The Outer Worlds in Close Critique [Spoilers]
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- This is a full-spoiler critique of the Outer Worlds, a dark corporate satire wrapped up in a bright RPG package. It looks at the contrast between how the world treats its characters and how the world treats its players, as well as asking how different the game is from Fallout 76 anyway.
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When I got to the end of Outer Worlds, I legitimately thought I was at the halfway point.
I did too! I was like "alright, THIS is where the game starts to get juicy!" before bitterly watching the end slides and credits.
It's really more of a proof-of-concept than 'the next NV' - but I understand why they had to market it like it was going to be the next NV. It's their last major game in the mainstream market and Obsidian is a beaten puppy when it comes to their finances. They needed a safe bet and if nothing else Outer Worlds is fucking SAFE.
I had that while playing Final Fantasy XIII. I thought I reached the point where the big villain of the first half is shown to be a pawn and the real antagonist revealed. But no, that was actually it.
exactly like Tyranny, right?
Me too! I read the warning about how you couldn't go back and figured "Ah, there's going to be some big change in the status quo that locks out certain unfinished quests or something." I never imagined it was the end.
it's astounding, in a mostly anti-capitalist game, how many golden third options revolve around putting the 'right' people in charge of a corporate nightmare instead of changing an evidently broken system.
You make it sound like an astute observation of US Politics
It doesn't even read as satire to me. It reads as a straight parody. It is in no way trying to shame any particular group or institution. It pokes fun, but it's not critiquing.
Well said, but isn't that apt in a way as a criticism of the imaginative limits of the game's cynical characters, and therefore also a criticism of some real anti-capitalist rhetoric? After all, if you think about many of the prominent anti-capitalist perspectives today, you have choices that are limited in kind of the same way.
You have the democratic socialist types, who want to rally everyone to vote for the right progressives to take office, and they're going to make everything better. Even many traditional revolutionary types think that state power needs to be seized, the means of production nationalized, and everyone is going to be led by an intellectual vanguard party until we can achieve "full communism". (Here of course I mostly have in mind Marxism-Leninism.) It may be revolutionary (as opposed to most of this game's third options), but it's still fundamentally a matter of giving the right people power.
And of course you also have the rise of something like Third Position-ism again in the more populist corners of recent right-wing movements. I don't think I need to give a lengthy criticism of that, but to sum up, quite a lot of anti-capitalist critique still buys into the the view that the same political power that today creates oppressive conditions can tomorrow create conditions of freedom and equality as soon as the right leaders are in charge. I don't know if The Outer Worlds is cognizant of these limitations, or if (more likely) it too has bought into the ideology of political power and (worse still) slow progress over time, but the ironic alignment of the limited outcomes of player decisions with the imaginary limits of the world's NPCs is worth noting either way I think.
You can buy their point or not, but I think it is more than valid. The game accurately depicts the destructive elements of revolution while still accepting that revolutions will change things, this is already quite generous since revolutions far more often fail than anything.
Ultimately their viewpoint is that when faced with an existential crisis humanity uniting to solve that crisis is better than burning everything down.
Broken compared to what?
Fallout 76 left a lot of people eager to place this game on a pedestal, I think.
Yet this game is as flawed as 76. Both 76 have a strong core piece (the world in 76, the dialogues in TOW) but the rest is lacking. Both games are objectively 6/10. So it sucks that gamers tend to glorify TOW and condemn 76...
@@BoroMirraCz Uh, no. That's not what I meant at all. 76 is still trash and will always be trash, because it was made by a lazy, incompetent studio that's been stagnating for years. The Outer Worlds is crushingly mediocre, but that doesn't suddenly make 76 a misunderstood gem.
@@BoroMirraCz "Objectively"
@@BoroMirraCz What world? It has minimal(if any) connection to the World that is it's setting, not to mention blatantly throwing out years of world building for some cheap thrills.
Your right I played through it and I was like ... Eh it was great but ... That's it I guess
"A completionist mindset is damaging to a good rpg" 22:53
I've just realized I've always known that in the back of my head but have never actually heard it vocalized until now. Huh
Edit: I'm feeling the beard Noah 👌
It's why I loved pathologic 2. I just didn't have the time to do everything. More rpgs should have time moving on mercilessly.
Choosing not to do a quest is a choice, and these people will suffer. That's role-playing.
Or tldr, more role play less roll play
Its kinda sad that it even needs to be said
I disagree as well. There's nothing wrong with willing to experience as much of the game as possible. It completely bullshit when a game locks you out of content because of some random decision without any prior warning. Would people be happy that Witcher 3 locked them out of Blood and Wine because the player didn't choose to... I don't know... trim Gerald's beard?
Well, I guess Gothic isn't a good RPG then.
@@BoroMirraCz if you're so willing to experience it, then what's so wrong with a second play through?
My favorite moment with the game was a loading screen, no joke. Throughout all of the communities in the game, you see houses that you can't enter with big windows you can't see into. It all made the settlements feel fake and dull, as though these were just cardboard boxes painted with the visage of a home. The loading screen was an advertisement for Spacer's Choice(TM) decorative windows. The settlements actually are made up of little box houses made to look like real houses from the outside, and that's just such a great bit of worldbuilding that incorporates the limits of the game engine.
@@tightwad06 I don't know why I didn't get the notification for this comment, maybe it was divine intervention. Either way, I agree completely. I'm not a sodomite yet, I'm still a virgin sweet and pure in the eyes of the lord, but I've heard that prostate orgasm is pretty intense so I'm looking forward to trying that.
Provo what a snot to delete your own comment
@@tightwad06 the fuck is wrong with you?
@@tightwad06 No I would not.
I would just be traumatized by the way I must have found out about this.
@@Skullkan6 I'd like to say it would be easy to not fall for such a trick but it unironically threw me off when I revisited this comment chain. Guy's got enough craft to get me feeling for a brief moment like I'm just gross in lieu of having good arguments. Sure, some of that's just me not trusting my past self, but the guy's got craft.
"My favourite game of all time is still probably Fallout: New Vegas."
Amen.
It was hilarious having hardcore Obsidian fans proclaiming this was gonna be NV in space.
Oh hohoho how wrong they were.
Never really liked any of the fallout games tbh.
@@colin-campbell Can you blame them? Bethesda's been moving in a non-RPG direction for years, leaving many Fallout fans neglected and starving for a Fallout-esque RPG to sink their teeth into. Fallout 76 only exacerbated that feeling when Bethesda dropped the pretenses and revealed that their only interest is profit.
Peter Hanson
It’s as if companies like to make profits.
Le underrated gem
"Yes! I've been looking forward to Noah playing Outer Wi-" Oh.
To be honest, I thought that Noah would have done a double review of the two, considering the up-front similarities. Close release dates, same "frontiersman in space" vibe, even close to the same name.
@@a.monach7602 The name similarity is incredibly unfortunate. It's like they got into a staring contest and nobody blinked.
Man I can't even imagine what Outer Wilds would do to Noah. That would be such a beautiful collision of considerate story-telling and creativity.
"I waited all game long to be surprised by The Outer Worlds, and when the credits rolled, I was still waiting." Yeah, that's the best explanation for how I felt after finishing it too.
The Outer World suffers from the same symptom The Surge,Risen 2/3,Torment: Tides of Numenera or other similar titles have,and that being that its a homage to a superior title which means its has very little to no ambition of its own.
Trying something new and failing can lead to some very amazing results (Vampire Bloodlines,Alpha Protocol,Cryostatis..) but just following in the footsteps of others will always turn out just ok.
