The Outer Worlds is a fun game with a world that's both alien and an exaggerated version of what our own trip into the stars could look like.
The gunplay is pretty smooth and the weapon modding system adds a fair bit of customization, though I wish unique weapons had the ability to mod them as well. The science weapons are especially fun, though upgrading them to keep their level up with others you find is incredibly expensive.
The companions are likeable, fun, and flawed - each has their own quirks that make them feel a lot more real. Their individual stories are interesting, though I wish they had more interaction with the world beyond occasional quips.
Finally, the story is incredible fun and full of sci-fi references, tropes, and wild characters. The DLCs, especially, are so atmospheric and feel like proper stories of their own.
I can happily recommend this game for anyone that likes wild action, goofy sci-fi, and fun characters.
Once you remove the hype that the game had back in 2019 for " New Vegas in Space " and that you become reasonable and take the game for being his own thing, you find out you have in your hands a great exemple of modern action-RPG with first person shooter gameplay.
Story-wise, The Outer Worlds manage to not stretch himself too thin limiting the number of main characters and entities. If from the external point of view things seems to be quite basic " The Evil Board of Corporations " against the " Suffering and Freedomless People of Halcyon ", once you start to dig deeper you start to discover many elements showing that the writters had more than one ace in their hand.
Outside the main quest, the writting takes a small hit, some of the side quest are forgetable or fall into the fetch quest department but others are brilliant like the Iconoclast or the SubLight arcs.
Graphic-wise, the Outer Worlds is gorgeous, 6 years and a soft remaster with the Spacer's Choice Edition later, the game design is impressive, the environments are gorgeous and each planet have its own identity. Minus point for the Spacer's Choice Edition that seems to have an issue with its light and color management, once you difg in for the first time you might think that your monitor is ot correctly calibrated but no, the Spacer's Choice edition have oversaturated colors (especially red) and light reflections sometimes can be bliding.
Regarding the gameplay, this is a classic run of the mill action-rpg. For my playtrought I did chose a specialization in long guns and heavy guns, so I completely left the handguns and melee behind. The experience was good but not transcending, the gun designs are interesting but the diversityu in " classic " weapons are very limited to a few design. On the other hand the number of Science and " Unique " weapons is enormous, some unique weapons are just variants of the classics with different modifications of visual aspects, but the science weapons are their own thing and can be glorious if you max out the science skill and keep upgrading them.
I can not comment on the Sneak mechanics as I didn't cared about ti at all, this is somethign that I prefer to observe in immersive Sim genre.
Another problem of The Outer World is the number of consumables. While it fits the story greatly wth all these fantastic products like Spectrum Vodkas, Saltuna Fillets and other Plain 'n Pure Water. There's simply too many. In the end, the player will just use the consummable that provide +200% health regen and +25% base health, rendering the damage, immunity, ability cooldown and other buff / debuff consummable utterly useless and clutering your inventory. They might be useful for the very hard difficulty, but on normal and with a completionist playtrough, I never use a single time any of these.
The sound design in the Outer Worlds is great, the gun sounds good, the dialogs have good actors even for random NPCs and the soundtrack by Justin E. Bell is excellent and integrate correctly to the different quest and events of the game (especially in the 2 DLCs).
In conclusion, after 53 hours of a completionist playtrough and doing all the quest available in game as well as the 2 DLCs, The Outer Worlds managed to be a very good experience with a captivating story, a classic but not innovative gameplay and gorgeous environments and soundtrack.
I hope that the quality will be the same if not better for The Outer Worlds 2!
And remember, it's not the best choice, it's Spacer's Choice™️.
...but it became a generic first person shooter with some RPG elements that doesn't commit to the bit. Made by a team that should've known better, they took their shot and missed. But it wasn't close to the mark, they pretty much shot themselves in the foot.
The game has difficulty deciding if it wants to be taken seriously or not, and the lack of actual choices with actual consequences is pretty much non-consistent. The game also doesn't reward exploration, or creative thinking towards puzzles/ problems.
I did three playthroughs, and have difficulty remembering anything about the game. I did, however, in my last playthrough, send the ship into the sun. That felt satisfying.
It is nicer playing than Bethesda titles but it does feel lacking. I know im late to play this title already but id say my wait was waranted, its entertaining at points but its not a thrilling adventure. neither are bethesda games to be fair but i feel like a game like this should have bit more polish, it crashed so many times unmodded, the first time getting on the ship at the begining of the game; didnt crash after but it was a nightmare when i first started playing. the characters are alright and the designs are great but im not a huge fan of the segmented open world style where loading screens seperate everything. i guess the only plus side would be its now an older title and on sale regularly, it is worth 70, id say not, but is it worth 25ish, in my opinion yes.
