Evaluating The Outer Worlds - Obsidian's Aggressively Average Adventure

[@FuzzyFiend]

All of the four main writers who worked on New Vegas had left Obsidian by the time of The Outer Worlds and it really shows.

[@jinmark9453]

Apparently weapons and armor designers left as well. For that matter wild life designers as well ......to be honest after thinking about it iit all sucked a lot mor then I remember.

[@antoniocastano7077]

Somebody may be going there soon who will turn things around

[@D0NU75]

it really, really fucking shows. People in the comments say stuff about Obsidian not pushing game mechanics further, that doesn't matter and it's the least of it's problems, but the writing... the writing is so bad it feels like produced by hipsters, too afraid to commit to any emotion other than goofiness or "love". Bad writing angers me so much it will make me stop playing even the most acclaimed game (looking at you Fallout 4) you can think of. Unforgiveable.

[@benito1620]

@Donuts The Outer Worlds writing is like Reddit, the game. Just haha funny quirky little marvel movie quips, can't have any serious moments last more than 2 minutes or else people might feel an actual emotion.

[@GlizzyGoblin757]

@@benito1620 and people are actually excited for this upcoming potential “fallout new vegas 2”

[@Nolaris3]

It's biggest legacy to me is that it will always get confused with Outer Wilds

[@mundanesalad]

Outer Wilds being a MUCH more memorable experience, too.

[@marcorc5167]

Outer Wilds was such a fun and unique game. The mechanics and the story were really good.

[@winycentaur2540]

Lmfao I thought this video was about Outer Wilds😂😂😂

[@RealLargeManTheGiantOne]

Outer wilds is genuinely a masterpiece, and I absolutely hate that whenever I bring it up people talk about it being a shit game and when they bring up the mechanics I realise they mean outer worlds.

[@Diremagic]

its the opposite for me I'm like wtf is outer wilds

[@Patterrz]

The Outer Worlds was great for the first playthrough, but I had no urge to go back for another afterward like I always did for Fallout

[@dizzydial8081]

That was my very same experience. Anything I missed I felt wasn't worth replaying. I loved the setting.

[@ballisticus1]

Similar. I did a normal playthrough. Then faltered out of boredom on my second (kill everyone) playthrough

[@killa4hire]

I had a similar experience. Took time off. Got hyped up for another run. Made it 2 hours in. Stopped.

[@Caddynars]

There’s not just enough branches to choose between to warrant a second playthrough. New Vegas not only had multiple branches, but they were very fleshed out, and had consequences for choosing that branch.

[@derp195]

I loved it at first, but barely got past radio free monarch before deciding I had played enough of the game. Played it again on switch, and lost interest at about the same time, but after having suffered through a pretty awful switch port.

[@sirweasleton8344]

My favorite thing was making my character have the phobia of robots and then having the dialogue option to just scream when first encountering the robot companion found on the ship😂

[@schizoidmeme5470]

My fave is when you have to hype yourself up to interrogate a robot to solve a murder mystery.

[@cendresaphoenix1974]

These aren't your favorite parts these are the only enjoyable parts... That's the problem here.

[@chance_hollow]

And that's what the game is all about

[@WeezyOld]

@@cendresaphoenix1974 L take

[@MrJesus4132]

@@cendresaphoenix1974 Lmao such an L take dude. trying to tell someone what they like just makes you look like an arrogant child

[@dungeonsanddobbers2683]

I've, honestly, never seen a game so positively praised and spoken highly of disappear off everyone's radar as quickly as The Outer Worlds did.

[@expendableround6186]

Everyone was a little _too_ eager to tell Bethesda to go and take it up the ass after 76 crashed and burned (Looking at *_YOU,_* Jim Sterling.)

[@sportsjefe]

@@anubis4695 Fallout 4 isn't the comparison point for Outer Worlds, Fallout 76 is.

[@doctorbrown5957]

@@anubis4695 Mods are awesome but too many people point to mods when speaking about the greatness of Skyim/Fallout. I agree with it to a point, but the games being carried by mods long term doesn't really speak to the core games quality. Vanilla skyrim is an absolute bore. Same with FO4 to a degree.

[@txivneebswafflesandshroom]

@@sportsjefe they both are lol wtf you freak

[@d2heffz231]

@@expendableround6186 I believe it's Jennifer sterling now or some shit 🤣🤣🤣

[@a.e.5923]

There’s actually technically a THIRD ending to the game, which requires minimal intelligence. when you choose where the hope gets sent you can override the autopilot and accidentally fly it into the sun, giving you the absolute worst possible outcome

[@zacorycoward2658]

I loved getting that ending I laughed my ass off, i recommend a dumb run if you're only playing this game once

[@tacioob2337]

@@zacorycoward2658 dude i cant recommend this enough

[@Val.Kyrie.]

That’s hilarious.

[@Serahpin]

Worst, or best?

[@ericamborsky3230]

Well, they're frozen, so you gotta heat them up.

[@auronward2809]

The most powerful and memorable moment for me from playing The Outer Worlds was about 30 hours in while looking at the star map after completing my last available side quest before going to the point-of-no-return-planet, and realising that all of the planets that I thought were going to become available to me as the game went on were actually just decoration on the star map to make the game seem bigger than it actually is. 3 years later and THAT'S the most powerful experience I recall.

[@John-gm8ty]

yea, this one shit me off too.

[@Dj.MODÆO]

Each of The 3 DLC packs unlocks a new world.

[@9r0t0typ3]

Same

[@John-gm8ty]

@@Dj.MODÆO by the time the fist DLC came out, I was completely over the game and had no interest, they took too long.

[@Mikalent]

@@Dj.MODÆO you have to stick the landing to have people actually care enough about the game to come back for the DLC. Outer Worlds failed in it's initial premise, one playthrough is enough for people to get the games fill, especially with how much of a slog the game is. Contrast this with a decade old Bethesda game, Skyrim, and by typing those words Todd Howard will now attempt to sell Skyrim "extra Special edition" for only $80. But in all seriousness, Skyrim stuck the landing for the game's initial premise, it hooked you with Dragons, and while they got old, the dungeons, side quests, Civil War storyline, and various Guild lines all kept the player invested enough. Combined with the fact that Bethesda releases their design tools alongside their game, Bethesda was able to increase the value of Skyrim exponentially by allowing mods. There where a record number of Mods when the first DLC came out, the game was still dynamic enough that multiple playthroughs where still fresh and enjoyable. Outer Worlds, had none of this, the game was linear, while the skill system was new, most skills didn't matter, and you where pushed hard by the game to go down a specific path.

[@jackson4672]

Obsidian proved in Fallout New Vegas they can have comedic companions also have some of the best backstories. Arcade Gannon, Lily, Raul, and Veronica all act as companions that are more comedic but they all have deep backstories where your options in their quest impact their future life.

[@Charagrin]

A big thing to remember is most of the folk who made New Vegas so amazing left Obsidian. Obsidian is a company, not a person, and time keeps going.

[@DarthFhenix55]

@@Charagrin The lost of people like Chris Avellone really hurt Obsidian.

[@callumwoulahan7681]

@@_zigger_ haha. I'm so curious. Why?

[@kyyy8436]

@@callumwoulahan7681 it’s homophobia bruh, kinda what you’d expect from a Russian z pfp

[@callumwoulahan7681]

@@kyyy8436 oh oof, yeah fuck you’re probably right. I was imagining he had some amusing head canon / lore justification. But no. Just afraid of the gays. What a pleb

[@modestestmouse4820]

I remember beating the final boss and feeling shocked when I realized it was actually the final boss because it genuinely felt like that was only the halfway point of the game.

[@jmjedi923]

I remember I just used the mund control gun and mind controlled the final boss. I think it killed the smaller enemies but yeah I just remember it was a cakewalk

[@Texelion]

Same, the game ends kinda abruptly, as if it was not complete. But I guess it's just some kind of intro to the sequel.

[@captainscience2732]

@@Texelion It's Tyranny all over again, but in space!

[@wellthismachinekills3809]

@@captainscience2732 KOTOR 2

[@r.higgins4521]

Of all the criticisms of Outer Worlds, this is the one that resonates with me most strongly. When someone, I think it was either ADA or another NPC, warns the player that traveling to Tartarus is the "point of no return" and to make sure to complete all the side quests and everything first, I was so disheartened. I think a large part of it was that some of the planets on the map hadn't been visited at all, so I assumed that they had content on them (when they were probably being saved for the DLC or just used as window dressing). The world felt so small, like only the locations and factions immediately relevant to the main plot were allowed to be shown.

[@ProcyonDei]

Outer Worlds is like Fallout and Borderlands decided to have a child together, but rather than end up with the best traits of both parents, the child ended up with the positive traits of one parent cancelling off the bad traits of the other and vice-versa so the child came out just painfully average with some good traits here and there...

[@DapperProf]

You really nailed the analogy 💪

[@zigfaust]

That's like... actually accurate as fuck.

[@MrPronGogh93]

Meh: if we talk about borderlands 3,sure,you are right and I can see is (br3) even more no sense than this. But if we talk about bl2 and the pre sequel, I disagree since yes, the game use irony and joke a lot, but as a mean, often, to hide what's beneath the surface of a story. Just as an example: pickle in the prese quel is an annoying kid, follow is quest and you find out why he is like this and is sad.

[@hunter_0221]

​@@MrPronGogh93 Don't pick on my boi Pickle. He was legitimately designed to be an annoying, but sort-of bright kid, so the expectations weren't high to begin with - until you delve into his quest line and suddenly ask yourself the question "Why would a 10 year old boy even live all on his own on an icy, hostile moon in the Borderlands?", and then it dawns on you. The unfortunate counterpoint to him is Ava from Borderlands 3, who was basically supposed to be a funny little kleptomaniac kid similar to Pickle - so, comic relief in a sense - and I actually had high hopes for her after that Athenas quest to steal back her shit. Granted, it's a quest also made memorable by the fact that the planet is possibly the most visually stunning location in the Borderlands franchise yet, so it was an actual treat to go back there. But, no, she had to go and turn out to basically be what Walter Jr. is to Breaking Bad (you know, that award-winning documentation about the American health care system), only moaning and complaining about literally everything in the most annoying way conceivable, though all without putting in any effort on her own, only to then being basically forgotten about until the very ending. There's no "screw this shit I'm gonna do this now" type of energy. Lilith, as an example, has that - never forget the ending of the Pre-Sequel where she just portals into Eleseer, burns the Vault mark into Handsome Jack's face, refuses to elaborate and then leaves. Ava, though, she has none of that resolve and yet keeps on throwing temper tantrums after repeatedly not being allowed to do a thing. Her "evolution" into a Mary Sue (or, as the game calls them, "Sirens") didn't help her character in the slightest, to the contrary. An attempt to rescue her character in the Designer's Cut or Director's Cut or Whatever The Crap Cut by giving her an own questline didn't have the desired effect either. Thus, in a game full of strong characters (excluding Mary Sue Nr.1, the main villain whose name I already forgot), she simply went under. Speaking of Borderlands 3 and The Outer Worlds, to stay on topic, I believe we do have to acknowledge something of potential significance to the discussion that also went under a bit: Borderlands 3, after all an FPSRPG game with a similar - albeit less pronounced - space-western, open world setting, was released only roughly one month before The Outer Worlds. Now that, that is just bad timing to come around with your own, brand-new IP. Of course, that's not the sole reason it is "aggressively average" (a great description), but it works in combination with reasons already mentioned. I think, however, chief among these reasons ranks the lack of the...fantastical, the grandiose. Something that may not threaten the world, but gives you an actual motivation to continue regardless: A villain that stole something vital from you, a son or father to search for, a family member to avenge, a mystery to explore, a vault full of loot to open. It all a bit wishy-washy, there's no drama and no real tension. Think that might be the essence of what this game lacks. The Outer Worlds 2 is in development, however. I believe that, since we're looking at a new game franchise, The Outer Worlds 1 might work better as part of it, rather than individually. Remember, Borderlands 1 - in comparison with newer entries - isn't exactly a groundbreaking experience. It definitely was back then, in 2009, as it introduced a whole subgenre of a genre that was itself pretty recent, having been established only two years prior: The open-world FPS with role-playing game elements. In case you were wondering, the first FPS of that persuasion is often considered to be 2007's STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl, which was created the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World and published by good ol' THQ. Mass Effect 1, to name another space sci-fi game, is also not particularly strong on its own, as it was created in the image of the classic, already-established Bioware role-playing game Dragon Age and thus had certain mechanics in place that were heavily altered or even scrapped entirely by Mass Effect 2 (which is generally considered to be the best entry into the franchise). We can see a pattern here: First games in a newborn franchise are usually the ones that are still searching for their identity. Often, only a second and third title can grant them that with the power of hindsight. On that note, I shall finish this excessively verbose rant. I appreciate anyone who has read until this point.

