 The Outer Worlds improves on the RPG formula Bethesda's been struggling for years to capture with Fallout 3 and 4, but fails to live up to the narrative strength to obsidian's previous entry into this style of RPG, Fallout New Vegas. So what's the verdict? Watch on to find out. The Story Plot I have issues with the plot, surprise, surprise, but before I get into it, let's get you up to speed with the story of The Outer Worlds. Welcome to the Halcyon Colony. There's no other place quite like it. Whether you're a corporate stooge or a steam crazed raider, there's a role to be filled by you. But wait, there's something rotten going on in the Colony. A mad scientist by the name of Dr. Phineas Wells has intent on harming the residing board, the Corporate Council in Charge of Colony Development. By sautaging many of their top priority projects, I was here to do this, you ask. With the help of a colonist, recently awakened from defreeze and the derelict ship, the Hope. Who is this dangerous individual and whose side is he on? Watch on to find out. Now that this is over with, the good Dr. Phineas Wells has an ambitious mission to save the Halcyon Colony from its corporate overlords by awakening all the colonists of the Hope. The brighter scientists, engineers and overall minds the Earth ever send the Colony's way, now trapped in a derelict ship. All of them, just like the protagonist, until recently that is, in defreeze. However, after he succeeds in awakening you, Wells doesn't have any of the necessary chemicals left to awaken any of the other colonists. In addition to that, as you attempt to restock these precious materials in order to awaken your fellow colonists, you will explore the full extent of what Halcyon has to offer. In all its drugged up corporate glory. The first thing I'll say about the plot, it doesn't overstay its welcome. And that's good. It starts off as something moderate, procure some chemicals for the mass scientist and slowly blossoms into the you need to save the colony, start pronto, plot that we all knew and expected. It's engaging enough to keep you interested through the 20 some even 30 hours you play the game for. The problem is that the mission to get some chemicals and save a few planet's worth of living human beings is overshadowed by the far more personable involved stories you get in such places as Edgewater and the planet of Monarch, both of which have interesting plotlines and moral choices that actually made me stop and consider what to do next. The quests told in these hubs engaged me far more than any of the choices I was given during my work for Phineas. And the last major choice in the game was as binary as it gets. If perhaps the Chief of Bureau or Corporate Security General was her name, was introduced earlier and there was something more to her than a mildly James Bond-esque era of villainy, perhaps there would have been place for an actual choice, morally complex and engaging. Because the Outer Worlds stands, however, there is not. Let's now look to the characters. You play as the Captain. In my case of a letter, in your case might as well be something along the lines of XX Mom Killer 69 XX of The Unreliable, a hunk of junk that never seems to improve despite the first of my companions being amongst the finest of Halcyon's engineers. I speak of Curse of Pervati, voiced by the ever-brilliant Ashley Birch. Pervati is great. So great, in fact, that I was only 95% annoyed at her for making me jump between planets for the most busyworkish romantic quest I have ever played. Ah, haha, but it's not even a romantic quest between me and her. No, no. This romance is between Pervati and the head of the groundbreaker, Junlei Tennyson. The groundbreaker for the record is a former colony ship, now used as a meter point between Earth and the colony. What other characters left an impression? Let's see, let's run through them all. Ellie was hilarious, she's one of the other interesting companions, probably my favourite one if I have to be honest. A doctor board of plastic surgery turned pirate, taking inspiration from all the idiotic space adventure dramas financed by the board in order to distract folks. Ellie is ironic, funny and very often closed off to anyone trying to perceive what's behind her mask of daring do's pace pirate. I found screwing around with her companion quest hilarious. There you go again captain, always menacing polite society. Anyway, you're probably wondering where I've been all this time. Nioke was not so fun. She had a satisfying arc on Monarch on account of being a native of the planet and knowing all the players. She had a lot of conversation cues and she played an important part in the going zone at Monarch as a guide throughout the planet. Vika Max left little impression, so little in fact did he leave. I didn't even bother to play through his companion quest during my first playthrough. And only playthrough. I did go back to the save file eventually after I beat the game, but you get my drift. Okay, I'll admit, the element of him being a hacker before becoming a priest was interesting. But I didn't feel the need to follow through after a few weeks away from the game between my edgewater video and picking it up again. And that's the problem, one of the problems of the art world. Two more companions I left, one of them is Felix, a guy with some anger issues and a really can do personality. And Sam, a repurposed cleaner, automaton seemingly devoid of personality. His companion quest consists of waking him up, picking up a few pieces as you go along. Similar to what we did way back when in Co-Tour 2 with HK47. Which let's face it, doesn't give you an awful lot of opportunity to acquaint yourself with a metallic hunk of junk. The biggest issue with the characters is that they have too little going on. The companion quests, with the exception of Pervatis, are all quite short. And hers only feels long because it's padded out with a lot of travelling