RPG incoming!

I’m going to be honest with you; I thought this game was going to be bad. I thought Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and Borderlands 3 were going to bury under the holiday season rubble, and you’d never see this game.

Boy was I wrong, and boy was I glad that I was wrong.

What You Need to Know

The Outer Worlds is action RPG made by Obsidian Entertainment, aka the people who made Fallout: New Vegas (regarded as the best in the Fallout series).

The game takes place in a different United States timeline where President William McKinley is assassinated, and Theodore Roosevelt never succeeds him. Mega cooperations and business continue to thrive because of these events, and they begin terraforming planets to make them habitable. Phineas Welles, a mad scientist of sorts, is traveling to the farthest reaches of the galaxy in his ship with passengers in hibernation. The ship breaks down, and Welles awakens your character.

The story is satirical in a sense. Businesses are ridiculously powerful and even own people. This game explores those themes in a quest spanning the galaxy.

Time to get to work!

Gameplay 

So starting your journey through the galaxy huh? Let’s break down what you can expect.

After creating a character, players will gain skill points. Skill points are given in groups of 10 and can be distributed through seven different skill trees. Every 20 points invested into a tree gives you a bonus such as critical damage or other cool things. Every two levels you will gain perk points that can unlock bonuses such as a boost in weight capacity, sprint speed, and health.

Basic gameplay is solid. You shoot, loot, and dialogue your way through the universe. You’ll undertake many main missions with tons of side quests to tackle as well. You can equip armor that has bonuses to your stats, upgrade your weapons with scopes and damage boosts, and command a ship that can fast travel throughout the galaxy. While fighting, your character has an ability called TTD or Tactical Time Dilation. With it, your character slows down time which helps to target critical spots. Gimmicky, but it works.

Players will have the chance to recruit allies who will join your party in the field. The cool thing about the companions is they add bonuses to your characters. Low in the hacking skill set? Bring Vicar Max and he’ll boost your hacking rating. There is some thought process when you make your parties, which is cool and a different change of pace.

Allies will also chime in during conversations, which makes them feel realistic although it feels unnatural at points. Also, your companions can be given weapons, armor, and gain perk points so you can pimp them out. Companions have abilities you can use in combat, and they’re pretty cool.

Impressions

Like I said at the beginning, I thought this game would get buried. During the E3 reveal, the game looked gimmicky and honestly not that good. Well my mind’s changed a bit.

As soon as I landed, the game charmed me. I like to specialize in a balanced build including having a high persuade stat. Two minutes into the game, I’m already persuading an injured guy to let me borrow his gun so I can kill marauders. Now that may not seem like a big deal to you, but would you let a random dude borrow your gun?

Another big thing to me is story. Recently, I finished Breaking Bad (top 10 anime of all time), and I’ve been watching Ozark on Netflix. I love how those shows crafted stories that had other story lines connect out of nowhere. Bad example time: You think this guy is random, but he’s actually the cousin of the man you killed, and now you need his help to smuggle drugs while he’s trying to find out who killed his cousin. If that made sense to you, then you’ll be glad to know that The Outer Worlds has connections like that. I won’t spoil a cool one, but it happens early and spans across a few character interactions.

I do have a few minor complaints. The game features a repair system, and your weapons/armor need to be repaired after awhile. The gunplay also is kind of unfulfilling as it’s easy and AI is lacking in the brains department. Also, there’s no romance options. I swear that’s not a make or break for me, but it would’ve been a cool feature to have especially since there’s options to charm characters.

 

I don’t know why, but when I play this game, I feel like I’m playing Destroy All Humans back on the PS2. The game feels outdated in some cases: the gunplay, graphics in particular. It just works though. Like if this came out on last generation consoles, it definitely would’ve won a Game of the Year award. I guess that’s what makes this game so much fun. Every once in a while, a game that feels outdated can be really good. I’m not saying their intention was to make the game this way, but it’s such a weirdly good game.

The game is getting solid reviews across the board. I think it’s even sweeter since we’re seeing Fallout 76 and Bethesda falling apart before our very eyes. I’m still waiting for the day we can get a real Fallout style multiplayer game, but for now, I’ll stick with The Outer Worlds.

Any who, I like it. Check it out.

What are your thoughts on The Outer Worlds?