The Outer Worlds - Early Impressions

joevonzombie said:
Perks are definitely lame as fuck.
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The perks are the biggest complaint I've seen about this game. I think people were expecting New Vegas in terms of the perks. Where perks affected dialogue and your play style. It seems that Obsidian took a page from Bethesda in terms of perks and that is disappointing.
 
I got some time to play up to the groundbreaker, and honestly I kindof have mixed feelings about this game. I definitely want to like it, and I've found things that catching my interest, but the one thing I can not get over is how cartoonishly evil the corporations are in this universe. Forcing people to pay the rent of dead people? Forcing a man to wear a mask he cant take off, see out of, or eat normally with, and force him to live his life as a walking advertisement? That's only the tip of the iceberg, and while I'm sure there are some rich sociopaths IRL who'd love to get away with that kind of stuff, you'd literally have to cybernetically modify peoples brains for them to put up with that level of abuse and remain compliant.

What sense would it make to side with these people? It's made immediately clear that your character will not benefit from this, unless edgewater is the worst example. Even my characters available dialogue choices agree with me most of the time, as I don't see many of them often that justify the world around my character. I'm hoping this will change as I get further through the game.
 
RangerBoo said:
It seems that Obsidian took a page from Bethesda in terms of perks and that is disappointing.
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95% of FO3's perks were just straight skill boosts like that one that was just small guns and repair so you end up having 7 of them. I can't even remember 4's at all and I think the perks are your skills in 76. I think people are just over selling New Vegas perks unless they think Terrifying Presence was such a great perk with the 3 times you'll ever use it in a playthrough. I'm fine with skills playing a bigger role over perks when it comes to something like that since if I'm at 100 in explosives, why the hell would I need a perk saying I'm a master?
AeonG said:
you'd literally have to cybernetically modify peoples brains for them to put up with that level of abuse and remain compliant.
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Nah good ol' fear will do the trick every time. I've posted about this earlier in the thread but I view it as this perfect nightmare scenario of the creepy cultist like behavior and corporate culture of a place like Facebook, the inhumane and soul crushing work environment found in the industries of China, mixed with good old Exploitative Mercantilism from the Age of Discovery.
 
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@AeonG keep in mind that the worst regimes in history were masters of “spin” and getting people to believe that they were the solution to society’s problems (look at Goebbels and the rest of Hitler’s squad). Theoretically, combining the necessary skill of “spin” in advertising and marketing with government would give you the greatest team of spin doctors ever created. And as long as people in-universe believe the shit they’re shoveling, they’ll follow their corporate overlords straight to Hell.

And that’s not even mentioning the rights people will give up out of fear (see post 9/11 hysteria). With raiders and shit walking the world, imagine gun control and the PATRIOT Act x1000.
 
Perks are not as varied as New Vegas which is a bummer, but what this has over New Vegas is a much more reactive world, a lot more skill checks per conversation. Some things that were Perks in New Vegas (Like Terrifying presence) are skills here and every 20 points of a skill gives you a specific new effect or boost so it evens out. Still wish perks where a little bit more flavorfull.

AeonG said:
I got some time to play up to the groundbreaker, and honestly I kindof have mixed feelings about this game. I definitely want to like it, and I've found things that catching my interest, but the one thing I can not get over is how cartoonishly evil the corporations are in this universe. Forcing people to pay the rent of dead people? Forcing a man to wear a mask he cant take off, see out of, or eat normally with, and force him to live his life as a walking advertisement? That's only the tip of the iceberg, and while I'm sure there are some rich sociopaths IRL who'd love to get away with that kind of stuff, you'd literally have to cybernetically modify peoples brains for them to put up with that level of abuse and remain compliant.

What sense would it make to side with these people? It's made immediately clear that your character will not benefit from this, unless edgewater is the worst example. Even my characters available dialogue choices agree with me most of the time, as I don't see many of them often that justify the world around my character. I'm hoping this will change as I get further through the game.
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You already have people nowadays who are deeply convinced that healthcare should be a luxury, even among people who are barly making ends meet. There are tons of horror stories coming from places like Amazon wharehouses were people had to pee in bottles, Facebook randomly subjecting interns to looking at snuff and child porn daily without telling them that's what their job was gonna be and offer them no psychological thrapy and instead replace it with letting them get high, lotta tech start ups that operate like cults. This is just taking it a step further by having it set in corporate colonies where the corporations have basically government like power over people, if not more so.
 