I think Fallout fans in particular demand more of the same and treat any change like it's "ruining Fallout (again)" so it's understandable why they're scared to try anything innovative. Change is easy to critique, but stagnation will kill you.
@creapsmantic That sounds more like a DLC than a new game.
I skipped the game solely because its a sjw leftist cuckery propaganda machine made by mutant wahmen in crewcut.
@@nessesaryschoolthing If by "innovative" you mean dull and uninspired, it's not like Fallout 4 offers anything new, actually it's simplified in most areas comparing with New Vegas or even F3 and F76 is a disaster.
Mirror Blade "any critique of the things I like is propaganda"
One of my favorite bits in the Outer Worlds was talking to Martin Callahan when wearing the mascot hat. You get a special dialogue option and he responds with "They got you too?"
As always Noah this was fantastic, very excited to see more!
The comments about conversation for character and not just utility makes me very excited to see what he writes on the topic of disco Elysium, it seems like he's really going to appreciate it
I hope Noah plays Disco Elysium; it's without a doubt, the best game to come out in the last decade and worth every penny and more.
I agree wholeheartedly with the "A, B or C" criticism, and it was something I immediately noticed on my first playthrough too. It was a very "Bioware-ish" design choice, meant to give the illusion of moral complexity without actually forcing you to make any compromises. It's the sort of thing that I've heard Obsidian writers themselves rail against in the past: if you're given a choice that is obviously superior to all the others, then you haven't really been given a choice at all. Unless you really, truly believe that Side A or Side B is morally superior, there is no reason not to pick the mechanically and ethically superior Compromise C and move on. It's made especially frustrating by Outer Worlds' cynicism making virtually every uncompromised position unlikeable. "Do you want to revert a whole town to wage slavery or abandon them in a forgotten town on a hostile planet?" Gee, I don't know, they both seem SO compelling!
Obsidian's best stories always gave you good reasons to side with any given faction. You could analyze their strengths, and their weaknesses, and come to a conclusion that YOU find ethically superior. Outer Worlds doesn't really bother to ever ask you how you feel, except in sneeringly sarcastic ways, as if the right answer is so obvious it's a little insulted it has to ask you at all.
calling this problem bioware-ish kinda makes me angry. there is a ton of moral complexity in mass effect and dragon age. and in kotor it's lack is an essential part of the universe. this is some revisionist history shit because the last few bioware games were garbage.
I'd argue that the issues with this games choices run deeper than the lack of justifiable motivations/effects-on-the-wider-world given to each faction. I see most of the faults with this game coming down to the bad habits Obsidian has developed over the previous two decades because their fanbase has encouraged those habits.
Obsidian's writing has always veered towards the overly cynical, and the mid-00's was the perfect breeding ground for that type of worldview to be championed as good writing in videogames. They were an alternative to the "naivete" of Bioware/Bethesda-style RPG's, and genuinely felt subversive during a time when CRPG's were in danger of disappearing completely. In the present day, with governments gaining more intrusive control into the lives of its citizens and even the planet itself in danger of dying because of 1% greed, the most oppressive of dystopian fiction feel like idealistic escapism, and its audience are unwilling to suffer through what they can see and experience on a daily basis. Tyranny, for example, was a project that Obsidian had wanted to create for years, and by the time they finally completed it, Trump came into office and suddenly the games tagline of "Sometimes, evil wins," hit far too close to home than most players were ready to deal with.
The writers at Obsidian are still, even past their prime, better than the majority of video game writing on the market, and especially the AAA mainstream portion of that market. As flawed as their satire of capitalism is, the comedic elements still land well, and that's more than Bethesda have managed with their brand of Fallout-themed comedy. However, the cynicism that made Obsidian stand out is now dragging them down creatively, and rectifying that would require a re-evaluation of their values as people, and what their works communicate beyond being a playground for player-choice. I'd like to believe Obsidian's writers are capable of doing this, but the general positive response to Outer Worlds will block out any notion they're on the wrong track, especially if Obsidian continues being used by hardcore RPG enthusiasts to insult other RPG development studios (which I've been guilty of, even in this very paragraph.)
@@Molimo95 Red ending, blue ending, green ending.
@@Molimo95 Calling it "revisionist history" is a bridge too far. Bioware has been guilty of everything OP implied since ME3 came out. Revisionist history would be something like ignoring the past 7 years of games to focus on a better era when Bioware likely had a different set of developers than today.
I understand why you don't like people focusing on the more negative elements of Bioware when there's positive stuff as well, but this is what happens when a company obliterates all the respect and good will they've earned.
Hmmm seems like in the past ten years video games have become less of a create your own story adventure and more of a " I made video games to change peoples lives.....by cramming my personal, political opinion and world views down your throat till you see things my way or lose consciousness from lack of oxygen so I can defile your misogynist,racist white corpse." agenda.
Feeling smugly validated because I've been going off on how awkwardly this game's mechanics and character arcs fit its short runtime and lack of downtime between big dumb radscorpion fights since the day I beat it. Like before you go to Tartarus there's this meeting with the whole crew of the ship and they're all like 'we'll follow you to the gates of hell captain!' and it just feels like a group of people you've met a week ago nonsensically deciding to put their lives on the line because none of these relationships get any time to breathe.
Yes, you've really done fuck all with those characters by the end of the game. You... went to planet #2 together, and fought the same three generic enemy types as on planet #1.
You've not role played the game and it's a role playing game. You've just rushed through the story quests on easy difficulty; that isn't completion lol.
Start a game on standard or higher difficulty, spend time building a character and ROLE PLAY IT PROPERLY and then you will not be able to just rush the game in 2 hours; you will need to build your character and max them out - for your final assault on Tartarus.
What a waste, this is my favourite game I think it's better than Fallout NV which was my previous favourite game that I still play regularly. The reason it's "better" isn't just because it's newer though, FalloutNV the writing wasn't as good and the characters aren't as good, and the voice acting sucks, and it has bugs, and the graphics and shooting are terrible - these things are ALL improved vastly in OW as well as having top tier graphics.
Seriously I would recommend you play the game again and this time play it on a difficulty setting that reflects your experience. Sticking it on casual and speedrunning it, you may as well just buy a COD game lol. Are you a fan of role playing games generally?
I play very little else, and let me tell you that when you play Outer Worlds the way it was intended you WILL find that it is far far better than you've given it credit for. I'm now on my second playthrough on harder difficulty with a vastly different character and already it's a completely different game. As a female character who is physically weak but intelligent and sneaky (opposite of my usual male "me" character) the dialog is totally different, the missions lead to different things and involve different resulting scenarios.
First time I was a brute character with low tech skills but maxed out weapons, and I ended up almost perfectly saving everybody I could and ending on all the morally good choices (I did screw up a few times though and didn't save-scum to fix the fuckup). This time with the sneaky chick character, I can't do that - it forces me to play in a different way TO ROLE PLAY a different way and THAT is where this game excels. If I just barrel into any gunfighting my companions and I will just die, without fail because my health is so low. But to make up for it I can now lie, persuade, intimidate, steal, or sneak around and that makes the game totally anew. Try again bro you are missing out!
By the end of the first game I knew the companion characters really really well, but two of them ended up wanting to leave my crew because of decisions I made they didn't agree with and i'd caused two others to dislike each other. This time around I will try to piss them all off to see all that content I never saw with them arguing amongst themselves, or remarking during missions how they think my decision sucks and they are gonna fuck off if I do it again :D Excellent game 9/10 I just wish it had more DLC's or maybe had new game plus.
Can't wait for OW2 or the next Obsidian game.