[@Deadsnake989]

I once explained the game to my friend as "Scuffed Deus Ex: Human Revolution wearing a Fallout skin suit." The gameplay, menus, and most mechanics of the game just felt like "not quite good enough, but not terrible" version of Deus Ex. The world felt like Fallout, dreary and bleak, but not quite a serious grim dark story. Overall I'm glad I borrowed the game from a friend, rather than bought it myself.

[@Terminarch]

One of those little things that seriously rips me out of any RPG. There's a few dozen people in town and no trade. Just outside the non-existent walls is literally hundreds of respawning bandits. Who the fuck are they stealing from!?

[@FenniNordwind]

From each other

[@idrissb9742]

@@FenniNordwind ahhahahaa has to be

[@Slender_Man_186]

“No trade” they have space flight, so idk where you’re getting that from, the whole reason that the town is dying is because people don’t visit the space port right next to the city anymore. “Non-existent walls” did you even make it to the first town? There’s a massive wall surrounding most of it!

[@skeletonking2501]

If I remember correctly those bandits are actually just violent insane druggies

[@Slender_Man_186]

@@skeletonking2501 not even, most were just common people who said “fuck this corporate bullshit” and set off to do their own thing, I distinctly remember one of the bounties you get from the first town being the former doctor of the place.

[@Zeiru]

34:58 This little thing here is SO EXTREMLY IMPORTANT because she's apparently the only person who's figured out how to make food grow in the Outer Worlds, a problem that becomes abundantly clear by the time you reach the credits.

[@michelphilippe193]

Which is strange. You would think with all of the scientists in this game that something so obvious would be known. They can manufacture drugs and change chemical compounds, but don’t know basic nutrition. Writers seemed to harp on “Company is evil” so much that company was also idiots

[@tainkirrahe]

the Roseway quest is likewise as important because it foreshadows that the Board is planning to murder all of the workers - it only appears to be a stupid quest on the surface.

[@CowToes]

It's kinda odd that even after discovering the crisis of "we have no food." You never go back and address it ever again.

[@Bjarmid]

It's only a stopgap solution, since she's essentially supplementing the soil with the nutrients stored in bodies, it's only recycling what's already there, and since you lose some nutrients every 'generation' you would still have a problem eventually without another solution. I'm guessing people have essentially been living off the stock of nutrients that have been brought into the system through trade and in their supplies and own bodies, and by the time of the game it's become too dilluted in the ecosystem to sustain people.

[@Lucky13Ravens]

​@@CowToesThat was a big issue i found in general. Things have no long term effect. Edgewater doesn't die or become a garden, there are no comments about how exports changed from Saltuna to Mockapple, which should affect other Saltuna facilities and could have had a knock on with Monarch. For all the connection, they are mostly superficial.

[@kareliask]

I think this game shows that when on a budget - either financial, time-wise, or manpower - trying to do a small but polished experience doesn't work for a game of this calibre in the same way it might for a tiny indie studio making something within its means - it just left people wanting more/wishing it was more fleshed out. Obsidian often seems at it best when pushing the limits of practicality.

[@rawn9234]

I feel you

[@BludPanda]

It actually does work but the game made itself out to be much bigger than it was. This could have been avoided.

[@chiiloutbro]

@@BludPanda it was lamely small asf, only reason it took me awhile is cause I played the mode with no fast travel. Game sucked never played it again, I also loved fallout 3

[@mikemcmullen5006]

@@chiiloutbro obsidian didn't work on fallout 3, just new Vegas

[@gpheonix1]

or at its best when they have decent writers

[@benmasta5814]

Obsidian seemed afraid to do anything special for this game. The stats, equipment, guns/weapons, even the enemies all seemed like a first draft choice, before they added the bells and whistles.

[@yourehereforthatarentyou]

it’s why i’m cautiously optimistic about outer worlds 2. hopefully it’s an improvement but i likely won’t be buying it day 1 like i did the first one

[@alecseusalec3418]

For some reason it seems to me that they simply could not come up with anything other than a first draft choice.

[@AVerySillySausage]

Obsidian is just not a very innovative studio. It's full of passionate people who grew up playing RPGs and who want to make more RPGs, but they don't seem to have a very strong vision beyond that. Their games just come across as really bland to me. They never feel as large in scope as NV did. One thing is clear, Obsidian is not good at designing large 3D open worlds and they don't really care about that anyway. The one downgrade Fallout NV had over 3 was the open world design, and none of their subsequent games without relying on Bethesda's gamebyro engine have come close. Like everyone else, I still hold out hope that Microsoft brings the studios together to collaborate on a game that has the strength of both studios.

[@danielyanezgarrido]

I think they created a framework with the first game, they can build from here on.

[@Darkworldxl]

@@AVerySillySausage I’d argue that Fallout NV’s open world is better than 3 but the key thing I feel I should mention, Fallout has tons of lore they were able to use to make NV. The Outer Worlds is a brand new series. In that respect it is more similar to the original fallout.

[@CityofButterfly]

When I played this game I had basically 3 thoughts: 1) Combat was ridiculously easy, especially after my gun-oriented character found plasma weapons. Not only are they OP, but you can find them as early as Edgewater. I could plow through the rest of the game in my sleep. 2) It's amazing how sparse and empty the open-world areas feel. There isn't a single thing you can find on your own that isn't related to a quest you get somewhere else. 3) Parvati was a far better character than this game deserved.

[@LinksBetweenDrinks]

Yeah, Parvati was delightful. It felt like every other character was somehow meta aware at how much players would love Parvati, and were trying to do cut-rate Parvati impressions.

[@t2av159]

Parvati was trash

[@chiiloutbro]

Did you play on the hardest diff? I played this game once on the no fast travel hard diff mode and I couldn't beat the game,towards the end I got stuck lol

[@t2av159]

@@chiiloutbro I beat the on supernova, no companions, gun high intelligence build (I believed I used handguns and Sniper rifles). I did die a few times on the end boss and on that planet with lots of those mantis aliens. Besides that, it's not too too difficult.

[@chiiloutbro]

@@t2av159 yeah I found out a minute ago the robot is the final boss fight and that's when I quit the game, I literally played through to the end on nova just to never finish the game 😭. I could prolly beat the thing but honestly I kinda knew at the time deep down the game was just forced for me up to that point. Good shit tho man I wish I woulda been able to have the patience for the last battle

[@Scornfull]

The best way to sum of this game is "Obsidian relentlessly and consistently stole losses from the jaws of victory over and over"

[@vergilsparda8431]

Less losses and more draws. A loss can be interesting but a lot of this game’s shortcomings are just dull like most draws

[@boozybaby8220]

​@vergilsparda8431 I think if it's still interesting at all, it's a draw, once it's so badly designed that it's not even interesting or funny, then it becomes truly bad. Bad is when it's not even so bad it's good anymore, it's just so bad that it genuinely doesn't give you any reason whatsoever to continue or finish the experience

[@richardkenan2891]

It feels like the game was made by Spacers Choice.

[@pieceofgosa]

Playing The Outer Worlds is like going to see a really, really good cover band. They're tight as hell, they play all the biggest hits but there is something not quite right. At the end of the day, it's just not the same as the original artist. All the ingredients are there for me to love Outer Worlds: it's smooth as hell, looks great & has a healthy sense of the sardonic but I could never shake the feeling that the game was trying VERY hard to be what it was, rather than it just.... being.

[@skyrocketautomotive]

Couldn't agree with you more, every corner of the game seemed to be winking at you as if to say ''see? we did the thing you like when you play Fallout!'' even the vending machine jingles felt so put on rather than being an organic part of the world. When you play a fallout game you feel like the world has always been the way it has (the adverts for example) whereas the Outer Worlds feels like the paint is still drying when you show up. A would be great game, but paper thin throughout in my view...

[@skyrocketautomotive]

@umar b I far prefer FO3 as a game, everything about it except for iron sights and hardcore mode is preferable to me (FO3 with those mechanics would be perfection for me), but Outer Worlds didn't need to have a tight deadline, and it was still skin deep through the bulk of it. A good point though, NV gets a lot of well deserved praise, and some that goes a little too far considering a lot of the components were already there!

[@Olker8]

I think it’s the trying very hard to be what it is is what killed if for me. It just felt off the whole time.

[@ntr5420]

Literally my exact feelings about it, thank you for putting it into words

[@WorldWalker128]

Yep. Sounds right on the money.

[@WowSuchGaming]

After playing this game I felt like going back to New Vegas. This felt half baked but still fun. But all ideas weren't quite enough to return to in the end

[@o-pitamask4698]

What's up my man

[@HeroFall]

I played this game thanks to gamepass and i felt robbed. Easily a 5/10 game. Was just average. Did the rpg checklist and while characters were stand-out, the universe was shallow. Your crew is just average caricatures. Your antagonist is faceless. Your reason for even going on said quest was bare bones at best. Best thing comes from dialogue but from the basic builds to dumb skill trees was another blow to what i would have enjoyed. Easily the worst of the obsidion games and worse than fallout 4

[@Dabadi4834]

I like it how you appeared right after I watched a fuck ton of zombie sins

[@Batchall_Accepted]

I actually went into this one blind and the fact that I didn't have even a hint it was an obsidian game till I read about it afterwards was telling

[@toomanybrews7123]

@@Batchall_Accepted Did you enjoy it more because of that? I went into this game after being told it wasn't what everyone hyped it up to be and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think most people were let down by the hype. Which, at this point, you would think gamers would stop doing to themselves. It literally never works out well.

[@TroopperFoFo]

I don't think a lot of people realize how much of the Fallout new Vegas team no longer works at Obsidian and went on to do other things some even left gaming all together. I don't think Obsidian is going to hit that Fallout new Vegas magic again with so many gone. Fun fact several former Obsidian employees work on Fallout 76.

[@CatBitchNami]

Which is funny considering how much garbage it was.

[@P4shaPlays]

Damn you’re right, how will Obsidian ever create another good game without the caliber and talent of Fallout 76 development team…

[@TroopperFoFo]

@@P4shaPlays Yet Fallout 76 is still in the top 50 most played games on Xbox where Outer worlds and grounded are not. We will see how avowed is but having been a tester for Obsidian I am not overly hyped. But then again I was a tester before Microsoft bought them.

[@Beyondqqq]

Do people not realise this studio made POE? They already hit the magic again.

[@Awesomewithaz]

@@Beyondqqq Path of Exile? That garbage mmo?

[@colddripgaming]

I can see the potential with outer worlds and they crafted a really interesting universe to explore but this first game did feel more like a test run than the full released game

[@Rig0r_M0rtis]

That's basically Tim and Leonard's MO

[@BUchan907]

Yeah and the fact that obsidian didn't have a great budget and had to cut alot of content

[@dankbonkripper2845]

​@@BUchan907always some excuse for them huh

[@loganknox7]

The only thing I really remember when I played it a few years back was when the side quest of that family you have dinner with I remember saying to myself “oh another cannibal quest”

[@Ooffoop]

Every game needs one

[@AdonisOuranios]

I'd really like to see this "nice family that's SeCrEtLy cannibals" trope just once where you discover a series of evidence that seem to definitely point to a very nice, wholesome family being cannibals, and then it turns out each piece of evidence is a weird misunderstanding and they are just genuinely a nice, wholesome family with nothing sinister underneath.

[@EvanOfTheDarkness]

I though of it as a reference to the cannibal family in one of the Resident Evil games. The game is full of them (Spacer's Choice = Amazon's Choice, right?), but some are more obscure then others.

[@yungoldman2823]

@Adonis Batheus but you only realize they’re innocent right after theyve been hanged for their crimes, at least if thats the route you took on the quest. See thats another thing missing from this game is variability when it comes to quest outcomes, everything was so binary

[@avalonjustin]

Oh no Andale flashbacks!

