclasts. The way the Iconoclasts are written is a bit weird. They say they're anarchists but their leader says he doesn't want actual anarchy, he just wants a different structure than what is currently in place. That's pretty reasonable, but why identify as anarchists then?

I think it's good. I'm 8 or so hours in and am mostly enjoying my time with it. Some of the things I don't like include:

-dialog options. I've poured most of my points into dialog/leadership skills so I could mostly talk my way through the game as I normally would in a game like this and some of the dialog options I get are not what I want them to be. I'm trying to play as "paragon" as I can but sometimes I'll get like one persuade option and then three sarcastic or aggressive options and I don't like any of my choices and I'll pick the least bad and then the conversation goes in a way that I don't like. And again, a LOT of points in dialog. Not every conversation has been that way, but some have.

-sidequests: I'm doing a lot of sidequests and some are great and some just didn't feel worth doing to me. I've actually googled "what sidequests are worth skipping" but pretty much everything points to "Do all the sidequests." But like, I don't WANT to do all the sidequests anymore, but I DO want to do some good ones. I know this is a me problem, and maybe I should wait until some "top 20 sidequests in outer worlds" lists pop up and then go back to it. Or something.

-accidentally botched quests: I won't go into details but there was a series of sidequests a few hours in that I was doing and I botched all of them because I either misunderstood what the game was asking me to do, or misunderstood the order in which I was supposed to do them. All I knpow is I was following a quest marker thinking I was going to do one thing but it was actually taking me to do something different and doing the different thing botched like three sidequests at once. Again, this may be a me problem, but I swear I thought I was doing what I needed to be doing. So that kinda sucked.

I guess I should mention that I'm not save scumming, I'm trying to live with my consequences, even if it's causing a disconnect between me and my player character.

The game is pretty fun but I also think overblown in some of the hype.

Yes it looks and runs better than the usual Bethesda type games but it also is very cramped. I'm cool with paired down but there's no doubt its cramped. And then when it does try to do some kind of exploration area moments they feel like a poor imitation of what a good Fallout or Skyrim can do.

The writing and dialogue moment to moment is pretty good but the overall story is not so great. Many other elements of the world feel derivative of other fiction and not in such an interesting way or combination either. I was pretty excited for the style when I thought it was golden age kind of sci-fi/comic book sci-fi stuff from the short trailers I saw but instead it's.... Firefly. Really not doing much for me with being Firefly the game. The Western sci fi thing is not my favorite. The anti corporate bent of a lot of the story thus far is cool but I see it going "well the other guys are bad too" or something. Also so many of the characters are rubes that it may say nothing at all about it. Maybe I'm wrong.

Aspects of the quests and actions also... just feel so route by this point. I know its the opening area but the generator situation just being "flip switch to send power to group A or group B" just immediately gives you a sign of some of what is to come with how formulaic it is. Even more so than RPGs that were coming out 20 years ago. When you compare it to how quests are structured and presented to the player in the Witcher 3 for example it looks really bad and hamfisted.

The combat is better than those other games for sure I will say (out of the box at least, Skyrim with certain mods still is my favorite).

The RPG progression though is quite lackluster for me in two points:

A: the perks which have lost all the charm from a good perk system and

B: the way in which Skills are grouped for upgrade, a kind of system I hate in games like this that removes player choice and build abilities with groupings like that. I want to be able to dodge and not upgrade block every time for example. Those shouldn't have to be bundled.

Once it opens up and I am enjoying it and certain quests have been interesting for sure (I also enjoy the anti corporate style of the game) but I think the game is just pretty good thus far, a nice 3/5. Which is fun for me right now but it's nowhere near great, yet at least.

EDIT: I also have to link and call out Rob Zacny's great review of the game, which I found myself in agreement with so far.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nagq/how-outer-worlds-turned-me-away-from-revolution-into-maddening-pragmatism

If you want to be a talker, you kind of have to be a jerk to a degree in this game. I like it for my own choices but I understand the problem. Like with other parts of the game it seems like there's more freedom when you start than there actually is.

Of course there are limits to what any game could do but I think part of this speaks to how poorly the choice is done there. I am so tired of choice based RPGs literally having a switch moment like this where you decide between A or B. It's so boring and feels so mechanical. There's a way to do it all more gracefully, allowing in betweens like you talk about or at least making it not a switch.

I know to some that may seem stupid for me it really takes me out of games like this. If you compare it to how any game in The Witcher series for example or Deus Ex (which is about 20 years old now) handles choice by comparison it's really goofy. Not that those games never have a sort of "switch" moment but they have a lot of other methods of choice throughout that feel organic and interesting and usually more elements and factors at play.