‘Better than Fallout: New Vegas’? I respectfully disagree. I would recommend watching ‘NeverKnowsBest’ critique this game. That should challenge your beliefs on the nature of it as a enjoyable product. It’s shallow and re-treads old ground. It’s non-sensical and only pushes one, although it does so poorly. But as I say, I feel the previously mentioned video can do this argument more justice than me.
*one narrative
@@angusd7285 Dude I have owned this game for over ten years there is not a thing the guy can teach me about FNV.
I have played more of it myself than either of you.
Stop sucking the dried out teats of review fucking rate the games yourself, then you won't have your mind so easily changed on it.
FNV is actually a fairly terrible game engine so that immediately hamstrings it during the comparison. DESPITE the terrible engine, it still manages greatness whereas OW has a great engine already so the gameplay is solid BEFORE you start enjoying the story and RPG elements.
Plus FNV is too predictable when it ends, at least in OW you can actually BE a proper bad character because FO never allows for this, it just fakes it really well.
There is literally ZERO tragedy to FNV universe continually cannibalising itself and dying, it may as well be episodic now at least OW had emotionally touching moments - FNV was comedy not tragedy because of all the bugs! OW has barely any bugs.
But sure I get it man you don't like newer games as much, that's up to you just let's not make out that FNV was absolutely perfect it was definitely not. It still crashes regularly lol whereas I have crashed OW twice in two months, both whilst getting the overclock setups going. OW is definitely the better game, though I had more fun with FNV in the decade I actively played it the most it's not really fair to compare OW until i've had that ten years too,
I love how long your Patreon list takes at the end, now. You deserve it, my dude. Best gaming deep dives on UA-cam imo, and your travelogues have moved me to tears more than once. I've driven the Fallout New Vegas map in various chunks a few times this year on trips up or back the Long 15 from the Boneyard running freight.
I did one relatively completionist playthrough as a dashing, charismatic gunslinger who stacked critical hit after critical hit, saved everyone but at the end took all the power for himself, and it was fun and pretty satisfying. Then I started another character who specialized in melee weapons and science and I one shotted pretty much everything in the game with the science hammer, and that was fun for awhile, but the story was so similar even when I went out of my way to make different choices, I barely got halfway through monarch. I waited awhile and made a Zapp Brannigan-esque character. He was incredibly dumb, greedy, and mercenary, but charismatic despite all that with very strong companions. But the board quests were so fucking stupid I lost all interest very quickly.
I often gauge how much I like RPG’s by how many characters I have, I am obsessed with builds. In Bloodborne I have around eight, in New Vegas I’ve made 12, but I could barely stomach one and two halves in the Outer Worlds.
The Outer Worlds is probably one of the best examples of recuperation I’ve ever seen. They took the language of anti-capitalism to lifestyle-market this product to an audience that might like to see itself as counter-culture.
You're right, and now I'm sad.
Fuck.
Yeah it’s basically written to sell to Chapo Trap House fans lol
this is true but banal, applies to all "anti capitalist" art as commodity
@@bleepbloop2318 Chapo spent months getting out to vote for Bernie, I don’t know what other US leftism you have
In fairness to Obsidian, I don't get the impression it was created and produced for that express purpose. Obsidian is still a fairly mid-sized studio, but under the same pressure for ROI as any other. I don't doubt they were trying to reach a wider audience, but it's the anti-capitalist sentiment and ideology that's stale. People are sick of anti-this and anti-that. That's why ideologues and propagandists have reframed their anti-isms as pro-isms to try and make them sound more appealing to the supposed "masses."
If Obsidian wanted to reach a wider audience with The Outer Worlds, the premise might have been better a satire of corporate rule with which most anyone would be able to relate, but that would have been a tall order, indeed.
"Science fiction is a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when, in reality, you are attacking the recent past and the present." ~ Ray Bradbury The fact that corporations rule our world is, in fact, a solid basis for great satire, but Outer Worlds might have fared better if it hadn't been an exploration of a society that had internalized corporate culture and propaganda to such an extent that it comes across as merely stupid. It would have been a very different game, but would likely have resonated with far more people.
One of the most disappointing games I've played recently. I was so hyped after the first zone, it felt like there was infinite potential..
Then everything began to fall apart. New guns were just "rifle mark 2", "pistol mark 2".
It seemed like there would be depth after that first zone, but it seems like nothing in the game really digs deep. Story is shallow, rpg mechanics are shallow, perks are shallow, guns are shallow, ending...
Really bummed me out; I won't charge into an obsidian game like I would have before this one
go play pillars of eternity 2 if you haven't already
At first i was hyped then i asked myself is this really all there is to this?
Yes, I was immensely disappointed and haven't touched it since a few days after it released.
I've been focusing my time instead on the Stalker series and lately, mainly with the Anomaly mod. Those games are just incredible.
Ok
That whole weapons scheme reminds me of other loot-heavy games. I remember being excited for Borderlands, thinking it was going to be a new dystopian RPG with more of a wild, Mad Max sort of tone but as soon as I saw that the weapons’ names were colored based on value (like you’d see in an MMORPG like WoW) my interest dropped to the floor and I just stopped.
I am really looking forward to your close critique of Disco Elysium if and when you get to the game.
+1
@@cidfacetious3722 lol ok
@@cidfacetious3722 With one? Personally I would go with Lenin.
@@uyaratful I mean, he's still in the Mausoleum, go for it.
Disco Elysium coming out around the same time as Outer Worlds really put the quality discrepancy on full display. I was looking forward to OW, now it's barely a mediocre footnote of 2019 since it got outclassed so effortlessly. Plus, DE doesn't make you put up with mediocre combat.
To be fair though, in terms of writing/dialogue, DE also outclassed all other games ever released.
My best play-through of New Vegas, and the reason I count it among my favourite games, was the none where I set myself a "no looting" rule, where I would only pick up things I naturally came across during the story, because in real life I don't rummage through every bin in every room I enter, and even in the apocalypse I wouldn't waste my time going around looking for loot.
You absolutely positively must play Pathologic 2. It'll heal your soul.
It does a lot of what you consider to be the best bits of this game, and extends into directions you wanted Outer Worlds to go. Very specifically, it submits you to the world in the same way it submits its characters to it. It really hurts at times. But you know, it's the good kind of hurt.
Plus, it's pretty darn topical at the moment.
Just want to reiterate that this is perhaps the only game I know that explores the art of suffering.
@@MarZandvliet You might've heard of it by now, since it's been growing in popularity, but in case you haven't--I think you might also "enjoy" Rain World, based on everything I know of Pathologic. The experience of trying to find meaning in Rain World, both like, as someone playing a videogame, but also in a much grander sense, a "what can the point be to living in such a cruel world?" since it throws you out to the wolves with no express objectives, barely any tutorialization, barely any idea of how to do anything... By no means similar in how they play, but, I think they might be in their absolutely unflinching design choices and emotional/affective difficulty. It's an open world survival platformer of sorts, with incredible, ruthless AI creatures and the most engrossing takes on a collapsed sci-fi world I've ever seen, with some really stunning environments. That's the simplest way to explain it. Honestly, I'd recommend looking up a trailer or Matthewmatosis's review, he'll probably sell it better than I can. But uhh, if you want to read what I wrote, (I don't really expect you too, it's pretty long) here's a more in-depth, but still spoilerless explanation.