[@SourRobo8364]

I always remember in New Vegas where I had to get a guy out of prison, the guard didn't like me and told me to pay. So instead I shot him dead, took the key card, disguised myself to get in, and got the guy out. It was so fun. It's that kind of gameplay branching path that this game feels like it's missing.

[@motivateddad]

nearly a hundred hours on NV and I never knew about this quest. Where can I find this?

[@SourRobo8364]

@@motivateddad It's an early quest where you have to get a sheriff for a town.

[@motivateddad]

@@SourRobo8364 I was doing a science build so I got the robot working. Didn't knew about that branch.

[@SourRobo8364]

@@motivateddad Very cool.

[@ilcorvo9559]

@@motivateddad it’s the mission where you have to get myers from the NCR correctional facility (so he can become sherif of that town which name escapes me)

[@couguard]

"aggressively average" really is the perfect descriptor for this game.

[@LIITEMIES]

When a hype kills a title.

[@calebneff5777]

I really strongly disagree. It is wonderful and stands on its own. You just have to go in expecting what it is, not another New Vegas.

[@RunehearthCL]

@@calebneff5777 nah it sucks, incredibly they made a gameplay even worse than new vegas'

[@Maria_Erias]

@@RunehearthCL This is one thing that surprised me, given Obsidian's pedigree and how much I've loved their other games. I played through Outer Worlds once, and that was it. There was no real depth to the weapons (generic shotgun, generic sniper rifle, generic assault rifle, then generic shotgun mk2, generic sniper rifle mk2, generic assault rifle mk2), none of the companions were really interesting to me, the story was pretty flaccid, there really wasn't anything engaging. I kept playing, hoping that the good part was right around the corner... and then it was over. It really reminds me of that Family Guy episode where Brian's in a movie theatre, describing The Blair Witch: "Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. There's something about a map. Nothing's happening. The movie's over. A lot of people look pissed."

[@thechosenwon6762]

I'd give it a good rating

[@grit9938]

I have never been able to quite figure out why I never could get into this one, but I think you hit it spot-on.

[@lancerguy3667]

For me the whole 'cartoon character' issue was what destroyed my ability to fully immerse in the world. Everyone was just a little 'too' goofy and stupid... it made it impossible to fully see anyone as human, and while it 'did' make the worlds feel more alien... it didn't make it a place I enjoyed spending time in. It was less like a colony in the far-reaches of space and more like being trapped in some kind of surreal political cartoon. I played it to completion once, put it down, and never really thought about it again.

[@jeremyphillips3087]

if the story was more interesting and the quests were more interesting and the combat were more rewarding then the goofy characters might have worked.

[@gracekucienski3808]

Hi t

[@Anubis.6256]

100 percent agree, 1 playthrough and done forever. Stop making jokes every 5 seconds!!!!!

[@AintPopular]

Goofy characters what made me play this game ngl. Especially Parvati

[@wh8787]

Yeah, if people feel like people in a weird, goofy world, that's fine. If everyone feels like a two dimensional cartoon character, as you say, it's just hard to really engage with anyone. I also found a lot of the characters kind of babble on a lot in a way that I think was meant to be world building, but that I just found kind of annoying and meant that a lot the time I was like "oh shit, were they saying something relevant to a quest? I'd stopped listening!"

[@tutorialsandstuff3349]

Patrolling the outer worlds almost makes you wish for a meteorite winter

[@Katyamuffin]

There's nowhere to "patrol" even the world is so empty😭

[@MacAndSheeeeesh]

Stop giving me Hoover Dam flashbacks!

[@williamyoung9401]

Loved this game. And keep in mind, this isn't a AAA title. Obsidian's last game before The Outer Worlds was crowd-funded, so cut em' some slack. They hit a home run with this game, creating an entirely new series. There's a reason Microsoft bought them out and they're working on a sequel.

[@danieljohnson3320]

​@@MacAndSheeeeesh yes man still haunts my dreams

[@cynicalgold9992]

​@@WakeUpEternals that's not how things work lmao

[@reapfield8687]

I put 200 hours into this in 2019 when it launched and I remember virtually nothing about it. Really strange how little of an impact it made on me

[@Ghostface6]

I recommend the dlcs

[@Darkworldxl]

Not even the diet toothpaste that is one slight change away from rocket fuel?

[@cheezburgrproduction]

Sounds like Dragon Age Inquisition for me

[@chiiloutbro]

I grinded the game on the hardest difficulty, most ppl wont do that but it made the game hard asf and it wasnt that good anyway. Not surprised I never beat it, fallout3 is much better than this dogshit

[@Arszene]

@@cheezburgrproduction Inquisition was worse lmao

[@JerdMcLean]

I put these videos on at least every couple of months just to have some background noise at work or while I play. Really is a testament to the quality of your videos because I seldom do this with other videos. For some reason I feel like im listening to them for the first time every time.

[@albertzinger7132]

The issue with a common person instantly knowing ho to use weapons was already solved in Gothic. In that game you can't even equip high-level weapons at the start, but what's more important, until you learn (from a teacher) weapon techniques, you character is just waving it around like a dumbass - the animation itself is different. With the techniques your moves become clean, fast and effective.

[@FourDerpyPaws]

Gothic (at least the first...two, I guess) also had the problem of open worlds solved pretty well, I feel. You CAN, in theory, go almost anywhere right at the beginning of the game. You'll just get killed. It results in a much smaller world initially, and makes the early experience much tighter. You get that feeling of wanting to get stronger in order to be able to explore that ruined tower in the distance, not just checking off boxes and collecting the flags on the map, like in many other games (Witcher 3 has that a lot, even though it's otherwise a great game).

[@RyugaHidekiOrRyuzaki]

Reminds me of DS1. Yes you can technically go anywhere from the getgo, but your character really cant. Assuming new player skill level.

[@bruhvenant]

@@RyugaHidekiOrRyuzaki Elden Ring continues in this tradition except turned up to 11

[@doctorbrown5957]

@@FourDerpyPaws I'm realizing this with Divinity Original Sin 2, as well. Once you're off the tutorial island and in the first open world map, you can go anywhere, but I'm getting curbstomped by encounters 2-3 levels higher than me, which forces me to look for areas more around my level, or finish quests I've already acquired so i can get more buff.

[@jeffjwatts]

@@FourDerpyPaws Fallout New Vegas did the same thing. You start on the West side of the map, you can theoretically go North, East or South. Except that North you are definitely going to die, and East you will probably die. So, the game pushes you South.

[@luhso7552]

This game seems like it fell victim to "Single Playthrough Syndrome." As in the devs initially designed the game around mutually exclusive choices that encourage multiple playthroughs. Then, they deliberately sabotoged their own design halfway through; worried that players would complain if they made a choice that locked them out of some of the content. I think Salt made the same critique in his Skyrim video. Maybe "Skyrim Syndrome" is a better name?

[@stuglife5514]

Yea, that’s the exact reason I quit this game after only a few hours.

[@vjbd2757]

Skyrim though is still going strong after 10 years. Everybody seems to have forgotten about OW after 2019.

[@Grobut81]

Skyrim syndrome would be very fitting. Skyrim went out of it's way to ensure you would never need to roll a new character. You can join every faction, nomatter how mutually exclusive their goals might seem, level up and master every combat style, do every quest, and then continue doing infinately respawning radiant quests for all of eternity (not sure why you'd want to, but technically you could), and all on the same character. Skyrim's success pretty much ensured we'd see others try and follow in that mold, so yeah, Skyrim syndrome.

[@bugjams]

I think a big part of that problem comes from having the end goal of the story explained to you at the beginning. "Oh, we have to save the colonists! It's VERY URGENT that we do so!" ...And then you spend dozens of in-game days fucking about and helping your companions dress up for dates. Ah, yes. Urgency. This problem also exaggerates the annoyance of side-quests and fetch-quests. "Oh, we have to save the colonists... to do so, we need a McGuffin, which we can get by trading another McGuffin to Captain McGuffin the 4th." It would be much better if, for example, Phineas didn't know what to do next once we landed. Instead he seems to have the entire thing planned out. It would be more interesting to have the plot adapt _with_ our character. Even better, have the end goal change with the story. Maybe we were originally supposed to save the colonists, but whoops! Something changed, now they all have to die. Or whoops, they woke up, but they're all evil cyborgs now and are hunting you down. _THAT'S_ interesting. Of course I'm exaggerating for the sake of my point, but still. Telling the character _exactly_ what the end goal of the story is in the first 5 minutes of the game... is bad. It's basically a spoiler for the ending, AND it restricts how far off that path the story can go at any given point.

[@ChangerofWays-Tzeentch]

Wait oh my god I just realized Skyrim is just like this there is no choice just the illusion I am an idiot

[@SirMatthew]

It so funny to me that everyone thought this would be the "Bethesda Killer" and then it immediately fell under the radar on release

[@sadmanpranto9026]

my reaction exactly

[@BlueHAWKS100]

Bethesda is doing a good enough job killing itself

[@phillipscott7049]

The DLC sales kind of say otherwise don't you think as do the views of every Outer World's 2 teaser and article that released. Why do so many people assume everyone thinks same way they do?

[@sadmanpranto9026]

@@BlueHAWKS100 Developing a new engine, releasing a genre defining Flagship RPG, Running one of the stable TPS MMORPG. Even profiting from a game with failed release... "Bethesda shot on themselves on their foot" has been a thing in the community for a LOOOOOOOONG time but I'm yet to find good evidence of it.

[@BlueHAWKS100]

@@sadmanpranto9026 call of duty is worse than ever and still brings in a ridiculous amount of money. Just because Bethesda still bring in a bunch of money doesn't mean they haven't lost most of their good will with fans through extreme greed, laziness and an extreme dumbing down of beloved franchises because they think we're too stupid to handle anything else.

[@Belltower_Basement]

This whole game is like if "Old World Blues" was an entire game.

[@509Gman]

Yup

[@nickchavez720]

Old World blues but with weaker writing.

[@dootmarine1140]

Old World Blues but without much of the charm

[@dawsong5208]

Old World Blues without the amazing bonus of being dlc to a much better game 😬

[@cartoonvideos5]

No Old World Blues is still better than this game…

[@nobody2996]

The way you describe this game's tone of writing makes me think of Mass Effect Andromeda, where it felt like someone looked at the success of the Citadel DLC in Mass Effect 3 (or, as you mentioned, Old World Blues from New Vegas) and decided to make a game around it, forgetting that the reason that worked was that it was a short, lighthearted adventure that acted as a last hurrah with all the characters you've grown to love after three games in the middle of a dark and depressing war story. Though with this game it's 100% intentional comedy... I don't know if that makes it better or worse.

[@TheKueiJin]

Frankly i disagree, not with the idea, but with the comparison. The similarity between Citadel and Andromeda is warranted, as the team that made Citadel was the one that made Andromeda... What i disagree to is that the people behind the writing in Andromeda were non-existent. Outer Worlds had a team write a wacky journey into the stupidity of man grasping the stars. And they did it. I see all the flaws that Salt put on the table, and contradict none. All valid, all good. There's one point i'd like to highlight: throughout the review he kept mentioning that it felt like the game was rushed. Well, I feel like that too. But do you know why "New Vegas" was a cult classic, and not a financial success? Because even right now it's still quite buggy. It's clear to me that the Outer Worlds invested most of its time in designing and bringing the worlds to life. In making the game as smooth as possible, but unfortunately ran out of steam/money/people/time, idk, when creating the story. It cut corners, and guess what? It still spread like wildfire. Bottom line is: Obsidian always cuts corners... Either you want a broken game, but with fantastic story, or a fantastic game, but with an *aggressively average* story. My pick is the first tho, and I'm hoping the second Outer Worlds will deliver. I don't even mind if they use the exact same graphics, engine and anything they used now. They can even downgrade the graphics to Fallout New Vegas levels. I prefer the story, but I also understand how Outer Worlds came to life.

[@nobody2996]

@@TheKueiJin The team that made Citadel wasn't the one that made Andromeda. It was the one that worked on the Omega DLC and the ME3 multiplayer that went on to work on Andromeda.

[@TheKueiJin]

@@nobody2996 Montreal developed Omega, Edmonton did Citadel and Andomeda. I you want further proof, Raycevick has a piece on it.

