Don't do that, because you'll make a terrible mess of your kitchen.
Gamer kitchen safety tip, kids: Don't put discs into your blender.
...also, use a lid.
The Outer Worlds comes to us from Obsidian, the people who almost literally hyped themselves up as the creators of the only universally-recognized good games in the Fallout franchise (while I disagree, burn on Bethesda there!) in the trailer for this game. But is the reputation deserved? Many have said, even if we were able to get a Fallout: New Vegas 2, that Obsidian isn't the same as it once was. Not even the almighty Chris Avellone, whose praises I sang on this very blog only a week ago, is there anymore. So can it truly be as good? Let's take a look.
The Outer Worlds is a first-person RPG set in the distant future of...the future. In this universe, President William McKinley was never assassinated, and thus Theodore Roosevelt did not have the platform by which to bust the business trusts. These trusts eventually became megacorporations that went out into the stars and terraformed and colonized entire worlds for profit and...well, profit.
So no, sadly, this isn't a direct sequel to Fallout: New Vegas where House won the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and had his colony ships out searching for new worlds to inhabit. However, this will do absolutely nothing to stop my headcanon, so that's what happened. If you disagree, feel free to start your own blog and contradict me.
As such, we begin as the member of a faster than light vessel in cryostasis. Before being released by a definitely not Doc Brown from Back to the Future type and shot to a planet, I had decided to create a smooth-talking conman with a tongue of silver and (when that failed) a steady trigger finger. Luckily, The Outer Worlds provides in both the character creation and through dialogue choices, many of which can be hysterically funny.
Thus, we saw a not-Han Solo named Emmett land on the first planet, and squarely on the man who Not-Doctor Brown had hired to ferry him around. While Emmett was down one Alex Hawthorne, "Alex Hawthorne" was in possession of a brand new, pre-owned ship.
Like most open world RPGs, it's very easily to get caught up in side quest after side quest just by wandering around and talking to people. Emmett, being the ever-enterprising sort, was plenty happy to help those in need...provided they had the bits to pay him for his work. Given dialogue options, I was surprised how often I had to lie to people I'd lied to about how I'd lied to them upon double crossing them at certain points. This continued through most of the game.
The player has the ability to use quite a few dialogue options that, again, have that dark humor most people would put in for the Fallout series. The whole universe presented to us is very much in that vein, strengthening the connections to the New Vegas joke I made earlier. The entire plot is heavily anti-consumerism in the way that Fallout often is - i.e., corporate greed having an adverse effect on the human condition. Only instead of Fallout, where society has largely collapsed and problems are solved with bullets, The Outer Worlds has society at a near-collapsed state and the appropriate paperwork has to be signed and spellchecked before being sent off to the appropriate people (in triplicate) before the shooting can solve the problems.
It's little things like that, but with the various ways you can interact with and even change the world it makes it all the better.
Apart from dialogue, the player has your standard assortment of weapon and other combat skills. If you want to play a tank that can eat damage and spit out pain on your enemies, you can do that. If you want to play a hunter that snipes at a distance without ever being seen, you can do that. If you want to play a heart of gold smuggler with an itchy trigger finger and a penchant for jumping in at the last minute to save the day, you can do that.
And yes- if you want to be an asshole who's only in it for the money, you can do that, too.
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| Admittedly, the fixed eye contact conversations are a bit wonky. |
Also, the hacking minigame isn't a minigame. You have to have the appropriate skill and have the appropriate device(s) to do so. This is something I've said about Fallout for quite some time. Seriously, Bethesda, you did this perfectly with Morrowind and then you decided to get all stupidly clever. It's just needless busy work, something which The Outer Worlds seems to understand far better.
There isn't really too much more to say. This is basically Fallout in space and it works really well. I could go on for ages about several different facets of the game, like the plot and individual character stories, but I don't want to spoil any part of this game for anyone. It's just that great.
(I will say it was a bit on the nose with the Firefly homaging when two of the first companions you can pick up are a plucky young female mechanic and a man of the cloth with a less than on the level backstory on a backwater world...but I like it.)
If you haven't picked this up, definitely do so. I highly recommend it. If I had actually played this in 2019, it would have easily been my game of the year, if I still did Game of the Year lists. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a man who I rescued from a latrine to swindle out of his life savings...
The Outer Worlds comes to us from Obsidian Entertainment and Private Division, available for Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, and an upcoming release on the Nintendo Switch.
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