Rain World follows you, a small slippery rodent creature (a slug cat) that has recently been separated from its family. You have to survive in a harsh, alien ecosystem that sprang forth from the corpse of some now ancient, sci-fi world, that is constantly being simulated even when off-screen. Every creature has goals and wants and needs, they're always hunting, scrapping with each other over food, leading to some truly incredible and dynamic encounters. All the animation is code-based/physics based, so you and all the other creatures have a very physical, dynamic presence in the world, and there isn't really any separation between AI and animation. The way you and creatures dynamically scramble up things, grab onto the environment, switch methods of locomotion, it's all extremely dynamic and unpredictable. If, reading that, you're imagining TABS, then--well, yes, occasionally, it can lead to hilarious results, but mostly, it actually enhances your immersion in the world. Picture this:
You're being pursued by a big lizard, scrambling over ruined, uneven terrain, when a huge mechanised vulture swoops in from above. You plant a spear in its guts and it tumbles down to the earth, landing on your pursuer, then the vulture comes to its senses, and now they're both embroiled in a fight.
Controlling your guy feels, in some ways, kind of similar to the characters of Team Ico games. That feeling of being a small character that is affected onto by the world, where the physics overrides a total sense of agency yet, ironically kind of immerses you more deeply in that world, as you barely cling to the back of a colossus, or your sense of weight and momentum in The Last Guardian... It is a platformer game, but, definitely not a very traditional one. There's a larger emphasis on the environment, and more realistic locomotion. Though, if you get really good at the movement, there is a ton of unexplained movement tech that can have you dancing and zipping around. It'll just take you a few hundred hours, some tutorials, and multiple playthroughs to get there!
You weren't fully grown, and as such, disconcertingly strange systems and controls put you in step with a little guy who has no idea how to do much other than clumsy, basic locomotion, and... eating some bugs. Those are the only things the game teaches you, and then you're thrown out into the storm. Literally. In this world, you have to scavenge for food, try and explore and make progress, but every 10-15 minutes, a terrifying, crushing rainstorm will start up, and if you aren't inside a shelter, the pressure will kill you, or flood enclosed rooms, drowning you. You are given no express goals. You have no idea what your purpose is, now, all alone in the world, and you as the player have to seek it out.
It's kind of harrowing at times, you're not the bottom of the food chain, but you aren't far off, especially at the beginning of your playthrough when you don't know what you're doing but--not having that pretense of gold at the end of the rainbow, the game actively testing your reserves of hope, your ability to deal with exhaustion and get back up again, leads to some of the most unbelievably stunning payoffs I've seen in a game. Same ballpark as Outer Wilds for me, personally. There were moments towards the end that felt almost spiritual, lol. But it's not just in big moments either, I mean, even in the environment, there are all these fantastic moments of discovery! You don't get told what items or creatures do (with one or two exceptions), you just have to watch carefully, respect the danger present, and experiment.
One last thing: the world and your journey through it is extremely non-linear. It's divided into a bunch of individually very large regions with distinct theming, and each region has several gates that lead to other regions. Each gate requires its own level of clearance, and you can level up your clearance by successfully hibernating enough times in a row. The game is inspired by ideas from hinduism and reincarnation, and so this "clearance" is really more like your _karma._
If you die, the clearance goes down one, if you successfully live through a cycle, it goes up one. It's very punishing. What this means, in practice, is you can find yourself in a deep rut, in a horrible place, where progress seems impossible, because you don't have high enough karma to leave the way you came in, and you don't even know where you'd find another way out. It's exploration with real stakes and danger. There are places in this game, MASSIVE places, that I honestly don't think you should ever visit on a first playthrough if you can avoid them. You'll never get stuck on a hard encounter or boss fight, cause the game doesn't have those, but certain regions can be so mechanically mystifying and hostile to you, that you'll have all your clearance reset to zero constantly, and this horrible creeping despair washes over you--and it turns places that, in other games, would only be horrifying in form, into functional nightmares. I promise though, if you spend enough time observing them, carefully, tentatively exploring around your shelter instead of going boldly where no one has gone before, you will understand the rhythms of that region bit by bit, and eventually, claw your way out.
In that way, Rain World was for me what I think the original dark souls was for a lot of people... This genuine journey and arc that dragged me through the pits of despair, showed me an unbelievably beautifully realised world (seriously, the art, music, animation, world design, all come together to create such a believable and interesting take on a sci-fi world, it'll knock your socks off)--that traffics less in mechanical, button-input difficulty, and more in demanding an unconscionable amount of will-power and hope to finish it, without promising anything for you at the end. I've played I think maybe half of Bloodborne, I didn't quite have it in me, but, something about this I think, was far more unfriendly, and yet, I was just so intoxicated by this world that I had to keep going.
You feel so small and rudderless, there are so many creatively interesting choices, there's nothing quite like it.. If anything, pick it up for the AI, it's incredible. I can't say do it for the sights, because quite a few people never make it out of the first region, and a lot more people end up taking at least two playthroughs to beat the game, because they quit the first one, and I honestly couldn't blame them.
but yeah. Sorry for long this was. Hope it's up your alley, that whole... feeling small and alone, crushed under the weight of an uncaring world, the game never holding your hand or giving you a reason to continue, but... pushing through anyway, and not necessarily coming out triumphant, but--never folding. Never giving in, finding a way to speak that world's weird language. I think in those ways, it might be similar.
I had a similar experience with The Outer Worlds, except I was even less enamoured with the story than Noah. It's... fine. It's a satire. It's just not very clever for the most part. The corporations are so cartoonishly evil and incompetent, you wonder why the leaders haven't died from cramming crayons into their mouths the moment they woke up. It also doesn't help that most of the jokes and set ups are just variations on "look how abused these employees are, look how evil the corporate overlords are". Most of the jokes are predictable - you see the punchline coming, because the puchline will ALWAYS be - "this corporate policy is super evil, guys, super evil!" Think about a possible outcome to the joke, then take the darkest (most obvious one) and there you have it.
I'll admit it was funny for the first 10 hours. It got a little thin after that.
But most of all - it was far too easy on any difficulty other than supernova. Far too easy - I barely had to try on normal, and I wasn't challenged at all on hard. The options for combat became boring because of that - you didn't have to plan or adjust your playstyle for different enemies, you could easily bulldoze any opposition without thinking about it, using whatever playstyle you wanted.
And the world was just too small, and didn't feel fleshed out enough. I know for story purposes the last main world, Byzantium, was a place without many stores open or much to do, but it also felt like the developers had run out of time and/or money. The best, most interesting parts of the Outer Worlds are in the beginning.... and it just gradually gets blander and blander and smaller and smaller as time goes on.
It's alright. But sometime tells me that if there wasn't a tidalwave of (mostly justified) hate against Bethesda's handling of Fallout, and an ocean of hope and desire for "the underdogs" to "show up" the "bad guy"... this game would have been more harshly judged by the press. I suspect that a lot of the reviews, which were almost insultingly overladen with lavish praise, were in part influenced by this "let's punish bethesda and champion the plucky underdog!" mentality.
Idk man every day it seems to me like life gets more and more satirical and cartoonish.
I agree with this, especially with the narrative critique. The problem isn't the material that it was engaging with, but rather the fact that it was very monotonous, to the point that I actually hated even talking to NPCs halfway through the game. Each person's quests, backstory and personal conflict started melding together and becoming a chore to care about, i.e. they were a waste of my time. I *really* enjoyed Edgewater, but partway through the Groundbreaker, nothing much surprised me further.
If Fallout 76 never existed, I doubt Outer Worlds would be praised any more than Fallout 4 was.