[@TheSynergy40]

@@TheKueiJin I think the main reason new vegas succeeds where outer worlds failed is because it had a different team, and had some pressure like majoras mask to make a game in a constrained amount of time. if you promote your game with the tag line of "by the creators of new vegas" you'd expect at least similar qualities.

[@MrBlaktoe]

It's satire and satire has to be on the surface to work. The flip side is how dark and evil the government and corporations are in Fallout. It's just never really in your face. And I'm not talking about VaultTec.

[@LLFoolJ]

3 hours in to The Outer Worlds: Oh man look at all these planets, I can't wait! 40 hours in to The Outer Worlds, Oh man I can't go to half these planets, and also I have no desire to.

[@uberboomer8670]

I believe you can immediately turn Phineas in upon arriving on the Groundbreaker, you just have to loot his wanted poster off of a pillar and it gives u the option fairly early... My main complaint with this game was the lack of enemy variety and that the weapons start pretty cool, until halfway through when you realize the rest of the weapons are boringly "previous weapon 2.0"

[@Rig0r_M0rtis]

Yes, to me the combat was not ejoyable. But i think it's because it's just a boring FPS, so unlike Fallout NV with VATS or Mass Effect with telepathy.

[@srn7254]

late AF but you don't even need to inspect the poster actually - you can just hand him over right off the bat since Udom asks straightaway if Alex told you anything about Phineas' location.

[@kizunadragon9]

I went heavy into a chrisma/speech build like i do in every game like this and found out due to my silver tongue i skipped half the game.

[@bigearl1624]

It sucks that most developers don't understand how to use a speech system.

[@HistoryScope]

I've never really been able to properly explain my feelings on this game, however, "aggressively average" is an absolute perfect description of this game. The only really memorable part of the game are the insults you can say "He is the least reliable crewmember on a ship called the unreliable" and that you have a companion who is ace and explains a bit what that means. I remember walking into a house that had cannibals and IMMEDIATLY knew this was the cannibal trope and I wouldn't be allowed to leave afterwards. Everything about this game, in my opinion, feels like it needed just a little bit of extra work to make it special.

[@toastedt140]

Imo there was a general lack of passion in environmental design that makes fallout unique and replayable. Bland 3d models repeated endlessly

[@deamongimli]

@@toastedt140 I agree with this, but also this entirely fits the setting. It's a system colonized by cheapskate corps so of course all the buildings are copy-paste.

[@D0NU75]

@@toastedt140 that is something when you take into account that every fallout game after 3 is built with prefab assets that repeat all over the world and still you can tell some places have personality of their own.

[@mushyroom9569]

It’s the problem with modern AAA games. You can’t make Doom without risking a Daikatana.

[@nathanlevesque7812]

@@mushyroom9569 Doom is trash anyway.

[@Katyamuffin]

All I remember from this game is being super angry and disappointed that the biggest decision at the endgame was "Be a horrible piece of shit and side with the corporations or be the hero". Truly a thought-provoking and difficult choice, thank you Outer Worlds

[@petrsukenik9266]

There should at least be good and bad corporate and good and bad separatist endings

[@exploertm8738]

To this day people fight which faction is best to join in NV, fuck, people fight which faction best to join in F4. TOW? Yeah, be a bad for the sake of being bad or be good for the sake of being good.

[@thatrandomcrit5823]

@@exploertm8738 I hope you´re not saying "Fallout" 4 is better than TOW

[@exploertm8738]

@@thatrandomcrit5823 it is. TOW is garbage. I played once, said okay and never came back. F4 was replayed at least like 15 times, and each playthrough alone was like double of my single one in TOW.

[@chrissimon3790]

@@thatrandomcrit5823 it is. Fallout 4’s writing is terrible and the story isn’t good but the overall game is better than the outer worlds in my opinion. Also fallout 4 has a fuck ton of content

[@waywardlaser]

I played through it once and it was…fine. Honestly I’ve had far more enjoyment with games like Fallout 4 and Cyberpunk. I think Outer Worlds got a lot of praise at the time simply because we were all on the Fallout 76 hate bandwagon.

[@nobodyjustacreep]

It did get more praise then it deserved.. But idk if i can agree that its worse then fallout 4

[@JayMaverick]

Definitely better than any of the garbage that carries the name Fallout. But that's just the thing. I can complain and rant about what I like and dislike about Fallouts for hours. All I can say about Outer Worlds is "yeah it was ... fine."

[@noahgolden4381]

@@JayMaverick better than new Vegas?

[@Aspi3Gam3r]

"More enjoyment with games like Fallout 4" Lol how? That games sucks donkey dick as an RPG

[@waywardlaser]

You can call Fallout 4 a bad RPG all you want but that doesn't negate the hundreds of hours I've sunk into it over the years.

[@RetirededKat]

My only gripe with the game was (spoilers: I planned from the first opportunity to work for the board until I gained enough trust to meet them face-to-face, then execute them all. I worked my way through, gritting my teeth as my companions slowly grew to resent me with no way for me to explain myself. When finally the time came for me to attend a meeting, my weapons were disabled, and I was given an ultimatum. I kept going as working for the board until LITERALLY the very end of the main story, where I assassinated the president of the board and saved the professor before riding off into the sunset.

[@jeffbezos3200]

I speedran this game cause every time someone said “go here to collect that macguffin that I’ll trade for another macguffin you need,” I just killed them and took the item. Totally collapsed a planet’s government by killing both factions for shits and giggles. Other than that, though, I still got the good ending. I think that’s the thing that kinda ruined it for me…I was straight up evil, everyone hated me. I had failed all my companion quests by killing their targets and then got them to stay cause I had such high charisma. I really should’ve gotten a Hitler level ending for the game…but no, I saved the day at the last second and got rewarded despite being worse than the bad guys

[@SaraphDarklaw]

It’s kind of realistic. IRL, sometimes horrible people still get the good ending. Alot depends a lot on how you’re able to justify your actions to others and how well you can sell yourself to others. Meanwhile general nice people get the shaft because they are also shy and don’t like talking. It happens.

[@jeffbezos3200]

@@SaraphDarklaw yeah, I get that…but I don’t think the game meant it as a critique, you know? It felt like it was there cause the end didn’t really rely on the rest of the game. It would’ve been nice if I got more called out for being a piece of shit

[@TheKueiJin]

@@jeffbezos3200 I get that, and i would've loved it too... The problem is that everyone wanted something else from the game... Yahtzee Croshaw said it perfectly in his review of Deus Ex (new ones) that every sparkly piece of shit added in the game that fools the eyes is 10 times harder than we think, so naturally there isn't enough time in the day for devs to add more interesting systems that actually WORK. Compared to the old generation of Deus Ex where it was stitched together with duck-tape and spit. What i'm saying is this: Game looks gorgeous and was made by a team of devs that is infamous for making buggy messes. This isn't a critique to them for making buggy messes, i'm merely trying to point out where the time investment went. I do hope that Outer Worlds 2 remedies this. And i wouldn't mind if it was made with the cheapest graphics available. What I want from Obsidian isn't graphics but great story and great characters, which, by my opinion at least, we got in Outer Worlds.

[@sanchoquixote1121]

This was my experience with New Vegas. Played that game for 10 hours, killed Mr. House, and never looked back. Solid 7/10

[@tridonstrident6785]

@@sanchoquixote1121 Most obvious bait I've ever seen.

[@goodwholesome2787]

This game feels like the most "game I've already played" ever.

[@PopeGoliath]

I felt that way about Dying Light. Every single thing in it made me go, "Oh! Like [Insert Game Here]?"

[@talullah1065]

@@PopeGoliath okay but dying light has like fun gameplay to support that, ow was just the diet version of fallout nv combat (which isn't even that games strong suit)

[@PopeGoliath]

@@talullah1065 I'm not saying that Outer Worlds was any better. I slid right off that game, despite being a New Vegas fan. So many useless weapons, armors, items and stats. I never figured out what half the consumables did and it never mattered. Got off world, went a couple of other places, then stopped playing without ever choosing to quit.

[@GlizzyGoblin757]

@@PopeGoliath dying light is extremely overrated. the final boss was a fucking quick time event lmao

[@talullah1065]

@@GlizzyGoblin757 so? The gameplay up to that was fun enough to play over and over, dying lights story sucks but the gameplay is godlike

[@gordonross3270]

Was hyped as hell for this game. Played solidly for around 30 hours before petering out because a checklist open world just doesn't keep excitement far enough in.

[@kaydwessie296]

Was also hyped for this but then when it came out and nobody was excitedly talking about it I was like "Ah, so I'm not gonna spend money on it"

[@gordonross3270]

@@kaydwessie296 yea. Thankfully it was on gamepass

[@nxght6694]

played for 17 hours until i beat the game, was utterly disappointed, and immediately uninstalled rather angry that i spent 60$ on overhyped mediocrity

[@gordonross3270]

@@nxght6694 just goes to show, obsidian isn't the gods gift NV fans hype them up to be. The lack of AAA resources hurt them here for sure since the last comparable game was backed by Bethesda.

[@alecb1178]

I agree. I played the game for about 2 hours and I myself felt like it was a checklist open world.

[@EnduringArts]

It's like you can see the walls all around you. It looks like you just going from large hallway to large hallway out in the world.

[@treywright9218]

I was just so underwhelmed with the game that I stopped playing about the time I reached Monarch. Everything just felt stale and every part of the game felt like it had already been done before and better by other games.

[@Strideo1]

Same here. I think I got pretty far along on Monarch before I just felt so apathetic I quit playing. This game had potential but ultimately I felt like a lot of it was just sort of lazy. Like the stuff I thought would be really intriguing usually just turned out to be a dead end or just resolved too quickly and conveniently to be satisfying but the stuff I didn't want to slog through was usually what the game wanted me to spend lots of extra time. Like there's this quest on the Groundbreaker where they want you to go to the lower decks and get something from this guy who's on the wrong side of the law and they don't want to risk sending any more security people down there because of the danger. I immediately imagined the lower decks would be this labyrinth of slums full of dangerous criminals and I'd have to track this guy down by questioning the locals or beating some answers out of the right people. No. You just get on the elevator and the guy you're looking for is right there when you get out of the elevator. The lower decks of the Groundbreaker are basically one large hallway with a few rooms on the side and nothing but hostile NPCs and it takes less than 10 minutes to explore. So they'll do lazy stuff like that in this game but some vendor will talk your damn ears off about inconsequential stuff and tell you their life story. I wanted the world building to come through experiencing the world first hand and exploring, not just through NPCs practicing their nonstop quirky conversation skills everywhere I go.

[@NoU-wc5ny]

I quit at about the same point in the game. I honestly just didn't like how stupid and goofy most of the writing was.

[@in_significant]

Same

[@AnonYmous-xw1jn]

Lol same

[@CPSPD]

Yeah exact same point where I quit too

[@LilBoyHexley]

The “early retirement” to be murdered is just so obvious at this point. The moment that line was uttered it was like “oh, they’re being killed.” Don’t even know why they bothered with how little it was fleshed out. I feel like the early retirement bit would have been better if it actually turned out to be a luxury retirement home. With the retirees looking down on the people who weren’t selected like they’re trash. Like a manufactured elite class to sow divide among the working class. For the comedy they could even do the ominous, scary elevator ride to a luxury area. With the residents complaining about how unkempt the elevator is.

[@rolandfischer931]

This is actually better. Every plot point was telegraphed in this game

[@azeria1]

@@rolandfischer931 yeah I guessed the big twist involving earth and the military only being half what it use to be really quickly as earlier as groundbraker

[@tuffy135ify]

I...never thought about it. Now I won't feel bad about taking him out. I just thought he saw early retirement as so awful because so many corporate heads just refuse to retire to build their wealth.

[@anagittigana]

You seem to be really missing the point. They are killing the older workers because of the food problem and hiding it as retirement.

[@AnonyMous-wo1vm]

@@anagittigana the point is being understood, it's just the point is neither clever or interesting.

[@orangelighting5633]

I remember the entire time I was playing all I could think was "the sequel will probably be really good" because this felt more like a demo than a game to me.

[@i0npath]

My thoughts exactly. It's like the have some semi decent ideas floating about, they're sure to make them work in the sequel.

[@TheGreenSkelet0n]

Its quite funny how Grounded, a survival game inspired on "Honey, i shurk the kids" that didn't take itself seriously somehow managed to be more memorable and entretainting than Outer Worlds

[@cekodokdurian]

Wait, forreal? Is it the same if i play alone?