I'm disappointed with perks being simple +5% to something, because there's no incentive to pick up Flaws for extra perk points (at least it looks like Flaws add quite a bit to dialogues).
 
The Flaws system seems mostly tailored towards combat oriented builds more than anything, they could be fun for roleplaying reasons but so far not for any mechanical reason.
 
Alphons said:
@CT Phipps, @Walpknut

I've watched some gameplay videos from the first planet and read around Codex and there's something that I'm really sceptic about- skill system and perks/ flaws.

Making every point worth 3 until you reach 50 in them looks like it'll quickly turn you into jack-of-all-trades that can lockpick, hack everything or intimidate/lie/persuade everyone. Do checks scale in the way that rewards specializing into certain skill or you're great at everything.

Perks also seem rather boring, with some small damage increase or health bonus. Do they get better (I've only looked around Tier I)?
Connected to it are Flaws. If perks are worthless, then why bother? Are they plain perk points for debuff or do they add something more (like Concussion giving you low Int dialogue and Robophobia giving extra dialogue lines with robots)?
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I feel the likelihood of maxing out everything is as probable as it was in Fallout 3 and New Vegas where I pretty much did.

And yes, the Perks suck and they're just Buffs as far as I can see.

RangerBoo said:
It feels like they cut quite a bit of things. I remember around a month before release that Obsidian was saying that The Outer Worlds wouldn't shove politics down gamers throats. I can tell that it was going to be more politically charged but they must of rewrote quite a bit before release. Am interested on what the script was originally going to be.
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I dunno, it feels pretty damn politically charged as is. "Corporations should not be put in charge of public works, scientific facts do not change by denying them, and businessmen are terrible at running countries" are pretty hard hitting things. Certainly, it feels like it has much more to say than any other video game I've played in years.

It's why I was so disgusted with so many other video games recently and Mankind Divided specifically.
 
AeonG said:
I got some time to play up to the groundbreaker, and honestly I kindof have mixed feelings about this game. I definitely want to like it, and I've found things that catching my interest, but the one thing I can not get over is how cartoonishly evil the corporations are in this universe. Forcing people to pay the rent of dead people? Forcing a man to wear a mask he cant take off, see out of, or eat normally with, and force him to live his life as a walking advertisement? That's only the tip of the iceberg, and while I'm sure there are some rich sociopaths IRL who'd love to get away with that kind of stuff, you'd literally have to cybernetically modify peoples brains for them to put up with that level of abuse and remain compliant.

What sense would it make to side with these people? It's made immediately clear that your character will not benefit from this, unless edgewater is the worst example. Even my characters available dialogue choices agree with me most of the time, as I don't see many of them often that justify the world around my character. I'm hoping this will change as I get further through the game.
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I am not sure about that. There are many companies today that are cartoon levels of evil. You have Disney not giving their employees at their parks lunch breaks to the point where they are literally eating out of trash cans. You have 2K sending hired thugs to put YouTubers in line and shutting down their channels. You also have companies like Gearbox who's CEO steals the overtime pay of his employees and also beats them in a hotel lobby. Yet many people put up with this abuse and despite people learning of the horror stories of these companies they still buy their products and stick up for them to the point where it is cult like.
 
Yeah, I recall watching watching videos of Amazon employees talking about the horror stories of working there. Many of those videos ended up being flagged and taken down. I wonder by who and why?
 
Corporations suck. I cry not a single tear for them.

Disney were too cheap to have their mascot outfits cleaned or properly cooled, so workers were getting fungal infections from head to toe.
AMC have forgone with proper safety measures for stunts on shows like The Walking Dead, which led to injuries.
Quaker Oats have been dousing their oats for decades in weed killer.
Johnson and Johnson's baby powder causes cervical cancer, and when they figured this out, they continued to sell it to poor minorities in the cynical belief that poorer customers wouldn't have the financial means to do anything about it.
Then you have Apple and their lovely suicide nets.