Honestly, I never found the corps *cartoonishly* evil cus that's just exactly what they'll do if they're allowed to. What I found annoying is that it was like, The Legion level of evil, but unlike the Legion you weren't *really* allowed to pull out your weird science weapons and microwave all their heads off. It's like if the legion were played for comedy. The only joke- "man these guys suck" gets old real quick, and you probably just want the catharsis of getting to put them them down without the game wagging its finger at you for it. (since every quest requires you compromise with them for the "Good" ending)
I found myself in a similar circumstance when The Outer Worlds was released; it ticked all the boxes for features I value most in role playing games. Point based character progression, skill checks, skill based combat, dialogue options with consequences, first person perspective, lots of items... but it's not enough for a game to just have those things. To entertain fans of New Vegas as they wanted to, they had to make all these check boxes feel novel and support of each other, but Obsidian didn't achieve that.
I only played the game one time through as well because, like you, I didn't feel like there was any mechanic I had not already seen the game's full potential for. I knew how the game worked. The narratives had little intrigue and rather just a lot of predictable unknowns.
At first I loved the outer worlds despite some of its flaws. Enemy characters and combat were boring. The worlds were small. Some of my choices didn’t feel that weighty. A lot of quests only had one ending or only one ending you would ever actually choose because the other choices would get rid of a follower or something. But I couldn’t care the game was fallout NV lite and I was still having a blast.
Then I got to the ending and everything fell apart. The writing felt sloppy when you find the concentration camp of robots under the big city and go tell the lady who gave you the quest you know how she will react but the game acts like it is some big surprise. This was fine though but the biggest disappointments were in the main quest. Early in the game was one of my favorite parts when you go into the place where the robots killed everyone right outside the starting town, it’s great because you can’t know who made the bots go berserk. The terminals say that this one kinda screwy guy was messing with them but if you go and talk to him he says the robots were going to kill everyone and he was just trying to help. You really don’t know if this guy killed all these people because of his insanity or it really was the boards new program like he says. But during the main quest near the end NOPE it was all set up by the board. Any possible interpretation I may have had wasnt relevant because the game was telling me how to feel. Then the main quest for the board said hey kill the starting town just murder all of them. And there is no way around it. It doesn’t matter who you put in charge or how many quests you did to build up the town nope they just need to die. The entire first act of the game was rendered useless.
At this point I realized something all the Dialoge choices I had made weren’t me picking it was someone else making the choices for me. In almost every speech there was only one right answer. The game had been railroading me the entire time. Sure you could role play an evil idiot and do a different run but other than that there was no way any character would make a different choice.
This wasn’t fallout new Vegas lite it was fallout 3 lite.
brother, the followers were so bad that i did my best to do quests in a way that gets rid of them.
Mackie Messer all their quests felt like I either had to go to this boring ending with no impact on the world or just be a dick/idiot and get rid of them.
Exactly. I legit agreed to the black lady's demand and even told the mechanical girl who protested to "trust me" because im thinking theres gonna a way to get out of this scenario low and behold the terminal only has override to kill the city in fact if i remember correctly there was a third option that did nothing. I had to reload my save and kill the board wifey. It was whacksauce
shit id rather play fallout 3
Yeah. My pistols/gunslinger character wiped out all of the Iconoclasts with little2no consequence. I also found the Flaws system to just be outright terrible: wow, nerf myself for a single perk point in yet another game were half the perks are useless, or they come across all Farcry 3-esque where you start wondering why you're paying points for something like shooting from a zipline.
Replacing "New Vegas" is a impossibility.
...it can get a sequel, but nothing will beat the fresh ideas from Olde Obsidian.
Truth be told with games like Disco Elysium coming out now I don’t feel that itch anymore. Either TTRPGs or the upcoming RPGs fill that desire - least for me.
You can't replace FNV unless Bethesda is involved. Half of the success of FNV was Bethesda. Outer Worlds made it apparent. All those bland and unfinished systems of OW are exactly those systems that FNV inherited from Fallout 3. Obsidian is good at writing but that's all. They need Bethesda to make a complete, engaging game.
Mirra The level of delusion that you put into the comment section truly baffles me. Bethesda is the studio that releases unfinished products, knowing that their fans will fix the issues for them. Bethesda is the studio that re-uses the stalest of tropes and narrative devices due to a genuine lack of imagination. Bethesda is the same studio that kick-started microtransactions and how they have progressed today. Bethesda is the same studio that will never release a great RPG due to the corporate bullshit they decided to adopt over making a piece of art.
Frankly, a lot of people give them more credit than they deserve. Let this rotten horse die lololol
@Gzus Kreist There was a shitton of talent behind the NV team. Josh Sawyer was the lead design director and unfortunately he did not come back for this one. He's still in the team, of course, but he took a back seat. I think Tim Cain and Len Boyarski are kind of stuck in the past in terms of game design; this should have been handed over to Sawyer.
@Gzus Kreist THIS! People have to stop treating studios like like they're unchanging static things it takes so many people to make a game just like how George Lucas only made the original trilogy with so many people helping an then made the prequels mostly by him self
I hate you sometimes, because sometimes you make me feel like I have no way with words when I spend months trying to tell my friends why I didn't enjoy this game that much
Then you come along and put it into a 45 minute video which has me going "YES, EXACTLY!" at every point, I s2g
Read more books and practice writing your thoughts, you'll improve
I still disagree with him on postal 2, but he put into words my feelings on Jericho, even as a teenager. I loved aspects of the concept but god was it painful to play.
Imagine House being turned into a cartoonist Caricature of Scrooge who is just so meaninglessly evil and bad at being so and you get the Halcyon board of third world politicians.
Quick comment on the topic of the "evolution" of modern advertisements:
I live in Germany and recently I came across the most blunt, distilled and, in a sense, most honest ad I've ever seen - to paraphrase (German and all), it basically went: "We all ask ourselves the same question - what are the things you need to own, if you want to live a fulfilled life? Well, you need stylish clothes, a new car, you need to travel in luxury and of course you also need accessories to express and shape your character. Only once you have bought all of these things will you really be capable of living that life you dream of."
Anyway, this video had me thinking about that advert, its directness and its sickening, borderline dystopian outlook really shocked me back then - I always assumed those were the aspects of advertising that ad execs wanted to stay implicit, rather than explicit.
The fact there was 3 (I think) planets you couldn't even go to was a cruel joke
Games like this, as well as the recent death(?) of System Shock 3 have got me thinking. I'd MUCH rather play a deep, meaningful new game in an _older_ engine, than something shallow in the newest Unreal/Cryengine.
I wonder if that would make a difference, though.
Your point at 18:55 also sums up the decline of the Far Cry series.
@JohnnyTheWolf Fantastic. It was my GOTY. I don't think it sold well enough, and it took a very long time to make. I'd still really like see what a talented team is capable of with an older engine that wouldn't require so much time and money spent on assets and licensing. Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is a good example of this in the FPS world. Imagine the Deus Ex version of that!
@JohnnyTheWolf I'd really try to give it a go if you can find it for cheap (or free). Your latter hang up might work itself out...
Wait what happened to System Shock 3
@@themediumcheese like tears in rain
@@HunterTinsleybruh are you serious when did this happen
I tried to play through the Outer Worlds; it felt like a simplified version of new vegas, but I stuck with it until I beat parvati's first companion quest. In edgewater, Parvati mentions that she doesn't drink because she doesn't like what it does to people. I also don't drink, so I identified with parvati in that. Then her companion quest happens and the first thing she does when faced with an emotional problem is go out and drink, and (with your help) it works out very well for her and gets her to sort her issues out. I don't know if it's a problem with me or the game, but seeing that was the thing that killed my desire to continue playing.
Maybe it was just me, but did it feel like her drinking was a meant to signal her "maturing" out of her "child like innocence" which is, frankly a very unhealthy attitude to alchohol?
It could've worked in the sense that alcohol has the tendency to reveal people's true attitude or feelings, but the way everything just wraps up neatly after a few glasses of wine is just nonsense.