[@otakon17]

@@cekodokdurian Yeah mostly. Stuff takes longer to build because you have to gather all the resources but otherwise it plays generally the same.

[@GavinAeilts]

why is everyone pretending the games bad...

[@revadarius2594]

@@GavinAeilts Because most people played it 4 years ago when it launched when it was horrendous, only in the past year, 18 months, has it become worthwhile to play.

[@fica1137]

Who tf cares about Grounded

[@highwind1991]

I remember completing that first area in outer worlds and really loving the game and thinking to myself wow this is going to be great, and then the game never reached that peak ever again. That first section was like a really gripping short story that could have been its own little independent game. And from then on outer worlds just kept failing to impress me and kept making me feel underwhelmed. It kept becoming like a lesser version of games that I had already played and loved way more

[@Reptonious]

All of the signs were there from the start. The only thing that qualitatively changes after the first area is the average writing becomes *terrible*. I'm willing to bet most people who were going to quit, quit after landing on the second planet and seeing absolutely nothing remarkable. Made it to the fourth one before I was consciously angry with myself for wasting so much time.

[@DanWorksTV]

the issue with game is, that we're playing these for the open worlds and the side questing and the looting based on skill development. But there are no vast spaces, there is only a linear mainquest and skills do not really change anything. there is next to nothing left to explore in a replay. there's no mystery left.

[@TheHellish]

Exactly. Pseudo-open world. Not able to continue a save after finishing the story also kills it. Game also felt pretty short, especially considering what I thought I was buying. Ya know. Bethesda killer lol

[@goawayihavecommentstomake1488]

The outside was simply rooms and corridors that look like landscape… Yes, I agree. No real free roam and exploration.

[@Zen-rw2fz]

You guys never played roleplaying games before the game is way more opwn than knights of the old republics and argueably even the original fallout games and those are cult classics

[@michaelf.2449]

@@Zen-rw2fz it's literally not though? Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas the main storyline is literally 5% of the game and has story upon story hidden that you'll never see unless you go looking and searching for it, and this game seems to have the problem that the main story line is THE game that's it. You can play fall out new vegas for 100 hours and never hit the main story line how do you leave this games first settlement without finishing the storyline? You can't but you can do exactly that in Fallout New Vegas

[@Zen-rw2fz]

@@michaelf.2449 that is a very weird point to make, the outerworlds has a lot of lore in terminals and such that you don't have to pay any attention to while the whole "100 hours and never hit the main story " is just weird, that doesn't happen and I don't know why you would want your games to have that? I think people just overhyped the game and feel like the game is much smaller than what they expected, it's a decent game still, reminds me a lot more of fallout 1 than new vegas.

[@screamingcactus1753]

The thing you mentioned about the choice in Edgewater really stuck out to me, because it could easily be argued that what Obsidian seems to think is the best choice wouldn't actually have the best outcome. Even if you oust Reed and Adelaide becomes the new mayor, Spacer's Choice is still in the picture. They've been choking out Edgewater for decades before now, and there's nothing stopping them from tightening the noose again as soon as they notice the slack. I believe that the best outcome for this community in the long run is for Edgewater to die and for these people to start a new town out from under the boot of Spacer's Choice.

[@Zen-rw2fz]

That's what happens when you side with adelaide tho, the people desert edgewater and start a new community outside

[@jeremyszpicki491]

Holy shit thats an option?! I just stole the thing and killed everyone once I did the quests.

[@SoullessAIMusic]

They also could have learned an actual thing or two about gardening. There are many ways to refertilize soil without resorting to bodies.

[@Rockmanbalboa]

It feels this quest could have more than two endings beyond the two that there is, like making peace with the workers and Edgewater and fightback the corps, or ratting them all to the corps, or offering them all to beginning anew, i really believe games should give us the chance of having good ending that we have to work for it, or bittersweet ones where we don't or bad ones where we just don't care.

[@Rockmanbalboa]

@@SoullessAIMusic it could have been a good optional ending, teach them gardening with a science check.

[@hereniho]

Ah yes, the game where they decided to give every character the "funny millennial socially awkward dialogue" trait, making them all blend together and become bland. You know, the "funny" talking where they go on for too many words? "Oh, don't do that! I mean, unless you want to do that, but I don't want that and neither do the scary guards with their scary guns... I guess every gun is scary when you're getting shot at but what I'm trying to say is just don't do that!" It's trying to be quirky and charming but just makes me want to punch them in the face.

[@gulanhem9495]

Man, I love you! I hated everything about this game, but what I hated the very most (even more than the butch look of all the females) is exactly what you describe - the lame humor of woke millenials being reflected though the "quirky and charming" nature of the characters. Because they live in their woke enclaves in Democrat cities, and because they think so highly of their own writing skills they repeat that trope over and over and over again.

[@FaithfulFumoFan23]

Self insert characters.

[@Robert399]

The Joss Whedon approach to "comedy"

[@DanielFerreira-ez8qd]

It's ironic you talk of it as a flaw, when the game's key visual inspiration was Firefly, a 2000s show written by Joss Whedon. It's even more ironic that what you're saying largely applies only to Parvati.

[@mullythebully5557]

so fkn true lmao. millennial writing

[@reedsims5407]

I remember finishing this and thinking that it was basically just a proof of concept. Like yep, single player RPG's can still garner attention and hype from the gaming community. Keep in mind this was around the Anthem/Fallout76 debacles. The setting and the writing were pretty good I thought, but ultimately the game took no risks and lacked the amount of content to make a game like this work. I think a sequel could be successful if they flush it out to be a 100+ hour experience and made the combat, weapons, and equipment less boring.

[@Horvath_Gabor]

You know, I have a feeling the game received as much hype as it did (besides the marketing team milking the New Vegas connection) precisely because it came out when it did, with people getting fed up with failed live service games and scummy business practices (read: paid time-skippers and boosters in full price AAA games). Just the concept of a straightforward Bethesda-style single player experience felt like a breath of fresh air.

[@emiloguechoons9030]

@@Horvath_Gabor That's exactly what happened yeah, there were so many memes about how Obsidian are doing Bethesda's job for them etc, and how the Outer Worlds was incredible etc, I was so excited for the game, but when I finally played it I just couldn't get into it, it seems like that's a very common experience, which sucks because I absolutely adore New Vegas and even Fallout 4

[@chabbab6698]

Your viewpoint is kind of flawed. Length does not equal quality. I dont care if the game is 10 or 100 hours, it just should have consistent quality.

[@reedsims5407]

@@chabbab6698 my point was to increase the scale of the game, as the areas are too small and I felt the world building felt a little rushed.

[@outrighteight8205]

I feel it was mainly Obsidian being careful because they were setting up a new IP. Like once they have it established they can build on it in the sequel and turn it into an interesting and flushed out experience with the first instalment being the exception. Obviously this is my own speculation and I have no proof of what the devs are thinking, but that is how the game portrayed itself in my eyes.

[@charliemilne4372]

Completed the Outer Worlds once, and never went back. Have to say the first few hours were really really strong, but it grew stale pretty swiftly. Once you've survived the initial gauntlet on Monarch, nothing else in the game is a challenge, or especially exciting

[@expendableround6186]

TOW was a car dying out to a bad engine as opposed to 76 crashing and burning. One at least wants to see some kind of theatrics with the failure.

[@MrTombombodil]

Part of me feels like one thing that made me bounce off this is they lent TOO hard into the ridiculous satire as an *aesthetic* and it prevented me from taking the moral dilemmas as seriously as I needed to to be invested. Games like Pillars of Eternity and New Vegas have a sense of humor when it serves the story, but they take their stories seriously and thus so do you because the writing is so strong. Outer Worlds just doesn't take itself that seriously, and so when the game wants to try and give you branching quests with nuanced choices you just kind of don't feel the pressure as much, which makes it hard for you to be emotionally I vested, regardless of the quality of the writing.

[@gh0rochi363]

I love it because it doesn't take itself too seriously. In two life high pressure situations aren't just dark brooding scenarios. Soldiers in fix holes still laugh you know? But I just like comedy a lot and I think they balanced serious and funny very well. Like they are people who are unintentionally funny but it was fine intentionally.

[@hereniho]

@@gh0rochi363 If you just want to laugh at random nonsense, then sure. If you want to actually have a compelling narrative, then it fails. It's like trying to have a dramatic scene but it always devolves into Three Stooges slapstick levels of comedy. You can't even pretend to care because theyre not people, theyre punchlines.

[@gh0rochi363]

@@hereniho it's not random but ok. Just ignore everything I said.

[@tobiwonkanogy2975]

@@gh0rochi363 ghorochi is saying the juxtaposition of normal and chaotic can lead to unique humor while xianxia prefers a more serious overall tone. Where it feels grim and can feel the dread.

[@caimantroup6986]

@@hereniho Maybe to you, but to me this is what reality feels like now. It genuinely feels like we are not far off from a Outer Worlds level of corporatism and as someone who uses humor as a coping mechanism, this game was great for me. Maybe you aren't as cynically jaded as I am, but it's just a difference in taste. However I will say that salt factory droning on and on complaining about how the game was presenting the quests got older than he claims the story did. He literally acknowledges the tone of the game in the opening, showing he understands it, then spends most of the next hour of the video complaining about a satirical comedy game making jokes. Like bro, that's the whole point. Then he keeps comparing it to New Vegas like that means anything. This isn't a fallout game, why are you trying to hold them to the tone of a completely different series when the game shows you what it's about from the opening cutscene? If you don't like that, fine say that and move on, but don't go on several 5 to 10 minute tangents about how "comedy game make joke, joke bad, me want not joke, make not joke like other game me like"

[@VioletAeonSnowfield]

Honestly the weirdest thing about the fact that they used 'aliens' as a joke is that this game is set in an alien galaxy where there are actual literal alien beings that live in said galaxy. But rather than adding in a sentient species of aliens as an enemy, they pulled the alien conspiracy card.

[@mattr5669]

My biggest issues in this game were the shitty, forgettable party members and how there was seemingly like 5 different guns and 3 armor sets in the entire game.

[@SaltSpirits]

Someone obviously did absolutely none of any of the companion quests

[@Hack_The_Planet_]

Party members is subjective, i thought Parvati was pretty cool. Plenty of interesting guns though my guy.

[@bearandthebull2372]

I honestly would have been happier if some armors were more useful/copied more than others.The salvaged power armor looks WAY cooler than the other sets,and it would have been cool to see different coporation versions of it with the best being a salvaged metal halcion set. Same with other hooded armors and such.

[@modestestmouse4820]

I feel like the party members were one of the only good things about the game…everything else was so bland and forgettable

[@Palemagpie]

I mean I liked Parvati. I really liked that romantically. She had absolutely no interest in you. But as a person and friend she respected your opinions, but still had her own character you couldn't sway. Better than most companions now days that just end up straight up simping for the MC

[@OxTheHerdzz]

To sum up the Outer Worlds: I put 57 hours into my first run through with it. I remember nothing about it and have not had it installed since. I genuinely forgot this game came out.

[@Aemond2024]

Lmao same. I domt remember anything other than the setting and characters were very disappointing

[@Darthmufin]

Aggressively Average is a really good way to describe it honestly. Not bad, but not great either even though the marketing really tries to imply it is.

[@icydragon308]

Weird seeing you here I’ve seen a few of your videos back when I played warframe lol

[@zivosthrintolimgren3513]

I feel like Nyoka, Cass from New Vegas and Oghren from Dragon Age would have a very interesting conversation if put in a room with a ton of whiskey 😂

[@thirdparty952]

Didn’t realize this till I took a good look at the title… “Aggressively Average Adventure” = AAA. Clever, witty. As to be expected from the caliber of quality Salt Man provides.

[@penttikoivuniemi2146]

This isn't a triple-A game though.

[@EnbyOccultist]

@@penttikoivuniemi2146Feels like one, has the soullessness down.

[@penttikoivuniemi2146]

@@WakeUpEternals The price of the game is 30€... Besides, the price of a title doesn't have anything to do with the amount of "A's" it gets, only the budget and the size of the development team do. This was done on a modest budget, by a relatively small team. Thus, AA.

[@Thuazabi]

@@WakeUpEternals aww, does baby need a safe space because the wokeness is too scary? Moron.

