The Outer Worlds: New Vegas, but it's Firefly and also Capitalism is Evil

[Beleriphon]

Spoiler: Regarding the Groundbreaker Companion

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Did I miss something majorly or does this guy just not have a good backstory? Or is there more to come?

Felix has a bunch of dialogue when you take him out on missions and what not. He's less interesting from a quest perspective, and more interesting from a wandering dialogue perspective. Him and Vicar Max have some good times.

[Cespenar]

Overall I'm a bit on the fence. Coming down from Disco Elysium, the drop in writing quality is pretty visible, and it was doubly so in the first act, what with the character establishment, plot hooks and everything.

Now that I arrived at Groundbreaker and (at least a bit) invested in the premise, though, everything is fortunately smoother.

Still, a lot of stuff seems pretty formulaic, like they had gone on to emulate a "Fallout game", rather than come up with something new and groundbreaking. I guess I expected more from Obsidian.

Then again, in this day and age, I should take what above average RPGs I can find, so maybe I shouldn't whine.

Yeah, I'm pretty much conversing with myself at this point.

[Chen]

After Monarch I found it felt super rushed and particularly the ending sequence was crazy rushed.

[The Hellbug]

That's the Obsidian I know.

[boj0]

Just wrapped the game up on Hard, and I'll jot down some thoughts while they are fresh.

Spoiler: Lots of spoilers and end game musings ahead

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I definitely felt like the game pushed forward very quickly once you hit Byzantium; I know for a fact there are people and missions I missed there but after walking around trying to find things to do I just gave up and moved ahead with the plot.

Combat was good, but not great; sneak sniper once again rolls over everything. TTD is better than VATS, but only due to keeping the shooting skill based other than RNG. Weapon types had the worst kind of variety, mashing Mass Effect 1 with a veritable buffet of random melee weapons that you'll never use (seriously, a spade? A hatchet? When you get the sword in the tutorial?)
Armor was neat how it worked with mods and heavy armor hurt stealth, but otherwise was bummed that aside from "Bad Guys" it was mostly palette swaps.

The companions are...weak, very weak. Story wise I mean; combat wise, easily the best compared to any Bethesda companions.

Parvati gets the most dialogue, but her personality is overwhelming "bleh", she suffers from tutorial syndrome: she has something to say about everything, but rarely has anything to add, her skills cover the 3 branches of core gameplay (social checks, lockpicking, and engineering for weapon modding), and she is completely subservient to the Captain despite wanting away from that life. She's also voiced by Ashly Burch, which further cemented her being the 'main' companion.
Despite leaving her in Edgewater, the game thought she was part of the crew for end credits which was...odd.

Max is a character I want to like but never want to use.

Felix is...I never actually used Felix, he has a punchable face, a sour attitude, and the one save file I picked up showed he's a dopey layabout eating cereal and reading comics, I have nothing against cereal or comics; but I do have something against his college freshman "I just discovered Che shirts" attitude. The book he has on social reform is explicitly unopened, much like my interest in him. He's a whiny kid who wants to be mad at something but lacks the mental capacity to do it correctly.

Nyoka(sp?) Idk I used her a bit, but "I'm a loud mouth badass with a drinking problem to hide the pain" is frankly lazy, the only nuance I got from her was even though the corps left, she still saw the value in them.

SAM is too pure for this world 11/10 best bot, let me skip an area of hostile autos by initiating a sanitation protocol.

Ellie was the companion I used for about 90% of the game, while I enjoyed her the most, her character was still a trope fest, Jack Sparrow but was actually a princess. Still she is the best pirate doctor I could have asked for. Knows how to clear out a room of Mantids with science *and* a gun.


I really thought there would be a bigger swerve for Wells, all this talk of him being untrustworthy, ADA saying he was unstable, the Board painting him as a terrorist...and all he did was try to thaw out the colonists? That's his big secret? He took a few tries before your character? Ok, I was expecting to find out the whole thing was he had a messy breakup with a CEO and unfroze you as a deniable assest to wage jealous war.

Overall the game was fun, if poorly paced. I'm going to try an evil, dumb, corporate yes man to get all my silly playthroughs done at once.

[Avilan the Grey]

Just wrapped the game up on Hard, and I'll jot down some thoughts while they are fresh.

Spoiler: Lots of spoilers and end game musings ahead

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I definitely felt like the game pushed forward very quickly once you hit Byzantium; I know for a fact there are people and missions I missed there but after walking around trying to find things to do I just gave up and moved ahead with the plot.

Combat was good, but not great; sneak sniper once again rolls over everything. TTD is better than VATS, but only due to keeping the shooting skill based other than RNG. Weapon types had the worst kind of variety, mashing Mass Effect 1 with a veritable buffet of random melee weapons that you'll never use (seriously, a spade? A hatchet? When you get the sword in the tutorial?)
Armor was neat how it worked with mods and heavy armor hurt stealth, but otherwise was bummed that aside from "Bad Guys" it was mostly palette swaps.