The ultimate example of course is the end of Mass Effect 3.

UPDATE:

I’m really digging Outer Worlds. It’s by no means stellar, but it’s a super solid game like a Bioware or Bethesda game that isn’t lacking and fucked-up in the way those games have been this generation.

I’ve been taking my time, savoring it, but I have learned that, at least on normal, exploring isn’t really worthwhile. You kinda seem to eventually go to every nook and cranny anyhow, though quests.

I have gotten to a point where I think I’ve angered certain factions or towns to the point where I’m shoot-on-sight. That’s KINDA a bummer, but maybe stealth can help? It feels like going through cities might be painful if I don’t get in certain folks’ good graces. This assumes that my experience is by design, and not some old school Obsidian jank.

I’m cool with consequence, it would just be good if I knew that my experience is by design. Wanted posters, radio ads, ADA telling me she’s avoiding certain ships, etc.

Still, having a lot of fun just savoring this comfort meal.

@stephen_von_cloud: The entire game has such a tongue-in-cheek / devil may care attitude, that I can’t fathom Obsidian wanting someone to be a paragon of virtue.

I try not to play black and white, personally, because I find grey more interesting. I’ve been playing, largely because the game REALLY wears this inspiration on its sleeve, like Firefly’s Malcolm Reynolds.

Actually, I had no idea what this game would be like. I had no idea the protagonist wasn’t voiced. I only learned this during character creation (looking up whose voice I’d need to listen to for 30-60 hours). When I saw there was no voice, I made a Lee Van Cleef looking dude that I named Malcom VanCleef.

I realized that half-naming him for the Firefly lead was a bit too apt a bit too late.

Anyhow, I dig that everything feels a little humorous, and I’d guess that even if you were to take the most villainous path at every chance, it’d be at least a little hammy, in a fun way.

I agree. When starting the game I felt bad for the NPCs I'd come across that were corporate talking points and slogan filled robots but at some point it made me okay with blasting them away lol.

Also Spacers Choice is certainly shoot on sight with me. I just live with it. In a faction based game eggs are made to be broken. Adds to replay value anyways too. You can check it by looking at your character page under reputation. It will tell you if a faction is Shoot on Sight. The game says if you stay away from them it'll maybe stop them from being shoot on sight I think but I am just rolling with it.

On this issue, my problem with it is the point at which it tends to declare a quest botched. Often there is no logical association between the trigger for botching a quest and what the quest is actually about.

For example, in the first major planet where you need to choose who gets the power, one of the quest's side-objectives was to talk to the deserters, but I happened to go to the power plant to complete the "get an AI logic module" sidequest first. The instant I set foot inside, it declared the deserter portion of the quest botched, even though I hadn't taken any irrevocable action for that questline. It felt like I was being punished for exploring.

I have to say I don't understand this one. The skills are only bundled until 50, then you can spread points around however you want. Up to that point, you are essentially getting two or three for one on your skill ups and why wouldn't you want that?

Personally, I think it's a really clever system - in most RPGs, you have to invest skill points without really knowing how useful a lot of the skills are going to be going forward. This removes a lot of that anxiety by letting you be passably good at a lot of stuff. By the time you need to put points into skills individually you have a pretty good idea in what you want keep investing in.

Because it obviously limits builds and build choice in an RPG?

If you are too anxious to make any choices that limit yourself, you shouldn't be playing an RPG. Things like this are just dumbing down RPGs to tedium. I don't want to be good at that many things in a game like this or it's mindless. This game is already predictable enough with the "there's a heavily guarded front entrance so find the obvious back entrance you can lock pick" type scenarios so if you don't even have to make a build choice that dictates what you can do it becomes really mindless and unrewarding.

It opens up sure but it wasn't necessary in the first place and limits build variety. If they wanted to actually let you choose more as you go without initial commitment before you get the game, don't base how things start on stats as much (plus they don't even allow you to respec stats). They do that kind of frontloading of choices and limit your choices after too. Worst of both worlds.

It leads to dumb moments where I want a charming character and I get intimidate and lie options I can easily choose as well because those bundles... so whats the point exactly? Why should hacking and lock picking not be separate abilities with their own place and use? Why if I am a hacker do I always have to be someone who sneaks? You can't even specialize in a weapon type within a style.