I think The Outer Worlds satire is spot on, especially if one looks at capitalism throughout history. It's connected to colonialism and slavery, to factory fires that kill people and to a whole lot of human suffering.

Shit, just the corporate jobs I had when younger were dehumanizing. They really tried to make us join the corporate "Family" and work for every penny we got. A clerk isn't just a clerk, but the janitor, pitchman, and all-around laborer. When the corporate heads screwed up and nearly bankrupted the company, the employees paid for it by getting 0-2 cent raises instead of the 0-25 cent raise we had before. Only the company suck-up got a 2 cent raise, while the rest of us got a penny. Whoopty-shit. I don't even want to get into the monkey-suit they had us wear.
 
So I acquired a copy of the game to try out for myself and my younger brother. So far, we have been enjoying ourselves with the gameplay, reactivity and characters though at the moment I am at Rosewater while he has gone off to several other hub-worlds (I myself have been busy completing Disco Elyisum to progress any further).

As mentioned somewhere in the thread, I like that both Edgewater solutions are not clear cut black and white moral choices,
seeing as Reed does repent for his boneheaded actions if properly convinced of his failings by voluntarily packing up to die in the wilderness while Adelaide is a selfish and vindictive person who just happens to have figured out a solution to the town's problems even if it does involve using a probably short-term solution of corpses (plus she did say she may eventually turn to using worker corpses).

Perks have been disappointing in that they do not seem to influence dialogue so far and the flaw system being optional does only seem to simulate role-playing. I'll probably be able to say more once I get to play more of it.
 
RangerBoo said:
Yeah, I recall watching watching videos of Amazon employees talking about the horror stories of working there. Many of those videos ended up being flagged and taken down. I wonder by who and why?
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John Oliver did a whole episode about how Amazon's shipping lines are Dickensian horror shows.
 
Chud said:
Corporations suck. I cry not a single tear for them.

Disney were too cheap to have their mascot outfits cleaned or properly cooled, so workers were getting fungal infections from head to toe.
AMC have forgone with proper safety measures for stunts on shows like The Walking Dead, which led to injuries.
Quaker Oats have been dousing their oats for decades in weed killer.
Johnson and Johnson's baby powder causes cervical cancer, and when they figured this out, they continued to sell it to poor minorities in the cynical belief that poorer customers wouldn't have the financial means to do anything about it.
Then you have Apple and their lovely suicide nets.

I think The Outer Worlds satire is spot on, especially if one looks at capitalism throughout history. It's connected to colonialism and slavery, to factory fires that kill people and to a whole lot of human suffering.

Shit, just the corporate jobs I had when younger were dehumanizing. They really tried to make us join the corporate "Family" and work for every penny we got. A clerk isn't just a clerk, but the janitor, pitchman, and all-around laborer. When the corporate heads screwed up and nearly bankrupted the company, the employees paid for it by getting 0-2 cent raises instead of the 0-25 cent raise we had before. Only the company suck-up got a 2 cent raise, while the rest of us got a penny. Whoopty-shit. I don't even want to get into the monkey-suit they had us wear.
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I can relate. At least two of my jobs used this tactic to hide how bad things were for the lower employees from outside eyes.

So, I'll give Obsidian that. They nailed the corporate sleeze part of this setting, satire or not.
 
From what I have seen from walkthroughs and livestreams, The Outer Worlds is a typical newer Obsidian game where you either love it or you hate it. Sadly, I have not like the newer stuff coming from Obsidian. Tried Pillars, didn't click for me. As such I didn't have much of a interest when Dreadfire came out. Tyranny interested me with its concept but again, like Pillars, it wasn't able to hold my interest.
I can however see why people are singing this games praises in just to piss off Bethesda. It was a smart move on part of Obsidian's marketing to really push this game around the time of Fallout 76's subscription debacle. I imagine that Tim Cain is quite satisfied and smiling like the Joker that his game is doing well with gamers and Metacritic while Bethesda deals with one PR disaster after another. Seems to be the perfect revenge towards Bethesda massacring his boy.
 
The game is a little cramped but I have enjoyed a great deal of being a snarky smuggler with a spaceship. It's one of those itches that hasn't been scratched since Privateer.
 
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