The Outer Worlds Hands-on – Who Said Old School was Pretty?
The spiritual heir to Fallout: New Vegas - that's what its creators say about their game. The Outer Worlds draws a lot from its predecessor, but the atmosphere is completely different – and it sucks you in like a vortex!
- spiritual heir to Fallout: New Vegas;
- several large hubs instead of an open world, and hence:
- expect loading screens;
- but also great freedom in completing quests;
- rather than a superhero, a character with real flaws and weaknesses;
- completing the game should take about 30 hours.
Just as you don't judge a book by the cover, you don't judge a game solely for its graphics. Completing a few quests in the still unfinished The Outer Worlds from Obsidian Entertainment, practically the entire visual design made my cringe inside. And it's not so much about quality, but the artistic style – too colorful and incoherent. However, it all becomes more irrelevant as we dive deeper and deeper into the story-driven missions, or even minor side quests. Instead of focusing on the outer layer of the game, we're immediately engulfed with the game's inner world – the factions, residents, their problems, relations between them, and the omnipresent humor.
The Outer Worlds is a pure-blood RPG, where we can not only act exactly the way we want, but even speak the tone we want, and that's in most of the dialogues. It's us who decide whether we want to be a noble hero, a mouthy brute, a cunning liar, or a common idiot. We decide if the task ends quickly or develops into a whole different story – one that's incredibly engaging, too! The new game from Obsidian is not another, long-awaited Fallout, but perhaps this will give it a chance to really spread its wings, establish its own universe, worthy of the spiritual heir of New Vegas – that's how the creators of The Outer Worlds describe their game.
The style of planets in The Outer Worlds is rather peculiar.
The awakening of the colonist
During the short game show, I had the opportunity to play the very first minutes of it, which, unfortunately, I can't tell you much about – mostly because I don't want to spoil anything for you. However, I can tell you that the prologue was captivating, long and exciting. The story outline of The Outer Worlds, on the other hand, isn't a secret. Like in the engers movie, we are one of the colonists sleeping on a ship sailing towards a new home, the Halcyon system, the most remote colony created by mankind.
As it turns out, however, the ship is more drifting than sailing, and the fate of the colonists doesn't concern anyone. Except a certain character with the name as colorful as his personality. Finneas Welles wakes us up and asks for help in saving the remaining thousands of people. We find ourselves in a world reigned by powerful corporations; in places, where everyone's struggling to make ends meet. Given the freedom of choice – is it still going to be just about the colonists before the end of the game? "Well, yes, and no," I heard from one of the developers.
Once you get to the bottom of this game, you're sucked in imediately.
Lies, intimidation, maybe stupidity? In The Outer Worlds, you can be whoever you want.
Ashes to ashes?
We don't know much about the main storyline of The Outer Worlds yet, but we had the opportunity to get acquainted with various quests and missions. Gone off the deep end, we get to one of the largest locations of the game (the world isn't open – it consists of separated, large areas), the offers were plentiful and diverse, depending on the NPC we met. One guy, called Nelson, wanted us to retrieve his "dust," smuggled in on cute, local animals.
We could either demand a much higher reward for the job, using persuasion – or humbly accept his first, penny offer. Then, having returned with the collected goods, we could lie and hold onto the precious cargo, complete the order, or continue the thread, because Nelson apparently found that something doesn't add up. What follows is a meeting with another surprising character and new choices – should you settle the matter peacefully, or using force? Will you ultimately try to deceive Nelson, or keep your word? Will you bear his babbling, or maybe lose it and punch him right in the face to bring him down to earth?
The combat is simply there. Not feeling particularly excited for it so far.
TWO LEGENDS
The production of the game is directed by two people well known to all RPG game lovers. The first of these is Tim Cain, the producer of the first Fallout, whose back catalog also includes Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and the first Pillars of Eternity.
The second dude is Leonard Boyarsky. He, in turn, was the Art Director for the first Fallout, was also one of the creators of Arcanum and Bloodlines, but later embarked on an adventure with Blizzard, where he participated in creating the world and story of Diablo III and the Reaper of Souls expansion.
Fallout at the meat factory
Things got even better with a contract from a hotel owner. The industrious woman wanted to take over the local slaughterhouse, if I correctly, ran by a particularly assertive individual. Apart from a few obvious hints she gave us, we understood that she just wants us to get the thing done. How? Doesn't really matter! Do whatever you want! The only thing she cared about was taking over the business. At this point, a sea of possibilities opens up – of course, things depend – to a certain degree – on how you behaved up until this point in the game.
I get by with a little help from my friends...
The first decision is about how you want to enter the slaughterhouse. You can either obtain an employee ID, or just enter the place like you owned it. You can find a hidden hatch and climb into the smelly sewers, or just take your rifle and try to break through the security. Whatever choice you make, there's more to come.
A smart hero will sabotage the production line, the soulless one will poison the poor animals that are waiting to die anyway, and a space rogue will look into the eyes of the owner right before shooting... wait, maybe he'll try to strike a bargain with him and turn against the smug lady? Go and kill her? Maybe you can get an even better deal out of this? Welcome to The Outer Worlds!
