Kohno
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
So, did you guys get your New Vegas successor as ordered?
The Outer Worlds - Early Impressions
- Thread starter AgentBJ09
- Start date
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
RangerBoo
Resident Schizo Poster
I think most here are pleased with the game in the very least. Obsidian, unlike Bethesda, seem to be listening to what fans of New Vegas want and with more funding to put into their future games, thanks to Microsoft, the future for Obsidian seems to be bright and hopeful. Which means more games like The Outer Worlds in the future which I can safely say many here will be happy about.
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Not really.
I guess it is better than what Bethesda craps out but that is not hard these days.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
Smaller. But damn good. It's like Dragon Age 2 to Dragon Age: Origin but with a better story.
AgentBJ09
Vault Dweller
I liked what I've played of it, but factoring in the publishing company being a branch of 2K Games and the bits of woke and not-funny humor that I keep finding, once my Game Pass runs out, that's as far as I'll go with this one.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
Woke humor?
AgentBJ09
Vault Dweller
Separate things, but compounding ones.
RangerBoo
Resident Schizo Poster
I will say that the humor is more bearable then a Lily Sighn or Samantha Bee comedy special. At least I didn't hate myself and my sex after watching a playthrough of The Outer Worlds. Although some of the humor was the cringey, "LOL! So random!", "We're in a bleak situation but we are going to be quirky and quipy!" humor that is really common now with the entertainment industry in California but that just maybe my Washingtonian bias.
AgentBJ09
Vault Dweller
Sign of the times, really. When it comes to New Vegas, you can tell the characters are written as though the world they live in is the one they've always known, and is treated as such. Same with Pillars of Eternity, which I really like, and Tyranny did an okay job of it.
That's where Obsidian trumps most RPG studios. They keep that in mind when writing characters, so any humor fits the setting. By this point though, it's clear the loss of staff from the New Vegas days has hurt them in the writing department.
Chud
Still Mildly Glowing
Eh, I didn't find it "woke." I never felt talked down to, condescended, or that a character stood up on a soap box. There's differing views, sure, but they're handled as just that, or at the very least asides. The player can often ignore or flat out insult others at almost every turn. I found the queer companion fine, as it was so tame. The quest was rated PG and totally harmless. "Hey, I like this person. Can I have some pointers?" I felt like an older brother helping a little sister. The queer factor might make up something like 2-3% of the entire game. Big Deal. NV has two gay companions (Arcade and Veronica) and I never felt like they were shoved down my throat. They're just people, like everyone else.
The Outer Worlds tempers much of it with humor and other voices. That's not a bad thing. The humor is subjective, and I didn't laugh at everything, but after killing a group of outlaws and hearing the robot companion Sam happily say, "Dispensing body bags," gave me a good chuckle.
The Outer Worlds tempers much of it with humor and other voices. That's not a bad thing. The humor is subjective, and I didn't laugh at everything, but after killing a group of outlaws and hearing the robot companion Sam happily say, "Dispensing body bags," gave me a good chuckle.
TheGM
The voice of reason
No such thing as SJWs have no sense of humor.
I'd say the humor in the spoken lines is quite quippy like Firefly, but I recently watched Avengers End Game and suffered from a case of quip poisoning so I can't really gauge it's frequency here.
Got a chance to really sink my teeth into it over the weekend. I'd say this game feels about 60% Mass Effect 2, 30% Borderlands, 10% Bioshock. There are actually some mechanics and even sound effects in the game that sound like they're the same as Mass Effect (not that that is a complaint) and the combat and companion system gameplay feels very reminiscent.
Overall really enjoying the game, enjoy having a lot of skill checks and dialogue options. I spent a lot of time making my Edgewater/Botanical gardens decision and I'm looking forward to seeing how it affects the story. I find the conversations humorous and/or interesting a lot of the time. A couple zones have felt "fetchy" in that it feels like you spend a fair amount of time just running back and forth between an NPC and a quest location that's buried somewhere in a labyrinth (Groundbreaker) but it hasn't been too bad. I have very few complaints so far and the ones I have are minor:
- It is annoying that you can't keep your weapon holstered because the same button used to activate items also unholsters the weapon, so your gun is pretty much always out
- The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th slot inhaler items don't seem very intuitive or useful to me. There doesn't appear to be a way to have them "auto-equip" or be able to distinguish between when you do and don't want to use them (since it uses them all when you use the inhaler).
- There are too many button interactions that require you to "hold" the button, in particular the weapon selection wheel. If I'm switching weapons more often than not I'm in combat and I don't like having the added delay
- You can't fast travel from inside a building so sometimes you spend a fair amount of time trying to find your way out of a large area so you can fast travel
- The modify system for weapons/armour is a little unintuitive and I find it difficult to understand what you have equipped/are replacing along with what the stat changes actually are (this might be just me)
Overall really enjoying the game, enjoy having a lot of skill checks and dialogue options. I spent a lot of time making my Edgewater/Botanical gardens decision and I'm looking forward to seeing how it affects the story. I find the conversations humorous and/or interesting a lot of the time. A couple zones have felt "fetchy" in that it feels like you spend a fair amount of time just running back and forth between an NPC and a quest location that's buried somewhere in a labyrinth (Groundbreaker) but it hasn't been too bad. I have very few complaints so far and the ones I have are minor:
- It is annoying that you can't keep your weapon holstered because the same button used to activate items also unholsters the weapon, so your gun is pretty much always out
- The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th slot inhaler items don't seem very intuitive or useful to me. There doesn't appear to be a way to have them "auto-equip" or be able to distinguish between when you do and don't want to use them (since it uses them all when you use the inhaler).