I didn't bother playing through a second time to see what happened if you talked her out of drinking though.
Its you.
@@null643 Nobody cares, and you're on the wrong channel, if you're that closed minded. Noah marked her inclusion in the story as positive.
But it’s not positive. Mental ilness should not be celebrated.
You managed to put the feeling into words. The feeling of getting everything you wanted in a game and then leaving bored
As someone who does absolutely love the Outer Worlds, the points of this video are absolutely fair enough. Hopefully they address at least some of these points in the next one
When playing the game i was always put off by how detached the main quest was from all the side quests on the planets. Yes it technically was thematically coherent and the town led to the objectives, but those side quests felt far more like the meat of the game to me. When the crazy scientist told me to do the thing I simply did it with no real motivation other than "I guess that's what I'm supposed to do". And while I can logically see how saving the crew will potentially change the landscape of the colony, the actions I was engaging in never felt like that was true. This feeling even culminated in the finale where the game glitched out on me with the final door where the CEO was located, preventing me from entering without the game crashing. I didn't bother trying to fix it outside of a simple reinstall as my dad was also playing it, and when he finished it I sat down and watched him and when the credits rolled I was just like "yeah that's about everything I would have done." Then I uninstalled the game and essentially forgot about it until now. I would say it was sad, but ultimately it just felt hollow.
If you bring Felix into the final mission, he'll quit the party if you choose to blackmail the chairman. There's actually a lot of hidden variety to be found in the companion dialogue, depending on who you bring along for different quests. Vicar max will argue about philsophism with graham, for instance. It's great.
😮 love your content! I can't believe you watch Noah Caldwell-Gervais. Now I know you truly are a man of culture 👍
I found it so hard to pay attention to what characters were saying once I noticed that they all have the same backlit ear. It's even weirder if you approach them from behind and talk to them.
Finally! For hours after I finished the game I just couldn't put my finger on why I felt so hallow after. Like I enjoyed the time I had but was waiting for this big turn that never came. The line about the story not affecting the player in turn is what made the bulb over my head light up. You where able to in detail describe a vauge feeling I couldn't seem to mentally articulate.
Your criticisms are spot-on! I was roleplaying on Survival Difficulty as a melee Riddick-esque loner character, but the game was refusing to offer me choices that I wanted to pick based on my own role. It was clear I was being a set of Red, Blue or Correct Answer to every problem that I felt there was little choice in being who I wanted to be. Add to the criticisms of flat gameplay and barren-yet-busy world, I felt that nothing kept me in this world, despite some of the enjoyable moments. I forced myself to carry on playing repeatedly, hopng it would get better, but I couldn't take it by the end of Monarch and I dropped it.
"If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else's." is a reference to an episode of the original Star Trek series where Spock says it to a love interest that he is leaving behind.
I would also like to say that your videos are awesome, Noah!
Noah you absolutely nailed my thoughts on the game! My roommate couldn't believe that I uninstalled the game after getting about halfway through and I just couldn't really put my finger on why exactly but the game just didn't feel right. Not that it was bad! It is fun and it does feel like New Vegas in some aspects (even like Kotor in it's smaller maps but different planets sorta deal). I too decided after uninstalling Outer Worlds to do another playthrough of New Vegas and I was enthralled again! I even found shit that I had never found before even after having so many hours put into that game!
A personal gripe I have with Outer Worlds gameplay is the decision to only have 3 ammo types and only 4 weapon slots. The fact that New Vegas had so many different ammo types and all of the number keys for quick switching just gave me so much more variety in my weapon choices! It always sucks in Outer Worlds using a Sniper Rifle that is then draining ammo from a Heavy Machine Gun. Especially when playing Hardcore Mode on New Vegas where ammo would have weight and you'd really need to make decisions on what weapons to have and such. I just never got that kind of feeling from Outer Worlds.
Overall, not a bad game, but it's no New Vegas.
fuck i wish obsidian would pass this video around to its writers
Having just had a lengthy conversation with "Moon Man" Martin, I can confirm 100% - the level of thought and subtlety put into his dialogue and story is worth it. I felt enough pity that I had to buy a Moon Man helmet just to make it worth his time at all. Poor guy.
I think no other game in recent years can be described with the word "frontloaded" better than Outer Worlds.
Tennessee Ernie Ford intro, yeah man. That sets the tone perfectly
I like how you keep in the audible clicks of your mouse as you begin and end recording. I love how its a nod to older recording mediums that in their analog nature would always begin and end with the a tell-tale sound. or you just cant be bothered. I like to think its a homage to the tape and vinyl technology that always accompanies your videos. I would love to hear a version of your videos record though an old tape recorder to have the marks a distortion of the medium in it
This game being disappointing is even more frustrating considering it buried Outer Wilds by having a similar name. That game deserves to be a well known classic.
Seeing a notification for one of your videos always makes my day. Thanks for your hard work
For me, this game was honestly the definition of mediocre. Not bad necessarily but definitely not that good either.
Same i got 20 hours in and dropped it because i couldn't vibe with anything in the game
I have never played a game that feels so aggressively mediocre.
sleek interface, killing to complete quests, tunnel game thought. Compare that to clunky fallout and I love this game at least it doesnt pretend theres something to do once you reach max level because only game that rewarded random exploration was morrowind- you could stumble on op hidden item randomly. So I prefer tunnel fallout than wannabe morrowind.
@@MrSp0iler People are too harsh on this game, in light of cyberpunks lack of rpg elements, ive been able to appreciate Outer Worlds' ability to roleplay and really make big/varied decisions and paths in every quest
The whole game just felt very luke-warm to me. It was like the game was giving me everything I ask for out of this sort of game, but was staring me in the eyes and saying, "This is what you want, right?!"
Leonard Boyarsky, did a podcast interview resently on "The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook", where he talks about his career making games from Fallout to The Outerworlds, and he talks about their reasoning on choise trees. Thought you'd enjoy it Noah, alongside my fellow views.
Leave it to Noah to wait six months and then give the most decisive, well thought out, and comprehensive critique out there
The classic Noah way. I think I understand a game's design priorities, and then Noah talks about it and I gain a massively more intuitive and comprehensive understanding.
I love the way you do your intro and title cards you always find a cool way to open your videos
I wanted to love this game, badly even. But the only thing that comes to mind about it afterwards is how badly the color scheme makes my eyes hurt.
Thanks for articulating my frustration with the plot and choices in this game. It positions itself as a critique of capitalism yet falls into the ideology of neoliberal centrism and incrementalism every time when something needs to be resolved. Also the game mechanically rewards players for participating the system it criticizes. You are rewarded with xp for discovering vending machines for gods sake.
On a hindsight, should have probably seen it coming when Boryarsky straight up denied they really had politics in mind when designing the game.
The saddest part is that in taking that centrist approach the writers were making a conscious decision to "lecture the players", as much as Boyarsky wanted to deny it. The idealist "it's not the firm that is the problem, it's just that the boss is bad!" that doesnt take aim at the mode of production itself is ideological and it is a lecture.
@M Murphy Are you saying that wouldn't be a great time?
@M Murphy Morally grey is a cop out word more often than not. Every story, despite how much players can inject themselves into, has a position in its politics. Many games claim to be morally grey and ended up just the developers trying to be amoral, like The Outer Worlds. But the game's position is fundamentally pro-capitalism and biased against alternatives because the writers already drank the neoliberal kool-aid. There's nothing morally grey. That's the writer carrying the truism of capitalism into the game world. All the outcome the game perceive as "good" is to preserve the system and tinker it to a direction the writer deems more humane. So yes. I want to be a commie and I did my best to be one in the game's system, but the game scolds me every time for trying.
