I have been following up on this game since the start of this week on the RPG Codex and from what people who have been playing the game have been telling there along with from what I have been reading about on various sites I can not say that this game really grabs me.
Now I am not going to talk about possible progressive social politics/ideology content which have become such a major point of discussion in various forums, Pro and Anti, but rather from what I read about the design such as the world building, the writing, the quests, and of course the gameplay.
From what I understand The Outer Worlds definitely doesn't try to be an epic like Mass Effect, more a "down to earth" experience in which your decisions decide if a colony survives or not and how it will survive. Such a low scale setting and narrative can be interesting but I still always prefer there is something extra to grab my attention.
Something like this always feels to me like it helps set up the real problem or crisis like how for example in FNV the conflict between the NCR and the Legion would make Ulysses decide that neither nation or House had the answer and that the world should be reset again with the hope something better might come out of it.
Actually there some such themes in this but I don't want to give spoilers.
I can not give much commentary about the Corporatism angle in this game, I am sadly not that knowledgeable in that field but from what I heard it can be sometimes very simplified but also done in a very cartoon esque way. Something that was a point of discussion on the Codex.
To me it sounds very unbalanced with little nuances with the other side being borderline communism. I kind of wish that the situation was a bit more open to interpretation, with either sides have their good sides and bad sides or perhaps better strengths and weaknesses.
Even the main "religion" seems designed in such a way that you can not help being repulsed by it.
Gameplay, well many people compare it to FNV and that some of it such as the shooting part is much better than TOW's "predecessor" but that at lower level its feels to difficulty.
There is crafting in the game but a lot of people who played the game at some point found it pointless to do as it was much easier to scavenge better equipment. Even buying better weapons, armor, and other things you may need can be completely skipped.
Exploration on its own feel unrewarding as it only result in more "junk" to carry around.
There is some interesting thing done with perks with the player being able to choose to have "weaknesses" in return for extra skill points with the weaknesses sometimes also opening up new roleplaying options but in general perks are considered underwhelming.
The game's world itself is described as a sort of mix between Bioshock, Borderlands, and perhaps a dash of the latest Prey game world aesthetics and feel.
Oh the alien world part coming out of No Man's Sky.
I am not done with reading all the RPG Codex entries yet but I am going to wait until this game is on Steam, all DLCs are released, and it is on sale, and if it will be sold on GOG I will wait for it until it is released there.
Oh and this is BTW what you get when you allow the game to generate a face for your character;
