Why The Outer Worlds is not perfect

        The Outer Worlds - the return to glory for Obsidian Entertainment, the creators of the much-loved classic Fallout: New Vegas. Having experienced success with their crowd-funded CRPG, Pillars of Eternity, it seems that Obsidian wanted to take another crack at the first-person RPG once again, to take back their lost crown as king of the genre. Now that the game has been out for about two years, the big question is: have they done it? Did they kick Bethesda to the curb, as all the Reddit posts comparing New Vegas’ dialogue and story to Fallout 4’s seem to think?

So many options!

        It’s a difficult question, but I must say I believe the answer is a strong no. And before everyone raises their pitchforks and torches, ready to lynch the Bethesda apologist, let me explain. The Outer Worlds is a good game - a great game, in fact - but it just fails to scratch the itch that Bethesda’s open world RPGs do. Why? I’ll spell out two major reasons: worlds that feel sterile and dead, and “gamified” mechanics that take away from immersion.

        First: the world. The setting is brilliant, and is brought to life magnificently in the form of jingles, architecture, workers, and more. I mean, who can forget the iconic, “It’s not the best choice, it’s Spacer’s Choice!”? Each of the different settlements seem to have their own personalities, their own quirks that are expressed through unique designs; a city in a cave, the garishly opulent capital, the overgrown rebel’s camp… they all have their own charms. The problems begin when you step foot outside these places. The world outside these cities feels absolutely dead. There are either very few, or very generic events that occur outside the settlement walls, making everything feel boring and lifeless. Compounding this issue, each planet seems to mostly draw on the same architectural style - and by that I mean the exact same building shapes and designs - leading to generic lines of identical buildings that feel indistinguishable from the one you walked past a few minutes ago. Because everything is so concentrated within the cities, you only need to venture out to complete quests by killing enemies and fetching items, making it pointless to actually explore, as there is nothing unique to find outside the towns. There are no surprises - there’s either one or two major settlements on the planet, and they are painfully obvious to the eye. You won’t stumble upon a village or anything like that outside the cities. There are just enemies, enemy camps, and empty stretches of land. Unlike Bethesda’s Fallout, the player experience is not driven by exploration but rather the narrative, which creates a very different experience.

Beautiful, to be sure, but... it's missing something.

        Exacerbating the bland nature of the world is how artificial each interaction feels. While the dialogues are well-written and the NPCs are interesting, the gameplay itself falls flat. Obsidian decided to utilize looter-shooter mechanics for equipment, meaning there are generic guns with incremental stat increases, and unique “science” guns that do special things. While the unique weapons are obviously welcome, the generic guns are incredibly uninteresting. They range from pistol to assault rifle to shotgun to sniper rifle, and that’s pretty much it. The only differences are the tiny differences in stats, which means equipment is constantly shuffled out, leading to loot-fatigue. Compare this to Fallout 4 with its comprehensive system of generic weaponry with legendary traits and customization. I can still remember my precious “Ray Gun,” an absolute beast of a gamma rifle from Fallout 4, while all I recall from Outer Worlds is just a bland assault rifle with lots of big numbers. The loot mechanics ultimately goes against the RPG pillar of making the player feel attached to the things in the world. When the fifteenth generic assault rifle appears, I no longer even care about what gun I’m using as long as it kills people the fastest. Finally, the loot mechanics mean that enemies do not actually drop the weapons they use (unlike in Fallout: New Vegas), making it much more like the crazy slot machine of Borderlands. This breaks the immersion, making it feel like the world is an artificial roulette rather than an actual living world. When I find an enemy in Fallout that absolutely wrecks me with their weapon, I am motivated and curious to take them on, so I can play around with that badass gun. On the other hand, in Outer Worlds, each combat encounter becomes a set-piece action scene rather than a genuine interaction with a character in the world. Artificiality is the enemy of roleplaying.

Open an encyclopedia to assault rifle, and you'll find this (you'll also find it in Outer Worlds)

        Despite all my complaints though, The Outer Worlds is certainly not a bad game. Obsidian, due to their creative vision and financial limitations, did not create another Fallout - they instead made something else, something unique to them. They put a lot of effort into the story, making sure that player reactivity was a core part of the narrative. But in doing so, they sacrificed many things that had made New Vegas a game people love to this day.