@M Murphy OK, so we agree.
@Dalen Lewin No.
Sweet! Something new to watch while in quarantine.
I'd recommend you try Chris Davis if you like this channel and have other vids already watched.
We need more well informed and insightful critique of video games like this. Your videos are always a joy to watch.
I think between you and neverknowsbest I have the kind of "ammunition" I suppose to defend why this game fell so flat for me. My friends are on the hype train with all the main stream reviewers saying "it's the best game" essentially. I'm just not sold but I found it hard to back up some of the points I was making until I found these two videos really taking the time to dive into why it doesn't feel like game of the year material
Neverknowsbest is really great!
Needs more subs, check him out, guys!
That was exactly my thoughts too - I probably never again play Outer Worlds.
I thought about it and in general every single system is functional and adequate, but under scrutiny considering type of game, developer and few other things- most of them are very limited/ boring/ simple/ shallow/ barren or mix of above: streamlined hero equipment to helmet and suit, small (array of boring) items in general that start being repetitive 10min in, few items that serve puropse of building lore and atmosphere, not nearly enough special gear and armaments that discourages exploration, very weak weapon/armor modding system. Fighting system is functional, but combined with unrewarding exploration and few enemy types gameplay loop suffers greately. Sneaking is very simple. Same with complexity of combat encounters.
Also- no good mod tools and no expansions on the horizon.
It's a 30-40$ game at best. Not a bad start of a new series, but if they plan to make TOW2 it better be much expanded. They won't be able to ride New Vegas nostalgia 2nd time.
One 100% run leaves people filled, and that is a big sin for a game like that. Personally I also won't go back, except for watching some different cutscenes on YT.
DanuelNue You have a great taste in music.
SIXTEEN TONS AND WHAT DO YA GET? ANOTHER DAY OLDER AND DEEPER IN DEBT
I've contrasted Outer Worlds with Disco Elysium in the past, and came to the following point: Outer Worlds vs. Disco Elysium is like Baldur's Gate 1 coming out in the same week as Planescape Torment. Outer Worlds is a solid starting point but I want to see the sequel have some damn teeth, and it's got an unfavorable matchup against a really good choose your own adventure book from around the same time.
Tbh Baldur's Gate is a much better outing than Outer Worlds but that's just me
I disagree. It's like if 2/5s of Baldur's Gate 1 and a quarter of Planescape Torment came out in the same week.
please dont compare baldurs gate to this mess
After watching this video, I feel much less guilty for not finishing The Outer Worlds.
The beauty of New Vegas's quest design was how much effort they put into each option feeling "valid" where the game would show the effect of your choices without necessarily picking a "best" option. The Edgewater quest is a perfect example of how everything but the "thoughtful" third option feels "wrong". Sure, making everything a zero sum choice would be an interesting aspect to RPG morality, but the existence of the third option the game seems to have picked as "right", combined with de-emphasis on player traits in dialogue, completely kills the RPG-ness of it for me.
Like you, New Vegas is probably still my favorite game, and I didn't love Outer Worlds as much as I expected to. Thanks for your video!!
Still can't quite figure out the hype for this game. After a super-evil run, I can honestly say that there's nothing overly special about TOW save for some funny dialouge options. This game is in dire need of some real romance options or something to add some replay value because it just isn't there at this point. TOW is about as 6 - 7/10ish as one game could be, imo.
Noah, I have to urge you to play The Outer Wilds. The game is unique. There is no action whatsoever. The heart of the game is exploring a miniature simulated solar system to discover and solve a compelling mystery. It has simple mechanics that I've never seen in another game. The exploration is deep and interesting, like what you might've hoped for in No Man's Sky, and the game give you some unique puzzles and does not lead you by the nose to the solutions. Based on your comments here and in other reviews, I think you would love it.
I went into this game knowing full and well that it wasn’t going to be New Vegas at all. I still ended up loving it and although I agree with your points and have come to find gripes of my own with this game I couldn’t help but enjoy my time with this damn game. It had a nice charm to it that never wore off due to its short runtime.
Agreed. I unfortunately avoided it for way too long due to the mixed reception. The writing is great though. It's just a fun game.
Couldn't agree more!
I loved the game - replayed it straight after first play through, and played it a couple of times since.
It's quite patently a comedy game, and criticising it for not being art is unfair, and a bit blinkered.
Man, I felt absolutely EXACTLY the same way about this game. It just didn’t land, despite everything seeming to be in place, and nobody else seemed to feel that way.
I rarely ever see this game praised, when talked about all I hear is how disappointing it was and in some cases proves Obsidian isn't the same company anymore.
Shallow is as shallow does. The most interesting thing to me was how easily and almost forcibly you become overpowered through the regular mechanics of the game. I can't decide if they just couldn't figure out how to keep that from happening, or if they decided at some point it should become a power fantasy. I even played on the hardcore mode and still felt too strong after leaving the first planet, just like on the lower difficulties.
Let me tell you about my first 3 hours playing this game.
I generally like roleplyaing as a scientist, doctor and engineer, because then it gives me an excuse to tinker and poke around in places, and ask tons of intrusive questions.
When I got out of the pod and saw the dead captain, I knew this was going to be a grimer game than I was expecting. The heart of gold smuggler character being killed out of the gate certainly sends a messege.
The next person I see is an injured guard holed up in a cave. I naturally help out with his injuries, and he immedaitly afterwards says he's going to have to report recirving unauthorised medical attention. Foreboding, but nothing concrete yet.
Then I get to the town. I go through the gate and immediatly see a sick house full of people. None of whom will let me help them or even attempt to, because not only would it get both of us in trouble with the company, but they have been thoroughly brainwashed into thinking their sickness is their own fault due to not being good enough workers.
At that point, I thought about all the real world scenarios where this happens, from literal comparisons like under American healthcare to the pretty universal contempt and poor treatment of homeless people, the chronically ill and disabled, and anyone dealing with work related mental health issues.
It made me terribly sad and angry.
It's a very effective piece of writing and setting, that really nails down unambigiously what the 'deal' of this world is.
It's ours...but more bluntly honest about overwhelming corporatism and work-based morality.
I dont know whether the rest of the game follows through on exploring these ideas better yet.
But this one town says more about our current world than a lot of games do in their full run time.
I wish the game ever made me consider things like that and actually think about and reflect on it. Plenty of past Obsidian games did but this didn't. Apart from a couple companions nobody in the game felt like a real person nor did the game world feel like a real world people actually lived in. Ultimately the satire is so constant it's impossible to take anything seriously it's all a joke and most of the NPCs veer into to stupid to live territory. Noah does a job articulating the rest of its flaws. Not a terrible game it's an average game that fails to live up to Obsidian's past along with Cain and Boyarsky's past games as well.
As someone on the Asexual Spectrum, finding out about Parvati was such a great experience and the stuff she talks about during her quest line really resonated with experiences both me and some of my other Ace friends have had. The fact that you were even given dialogue options to confirm your own character is on the ace spectrum is great as well. With this game, and the 2016 Jughead comics I'm finally able to count the pieces of media that handle this subject matter well on two hands. And to answer your question: yes it is unbelievably sad that this is a huge accomplishment.
god your videos are always so thoughtful and well rounded. i realized i share all of the same hangups you had with the outer worlds, after months wondering why 'i hadn't gone back to it yet'. thank you so much for yet another awesome in-depth critique
I completed the first world, got to the space station and saw it would all be more of the same dressed up in cheesy dialogue.
I felt tired.
Uninstalled.