I'm about 16 hours in now and I'm starting to get the feeling from a lot of quests (mostly side quests) of been here done that. Now I'm not saying the quests are bad, just feel very similar to ones I've done in Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4. I don't really want to give examples due to spoilers but if you've played any of the Bethesda Fallout games I'm sure you've noticed this as well. I suppose I'm just a little disappointed that they weren't more original, or at least had different endings or a twist. Overall though they have still been entertaining and isn't that really all that matters?

I imagine it's very hard making all these quests that have branching paths feel unique, I get you can only come up with so many endings due to the choices.

@stephen_von_cloud: Oh, I’m all for rolling with it, I’m just curious how intentional every man, woman, and child on a planet calling for guards is.

I’m happy to go with it, if it’s by design.

It made a strong first impression on me, but my interested dropped off a cliff after the first planet. Not sure why. I love Bethesday RPG's and this one seemed like a good one of those, I hope my haven't changed that drastically.

I think I was a bit let down when I realized going from planet to planet was just going to be a loading screen.

@jaycrockett: Not knocking you, just trying to understand, but is your grievance that the planets and outposts feel too similar?

I’m just trying to interpret that loading screen comment...

I have my days where I've wound up spending hours sinking into Halcyon's worlds, and others where I feel eager to dig in again only to finish a quest line or two and find myself wanting to get back to podcasts and grinding out various battle passes. A lot of the same things I've said before still apply, though I will say the guns have gotten more interesting in their second iterations and the Ultimatum in particularly was a real pick-me-up for my relationship with that side of the game.

Having spent more time with the characters, Felix grew on me, Ellie and SAM feel mostly superfluous to me, Nyoka is entertaining and very useful in combat but otherwise kind of flat, and so I feel a little guilty whenever I don't have some combination of Felix, Parvati and Max with me. I'm also finding myself agreeing a little more with Rob Zacny as I keep meeting new quest givers in that the characters I'm meeting feel more and more like archetypes rather than fully realized people, reinforcing that carnival-esque feeling some people feel when playing a Bioshock game.

I still wish this were less of an apocalyptic dystopia, but at the same time Byzantium has been the least interesting major location I've visited yet, so maybe it's for the best the game didn't try too hard to dive deeper into what it would mean to be dropped into a society where everyone believes in the corporate mission statements. I think that would've been a far more unique experience, and unlike the Waypoint boys have found those interactions to mostly be the most interesting moments in the game, but given how the narrative (at least from the Phineas-supporter perspective) has developed I understand why they're aggrieved by characters that act like billboards rather than conscious, intelligent beings.

Overall I still feel pretty highly about this game, likely as I've said before because this is my first One of These since Fallout 3 (ignoring all the comparisons I could make to Bioshock Infinite, Mass Effect: Andromeda and other sort of dystopic loot-grab games). I'm just a little surprised at how bloated it's starting to feel given how much hay was made over its refreshing brevity - I'm easily over 30 hours into this game, and I get the sense I'll get close to 50 by the time it's done. That's a long game, guys. The 15-20 hour estimate pre-release and parroted by some reviewers sounds like you'd have to ignore a ton of the side content (and hackable loot boxes containing utter garbage), which I'm just mentally incapable of doing.

@stephen_von_cloud: The first paragraph of that review brings up a good point, but it's also kind of hilarious. "Oh, the workers of a company may not be responsible for the worst aspects of that company," should be pretty damn obvious to someone who works for Vice.

I just watched my roommate play through that part of the game and send the dissenters back to the town under Adelaide's management. It just reminded me that I should save my game and talk to everyone on both sides of a dispute before making the next big choice.

@nodima: Having done all the loyalty missions, or whatever they’re called, I’m digging everyone but Felix and SAM.

The three women are all strong in their own way, and Vicar Max is well acted with a nice bit of depth, conflict, and a proper arc to his story.

I guess the other stories could have used similar arcs, but I still like them for who they’re presented as.

Felix...like I said, he doesn’t do much for me, aside from his dropkick. He’s kinda like the Kaiden of the crew. I give Kaiden shit, but I loved the same guy as Carth in KOTOR.

@nutter: Felix Millstone is the Carth Onasi of Kaiden Alenkos.

There is totally a respec machine on The Unreliable. There's a catwalk on the engine room, climb up to it and walk all the way to the end across from Parvati and it's just sitting there. Costs 500 bits for the first respec and more for every subsequent respec.

I like the idea of an RPG giving me a chance to fiddle with every kind of mechanic before I have to start focusing on something. Getting a few hours in and realizing you've invested heavily in a certain type of character only to realize that they're fairly useless or that the game has more opportunities for some other kind of character really sucks. And using respec options feels like somehow wrong to me. Like, I'm glad they're there, but they don't really make much sense.