The companions are...weak, very weak. Story wise I mean; combat wise, easily the best compared to any Bethesda companions.

Parvati gets the most dialogue, but her personality is overwhelming "bleh", she suffers from tutorial syndrome: she has something to say about everything, but rarely has anything to add, her skills cover the 3 branches of core gameplay (social checks, lockpicking, and engineering for weapon modding), and she is completely subservient to the Captain despite wanting away from that life. She's also voiced by Ashly Burch, which further cemented her being the 'main' companion.
Despite leaving her in Edgewater, the game thought she was part of the crew for end credits which was...odd.

Max is a character I want to like but never want to use.

Felix is...I never actually used Felix, he has a punchable face, a sour attitude, and the one save file I picked up showed he's a dopey layabout eating cereal and reading comics, I have nothing against cereal or comics; but I do have something against his college freshman "I just discovered Che shirts" attitude. The book he has on social reform is explicitly unopened, much like my interest in him. He's a whiny kid who wants to be mad at something but lacks the mental capacity to do it correctly.

Nyoka(sp?) Idk I used her a bit, but "I'm a loud mouth badass with a drinking problem to hide the pain" is frankly lazy, the only nuance I got from her was even though the corps left, she still saw the value in them.

SAM is too pure for this world 11/10 best bot, let me skip an area of hostile autos by initiating a sanitation protocol.

Ellie was the companion I used for about 90% of the game, while I enjoyed her the most, her character was still a trope fest, Jack Sparrow but was actually a princess. Still she is the best pirate doctor I could have asked for. Knows how to clear out a room of Mantids with science *and* a gun.


I really thought there would be a bigger swerve for Wells, all this talk of him being untrustworthy, ADA saying he was unstable, the Board painting him as a terrorist...and all he did was try to thaw out the colonists? That's his big secret? He took a few tries before your character? Ok, I was expecting to find out the whole thing was he had a messy breakup with a CEO and unfroze you as a deniable assest to wage jealous war.

Overall the game was fun, if poorly paced. I'm going to try an evil, dumb, corporate yes man to get all my silly playthroughs done at once.

Really? I am with the vast majority playing this game: Story doesn't matter. World doesn't matter. Finding Parvati a girlfriend is all that matters. I love her and will die for her.

I run 99% of the time with Parvati (she's my main tank, melee only) and Ellie; Max makes me fall asleep he is utterly pointless.

[xroads]

Okay, got to vent a little ...

Spoiler: "Little Memento" Side Mission

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Once you learn about how Ash lied to you and left the mercs stranded for a better fare (which lead to their deaths), the developers should of provided the option to punch Ash in the face and keep the "memento." Instead, the best option you get is to wag your finger at him before you give him his bits.

Alternatively, I suppose you could of chose not to complete the mission at all. But that is really not satisfying either (and denies you a few xp to boot).

[JadedDM]

In Errors Unseen, is it actually possible to get up onto the roof where the scientists are being held?

Spoiler

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From what I can tell, they are scripted to die no matter what you do, but after it happened, I had Pavarti yell out, "Hurry, captain! Maybe they're still alive!" And I'm pretty sure they aren't, but she said it with such urgency that I wanted to check them out anyway. But I can't see any way to actually get up there.

[boj0]

It seems pretty scripted, I tried pretty hard to get up there to no avail. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an easter egg for anyone with console commands to get up there though.

[factotum]

I'm doing my second playthrough and I've noticed something which is bugging me *way* more than it should. Namely, the external model of the Unreliable doesn't match the internal layout. The ship has three decks, and inside, you have the bridge on the lower deck, the captain's quarters above, and then the crew quarters on the top deck. Outside, though, the windows of the captain's quarters are clearly on the upper deck--there's a huge area of blank hull in between the bridge and captain's quarters, and there isn't enough space *above* the captain's quarters to fit an entire deck in. I think I find it particularly irritating because they could easily have put the captain's quarters on the top deck on the interior model, and that might even have made sense, since it would have been on the same deck as the crew quarters.

[Brookshw]

Ignoring this thread for the moment to avoid spoilers; just stopping in to say that, having finally picked this up and gotten several hours in, I'm very impressed. World and quests are engaging and interesting, scenery is very interesting. Kudos to Obsidian on a job well done!