[@Rig0r_M0rtis]

@@WakeUpEternals wokeness? WTF

[@MrTJPAS]

What he said at 15:25 is exactly why this game didn’t leave much of a positive impression on me. It’s hard to connect with the people when they seem to have completely drunk the gilded-age Koolaid of company loyalty and never question it no matter how badly things go for them. Contrast that with Cyberpunk 2077 where you also have a world dominated by corporations, but in that world people more clearly adhere to the system as a means of survival or profit, and know that most of the rules that put them down are BS. The Outer Worlds has people genuinely believing that sickness is a result of not working hard enough at ones job, while CP 2077 advertises Militec offering 5 vacation days a year (which is ridiculously low, but at least they recognize vacation as something people want). In any comparison between the Outer Worlds and CP2077, I can at the very least be certain that people in CP 2077 are easier to connect to, regardless of how important to the story they are.

[@toomanybrews7123]

You are kind of supposed to feel disconnected though. You aren't from these worlds. You haven't been subjected to corporate propaganda your entire life. That is the point. You are the fish out of water who has a chance at actually saving these people. Or, at the very least, changing their lives dramatically.

[@Scrap_Goblin]

You act like that isn't how a large portion of humanity is in real life.

[@kristjanvendelin3566]

Your second sentence describes exactly the situation on Earth. You not being aware it makes your statement even more ironic and the game even better.

[@marcar9marcar972]

@@kristjanvendelin3566 you clearly drank the koolaid as well. The world isn’t a perfect place, people aren’t 100% rational nor are they 100% gullible. A lot of people put up with a lot of crap but it’s typically because it benefits them. Rebelling against everyone and everything on sheer principle has drawbacks. That being said more and more people are rebelling, mostly against your viewpoint though.

[@Slender_Man_186]

It’s been a few generations since the first colony ship arrived, the propaganda and indoctrination would effectively become a part of the culture by that point.

[@onanthebarbarian4842]

When I heard Obsidian was making a science fiction RPG, I was pretty excited. That excitement dropped to zero when I saw the trailer. Comedy games are extremely hard to pull off, and the trailer already failed to be funny. It's even harder to make a full on comedy game and also make a serious point, inject real pathos. The problem with wanting to be taken seriously is that you have to take yourself seriously first. There are games with settings and premises that sound much goofier than that of Outer Worlds, yet because they take themselves more seriously they hit much harder. Take the confusingly similarly named Outer Wilds. The planets are ludicrously small, and elements of comedy are clear. Your village has a space program so you can visit a world where islands are sucked up into orbit by massive storms, or have chance meetings with space angler fish. Yet it's a serious game, with its serious point woven into the fabric of its gameplay loop. Or maybe something closer to normal, like Dishonored. Does a story about a guy getting magic powers from the devil so he can avenge a queen he totally wasn't boning, morality system and all, sound any more serious than a story about corporate abuse of power letting people starve? But it is. Now imagine you get to the Lord Regent, and you find out he had the queen murdered because he didn't like the selection of cheese she served at the royal banquet. That's the level of seriousness that Outer Worlds seems to pull the run out from under itself with constantly. And whenever I see someone play it, the game feels lazy. Its design choices are generic at every point, seemingly taking a Fallout type aesthetic without the underlying reason of why Fallout looked like the 50's on steroids. It has the same, old "big choices, but telegraphed well ahead of time and only in dialogue" sort of design that's 20+ years out of date. And for all the shade they threw at Bethesda, they still do the same zoom in on the NPC for dialogue. But the one thing I think communicates the lack of care the best: Your ship's AI is an image file. Seriously, who thought for one second that looking at a picture of the same generic, butch face half the NPC's seem to have was a good way to communicate the fact that you're talking to your ship's AI? At the very least they could have taken a regular model and dialed up the transparency to make it a "hologram" the way games have been doing since forever. But no, just a static image on the poor side of quality. Obsidian, at least while working on The Outer Worlds, may have been the only studio in the world that desperately needed an ideas guy to tell them to knock it off with the generic, uninspired stuff. I'd bet my left arm that just taking any random gamer and giving him full authority over the team would have ended up with a better, more memorable game. Because the technical stuff all seems to be there. It's a game, it works, it looks good. But don't tell me that a random 16 year old couldn't have come up with something more exciting.

[@5xg378]

And judging by the trailer for the second game, it wont be any different

[@NovaNyst]

@@5xg378 the trailer for the WHAT NOW

[@5xg378]

@@NovaNyst It was shown during the last E3. It had the exact same tone and even the same narrator than the Grounded trailer shown during the same conference. The Outer Worlds 2 Trailer basically tried to make fun of videogame trailers. By having the narrator pointing out every trope and Cliché while giving sass. It basically felt like and even bigger waste of time than the stupid trailers it was trying to make fun of.

[@giovanni6643]

I lost all interest when i found out obsidian made it and both assumed and expected it would be yet another case where obsidian severely overestimated their ability's and majorly under delivered as a result, yet despite only watching part of a play-through and not even owning the game i was still disappointed.

[@xXCrimsonArkXx]

Disco Elysium is the only one that I can think of that wholly exceeded, but it had to go DEEP in order to do that. It also avoided the “zanniness” that most games go for when it comes to comedy, including Outer Worlds.

[@DesertDuc]

Supernova suffers from the typical RPG thing where it can be difficult at first but once you start levelling and upgrading your gear it becomes easy again. Honestly the hardest thing is keeping your companions alive, as even on passive and long range they tend to get too close and subsequently get their shit pushed in. I liked some of the companions so most of the stat upgrades I went for all applied to keeping them alive and I had to play very defensively. I ended up modding the game into a sort of "Micronova," where the combat difficulty is high but there's no follower permadeath and fast travel is still a thing. IMHO this is the best way to play. The game also doesn't really deliver on the "vital struggle," as despite being told the whole colony is starving and you have a needs requirement, you will never really go deprived. You'll find enough food and drink either just exploring or by buying it from vendors, and once you get off the first planet the availability of concessions becomes prolific and basically takes the needs function from an interesting gameplay mechanic to simple nagging. Telling someone they need to eat several times a day and then giving them a surplus of food is not challenging or interesting, it's just annoying. Even a simple "food rationing" thing would have been an easy fix to make it more of a challenge. Like, each concessions vendor would only sell you one food/drink per day and that's it, but even then there's enough variety of vendors to just make a rounds on Groundbreaker and be good for the day. That way if you want food for buffs you'd need to scavenge it. This whole game is just the definition of "has potential." I didn't dislike my playthrough but there's a lot left to be desired. Very hopeful for round 2 being much more fleshed out.

[@petrusjnaude7279]

One thing that struck me as odd, was the fact that your character is supposed to be a future employee of one of these companies, but a lot of your conversation options hint at the fact that you are continually shocked by things that should be run of-the-mill to your character. As far as the companions go, i agree that they started well with Parvati and from there it goes down a sliding downward scale from there.

[@Hemostat]

i kinda figured the companies weren't getting away with as much back on earth as they could in space with no one watching them

[@SirConto]

It was explained the people in the colonies got a lot more brainwashed over time. Your character missed some 60 years of how this society developed and generally went downhill. Basically everyone currently alive was born in this corporate culture and brainwashed from a young age. Matter of fact, things got so bad, the ambassador of Earth in the capitol believes the government of Earth would send an army over if they knew what the situation was like there. Which is also a big reason why Phinneas believes reviving the people on the Hope would solve most of the problems - it'd provide, I think it was half a million competent people that aren't as brainwashed, remember what life was like before on Earth and will understand that the current situation really isn't normal.

[@TheLikenessOfNormal]

Plot kind of explains this as when they arrived in the system they found a lot of flora and fauna to eat. However none of it actually provided any nourishment for neurological development. The only people that were informed of this were those in charge, they decided to keep it a secret and started down their path of corporate brainwashing of the ever neurologically declining population in order to keep the society functioning as they desperately tried to solve the problem. I'm kinda PO'd that it was such a HUGE plot point and explains the eerie wacky way that people are behaving and Salt just ignored it to call the characters cartoony and stupid :/

[@Hemostat]

@@TheLikenessOfNormal I always liked the cartoonist stupidity of the game. It's weird to see that it's everyone's main gripe with it

[@AlamarianJ]

@@TheLikenessOfNormal That plot point would have been an interesting discovery… Had the plastic, goofy characters not already caused me to uninstall the game before I could discover that. Just because they thought of a in-universe explanation doesn’t make it not annoying. Though I probably would have kept playing despite that if the combat was fun. Or the story didn’t use satire like a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel.

[@Muninnnr]

For me, one of the biggest let-downs was how your skills effectively didn't matter for gameplay (outside of a few dialogue choices). When playing these kinds of games (Fallout, Deus Ex, Cyberpunk 2077 etc) I like to spec into things like hacking, lockpicking and stealth, because in a good game these skills can usually be used to unlock special paths during missions or gaining access to unique areas that might have some special loot or give you information that can be used to your advantage in conversations. They generally make me feel more skilled, or like I'm accomplishing more because I'm not just running and gunning, I'm playing smart. I played the same way in TOW, only to eventually realize that it didn't matter. There were no special areas, no fancy hidden loot, no juicy hidden information that could be used to sway a conversation in my favour. I was just wasting my time taking the long path around issues when a run-and-gun approach would yield the same result, but faster and probably while being more entertaining to play. The best example of this, and the point where it truly hit me how useless lockpicking and hacking was, was when you reached Byzantium and got to the area in the building in the upper level where the top brass of the colony has his office. There's a door there, off by the side, which is locked behind a significant lockpicking skill check. I made a mental note of it, and several hours later when I had levelled up my lockpicking high enough, I came back to pick it. Had to be sneaky about it since there were guards around and they don't appreciate you picking locks. But I managed it, thinking that there was going to be something interesting behind it. This was a heavily locked door, placed adjacent to the main office of the most powerful man in the colony. So what did I find in there? Absolutely nothing. It was a mostly empty conference room with some bottles of alcohol lying around that I could loot and sell for next to nothing. This one example captured my general feeling of the entire game to the point that this one moment sticks with me more than anything else than happened in the entire game, because this was where a nagging feeling I had had for hours crystalized.

[@EmperorSigismund]

That's an issue that lots of developers these days are terrified of. In order for an RPG to be a 'Role Playing Game' it needs to be able to distinguish one role from another with content that is inaccessible to people playing certain roles.

[@smexizool]

@@EmperorSigismund Developers seem terrified to have the player not be able to experience the entire game in one play through. Like how in Skyrim I can be the leader of every major guild at the same time.

[@expendableround6186]

Fallout 4 _at least_ had perks that provided an immediate and *tangible* benefit.

[@Dodsodalo]

Little did you know, there was a post it note with a picture of Dave Chappelle hidden in that room, with the words, "Gotcha bitch!"

[@MattyBudzzz]

I must be thinking of a different room bc I thought that same place your talking about has a terminal where you can contact earth's last shuttle or something and you arrange some kind of deal with a higher up in Byzantium bc he's being held at his house, maybe what km talking about was just open like normal but I thought it was behind the door your mentioning, idk it was a while ago

[@maxreis9534]

During my entire time with the game I had that "Why am I not playing Fallout right now?" - feeling.

[@FluffySylveonBoi]

Because it's a different game and it is good too :3

[@darrencharlie]

I played this game. The DLCs make it alot more interesting and action packed. I even discovered the secret ending where you can fly the ship into the sun lmao

[@woefulfisher]

WAAAAOOWW!!1 SO QUIRKY AND WHOLESOME!!

[@DanielFerreira-ez8qd]

@@woefulfisher But it actually is. It's a unique ending tied to a low-intelligence run, one of the best damn things about these games.

[@OrysB-po1fy]

A stupid and pointless ending like everything else about this game

[@Hemostat]

a weird part of the game that never sat right for me is the armor. None of it looks good. Maybe the iconoclasts and clothes but none of the armor you're going to be wearing 99% of the time.

