 Ever since Chris Avalon left Obsidian Entertainment, I've had my share of doubts about the company's ability to follow up the great RPG classics of the previous decade it helmed. Some of my favourite games fall out New Vegas in the Night of the Old Republic too, among others. Pillars of Eternity, even with Avalon working on it as a narrative designer, lacked a certain depth. I'd come to expect from the studio, and while Obsidian's second isometric RPG, here in the remarkably strong premise and opening, it drew to a close at the worst possible time. I mean, you don't tease out the final conflict between you and the biggest bad only to then pull the curtains, you just don't do that. So of course I'd been worried. What you get in other one of my favourite developers has gone off the deep end, has gotten extremely greedy, put an accent on business first and player experience second, third and last. After playing through the introductory world, or if you'd rather the introductory settlement of Edgewater in the region around it, I'm happy to report my fears seem to have been greatly exaggerated, even misplaced. There is depth here and in all the right places, let's just get the basics out of the way. I love the customization, but even more so, I love the look of the game. Possibly, the vegetation is thick enough that I sometimes lose track of the veritable mountains of corpse's eye, a space freelancer slash recently awakened colonist who spent 70 years in crowd sleep, reduce. The visuals of this first planet are stunning, none of that bleak brown as you might remember from the opening of New Vegas. Bright colors, gorgeous vistas, a sky that fills you with wonder and appreciation for the artistic direction Obsidian has taken with this one. If the look of the world draws from the brightest, most hopeful of science fiction, boy, does the story have a fun time of dipping into the most dystopian scenario I could think of. In short, corporation is king. Here's the deal. The player character has spent 70 years in crowd sleep aboard the Hope spaceship, along the best and finest humanity has to offer. Over the 70 years, corporate culture has promulgated itself in extreme ways, like for example by poisoning the water supply of a small town in an attempt to extract the natural riches of the world, without a moment's thought for the suffering inflicted on all the innocents who live there. Uh, that actually happened. What? It did? Bloody hell. That's awful. Uh, okay. The salt-tuner thing? That didn't happen to her, did it? 100% in game. Oh thank God, corporate overlaws for that at least. Raise the mouse. The outpost town of Edgewater is a salt-tuner colony. It only produces salt-tuner. Its citizens are on an exclusive diet of, you guessed it, salt-tuner. There's also a plague in town, wonder why that is. And the cure for that plague, according to the outpost administrator, hard labour, is kind of like Stalinist Russia, come to think of it. What left the strongest impression on me, too? Even more so than the bizarre ways in which corporate interests have taken centre stage in human life has to be the characters. Plenty of colorful ones from the mad scientists attempting to make things right for all the colonists' finiest wells. Is that thing wrong? Not to worry. I've pumped your body full of a special concoction I devised to keep you from dying so horrifically, hopefully at all, but I guess we'll see it. To read Thompson. The man in charge of the settlement with corporate interests at heart in a very particular view of people. Even if he cares about them and often refers to everyone in Edgewater as one big family. I say he cares, but he obviously does so in his own very strange, somewhat twisted way. The leader of a renegade faction outside Edgewater, meanwhile, seems a kind and matronly figure, and has the greenest thumb in the universe. But her heart is filled with vitriol for the corporate way of life, so much so that she's willing to cause the death of everyone in the city. Which is scary, needless to say. And don't even get me started on Ada, the ship AI who, an article headline I glimpsed somewhere on the internet called Outer Worlds Yes Man. I haven't read the article, but that's a great way to nail the essence of that character. I will require some time to process this information. Thank you for your patience and for your honesty. I am programmed to take orders exclusively from Captain Hawthorne. If I accept your orders, then you must be Captain Hawthorne. Do you understand? But you know who the most precious, adorable, bestest character is? Parvati. The engineer and our first companion. She is the best. Just the best. This shy engineer isn't liked by all her neighbors, hardly by anyone, but I, for one, appreciate everything she brings to the table and can't wait to get to know her better. I knew some of them before they left. I don't know anybody well. I mostly listened to them talk, kept my head down. There was a boy named Thomas who used to follow me around, asking questions about the stuff I fixed. He was real sweet to me. Not any sort of dissident. Life's hard here, especially for them. What Obsidian has managed is, they've given each of the big players in Edgewater in a fair amount of the minor ones, too, some memorable quirk. Or even a few, something that's hard to forget, harder yet to ignore. And that's more than Bethesda ever seems to do, at least in the last decade. Then, of course, there's the choices. I've missed interesting, complex choices. First, the freedom to walk away from a quest you don't like is here, as in most other games. And I did that early on when a gravedigger, pardon, a junior in humour, let's deploy the corporate doublespeak already, asked me to collect the coin of the recently deceased's families and account that the graze are on corporation-owned land. And as such, they are rented. I refused, disgusted and haven't looked back since, and my first playthrough is guided by my own moral compass. But the ideas I've got for characters after that one. Boy, you are going to love them. But the big choice was between cutting the power of the city of Edgewater or that of a small settlement of renegades who've left their workstations in search of a better life. It's not exactly a binary choice either, since it's more than just about one faction or the other picking one over the other. It's about two different ways of life between picking the status quo and being completely radical or trying to find a middle way. Favourite side quest? Saving this runaway from a life among marauders inspired by space western serials and mostly from herself. How did I persuade her to go home? Simple enough really. I reminded her there's a new episode of her favourite space marauding show waiting at home. Wait, you're telling me he's got a copy of the mass market here? Why didn't you say so? I'll take my stuff and head on back I suppose. Grace is going to be glaring knives at me so I've got that to look forward to. Kids these days. Insufferable binges, am I right? At any rate, there's plenty to laugh about this one and I'm really excited to play more of it. And you know what? From the sight of it there's plenty to replay as well. And I rarely scratch at the itch to replay most games. For this one I just might. But not before I tell you all about whatever is ahead for me and my space of friends. Until then, see you next time. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, share, subscribe. Bye. Only the most dashing champion of private enterprise ever to don a mask. Until I get my start that is.