I'm not too keen on the way The Outer Worlds goes about this, however. If they want you to be proficient in everything but only specialize in a few things, then they should design the game that way. And here, it's not. I'd go as far as to say that the game has one build with a few different branches - in all cases, you are going to be shooting a lot of things with either pistols, rifles, or heavy weapons and you're going to be convincing people of a lot of things by either persuading them, lying to them, or intimidating them into doing something.

While I do still really like this game, it could have come out in 2005 and it would still have been an 8.0 game. After the CRPG renaissance of the past few years, I'm quite ready for a big-budget 3D game to step up its writing and gameplay systems because I'm tired of referencing a 4-year old game as the benchmark for these sorts of things.

I recall seeing someone in this thread say that they'd done everything in the game in 21 hours. That sounds insane. If you simply fast travel when you can and sprint straight for objective markers when you can't and play on Easy so that everything dies in a few hits, sure. I'm playing on Hard and actually poking my nose into as many nooks and crannies as I feel like and I think I'm halfway through at about 25 hours in (maybe a little more, I just finished up everything on Monarch). Even 25 hours ain't a short game, people, and if you think it is then you spend too much time playing video games.

It took me about 30 hours to finish, and I really enjoyed it. I was satisfied with the ending, as it wrapped up the story that was started, but left room for potential growth after. The majority of the dialogue was great and I felt intrigued to go on at a pretty rapid pace until maybe the final quarter, where it started to feel like things were far less fleshed out than the front half was. I enjoyed the crew, but they had pretty wild swings in terms of how much they had to offer. Like, for example, Parvati and Vicar DeSoto are my absolute favorites, but they have SO MUCH available about their characters, even just in terms of pure dialogue options, compared to the later characters that you get. I love the look of Nyoka, and some of her dialogue and small moments (like when ADA tells you she's been drinking again and you find her ah...awkwardly in her room) are great, but her, Ellie, and Felix just kind of all had a few things to talk about and one simple quest (well, Nyoka's involved quite a bit of travel and combat, but whatever) and that was it. Compared to the level of detail you got about their pasts and histories and motivations with the Vicar and Parvati, it just felt like 2 characters got the majority of the focus. SAM was such a nothing character I didn't even take him with me once. The best part about him were actually ADA and her horny ship cleaning dialogue.

So, end result, overall like I said, I really enjoyed it. It was also a weird feeling too, because early on I thought it was going to be one of my favorite RPGs in recent memory, but by the end, a lot of that had worn off. Still, happy I played it, and would have even be happy having purchased it (I played it on Xbox via Gamepass).

Feeling pretty meh about it after 10 hours. Doesn't do anything surprising or really that interesting. It sticks too close to the formula of modern fallout games. That's totally fine for people who absolutely love those kinds of games and just want more of it, but personally I look for something more than that.

It's competent.

@stephen_von_cloud said:

I really feel this bit. It's definitely been the weirdest part of the game for me. I went into it knowing I wanted to invest in dialog and technical skills, but I didn't realize I would be forced to be excellent in everything. I can't really complain, because so far in the 15 hours I've played I've been able to charm everyone, break into everything, access every room, open up every dialog tree, hack every computer, and unlock every safe. But at the same time, it feels less like I'm playing a role playing game and more like I have cheats activated that gave me the ability to do everything.

Investing in those skills heavily doesn't really have a cost either. You never have to pass a speech check to get into a gunfight. But if I didn't upgrade these dialog and tech skills I wouldn't be able to get into many rooms and would miss out on conversations with characters. I can't imagine playing that way.

I'm at a point now where I'm starting to get speech checks that require a score of 100, so it seems like the game is interested in having me specialize certain areas. But in a way that makes my journey through Emerald Vale as a full-blown genius seem even weirder.

I find that the grouped skills is a fine compromise to a very old problem in these kinds of games. It's nice that you can be a combat oriented character and not miss out on literally everything else. It's nice that you can focus on charisma without worrying that the games gonna feel like a huge chore outside of a few insane dialogue choices.

Group leveling skills feels kinda broken. Through gear, companions and perks you can raise hack, tech and dialog 40pts without even really trying which are 90% of the gates in TOW.

I don't feel like I'm role playing when I can persuade, lie, intimidate, hack, medical, science and use engineering pretty much at will.

Nearly halve the skills can very easily be ignored, leadership/medical are pretty much usless and if you use long guns then you don't need to invest in either defense/melee and its not even worth raising long guns above 60 really.