[@kokichibestboi]

the thing that really got to me and made me drop the game was how fucking boring exploring was. every explorable area on every planet just felt so small and cramped, and they were all filled with the same copy pasted enemies, and they all gave the same boring copy pasted rewards, it was just unbearable after a while

[@FluffySylveonBoi]

Exploring Outer Worlds is fun, just not for everyone, I loved it :p

[@hub_1.15]

@@FluffySylveonBoi yep only u

[@FluffySylveonBoi]

@@hub_1.15 It is funny when people lie trying to joke, like u :)

[@hub_1.15]

@@FluffySylveonBoi 👌cool i aint gonna believe anyone sane "loved" exploring in this game Enjoyed? Sure loved? Hell fucking no

[@johnfree2833]

Felt like a fckng rat in a lame ass maze with no treats!Bogus AF.looked Ok but dropped the GD game 4 hrs in.

[@wtrbrns]

To me, the fact that there always is a "secret" third option that makes everyone happy is the worst part of it. Part of the charm of new vegas was that the factions are uncomfortable and their actions are always pretty grey, and you have to sometimes compromise some of your values with who you side with, like irl. Here, you could just resolve a geopolitic heavy conflic only by sheer dumb reasons and evetything is perfect and resolved, lol

[@Frankie-xu6sr]

You mean more black and white, I don't think there's any way to have several factions fully support you in New Vegas because all of their motives and goals are so close-minded/one sided

[@RabidlyTaboo]

Pick house. the only moral answer. then you can always be right.

[@Radbiker33357]

The same way we can smooth talk legate laennius by saying he should retreat his troops although he marched his troops all the way to hoover dam... I’d say that’s a silly design choice. In fact... we can smooth talk all of the faction heads. So what’s the difference. Let’s be real most of these games have stupid ways to win heavy conflicts. That’s what max speech/charisma does in any RPG. It ends up being ridiculous.

[@TheBlackAntagonist]

Three worlds: Hero Power Fantasy.

[@owainraysor1808]

@@RabidlyTaboo not really. House has options that clearly harm other factions. two instances: 1) Freeside. If you make the NCR and The Kings have any sort of peace, Mr House takes offense and slaughters all of the Kings after Hoover Dam. If the Kings don't resolve the conflict, they survive, but the NCR citizens get abused and harassed. 2) Brotherhood of Steel. No matter what, they have to die in order to achieve the House ending.

[@StellariumSound]

I'm watching this video and repeatedly going "Oh yeah, I remember doing that quest" after having completely forgotten.

[@cameron818]

I'm amazed Reviewers acted like this was some sort of Masterpiece.

[@Rainbowhawk1993]

All because they wanted to get back at Bethesda. Seems so petty now.

[@expendableround6186]

@@Rainbowhawk1993 They threw out the baby with the bath water. F4 was questionable (especially at launch,) and 76 was a historic train wreck, but TOW was unabashedly dull and boring in nearly every aspect.

[@CyoteBongWater87]

@@expendableround6186 outer world was a game that actually fucking fuctioned. Bethesda is still garbage

[@CyoteBongWater87]

@@Rainbowhawk1993 bethesda is still dogshit

[@Čangrizavi_Cinik]

Most gave it great score because of the wokeness. Gaming journalists just adore woke message. Strong women with colorful (crazy) hair, lesbian romantic story etc.

[@wylon87]

I've always loved your subtle visual gags in the background. When you first arrive on Monarch and fall off a ledge and didnt find the elevator lift until later. I had problems finding that too.

[@izzypleasures3545]

I realized now the reason why The Outer Worlds' writing feels such a let down is because for such a politically charged premise, much of the things it talks about is conveniently unmoored from any real politics. It just ends up saying "We're all in this together, everyone is struggling, no one's at fault Halcyon is failing and if you rock the boat you're the problem." Even when the game tries to paint the Halcyon board as the obvious villain, it doesn't really seem to know why other than "They're just bad okay?" And when they portray alternative factions like Adelaide's Garden or the Iconoclasts, they're painted to be just as selfish/fatally incompetent as the Board and it just comes off as having your cake and eating it too. You can't have it both ways.

[@Idazmi7]

Exactly.

[@myceliumlung]

Same. I always felt the decisions were so.. centrist, for lack of a better term. Nothing seemed to have any concrete effect on the actual world, and nothing you do really affects the overall plot

[@Idazmi7]

@@myceliumlung Ironically, that makes The Outer Worlds _extremely_ poor as a spiritual sequel to New Vegas. *_Everything_* you do in that game vastly changes the outcome.

[@camd4648]

See, this could have actually been a good thing, had they done it correctly, because not everyone is inherently bad. There are shitty people, but everyone is acting in their own self interest. Why is the player more moral in his quest, than the antagonist? New Vegas perfected this idea, that NOT everyone is this big, evil entity, hell bent on destroying everything. Even Mr. House was simply trying to protect New Vegas. It could've easily skipped the "Capitalism bad" trope and showed both sides of the spectrum, and really make you question whether they really are the enemy or not. Show the issues with a world without those corporations in place, and the bad things that fall along side it.

[@izzypleasures3545]

​@@camd4648 What's funny is it doesn't even say "capitalism bad" in the end because it doesn't actually understand politics. As a result it mistakes "being interpersonally mean" as politics. To say "capitalism bad" actually requires you to explain how a system that rewards being singularly in control of concentrated capital is bad and the game sorta doesn't. As far as it's concerned, capitalism is just bad because the people in it are interpersonally mean (greedy/incompetent/selfish/abusive to their underlings, etc), and then turns around and say "People who don't want to work with their oppressors are themselves just as bad" (Adelaide being selfish, Graham being incompetent, everyone else conveniently too brainwashed to think for themselves.) In the end, the endings reflect its misunderstanding of politics by ostensibly shrugging. If you side with the Board, its fine. If you side with Welles, it's fine. People dying by the millions as an interplanetary society collapses because it has nothing to eat or its workers are put on ice by the thousands? Don't think about it.

[@Deehvad]

IMO the only reason this game got so much praise is because its timing was perfect. People were incredibly salty at Bethesda when Fallout 76 was a disaster, and everyone piled on this game saying "SEE!? LOOK AT THIS BUGTHESDA (har har har) THAT IS A GOOD GAME". This game was a sort of revenge porn that gamers wanted to rub Bethesda's face in after their disaster.

[@MegaNightmare4]

I remember being really confused and disappointed with the games antagonists, the corporation. I kept waiting for the twist that would reveal some hidden truth as to why they weren't objectively evil, or why there might be some case for siding with them. So that the conflict of the game wouldn't be so black and white. I kept expecting that twist up until the very end. Then when the game ended... there was nothing. No devils advocate, no grey morality, no deeper elements at play. Nothing thought provoking at all. The corporation really was just cartoonish evil for no real reason, and destroying them is the objectively better choice to make. I wasn't expecting this game to be New Vegas 2. I deliberately made an effort not to compare the two. But man, the nature of the game's narrative, how it puts on a pretense of being "choice based," and how it actually follows through was severely disappointing. It has some of the most shallow, black and white "choices" I've seen in a game in recent years. It's not as bad as Fallout 4 where the choices are mostly fake, make no sense and only happen at the end of the quest because Bethesda want's it's game to be a theme park with a set path instead of an interactable world. The choices in Outer Worlds were real, and they made sense. But they were mostly just... uninteresting, honestly. It reminds me of older games where the only "choices" you were given were to be a completely altruistic hero, or a psychotic sociopath, with no middle ground. Choose the objectively bad path, or choose the objectively good path.

[@wdf70]

I was honestly waiting for the board to be this super smart collection of bad guys who know literally everything that was going on with the system. But in the end all you get are a bunch of idiots who are no smarter than an average NPC. The Board was the one part of the game they had that didn't have to be a parody and could be a serious antagonist to juxtapose the rest of the games goofy nature, but no. You get a cavalcade of idiots in charge of a star system that's dying because of their own incompetence and you see it coming a mile away. Just like most of the game, the villains are a farce. They arent a threat, they're just too dumb to be running a space colony and it just takes out what little immersion the game had. It's like if you go to Caesars camp in new vegas and instead of finding a calculated charsimatic mad man you get a guy who couldnt tie his shoes and talks in flash gordan style quips.

[@polishrocker93]

If you ever desire a plot where corporations are secretly the good guys, then you are already drinking the capitalism kool aid. Corps are always evil, end of story.

[@MegaNightmare4]

@@polishrocker93 Yeah that wasn’t really my point at all. It’s not about them being “good.” Just about writing them with more depth than mustache twirling cartoon villains. Ceasers Legion were misogynistic, genocidal slavers, but they were still written with depth and nuance that made them interesting to explore.

[@jefferyjefferson2835]

@@polishrocker93 But wouldn't it be more interesting if there was more nuance to each side? Even if you believe in real life that corporations are always evil, can we not still assert that in this story, in this fictional world, it would have made a more interesting tale where one side was not completely and utterly incompetent and evil, and the other side was not entirely perfect + the de facto good side? Like that's what was good with stuff like Breaking Bad, or even New Vegas- that even people with really shitty goals had some neutral or perhaps commendable traits to them. You cannot genuinely believe that painting a group with a single color is more fascinating than painting with a rainbow of hues.

[@sloppyjoe9070]

That wasn’t his point. Also, capitalism is responsible for essentially every major technological advancement in recent history, let’s not pretend like there’s no possible argument to be made in its favor.

[@smergthedargon8974]

6:00 I like the way Underrail handles things, where increasing one skill gives you a smaller increase in related skills, i.e. being better at persuasion also increases your barter skill, increasing your lockpicking skill also increases your general mechanics skill, etc.

[@infinimineyt9700]

I remember playing through this whole game and yeah…there was something about it that made it both fun AND dull half the time. It is difficult to describe. Perhaps I just found the setting not compelling

[@Verlurion]

Outer Worlds had its flaws, extended playability being the biggest one, but it was a very enjoyable experience and more than that a very promising framework. And with its success and The Outer Worlds 2 on the horizon I have a lot of hope for the future.

[@zezex3116]

Same i enjoid it and currently playing the dlcs

[@ghostofuchiha3807]

I agree with the first part, but hope is really misplaced in these times. We are in some sort of dark age of entertainment. Movies, shows, video games have a very slim chance to be good these days. You will just be disappointed trusting in the future.

[@AdminAbuse]

Pure copium

[@DanielFerreira-ez8qd]

​@@AdminAbuse It's not copium to trust that developers that made something you enjoyed can listen to feedback to make their next game better. That's how most developers work with some very rich exceptions.

[@DctrBread]

Gotta say, this game really was a great example of boneless satire. The way it does satire is by taking a target, having it kick the dog, and then sticking some bathos/goofs on it. Rather than having satire that actually cuts deep or humor thats actually funny, it depends on the audience to be eager to join in thrashing the strawman. Since the satire isn't cutting or organized, it leads to the game having a social commentary that sounds like an imaginary argument. It has no praxis. The shape of corporate oppression in the game is mostly inspired by white collar rat races, and presents an alternative in the form of ... just running a more reasonable corporation. It has no insight on social stratification beyond this single petty context. You're really on the nose pointing out that a lot of the humor is not actually funny, just that it lacks seriousness or interrupts something serious. Probably not a good move to constantly make sure your audience isn't feeling too many emotions for the game you're trying to sell them.

[@thepancakemann]

I agree that this game is a great example of boneless satire. I saw that as a positive, however. Boneless satire happens to be greatly amusing and this game was distinctly funny. I legitimately thought the tone of satire was one of the few things Outer Worlds did that actually worked. I don't need a game or piece of media to make grand statements or wow me with the depth of its social commentary. It's enough to hold up a false mirror in a fun house for us to chuckle over. It's boring as piss though, and when you're already feeling numb from the satire you're dead on that it's a terrible idea for the gameplay, art, and story to be as emotionlessly vanilla as it is. I mean, noone's looking at a silly funhouse mirror for 200 hours - though I have done exactly that with plenty of better RPG's. Cheers.

[@nxght6694]

i think a mix of both would be great and should be what everyone strives to accomplish with a strong focus on timing as well as the actual humor.