SURVIVAL IN THE OUTER WORLDS
The gameplay at the highest level of difficulty, SuperNova, introduces quite a few changes in the gameplay. It's a hardcore mode, so you have to eat and sleep regularly. You can only replenish HP in bed, and fast travel can take you only to your ship, which, by the way, is the only place where you can save the game. Our companions, in turn, won't resurrect after falling in battle – it's permadeath, baby!
Big mech? Check. Big guns? Check. But it somehow isn't exciting...
Ok, that's kind of paranoid…
Freedom of action and choice are complemented by numerous RPG statistics and coefficients that increase or decrease depending on our achievements and performance. The groups of skills that we can develop include medicine, technology, combat, defense, intelligence, leadership or stealth. There are also the attributes, permanent perks that increase attack or the amount of obtained XP.
What I found most curious, though, was the mechanic of hero’s weaknesses. The developers didn't want another superhero with an arrow in his knee, saving the world, but a character of flesh and bone, who has both attributes and shortcomings. Moreover – the game's algorithms analyze the player's style, and determine the character's weaknesses themselves!
Maybe you can't see it here that clearly, but there's a lot of retro science-fiction with some really fun and quirky ideas.
In my case, it was paranoia. Considering the time constraints of the presentation, I didn't bother sneaking during the missions, and just went in guns-blaring, tresing and alarming the guards of my presence. After a few such incidents, the game awarded me a weakness called "paranoia," meaning more nervousness and a slightly reduced stats in restricted areas. I could, however, chose one perk as a gratification. It was rather difficult to assess how much these affect the gameplay in actuality, but the idea itself is really interesting, and I'm very curious to see how many possibilities the game can take into .
Bullet time instead of a V.A.T.s. increase
Combat – or avoiding it – is of course crucial in determining the character's statistics. The developers emphasize they don't know yet whether it's possible to complete the game without killing anyone, and since I thought the non-lethal approach a suboptimal way of experiencing the game for the very first time, I decided to try to kill everything I could – from some grose worms and giant mantises, to bandits, guards, and all sorts of cyborgs. And the Obsidian-RPG combat style can be summed up briefly as "alright." It doesn't stir your blood, at least not in any of the moments I've seen. It's just a way of pushing things forward.
Some beasts look really formidable.
The design of firearms is rather as dull as a 90bhp Ford Escort – uninspired, but it gets your from A to B. Rifles fire bullets, and bullets hit targets, but beyond that, owning a machine gun isn't particularly exciting, your pulse doesn't raise when you think about modifying the gun. Melee weapons are more interesting, but here, we have to come to with the subpar animations – both in combat and those of falling enemies. With this in mind, the spiritual heir of Fallout's V.A.T.S., i.e., The Outer World's bullet time, turns out an interesting and useful mechanic. Slowing opponents down makes the animations look a bit better, so watching the scenes is less painstaking, and the indiscriminate slaughter is gaining a little finesse.
YOU HAVE TO GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH
Our companions, with whom we can assemble bands of different sizes, can come in handy in battles. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to see what the recruitment looks like, but on the up-side, I noticed they had some sort of a personality, shaped by the events of the past.
One of them told me about some incident from her life, which later grew into a longer quest. The only think that I didn't like about our pleasant exchange was the fact it happened in the middle of a fierce battle, when I accidentally clicked on her. But then – it's an alpha, so things like that happen.
Paint my (outer) world
The saturation of colors can give you a headache. Visually, The Outer Worlds resembles a blend of No Man's Sky with planets from Destiny 2, and I have to it I didn't like that. Realistic characters don't fit in the cartoonish, a-little-too-dandy looks of some creatures. Ground textures are monotonous, and vegetation looks weird, rather generic, as if no one thought about what sort of climate we're in. Though it's just my subjective impression.
I loved all the retro-sci-fi tidbits, the humor hidden in the dialogs and events. I liked buying upgrades in old vending machines, I enjoyed the myriad of cool movie posters. Borrowings and inspirations from Bioshock are quite visible, but the coherence of the game world doesn't come close to Rapture. Again, we have to bear in mind that I only saw a small portion of the game – concept arts showed a few locations that might look a lot better. However, as I already said, the graphics don't look very good, but it's easy to shrug it off once you become engaged with the missions and the plot. You quickly forget it with the first witty line of dialog.
World beyond Fallout
After last year's revelation that Kingdom Come: Deliverance was for me, I have high expectations of the RPGs. The Outer Worlds hasn't been a jaw-dropping experience for me, but it's at least intriguing, and I'd like to know the entire story Obsidian prepared for us. It's good that we're getting a new IP, a new universe, instead of getting another clone of Fallout: New Vegas especially since full-on next-gen revolution isn't happening here. The last question is whether The Outer Worlds actually a good title. , anyway, after the release that it's not the same thing as Outer Wilds. Or your "surprised" will reach 10.
Dariusz DM Matusiak | Gamepressure.com
DISCLAIMER
The costs of accommodation and the trip to the presentation were covered by the game’s publisher, Private Division.
