Skip to main content

The Outer Worlds - It's [insert favorite RPG, Movie, Book, TV show] - In Space!!


The first thing I'm gonna say about this game is: I freaking love it. Everything that comes after should be seen through that lens. The second thing I'm going to say is that the writers/devs on the The Outer Worlds are sharp. You know the saying, "You can't please all of the people, all of the time"? Well, Obsidian Entertainment has shown that you really, really can.

It's been said many-a-time that "This Game" is just Skyrim with guns, or "That Game" is just Fallout in Space etc... Well, The Outer Worlds is all that and it doesn't care what you think about plundering pop culture for kicks. There are numerous nods to other games, sure, but (and I want to emphasize this) not only games. There are references to TV shows, movies, music, books, table-top RPGs, the list goes on, and it's not confined to the SF/F genres.

Conversations are 1 on 1. Very Reminiscent of Oblivion.
And like early Elder Scrolls, the voice acting is hit-and-miss.
The Outer Worlds isn't afraid to reveal it's source material, in fact it flaunts it - unashamedly - time and time again. And somehow, it works. On all kinds of levels, it works. But most of all, on the level of clever fan service in support of elegant game design. From the very beginning of this game I felt an overwhelming nostalgic twang - a feeling I haven't had since I played ES Oblivion for the very fist time, and was transported back to my Dungeons and Dragons heyday. Well, The Outer Worlds does something very similar. It draws on the best elements of all the games/books/movies you've played/read/watched before and melds them into a package that's at once so astonishingly familiar, and undeniably unique, that you'll begin to wonder if it hasn't spontaneously popped into existence due to some unacknowledged, gamer-wide yearning for this exact product.

Parvati - You really can't help but admire her.
I could talk about any number of great features in The Outer Worlds, but instead I'll just mention the writing - because I'm a writer. For a game in which the protagonist has no voice at all, there are some instances of nuanced interactive fiction here, akin to the best of Bioware. I mean, you gotta follow the quest-line, BUT the interactions with crew-members and other denizens of the Outer Worlds are engaging, fun and sometimes touching. Parvati, in particular, is a companion the like of which  I haven't seen before. Her naivety is refreshing and her bald honesty can only be described as heart-warming - to the point where I'm more than happy to forgo the main quest line and do whatever it takes to get her on that blasted date with her partner. I think we're going to see a lot of Parvati clones in RPGs to come. I could go on but I've probably written enough for now.

In short, The Outer Worlds is funny, it's colorful, it's both nostalgic and refreshing at the same time, but most of all it's pure entertainment made by people like us who like the things we like. I feel as though you gotta give credit where it's due, and with this game, it's due.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New project

I've been working on a book of family-orientated children's stories, drawing on my experiences bringing up my kids as a single father.  I asked AI to interpret one of the stories in art and it came up with this image (after a couple of dismal failures). It's actually a fair representation of the story.   Now, to begin the daunting process of finding a publisher for this collection.
Post a Comment
Read more

A Hand of Knaves - A New Anthology from the CSFG

Rogues are my all-time favourite characters, be it in books, movies, videogames, or tabletop RPGs (yes, I was the thief who stole your Ring of Featherfall while you slept and didn't say a word as you jumped off that cliff thinking you'd be fine) and thanks to CSFG Publishing I now get the opportunity to co-edit an anthology of stories entitled A Hand of Knaves - which will be 100% about thieves, scoundrels and rogues! So as you can probably guess, I'm stoked the CSFG committee decided to run with our pitch. In even better news, my co-editor is the unstoppable Leife Shallcross , who apparently doesn't have the word sleep in her vocabulary as she edits her upcoming novel The Beast's Heart , completes her second novel (which I've read and which is absolutely amazing), helps out with Conflux, as well as fulfilling her day job and doing all her other lifey things. We are super-excited for this and make no mistake, we both love the concept and want to produc...
1 comment
Read more

Flies in the Soup: John Scalzi Part 2

  Interview: John Scalzi Part 2 By Chris Large Interview first appeared in Aurealis #82. Welcome back John. At the moment your new book Lock In, [discussed in the last issue] is a standalone novel. Are you considering writing more in this world? Or is this it? No! I’d be happy to write more in this world if there was a desire from my publisher and from my audience. I don’t ever write anything but standalone novels. Old Man’s War was a standalone novel. I wrote that one book, right? And then it took off and my editor said, “You need to write another one,” and gave me some money. I said “Okay. I see how this works.” That’s how Old Man’s War became a series. Android’s Dream was supposed to be a series. I’d signed a contract for a second book but when I started writing it, it was terrible so I stopped doing that and wrote something else. So Lock In is currently a standalone book but if my publisher comes to me and says, “Yeah, I want you to write the second ...
1 comment
Read more