Finished it. Dug it. I don’t think it reached it’s full potential, but it’s a safe, good, Bioware/Bethesda-like that isn’t fundamentally flawed like those studios’ output this gen, so I’ll take it!

I think it was scoped well. The game is not exactly epic, in scale, for a save the colony situation, which makes it more manageable and eliminates some of the urgency vs. exploration problems these games face.

I also loved the Firefly vibe (speach, music, western/sci-fi vibe, etc.).

I’d love to see a sequel, whatever that looks like with Obsidian’s current situation.

@thepanzini: I played on Normal and agree. I wonder if Hard makes skill selection more valuable?

Frankly, on Normal, it almost feels like you could just say “I want to use pistols and be persuasive” during character creation and that’d be enough to give you certain options. Just kill off leveling and altogether.

By midway through the game, I was just slapping points wherever I pleased with not much thought, as everything was easy enough and I always felt over-leveled.

@nateandrews: You described exactly how I feel. It is pleasing in the moment to have all those options but afterwards when you look back you realize it all becomes arbitrary. The cramped maps hurt it as well because you can easily see all the options (and often they are laid out predictibly in this game as well).

It is a multi layered problem because maybe they could have raised more skill check requirements. I'm sure that might not have been satisfying either.

I think that with this short type of RPG though if you aren't focusing on build differentiation what are you really doing here? It all makes it feel so samey to choose any dialogue skill for example and then why have any different skills to begin with?

I am a huge Deus Ex fan and it's yet another thing that game figured out that games like it still don't really nail in the right way. Even when that game had a kind of dumb swim stat when it did come into play it was cool and actually could get you some useful things.

I'm enjoying my time with it finishing up Monarch, more so with gameplay than story. Presentation reminds me of an HD remake of a Fallout with the speechless protagonist and un-cinematic conversations. Hard was difficult at first spec'd as a low-HP sniper with no rifles in sight for several hours, but once I found good armor it became much easier. After I found a hunting rifle sniping became very satisfying because of the large draw-distance, which ME2 & 3 lacked. Had a couple quests glitch on me (game thinks Parvati died, couldn't give scientist Raptidon musk) but luckily the game has multiple autosaves.

A few annoyances:

• Wish there was a minimap that showed dead bodies, or a loot ping. There's a utility that highlights interactables at a bigger radius but I didn't find it helpful.
• RPGs need to put a moratorium on cannibal quests and "itchy tasty" logs
• I want to sleep till morning or night but I don't know what time it is.
• There's a fetch quest that became creepy because it was very one-sided with a hurried romance that only existed on paper.

I wrapped up Felix's and Nyoko's side quests. They were both pretty simple, but ended with some emotional moments.I

I went to Byzantium and did a side quest that resulted in me killing a lot of mechanicals, which resulted in me becoming shoot-on-sight to people affiliated with the Board, which makes me unable to turn in said side quest. That's pretty annoying.

It seems I've run into my first major bug. I finished a story quest in Byzantium. I was then contacted by someone working for the Board. This resets the negative reputation of The Board to 0%. I'm no longer listed as kill-on-sight in the Reputations tab. Guards in Byzantium don't automatically attack me now--but named civilian NPCs do. This is extremely frustrating and is preventing me from completing side quests.

So I’ve really had the chance to dig in now and I’m surprised after all the talk about how difficult “hard” is to find out that “hard” is really quite easy. After about 6 hours I’ve only died twice and both those times it was because I was being dumb and going headfirst into big battles. All it took was a different approach and those fights became trivial. I’m at the point where even that gorilla canyon fight felt trivial. I also find myself rarely using the time dilation, it seems completely unnecessary when I can just drop enemies without it no problem.

@haneybd87

I've also found almost no noticeable difference in difficulty after going from normal to hard. I only needed to make one change to my playstyle which was to use the direction pad to order my team mates to hold position in one spot and NOT to use any of their active abilities.

I don't quite understand how it works but on ALL of the characters I've tried their abilities typically place them into immediate damage or close proximity to an enemy and it does demonstrably less damage then their weapons. (Plasma mini guns which vaporize everything in mere moments).

I've seen this complaint fairly common from people discussing the game but I definitely feel it myself now where it kind of feels like I'm playing with cheat mode on. I've only missed 1 dialog check (A 100 Lie) and have been able to access all content outside of the odd attribute dialog that I wasn't spec'd into.

Progression hasn't seemed nearly as engaging as I usually find it in RPGs, which is basically my favorite part of them.