The game is just boring and tiring, I’m only forcing myself to play so I can post a negative review about LOL
I liked so much about this game but felt a lot of wasted potential in it - I really think that people were overreaching by saying it was like Fallout games but better and without Bethesda's terrible bugginess. It's true that it definitely does perform better mechanically, but this game really has no way near the depth of exploration and story threads that even Fallout 4 has, never mind NV.
I absolutely loved the companions and their voice acting and how endearing they all were, but the game itself just felt kind of shallow to me in a way that was glossed over by a lot of dialogue options, and I felt a lack of connection to the main story and to the ancillary characters in this world. Everything on the surface is like it was designed exactly for me personally to like it but there was still so much 'meh.' Buildings you couldn't go in, empty planets, planets that were on the map for decoration but that you couldn't actually visit.
(Apologies if I'm just repeating what Noah said, I'm commenting early!)
Clicking this i had no idea if it was the indie space exploration game or the obsidian fallout esque space exploration game.
Yeah, I'd say you pretty much nailed it. I really hope they push the envelope in the DLCs this year and take some risks, and hopefully they will expand somewhat on the base game.
I am ride or die for this game for one reason, and one reason only:
Parvati.
I like to wear a moonman helmet myself and give a couple to my squad mates as well. Its hilarious to me that the last thing some spacer sees before getting shot is a bunch of moon men with enormous guns and science hammers
After leaving Edgewater aboard the Unreliable and gazing out at space, I was thrilled. This was finally the game I'd been waiting for since KOTOR 2, and it was fully living up to my expectations.
Half way through Monarch I put it down and didn't go back to it. The exact game I'd been dreaming of for fifteen years, and I'd lost interest.
I've always told myself it's because I was playing on the Switch and I'd become tired of squinting at a murky, blurry mess. Having watched this video, there's no denying that everything you've articulated was slowly gumming up the works in my mind as well.
I had a feeling your next critique would be of The Outer Worlds, it wasn't what I expected but I love hearing you discuss RPGs thank you for letting me listen.
I can't wait to watch this! Keep working hard Noah.
Man what a refreshing moment of...I guess validation. In some weird way. I bounced of Outer Worlds so goddamn hard. It felt so bland and lifeless on so many levels. I remember the moment, pushing through the first world and getting to new slightly more challenging area and thinking "ok let's see what new gear we get here, something will open up.." and then I got the same exact Pistol but it was MK.II WOOOAAAHHHH GENERIC PISTOL 2.0! I've thought for years "Man my expectations for that game must have been way off. Maybe I'll go back, it's so well-reviewed it's this and that.." But holy fuck. This video is almost cathartic lol. I can finally rinse away that last teeny bit of "maybe someday.." and because of how much I've come to love and respect and relate to you and your analysis, I know I'm making the right choice. Goddamnit Noah, you really are the most talented script-writer and critic I've ever come across.
I got to "The Outer W..." and was super hyped, but sadly it's Worlds, not Wilds. Still appreciate the video. Would love to hear you talk about Disco Elysium next. I know it's a bit of an obvious choice, but... I can't get enough of hearing about Disco Elysium.
Disco Elysium and The Outer Worlds is a real The Prestige to the Illusionist. Came out around the same time, same general source material, but wildly different in the nuance.
Replace this metaphor with No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits if you want.
«Woah, people has to pay for their own graves?»
«Up to me Id put everyone in Edgewater six feet under free of charge.»
Well, aside the lull in Monarch - which the game quite never escaped - beside the fact its not that long; this remains one of the few games the last few years that I really managed to enjoy deeply (at times). Frostpunk being the only other that comes to mind.
Alot of the criticisms are spot on, yet it was a good time.
I really hope you do an analysis of Disco Elysium. Thematically, that game did everything that I had wished Outer Worlds had done.
You know a game is mediocre when Noah can't even break an hour with his critique. I have to agree with his sentiment though. Outer worlds is great on paper but I couldn't even make myself finish one play though. I had major problems with fallout 3 and 4 but still managed do multiple play thoughs of each. Maybe coming right off of Disco Elysium just put the bad parts of the writing in starker contrast.
I took a hard-line stance against the corporations, always taking the option to burn it all down and I think the story was more compelling for it
This game has/had so much potential, it really feels incomplete. On one hand Obsidian gave us a game that respects player decisions and choice, if you kill Ellie's parents for example, Ellie will get upset and leave the party permanently. On the other hand they also gave us a game where player choice and decision don't affect the game world much. If there was more content and if the content actually took the environment into more interesting scenarios the game could've been so good.
0:00 Holy Smokes. A Choose Your Own Adventure book!
As we both share the same favorite game and I have been a long-time fan of your content, I am really happy with this video (as well as all your videos for that matter), but I felt as though the companions in TOW paled in comparison with New Vegas. All of them with the exception of Vicar Max, felt like other companions in NV, and while Parvati's setup with her mom was very interesting, I think her eventual quest, was a wasted opportunity that did more to make you irritated with her than sympathize, due to it being a huge, expensive shopping spree-scavenger hunt. Alas, great video as always Noah.
I swear I can see the chromatic aberration in this footage and it hurts my eyes, why did they think this effect was worth including it's just migraine inducing!
I really appreciate how Noah weaves social and cultural analyses into his discussions about various video games and their genres.
The "need of emotional and sympathetic closeness above physical closeness" is basically every normal relationship that isn't based on sex
Love your videos Noah I drive for a living and I love to listen to all your work while I'm driving around in South Jersey everyday
Honestly, your video reflects my feelings towards the game overall. I thought it included everything I wanted, but the way the elements were added felt like Obsidian played TOW too safe rather than include anything that made the game felt ambitious. I lack the motivation to replay the game, it felt like I knew how the game would end by the three choice structure rather than feeling any regret or had that feeling of not completing everything as I did with New Vegas that caused me to replay the game numerous times for nearly a decade. The Outer Worlds is good, but not something I love honestly.
Thank you for coming through with this video. It's a hard thing to say some of the things you said in the video when you want to enjoy and like something.
Last time I was this early, Noah was still in his desert bus, wondering where the old American trails would take him this time.
Really looking forward to watching this but first I have to get some sleep.
When I first saw this review I thought it was wrong, but after playing the game it's finally putting words to a feeling I couldn't quite describe. I love the game and played it twice but couldn't stomach a third run because I'd exhausted all it's dialogue options and content. In two games that lasted a total of 31 hours. That's not bad but I've got hundreds in new Vegas and STILL haven't seen everything. and not just a little hat on a log but full questlines with unique content.
outer worlds felt unfinished to me. not because bugs or brokeness, games rather polished by todays standards infact.
it feels unfinished in terms of content...felt more like a proof of concept than complete game.
i still like it, its a great concept.
@Gzus Kreist there's only two lesbian npcs
noah, your piece on depression quest was illuminating to say the least, and not in the everyday gamer sense. keep up the great work. voices like yours are few and far betweeen in our favourite medium :*
Hit it on the head my exact feelings when I tried to play the game, I felt like nothing I was doing was mattering and I had seen it all before, I finally broke and stopped playing it when I got a quest where a mother sends you to look for her son but turns out he's an adult and predicted the whole thing, since it was literally a Fable 2 quest, but at least the Fable 2 version was funny
With the compromise option, I have chosen both, and chosen neither, but everyone keeps congratulating me for it, so I suppose I've won.
I've had a solid 10 minute chuckle, thanks Noah.
TFW I got this notification when rewatching your Red Dead video.
When I entered the first town in a raider outfit, I got told off. So then I spoke to everyone in my spacepants. Nobody mentioned it. The line to tell you off for wearing raider gear appears to be there to make us think that there's more, but there isn't.