[Lord Raziere]

Spoiler: Fashionable Rebellion

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So, update from last time, whenever I posted:

I've been to Monarch, empowered the Iconoclasts under Zora Blackwood until they took over Stellar Bay, and that was nice.

been doing a bunch of companion quests, from getting Vicar Max answers to what he seeks (turns he just needed to stop trying to control things), to Felix, to helping Parvati. Ellie and her quest was disappointingly cold and and heartless. I do not think I'll ever get her as a companion a second time.

got all the science weapons and both the perks for them and now I can just blast things to easily kill everything with them, they're so fun.

then I did Celeste's quest with clothing. thought this was just going to a bunch of fetch quests, and the dealing with bureaucracy haha funnies but then I got back and she was dead because the police killed her for making a cool dress because they're fascists. I killed them all, coincidentally got the card for the next part of the main quest, got the Chimaera which I'm pretty is the best armor in the game what the hell, light armor and just as good as heavy, hell yeah. why wear anything else? and I can wear a cowboy hat at long last. but yeah, if I had any doubts over how right it is to murder The Board, they have just been extinguished because a flamboyant owner of a boutique has just been killed for making cool clothing.

Don't worry Celeste. I'll kill them all in style.

[factotum]

I handled Monarch differently on my first playthrough:

Spoiler

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I got MSI and the Iconoclasts to actually work with each other, which seemed to be the fairest approach all told. My plan is to side with MSI second run through, because I'm technically playing as a Board sympathiser this time.

[boj0]

Spoiler: MSI

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Wouldn't killing the MSI be more along a Board sympathiser's course since they broke away from them, the Board doesn't want them back because they would legally own Monarch, and they want to push worker's rights?

[Lord Raziere]

Spoiler: Rebellion: Ending

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Finally finished the game. Killed the Board, freed Phineas Welles and look at the ending...

huh. sure some bad things happen and the future is uncertain but the colony will survive even though I ended Edgewater, killed MSI and basically did all the free spirited rebellion options. Its much better ending than I thought my actions would be.

The Board's plan was to basically freeze everyone else and keep all the food until they can figure out a solution. but scientifically their plan wouldn't have worked- their scientists simply hadn't figured out a solution yet. Phineas Welles truly does have questionable sanity but every time I talked to him he genuinely cared even though he is haunted by his actions that led to peoples deaths from trying to revive them.

Between that and the fact that Earth has gone dark for three years with no way to know what happened to it.....I honestly think I made the right choice. The Board was basically an incompetent, evil entity that was lying to everyone about the situation and too focused on trying to spin it positively than actually implement its decision. People need to be able to think freely without any ties to Earth if they need to survive, and The Board was only getting in the way of that.

It may not be the best ending where everyone works together, but is a good ending regardless. I'm satisfied with it. Outer Worlds is a good, just very solid and well put together game. I'm totally down with an Outer Worlds set in our solar system exploring why Earth has gone dark and whats happening to make it unable to communicate. they've definitely left me curious where obsidian goes from here with this.

a lot of the decisions truly made me feel at least a little bad about taking them because there are hints everywhere that there is some alternative that was just good or better even though what I did was valid. its pretty weird how I'm not guilty about any of my decisions now that I see that my actions did indeed have a positive effect, but in the moment I wondered if I was screwing everything up by doing this or that. this game is pretty forgiving about its moral decisions.

another aspect I found oddly forgiving was that I could get away with more crimes than I could in skyrim or whatever. like in those games, I kill somebody the entire town aggros. But here I can kill a guy and only the people nearby will aggro then everyone will just carry on as everythings normal but with some rep-loss. oh well. not as if I care about that. there is simply no actual criminal justice system like in skyrim, and the guards aren't anything better than normal mooks, so I can take them on no problem. if you kill guards aren't going to stop and fine, they just seem to kill you and you kill them, then when the fight dies down people look the other way and ignore you.

the weapons are all cool. definitely loved playing with N-Rays, I just wished that the N-ray mod wasn't so hard to find.

and overall, great game, its plot reliant on very realistic and basic things about economics, socio-political stuff, and resources and the proper use of them to tell a story about a society and how societies work, especially when confronted with all these probable challenges about going into space and establishing a life out there. I look forward to whatever obsidian makes next and hope its just as good if not better.

[factotum]

One very interesting thing about the game I found out while watching a Youtube video--you can kill pretty much everyone in the game, even the plot-critical ones. There is always a way round their death that means you can finish the game's story even if you, as this chap did, kill anyone you meet on sight. Makes all those times I wanted to kill Ancano in Skyrim but knew I couldn't because he was marked plot critical all the more annoying, really.

[JadedDM]

One very interesting thing about the game I found out while watching a Youtube video--you can kill pretty much everyone in the game, even the plot-critical ones.

Which probably explains why there are no children anywhere in this game.

[GloatingSwine]

One very interesting thing about the game I found out while watching a Youtube video--you can kill pretty much everyone in the game, even the plot-critical ones. There is always a way round their death that means you can finish the game's story even if you, as this chap did, kill anyone you meet on sight. Makes all those times I wanted to kill Ancano in Skyrim but knew I couldn't because he was marked plot critical all the more annoying, really.

That's pretty common for Obsidian. You can do it in New Vegas as well.