- There are too many button interactions that require you to "hold" the button, in particular the weapon selection wheel. If I'm switching weapons more often than not I'm in combat and I don't like having the added delay
- You can't fast travel from inside a building so sometimes you spend a fair amount of time trying to find your way out of a large area so you can fast travel
- The modify system for weapons/armour is a little unintuitive and I find it difficult to understand what you have equipped/are replacing along with what the stat changes actually are (this might be just me)
Kohno
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
I haven't played it yet, I will a year from now earliest if I'm still interested, but what I've heard is that:
- The character systems look nice, but don't really do anything worthwhile or meaningful (lack of interactivity and impact)
- The world is very linear and boring to explore (lack of interest and interactivity, feeling too deliberately set up)
- A lot of the characters sound like they were written by a bored ideologue, and that they feel copypasted (the afore mentioned "woke humor" for one")
- Loot is bonkers
- For some of the afore mentioned reasons (the skills and loot), it's very easy even on harder difficulties
- The much advertised reactivity turns out to be sorely lacking (Now here I have to say, that I don't completely buy it at face value, since in games like this you notice the larger scale of reactivity only through several playthroughs, like in Fallout...it is understandable that the first run might feel lacking)
- It is a disappointment in what all it lacks considering who made it
How much of that rings true?
The character system seems to have a lot of impact at least as far as conversation choices go. Seems like almost every conversation has an option to use various skills and you encounter interactable situations in the game world your skills factor into. You won't see these options (in dialogue) unless your skill levels are high enough for that situation though. The only thing meaningless in character creation was designing how your character looks. After you choose how they'll look you never see them again.
If people are comparing it to Fallout maybe. The freedom and exploration of the game seems to be more cerebral with the choices you make than the places you go. I'm actually not sure how open the world is but there are some points to explore. There just doesn't exist quest or other prompts nudging you to do so.
I like the dialogue personally but I'd say I'm not taking it too seriously. The game universe seems to be ironic and whimsical so I expect the characters to be a bit ridiculous.
Like you get too much? It's not a randomized item system like Borderlands, it seems like there are generic item types/tiers that give different bonuses. I'm not a fan of the modding system because it's unintuitive. There's a lot of clutter items in the form of "aid" that don't get used and don't seem practical.
High expectations often leave people disappointed. If you expect a game release to re-create all the same feelings of excitement and pleasure you remember mostly through nostalgia you can really ruin a game for yourself. It's better to just play Outer Worlds with no expectations and let yourself find the enjoyment naturally in the way the game offers it.
Kohno
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Ok, thanks. That cleared certain things up.
Might it be that they just aren't practical for the characterbuild you have, however unclear that might be in the game, or is it a universal thing?
You pick up dozens of unique types of consumables, a lot of which have the exact same (and often mediocre) affects like "200% health regeneration out of combat for 30 seconds" so right now I probably have 20-30 different stacks of aid items and most of them are nearly useless. You can bind them to be auto-used with the inhaler but their benefits aren't useful enough to justify constantly juggling them in the inventory screen. Health regen items in particular don't serve a purpose in combat and you don't want to waste adrena charges just to use consumables. Also the interface doesn't let you easily select or hot key these items and in the inventory screen you can only consume them by holding the "A" button (on xbox) which is really annoying. That's just my take.
Kohno
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Ok, sounds like Skyrim done badly. And Skyrim had a slew problems of it's own already.
The UI for aid items was better in Skyrim :p you could very quickly and easily see what each item did and consume it with a quick button press. It's not game breaking by any stretch, I don't find a frequent need to heal and largely just ignore everything in the aid category.
Kohno
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
I didn't have huge expectations over TOW in the first place, but this sounds... choresome. Although, that second sentence of yours still leaves it unclear if those items would be, if not life savers, helpful for some characterbuilds...that aren't yours.
No probably not, a lot of them aren't combat oriented. They're minor regeneration/stat boosts that last a few seconds and you already regenerate health out of combat (unless you have your temperament set to the lowest value) which might disable health regen all together. Maybe someone would find them useful but it's more bothersome than anything and the game's difficulty doesn't seem that high. The only time I've used items is for skill checks where I was a couple points short but I'd have to spend a couple minutes trying to find if there was an item that would actually give me a boost.
It is... I dealt with that by not using any of the aid items. Healing is auto-bound to the left bumper so that's all you need. Healing with "other stuff" requires you to fill those limited inhaler quick slots or make them part of the inhale (medicine skill) but they don't auto-assign so the slots are empty unless you keep refilling them. The items aren't necessary, I'd be surprised to find anyone truly needing them based on the game so far. I could be proved wrong. I'm playing a mostly science/engineering build with only 50 points in long gun. I'm not really min/maxed for combat or anything.