Outer Worlds - Massive Disappointment

A lot of the issues I had with the Outer Worlds have been mentioned already, but one thing I didn’t like about the game was that Phineas Welles didn’t actually have a plan to solve the food crisis. His plan was to just unfreeze all those colonists that had been left in cryo stasis and hope they’d be smart enough to figure it out. So essentially his solution to the food crisis is to increase the population...
 
Iprovidelittlepianos said:
A lot of the issues I had with the Outer Worlds have been mentioned already, but one thing I didn’t like about the game was that Phineas Welles didn’t actually have a plan to solve the food crisis. His plan was to just unfreeze all those colonists that had been left in cryo stasis and hope they’d be smart enough to figure it out. So essentially his solution to the food crisis is to increase the population...
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Yep, that is also something I brought up earlier.
Phineas' solution was wake up scientists and engineers and expecting them to come up with a solution.
Well seeing what most people in the Halcyon system are like a group of trained and skilled specialists are probably more capable of solving the problem the colony suffers from.
Thing is is that they still need "time and room" to work with and with resources already diminishing.

Personally I am kind of disappointed that this was what the writers could come up with for a plotline. It feels very underwhelming and half thought out, especially after they have made it clear several times that Halcyon's food supplies are low.

Some sort of totalitarian government would have to be installed anyway to manage what food supplies and means of production there are as the board is corrupt and incompetent. They still focus on profit when the future of the colony is in question.

I really felt that some kind of twist was needed to make the story/main campaign better.
One idea I had was that it would be revealed that Phineas had been working on a better way of terraforming the planets and moons of the Halcyon system after the previous attempt/method proved to be ineffective.
Problem with his new approach is that it is going to kill everything organic on the current worlds in order to replace it with organisms that are more compatible with Terran life (think the Genesis device from Star Trek 2).
Now the board is not completely dismissing this solution to the crisis but Phineas feels that the colony got into trouble in the first place because of the board and the general incompetence of the colonists. He believes a complete restart is necessary and seeing as there is a starship full of scientists, technicians, and engineers out there who are still frozen he has come to the conclusion that they should be the founders of the new Halcyon colony. (perhaps Phineas even wants to establish a society based on intellectuals and philosopher kings).

The player would learn about what Phineas is really up to while looking for those chemicals, putting into question of the player is willing to help Phineas to commit genocide.

Likewise not everyone on the board would be incompetent and detached from reality, or there would be potential board members who are a lot saner which the player could get on the board that have more realistic solutions on solving the problems of the colony.

At the conclusion of the game still some sacrifices would have to be made and there would not be "one" good ending, rather just a number of different endings with the player having to choose which ones they can live the best with.
 
One thing that I noticed is that in the ending slideshow you don't actually get a feeling for how the food situation worked out, whether everyone starved or not. There was a scientist you met on a quest who was working on splicing human dna with native species, but you don't hear from her again.

I would have liked if more of your choices had unintended negative consequences, like how if you help gecko with optimizations Vault City annexes them. For this game something like if you help Phineas he unfreezes everyone but they are not able to come up with a solution in time and 90% of the population dies -- leaving room for a potential (post apocolyptic) sequel.

Or if you help the greenhouse in the first planet, in the end they are not able to defend themselves and are overrun by raders.

I actually did like the main storyline a lot compared to a lot of other games (like witcher 3), but you get to the end and you're talking to the president and he's like "if you unfreeze everyone how are you going to feed them?" And one of the responses is actually, "you know I didn't consider that." I wish they would have put a little bit more time into that concept.

The original commenter mentioned that it was too silly, futurama-like. And while I agree that the absurdity level does ruin my immersion a bit, I honestly would have been fine with futurama level writing. Futurama is a great show. In that show you have an imbecile like Zap Branagan or a cartoon villain like Richard Nixon and the main characters have to be the straight-men and react to them and overcome the obstacles created by the obsurdity. This game doesn't quite get that. While I didn't hate this game and liked the writing a bit, it was still a disappointment.

What was really surprising to me was how many times I thought, "they did this better in fallout 3" while playing it. Vats is just better than time dilation. I'm not a big fan of the "walking simulator" gameplay, but exploration in 3 is also just often better. You do find some interesting scene or something more often. And I don't like fallout 3.
 
It looks like FNV was lightning in a bottle, and anyone who expected this to be FNV 2.0 was thoroughly disappointed.
 
BigGuyCIA said:
It looks like FNV was lightning in a bottle, and anyone who expected this to be FNV 2.0 was thoroughly disappointed.
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The problem is that, as other people have mentioned, FNV had some very talented people in charge of directing, designing and writing that game. Since then, Obsidian has lost most of it's very talented employees on exactly those fields, most notably Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone.
 
Eumesmopo said:
The problem is that, as other people have mentioned, FNV had some very talented people in charge of directing, designing and writing that game. Since then, Obsidian has lost most of it's very talented employees on exactly those fields, most notably Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone.
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Precisely, New Vegas was developed by Obsidian. Outer Worlds was developed by "Obsidian"

Gnarle said:
The original commenter mentioned that it was too silly, futurama-like. And while I agree that the absurdity level does ruin my immersion a bit, I honestly would have been fine with futurama level writing. Futurama is a great show. In that show you have an imbecile like Zap Branagan or a cartoon villain like Richard Nixon and the main characters have to be the straight-men and react to them and overcome the obstacles created by the obsurdity. This game doesn't quite get that. While I didn't hate this game and liked the writing a bit, it was still a disappointment..
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The problem is that even if the absurdist comedic writing was as good as Futurama I still think it wouldn't make for a good RPG, because to my eyes at least you need to be able to care about the setting and the world of a roleplaying game and totally farcical comedy or satire just do not engage you in the way that roleplaying should.
 