and busy work. There is not good design, there is some good writing, but not good quest design. The writing of other characters is, I will admit, happily too, often on point and hilarious. This is best reflected in the dialogue, which I thought was for the most part done with a lot of cheeky humour and seems to be a real strength of the writing team over at Obsidian. You'll find dozens of laugh-inducing conversations in your exploration of Halcyon. In the interactions with some of these characters, I'll remember far longer than I'll recall the rest of the outer worlds. How about player's choice? How does the player's choice affect the game exactly? In what ways, from dialogue options to what starts you choose to level up? How does choice change and shift your experience? In terms of shaping the story your own way, there is ample opportunity to do so on every hub planet. Storylines will force you into the middle of conflict between different factions and you will often have an opportunity beyond choosing just between one or the other faction, which I thought was refreshingly unbioware of Obsidian. How about those dialogue options? In short, I will admit I'm slightly unhappy with how the player's choices in leveling up the captain are reflected in dialogue, because you can hardly ever use feats other than the three social skills lie, intimidate and persuade in conversation. Outside of that, dialogue options are good at avoiding conflict, getting out of situations that would otherwise cause two bits and fooling around. Remember how I mentioned Ellie's companion quest? Well, it's all about her returning to her parents, wanting to discover that they've announced her dead and have collected the life insurance that comes with that. Well, after learning that I saved the game and shot them in their annoying faces. Come to think of it, I might have actually used a plasma flame thrower, but I was a plasma thrower, but I was pleased to discover that Ellie actually had a scripted response to me picking this route. I didn't stick with that choice, because naturally Ellie left after I killed her parents, which is our natural, but I was pleased that had I wanted to, there would have been consequences for this inhumane act that I wanted to stick with it, and that would have seen me and Ellie, of course, be done. Another small complaint, the options you get through your skills in dialogue rarely go above 65 to 75 in terms of points you need to have put in the skill in question, out of a hundred. I had put over 80 points in persuasion and for having pervaded my team, I had a bonus of well into the hundred, probably a hundred and seven, something like that. This isn't the case with the persuasion alone. There only ever were two skill checks which demanded a skill of over a hundred, and that's annoying. I thought that was really annoying because it doesn't really demand that you go all in to developing your character in a certain way. What I did was I made my character into an unkillable, heavy armor-wielding, machine gun, toting maniac who was also really charming and intimidating all into one. The only thing I didn't really level up was the melee weapons, and that was a choice entirely of my own. I could have easily gotten 50 points in melee weapons without being any worse off than I was, and I can't remember seeing a skill check other than those two persuasion checks that went up to a hundred, even over a score of 80. Intimidation, lying, no. And the passive bonuses you get leveling up different skills, I don't mean to disparage the game, but they're a bit shit. The gameplay. How about that gunplay? It's good, but not great. If you're looking for something with a real kick in terms of space, wild west, gunslinger kind of frontier feel, this isn't it, sorry to disappoint. It is a great improvement on New Vegas, and I honestly don't remember Fallout 4 well enough to offer a comparison with that, but it probably is slightly better than that as well. Knowing our friends over at Bethesda. If you've played Bioshock, that's about what you can expect in terms of feel. Not much feedback to go on is what I'm saying. The problem here is a lack of variety. A lot of guns to do it, most of them the same models, the same make, the same DPS, the same boring effects, sound effects. It is to migrate disappointment entirely on inspired work in that aspect. There are a few science guns that have really fun effects, but they're also not the most useful weapons. They're the kind of things you sprinkle into the gameplay to amuse your players, but they're not something that you use all the time to do amazing great things. Exploration is one aspect of the game I enjoyed. Going through the different environments, investigating how they differed from one another was fun. There is plenty to see, and what it lacks in enemy variety, the game makes up for in visual fidelity, and just gorgeous, absolutely beautiful vistas. I won't turn any heads by saying this, is the finest looking of all Obsidian's games so far. There's not a particularly high ceiling, this is a studio that's been churning out isometric RPGs for the better part of the last decade. How about the perks system? What are perks, but a boring? Emphasis on boring, alternative to Fallout's fabled VATS system. They give you percentage bonuses, or additional carry capacity, bonuses to this and that and nothing remotely interesting, nothing that truly affects the world in a meaningful way. None of the fun stuff you got from some of the VATS choices in New Vegas are here, and this is one more aspect in which the outer world's pales before its predecessor. There is also the possibility to gain a permanent weakness, but an additional perk point. These would be really cool for roleplaying purposes, I'm the first to admit that, but examining a 25% reduction to, say, plasma weapon resistance for a single perk point is a passionately bad choice. I must have been offered no less than four