[@Kvint-kh12345]

Also the trope is... well, not fresh to say the least. Yes, yes, we got it, big corporations are bad. I mean, over the course history they killed billions, starved millions, created systems of oppressions based on intrinsic characters, started many wars, unleashed several plagues... Oh boy i sure am glad we have Governments to keep those evil corporations in check... Now sarcasm aside, i would like to see this idea shown in games (or any other media for thet matter) for once, you know. Just to go against popular and easy "corpos are bad" and explore why are they bad? Is every side of them bad, or is there any possible good to them? Because in the end of the day, it's not the corporations that are bad just because they are bad, it's centralized power, that allows few evil people to take it in their hands (which, btw, is easier for them to do, since they don't have moral code to abide by, making seizing the power much easier). And then counter that idea with absolute anarchy and many issues it has. I miss products that challenge all ideologies and views, instead of ones that are safe and easy to challenge. I mean, i'm very close to being anarchist myself, however i see challenges in "no governments and no corporations" world and see how for some those challenges are so big, that they would rather endure negative aspects of centralized power in exchange for it's safety and relative predictability. So instead of every modern piece of media smugly saying "corporations are bad" (while ironically being produced by said corporations) i would like them to explain to me why are they bad, and why, if they are that bad, there still are good people who support those bad corporations/governments.

[@DctrBread]

@@thepancakemann Personally, I was stating that the satire was just not very clever. They established a humorous tone, but I wasn't laughing, because the jokes were cliches/memes. Having a lot of hit jokes does actually take some work, it turns out. A joke/gag doesn't need to make a deep statement about the real world to be funny either.

[@DctrBread]

@@Kvint-kh12345 I don't think there's any reason not to satirize corporations, but the satire is cliche, and seems more inspired by social media than history. additionally, I also see no reason to criticize absolute anarchy, because there is no such thing as it is. Philosophically, we may argue that perhaps those judged to be wise should have authority over those less so. However, in real life, that argument is meaningless, because it's basically the opposite, and a lot of authority is wielded simply as an ego-trip.

[@evan5935]

You missed the best part! (So far) Getting ellie to kill her parents with the kill command, and then her yelling at you about how you killed her parents and she cant be around you anymore. But only on the next time you speak to her lol

[@gracinvicko]

I have something like 150-200 hours and 2 playthroughs in this game and I had to google who Ellie was. The game was just so forgettable.

[@evan5935]

@@gracinvicko yeah, i only remember that part because it was so ridiculous 🤷‍♂️🤣

[@thesecond6886]

As far as I understood it, the "plague" wasn't the common flu but scurvy caused by the diet consisting solely of fish or something.

[@Anonymous-nj9wh]

Your channel is amazing and I look forward to coming home from work and watching. Keep it up

[@vojtechzahry9022]

Seeing you mention Kingdom Come: Deliverance, made me think it would be a great choice for your next analysis. It is one of my favourite games that came out in a last few years and I would love to see someone analyse it as thoroughly as you do.

[@rottenburrito7277]

I love that game, you can literally play it however you want and the amount of things to do is astounding.

[@bsils6213]

Same

[@GHOSTTIEF]

@@rottenburrito7277 the combat was so good honestly until you get to a high level and can just bonk people in the head I hope they make a way for modding if it gets a sequel

[@rottenburrito7277]

@@GHOSTTIEF Yes, I actually like the combat even though you need to get the hang of it because it can be challenging for some people if you play it the first time.

[@EmperorSigismund]

Kingdom Come is one of the few games that actually gives the respect deserved to medieval history. The clothing and armour in that game is absolutely gorgeous. I think the story, though, has an identity crisis. It wants to have a linear main story with a reliable protagonist, Henry, just like the Witcher games with Geralt. But it also wants us to be able to go around robbing and murdering people and going to jail like an Elder Scrolls game but expects none of this to impact the main story. Still I'd love to see another historical game like this set anywhere, anytime, so long as it looks and feels as good as Kingdom Come.

[@cocalicoman]

41:00 this is one of the reasons I love Morrowind so much. You really start out as some dweeb with no experience at all and it takes time for your character to become proficient with whatever weapon you want to use. Character great with axes? Can’t hit shit with a dagger because it’s a totally different skill set. Great warrior with low intelligence? Can’t cast spells because you haven’t practiced at all. It gets that dynamic learning down pat

[@onanthebarbarian4842]

Good taste. One thing that makes character progression in Morrowind feel so good is that you start a lot lower than most video game protagonists, but you end up much higher. The story works well with it, as you start as a lowly prisoner who got lucky but are acknowledged as a literal demi-god by the end of it. It's all the more satisfying because you actually do demi-god things. But another part that makes it work well for Morrowind is that you're allowed to gradually explore the world and immerse yourself in it. And for all its weirdness, the world of Morrowind is fairly serious, and feels like it's been built up. The people you speak to don't know everything, and they may lie about other things. So you read the books, but they're all colored by the perspective of the author, or are speculation or fiction about real events. And that's all built on a history that goes back further, and is barely mentioned, but has left its mark on the world you inhabit. So by the time you've grown powerful in terms of mechanics, you've also grown in knowledge, which allows you to use that power in better ways. Which is, I guess, why the world speedrun record for Morrowind is counted in minutes.

[@BrotherMag]

I may have to start over morrowind lol it frustrated me so bad

[@ObviouslyFonky]

@@BrotherMag Morrowind is my favorite game of all time... but the combat feels horrible. You should accept that if you want to try it again. And don't feel bad if you abuse some systems a little bit.;) If you can accept that part of the game (and not everyone will): what a great experience!

[@warandconquest6522]

I thought the whole starvation angle was a really cool concept but with no game continuing past the final story mission it kinda felt hollow. I turned my back on a faction to save the colonies from starvation and there’s no acknowledgment of it after that

[@117johnpar]

I apparently beat this game when it came out and I remembered nothing past the first planet and the little settlement past the ship you talk to the people at. I usually dont forget games so easily. And genuinely thought I hadnt beaten this. But I loaded up my save from Xbox and sure enough I had beaten it.

[@Gizmomaster]

The issue I found with the game(other than melee) was actual world/ story itself. I got the feeling they turned the whole corporations bad thing up to 11, but didn’t do it in a interesting way. They just all of the corporations seem incompetent. Incompetence doesn’t terraform planets, run interstellar businesses, or discover new scientific discoveries. In a way Obsidian fell victim to a symptom in their very own game. Propaganda. The player is almost religiously pushed to view corporations as incompetent bunches of do nothings that just ruin everyone else’s lives. It got old and quickly.

[@TheBlackAztec3]

Weird because the corporations were portrayed as pretty smart and manipulative. Especially the people you interact with from said corporations. The way they brainwash the colonists to work cant be done by idiots. Maybe Im missing something because all the corporations seemed very competent and evil in the game.

[@jimster1111]

this was my issue with detroit become human. it was so up its own ass with mirroring the 60's civil rights movement that it just didnt feel like its own thing.

[@coldmexican288]

Well, thats just the nature of big businesses, whether intended or not. What point of view did you expect from the game?

[@badlaamaurukehu]

@@coldmexican288 Maybe just a touch of self-awareness? It's like this game was written by the games own uninspired and goofy characters.

[@marcar9marcar972]

Yeah honestly the only thing I know about this game is it’s broke politics

[@TheStonewall117]

I played this game for about 12 to 15 hours, and immediately after beating it, felt nothing and never played the game again. Definitely NOT New Vegas

[@ser_ryon_vine6392]

Personal head canon: outer worlds takes place in a world where the courier sides with Mr. house and helps him colonize the stars.

[@manz7860]

The best NV ending

[@Sanguivore]

This would actually make The Outer Worlds just *slightly* better.

[@ididntmeantoshootthatvietn5012]

That would make it worse, i don't see any resemblance of Mr house in the corporations, they're too stupid to be associated with house.

[@Sines314]

@@ididntmeantoshootthatvietn5012 I actually don't have a problem with it. Mr. House would have died eventually (From an eventual machine malfunction, if nothing else), and had to pass on the company. However, while Mr. House might have been a very clever and controlled autocrat, most people who seek power aren't (His first protege, Benny, disappointed him in this way). By the time of the game, Mr. Houses carefully thought out empire has degenerated into this corporate hellhole. More soulless than anything Mr. House would have created, and without the thoughtfulness that would have made Mr. House a 'good' dictator. All ruling classes eventually degenerate, become shells of what made their empire great to begin with. But the corporations of the Outer Worlds have just too much control to be shaken off, to refresh the establishment... and so we get this terrible society.

[@Zen-rw2fz]

In one of the terminal it's mentioned that they had contact to some country in budapest and in fallout lore europe has been bombed to oblivion so if outerworld really is connected to fallout than the colonists must have left before the war

[@onlineidentity6826]

I have just completed it and absolutely loved the experience from start to finish.

[@whiskeysour1179]

Btw, the plot of "freeze extra people to conserve food, then unfreeze them when you need the labor" was done in Edgar Rice Borough's book The Yellow Men of Mars. About a hundred years ago.

[@kubekzpiciem]

I'd like to add to the "my cashier woke up and can swing hammer or deadeye any enemy out of nowhere" that rpgs might want to revisit some mechanics from old school games like "Gothic" were your guy doesnt know how to proper swing anything or shoot until he learns the proper way with a trainer, which is also tiered so you don't go from zero to hero immidietely.

[@KD-ou2np]

It feels so empty when your character goes around talking and acting like a badass when you were literally a pencil pusher before. Like why would my character be comfortable killing people and going on dangerous missions to retrieve things for people unless my character was a bounty hunter in a previous life? Its not like there are story events that push you towards this life, you just start risking your life for this scientist for no reason. I got a dialogue option that was like "gunships? Ha no problem for me" and it completely took me out. Like wtf do you mean main character? You've never even seen a gunship before, presumably?

[@vasto5952]

God forbid that wretched game

[@Th1sUsernameIsNotTaken]

Kingdom come deliverance also did it well in regards to combat mechanics

[@jtaco4101]

​@@Th1sUsernameIsNotTakenloved that game.

[@frds_skce]

So, Kingdome Come Deliverance?

[@xaero5150]

My favorite option is to cut the power off for the deserters and then convince reed to leave town, then tell the deserters that they can move back. Only one person is hurt, Reed Tompson, and the town is WAY better off, since Adelaide shows them how to grow crops. I think you actually get extra XP for that way of doing things.

[@alezarde211]

I remember being so excited for this game. A major part of my life in gaming was attributed to New Vegas and its intricate design, something I still think about and cite as a fantastic example of player choice and agency in an RPG. I saw this game be revealed and thought it would be the New Vegas like I had been wanting for a while. So I got it and played it. And liked my first play through. Up until the end. When getting told that I was at the end of the game, not even after 15 hours, I was so, utterly gutted. I literally remember nothing else about the game years later.

[@TheFacelessStoryMaker]

Outer Worlds to me feels like an experiment. The same great character writing and dialogue is there but since this is a brand new IP they didn't take too many risks. I enjoyed the game and still do to this day but it could certainly have been better. Hopefully MS doesn't interfere in Outer Worlds 2 since they own Obsidian.

[@Troll_vs.]

I fully agree it felt like a long demo or something like that. Just to say hey looks what's coming down the line. Like I hope the second is better it's its one of the reasons I got an Xbox. (Second reason is the Playstation 5 is fucking unicorn )

[@tylerdunn9683]

Outer worlds just needed another year or two in the oven

[@asiamatron]

Yeah feels like a prototype to me and a decent foundation.

[@machbass]

Nothing shows this more than the overall lore. As interesting as it could be it seems like you get the same underlying message no matter where you are or what you're doing.

[@benito1620]

Where is this great character and dialogue writing you speak of?

[@SteveZavitz]

I really agree with your points on Emerald Vale. One of the things I loved about New Vegas was just walking around and having this sense of discovery. Sometimes it meant getting destroyed by a gang of young cazadors, but the mystique of the Mojave never faded because it never felt like a bunch of invisible walls were boxing me in or driving me in a specific direction. When I realized just how small all of the maps are and had to sit through loading screen after loading screen, I basically skipped all the side quests and mainlined the game just to see the ending. I enjoyed my time, but man it felt like such wasted potential. Maybe the sequel will actually fix a lot of these issues.

[@DiegoAlvarezBeltran1993.]

The OW used something that so many companies have and will continue to use so long as it continues to work: Nostalgia. From the jump, it threw " Hey, we were the company that made NV so you /know/ you're in for something incredible" And when they got the reception they wanted, that was that. They could literally do whatever they wanted because its Obsidian and they made New Vegas so this game has to be great by default!

[@timothymoss5007]

My problem with Outer Worlds was the same you had with Andromeda. All of the NPCs were essentially, "Look how quirky I am! Isn't that funny?! I'm so quirky and zany!" I'm so tired of this trend.