There's usually an ending slide for each location that mentions that you did it too.

(Hell, New Vegas has a perk you can only get by killing and eating the leaders of four major factions).

[Spore]

(Hell, New Vegas has a perk you can only get by killing and eating the leaders of four major factions).

1) Relevant nick is relevant.

2) It takes a true gamer to know what a bored gamer does when he has done EVERYTHING in your game.

3) Is the ending better than "everyones dead, you suck"? Because some vital NPCs are just SCREAMING to get their heads bashed in with a rocket propelled hammer.

[factotum]

3) Is the ending better than "everyones dead, you suck"? Because some vital NPCs are just SCREAMING to get their heads bashed in with a rocket propelled hammer.

It's the same ending as you get in the normal course of events, as far as I can tell:

Spoiler

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Thing is, in a "kill everything" run the one person you definitely can't kill is Phineas Welles, because he's either imprisoned or behind bulletproof glass whenever you see him, so the game ends with you rescuing him from prison, just as in the regular "anti-Board" ending.

[Eurus]

That's disappointing. I'd be happier with "everyone's dead, you monster" because at least that feels like it's acknowledging your choices.

[Driderman]

Spoilers for late-game content and Parvati's quest:

Spoiler

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So I did some quests out of sequence and when I finally got around to wrapping up Parvati's companion quest I was wanted by The Board, which lead to the resolution of her questline involving a heavily armed and armored 3-man fireteam gunning their way through Byzantium city, killing dozens of corporate military and more than a few innocent bystanders, all to get her a pretty dress. I appreciate how the game still let me finish the questline and at least I also got a sweet hat collection out of it

[Spore]

Well, I for one switched over from my stupid melee brute on hard difficulty to a science/sneak build and I feel my fun has TRIPLICATED. I realize a tinkerer/lockpicking dude is absolutely my style of gameplay. But even then, you should not lock a vital skill of the game - tinkering - behind a required skill.

The first companion is an engineer ffs. I get that weapons that drops are crap. Because why should companies deliver a good weapon when they can just deliver A weapon. But it would make so much sense for your first companion to be able to help you out with that (not well, she is an engineer, not a weapon crafter) as the first major choice of the game is "living high quanitity vs. high quality".

There is an easy workaround. Let companion skill boosts give new tiers of skill unlocks. I get the abuse possibility but OW is a single player game. No one really cares about abuse in these things.

[factotum]

TBH, I don't see Tinker as being as vital as you're saying it is. Sure, it's nice to be able to upgrade the armour and weapons you're already wearing, but (a) you can find weapons that do more damage out of the gate anyway and (b) the game is really not all that hard that you need to optimise your weapon loadout. Not to mention that tinkering something rapidly becomes prohibitively expensive.

[Chen]

TBH, I don't see Tinker as being as vital as you're saying it is. Sure, it's nice to be able to upgrade the armour and weapons you're already wearing, but (a) you can find weapons that do more damage out of the gate anyway and (b) the game is really not all that hard that you need to optimise your weapon loadout. Not to mention that tinkering something rapidly becomes prohibitively expensive.

This. I only tinkered once I got to the last tier of weapons (and therefore had no higher ones coming in) and by then the game was laughably easy anyways (until the last mission).

End mission spoiler

Spoiler

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The only somewhat tough fights were the guys with N-Ray weapons at the end. And I literally avoided every single fight in the last level because I had the ID card from the start. Maybe some of those would have been tough, but it was so simple to avoid that entire conflict it ended up pretty anti-climactic actually.

[Cespenar]

Tinkering is actually pretty impactful on Hard difficulty, since upgrading your armor a few times costs less than 500 bits but can turn high rate-of-fire enemies from bursting you down instantly to only grazing you with their bullets.

[Driderman]

Tinkering is actually pretty impactful on Hard difficulty, since upgrading your armor a few times costs less than 500 bits but can turn high rate-of-fire enemies from bursting you down instantly to only grazing you with their bullets.

On Normal its pretty just something to spend your otherwise unused bits on though

[Cespenar]

On Normal its pretty just something to spend your otherwise unused bits on though

I'd imagine so. The only reason I started on Hard was the almost unanimous outrage of the internet against the game's difficulty. Or rather the lack thereof. Hard brings it down to a more normal experience, in my opinion.

[Spore]

The game is not ... difficult,. Not neither setting. It is uhm, weird. If you think of the weapons in "Tiers", unless you happen to have a weakness weapon (like shock vs. robots), Tier 1 weapons do NOTHING against (armored) Tier 2 enemies.

You can have the uber rifled super scoped korrosion damage rifle with 100 medicine and 100 long guns and barely scratch the enemy. Where you TRASH them with a simple Tier 2 pistol.

[xroads]

What's the max level for gear? I know players max out at 30. But does gear max out at level 30 also?