of these weaknesses, but I only took one of them due to the abysmal effects I'd have suffered under, otherwise, and that's for the entire length of your playthrough. These weaknesses offer effects which will have actively made the game less enjoyable. And what are the equipment? Let's just say that the variety in terms of weapons, both melee and ranged, is abysmal. I think I already mentioned that in terms of guns, but melee weapons, not much better. Armor 2 doesn't leave a dent in my cold, cold heart. Yes, I know, it's bad enough I'm deploying puns now. I'm really unhappy with the heavy armor models in particular. Most of it looks about the same with only different color templates. It's lazy and uninspired, and although I'm willing to ground to position the benefit of in-world logic, just about every enforcer for the board wears the same kind of armor, I'm not a fan of this decision. It seems creatively exhausted, say the least. Helmets are considerably greater in number in terms of unique appearance, at least. Some of them I was fond of. Others left no impression whatsoever, and of course there were a few funny additions which give you a nice bonus to such things as stealth, if you put on an eyepatch or goggles for a nice bonus to your engineering skill. Which is how hats work as we all know. Soon as I put on a fedora or a deerstalker hat, I immediately get plus 10 in investigation. That's how Sherlock does it. The presentation. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous. The visual direction is beautiful. Every world has stunning vistas, as I have mentioned before, and exploring was a pleasure more because of this than most anything else. Say for the companion banter in the occasional chance to shoot someone. Music and audio design. The score of the outer worlds is pleasant but largely forgettable, with the exception of the opening team which I have been humming to myself for months. Weapons sound good, especially the energy ones, and the voice acting, well, a plus quality. A great cast spearhead as I said by Ashley Birch, who got a nomination for her role in this one at last year's game awards. Is it warranted? On one side Ashley Birch is phenomenal, always. On the other, did her Vati have the presence, the sheer screen time as her fellow nominees? I wouldn't say so. But once more, I reiterate, the voice actors did a fantastic job. Ellie, Ada, excellent performances. Even Crispin Freeman, one of my favourite ever voice actors, who does an amazing job in everything he's in. You might know him as Alucard in Helsing, or Winston in Overwatch, and dozens of other roles. He pops up at the end there, too, taking on the role as Chairman Rockwell of the board, and doing so with great gusto. Really, there's nothing I've got to complain about in terms of the voice acting. Conclusion! Is this a good game? Yes! Is this a great game? No. Does it do a lot right? Yes! Is it still off the mark? Unfortunately so. This is a good world, and I appreciate the satiric look at what corporate culture might do to humanity, if pushed to an unnatural, dehumanising degree. However, there is more to be done. What the outer world likes is more than anything else, depth. Depth of character, depth of plotting, depth of meaningful customization options, and a good bit of customization in terms of visual armours and shape. The perk system is… uh. The closing of the game, too, is completely underwhelming. I count recall the last time I went into a last act expecting a big climax, only to come away from it feeling such sheer amount of disappointment. Using horror technology, I circumvented just about every last fight section but the final boss. I'm putting quotes here, which was outrageously easy. If you have an electric weapon and pervading on your team, which I did, and outrageously hard, if you don't. Due to an infinite amount of tiny electric mobs which do a lot of really small, slow damage. But it stacks up. It stacks up. There's something missing in this last half hour. One of two possible big outcomes, based on the players' earlier choices, I haven't played the other one. I was thinking of playing it before the review, but honestly, I don't care enough. I do, however, want to conclude this review on a positive note. There are different ways to go about playing the game. If you enjoy going about the same world in different ways, you could experiment with different character builds on the highest difficulty, which I have heard is the way to experience the game. I didn't because I did not want my companions to die, which they would have done times a million, because I'm crappy. You could be a lone wolf of yours, playing without companions, which is probably what I would do if I ever wanted to do the hardest difficulty, or perhaps someone with no points in the dialogue still at all. I've heard that's hilarious. You could also try and kill everyone in your way and see how far the game goes along with it before it breaks completely and utterly. And if that sounds fun, if that's your cup of tea, please enjoy it. Me, I think it's a good game. I had my fun with it, and I'm completely done. Thanks to Microsoft's Xbox Game Password PC, less than five euro a month, and I am actually playing through so many games that I would not have bought otherwise. I'm pleased. What is my score for this game? A 7 out of 10. I think that's a good score. That spells good more than anything else in the world. It's definitely not mediocre. A 6 would be mediocre, right? But it could have been more. It definitely could have done a little bit more in so many, many different ways. At any rate, thank you guys for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please like, share, subscribe, send this video to your friend, ring that bell button, or maybe ring an actual bell. Have you tried ringing an actual bell lately? It's a lot of fun. Until you do try ringing an actual bell, I'm Philip Magnus, and I'll see you again next time. Bye!