Eumesmopo said:
The problem is that, as other people have mentioned, FNV had some very talented people in charge of directing, designing and writing that game. Since then, Obsidian has lost most of it's very talented employees on exactly those fields, most notably Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone.
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Right. But Sawyer is still with Obsidian - he didn't contribute to the game?
 
I recall reading somewhere that he hardly had anything do with the game. Maybe did a couple of things for it, but not much else.

Research says he's the design director of the game. Whatever that entails.
 
BigGuyCIA said:
Right. But Sawyer is still with Obsidian - he didn't contribute to the game?
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Think it was mostly spearheaded by Cain and Boyarksky and whoever isn't video game celebrity status that was on their team. Sawyer was more likely working on other projects or something.

I still want to buy TOW but I'm waiting for a GOG release and a really good sale. And for me to play more of the games and mods I've been meaning to play. The lackluster reception of this game isn't inspiring.
 
That partially explains the weak narrative / writing at least. The absence of CA is still felt - most likely permanently now since he's apparently a raging abuser (allegedly).
 
Atomic Postman said:
It harks back to an era where corporate advertising was laughably shallow and hyperbolic, you know "Coca-Cola! If you drink this and it doesn't grow your hair back and save your marriage, your money back guranteed!" rather than the much more insidious and wickedly intelligent ways corporations market and enter the subconscious in the 21st century
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This. The corporate advertising in the game seems remarkably shallow and is not subtle. Like today corporations will use social media to try and make funny jokes, as a marketing ploy to stand out on social media. Or will psychologically try to get someone to remember their product from a young age. I remember a Budweiser commercial where the whole story is a happy one where a dog and horse develop a heartfelt friendship. I am pretty sure the whole point was to target kids so they will always have that memory glued in their brains so when they see Budweiser they will subconsciously have a warm feeling towards them due to that Commerical they made and will be more likely to buy their product when they are older. But Outer Worlds doesn't do any of that this it is played straight up with no hint of subtlety.

And this gets me to my next problem with Outer Worlds, what makes the setting a Corporate dystopia? If you change the Corporate dystopia to a Totalitarian Government what changes
Corporations in Outer Worlds have slogans and merchandize but so do Governments and political parties Ex.MAGA, Hope and Change
Corporations in Outer Worlds talk about profits and productivity but so do Governments Ex.colonial possessions overseas like I'd imagine Great Britain cared about its colonial profits
Corporations in Outer worlds have unelected board members yet Governments also have unelected leaders
Corporations in Outer Worlds lie to people yet so do Governments
Corporations in Outer Worlds are incredibly incompetent that they cause a disease outbreak yet Governments have also done exactly that
Corporations in Outer Worlds are incredibly incompetent that they cause a famine/food shortage yet Governments again have done exactly that (Soviet Union)
Like I could be wrong but I haven't seen anything in the game that is uniquely corporate
 
I found the game to be pretty great, probably my GOTY for 2019, but that's mostly because I played like 2 games that released in 2019. Might have to try out Disco Elysium soon.
 
I played a little bit of it and it was ok. It wasn't what I would call following this neo-liberal exponential outcome expectation that has clutched on and riding the spine of the public presuppositions.

Platforms usually are what motivate people. What is the platform? Am I in a car, an elevator, what is my goals, who am I? I have a supercomputer in my pocket and I don't even realize the importance because everything has be ubiquitously laid upon us by the efforts of people in random situations performing in a certain matter in an infinite variable spectrum of possibility, regarding all written word as a leech on the perception of the underlying reality on all things. Historical perception chains humanity into a singular expectation in an infinite universe and only through PAIN will you understand.

 
ResetRPG said:
I found the game to be pretty great, probably my GOTY for 2019, but that's mostly because I played like 2 games that released in 2019. Might have to try out Disco Elysium soon.
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I've only played Disco from 2019 and I'm about to play Sekiro once I'm done with Demon's Souls. From what I've seen, Disco is far better than The Outer Worlds.
 
SquidVan said:
I've only played Disco from 2019 and I'm about to play Sekiro once I'm done with Demon's Souls. From what I've seen, Disco is far better than The Outer Worlds.
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Disco is a narrative focused CRPG, so it being better is probably a given.
 
Disco Elysium also allowed players to play the kind of player they wanted to play as. If you want to play as a raging, sexist, homophobic, fascist you can. Granted, most of the NPC's in the game won't like you or want to interact with you if you are, as is the case in real life, but at least you have that option. In The Outer Worlds you can be nothing but nice and supportive to the gay characters in the game even if they are unlikable. I get why the developers did this (Current year Social Justices politics) but, at least to me, it doesn't feel like you are treating gay characters as normal people who happen to be gay but rather as special and fragile little purse puppies that need their hands held constantly. It is sad to see how backwards they went with this after New Vegas. New Vegas did gay characters right, The Outer Worlds feels like Obsidian took several steps back.
 
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