I played this game significantly longer than I thought I would, which may speak to how much I enjoyed it. BACKGROUND:
I think the first time I saw this game was through a trailer at The Game Awards. I remember being immediately hooked by its premise and really wanting to get it. My plan was to get the Switch version, but after hearing horror stories of its poor performance and seeing that it's on Game Pass PC, I thought to just play it on PC. Additionally, I felt it important to point out that I've never played a Fallout game before (and no, Fallout Shelter doesn't count in this context). This game is meant to be a sort of spiritual successor to one of the Fallout titles, but I naturally won't be able to speak to that on the account of my lack of experience. Perhaps I'll get around to playing a Fallout game in the future instead of watching videos of gameplay. PLOT: The game is set in a futuristic 24th century, where space travel is possible and humans have settled in distant worlds. The worlds we visit in the game are part of the Halcyon star system, whose planets have been colonized and are controlled by various corporations. People from Earth travel in stasis on ships to Halcyon in order to start a new life and become a part of the colony's workforce. Your player character is one such individual, in stasis on a vessel called the Hope. The unfortunate thing is, the Hope has been adrift in space for 70 years, far longer than the trip should have taken. You were revived by one Dr. Phineas Welles, who enlists your help to save Halcyon. He explains that the colony's people are suffering due to the negligence of the Board (the collective of mega-corporations governing all of Halcyon). He sends you off via escape pod to Terra-2, one of Halcyon's main worlds, to the Emerald Vale, and that is where your journey really begins. From that point, your decisions in dialogue interactions influence the story. The main quest lines have you choose between helping Phineas or siding with the Board, but there are a myriad of other decisions that influence other aspects of the story, such as your interactions with the game's various factions, and specific NPCs. By the end of the game, you get a full rundown of endings for each of the game's factions, notable NPCs, and Halcyon itself, and from what I can tell, there are a ton of ending combinations you can arrive at depending on what you do or not do in the game. The amount of influence your character exerts on the game's events is staggering, and it's one of the reasons I love this game. Overall, I really enjoyed this game's story. Not only was the prospect of being a spacefaring adventurer inherently exciting to me, and not only did I love being in full control of how it played out, but the way the game explored the underlying themes of corporate greed and capitalism ruining regular lives was done with nuance. While it's more or less unequivocally established that the Board is doing more harm than good, and that they couldn't care less about their workforce, a lot of the decisions you can make that go against them aren't simply treated as "you're doing the right thing and there are zero consequences." Regular folk would get mad that you upended their way of life, for example, and there are a few Board-aligned NPCs who, for all their missteps, do mean well and want to do right by their people. Most of the characters in the game are pretty interesting, with even unnamed generic NPCs having a ton of personality. Your actions and dialogue make a difference here, too, and certain story decisions may allow you to see facets of their character you may otherwise not see. The standouts here are the companions that you recruit on your journey. Although the manner in which they're recruited feels unceremonious, their character-specific quest lines and their small talk with you and other party members flesh them out really well. I went out of my way to do every companion quest, and I'd say it was worth it, because doing so made me more invested in them. I also found the nature of the decisions you can make throughout the story to be nuanced as well. Though you ostensibly have two choices when it comes to the main plot (side with the people vs. side with the corporations), there are more than a few story choices that are more in-depth than that. For example, siding with a corporation in one decision may feel like an asshole move in the short term, but it can actually open up a better scenario down the line for the people. In another, you can simply choose between helping one of two warring factions, but depending on what you do or not do, you can actually figure out a way to have them meet in the middle and join forces. In a world that seems to rely too much on dichotomies, I appreciated how the game gives you more than two options in many instances. I got a kick out of the game's humor, which played off of the omnipresent nature of corporations in Halcyon. The commercial jingles were silly and charming, the forced ad reads from most of the NPCs were hilarious, the satirical jabs at harmful company policies were clever, and the amount of completely weird shit some of the NPCs say was amusing. The world-building is pretty solid, with Halcyon's many facets sufficiently fleshed out through dialogue. You have to go out of your way to learn certain things, however, but all that extra reading adds rather interesting layers to particular places, characters, or events. Stuff like the history of Halcyon, the nature of each of the worlds you visit (and the locales within them), and the past actions of certain NPCs are given even more meaning thanks to all these extra bits of lore, and I enjoyed the process of discovering it all. On the subject of the game's locales, they do a great deal when it comes to reinforcing the game's focus on the Board's negligence on its workforce. Most of the towns are completely run down and struggling to stay afloat and meet Board quotas, and the juxtaposition of that squalor next to Byzantium, a Board-controlled city where all its citizens live in excess luxury does more than enough to drive home the disparity between the working class and the elite. PRESENTATION: The game's visuals strike a decent balance between realism and something a bit more cartoony. The various planets look great and boast unique-looking flora and fauna, you have impressive-looking textures and shading, but the aesthetic feels stylized as opposed to another one of those AAA attempts at replicating an uncanny level of realism. In terms of visual design, the game has an interesting mix of styles, like product ads that look like they came out of the '40s, sci-fi elements that have a gritty look to them (as opposed to something like Star Trek, where everything looks sleek and futuristic), and many of the character outfits and armor seem like something out of a post-apocalyptic story. I can't say much of the aesthetics of the areas themselves, however; though individual aspects of some locations were interesting, I don't think any of them stood out as particularly memorable. Although the game's music leans more on the ambient side, the soundtrack is solid, with tracks that feel like they were taken from popular space operas and Westerns. The voice acting is fantastic as well, helping sell the personalities of all the NPCs. I also like the '50s-style commercial jingles for all the products in the game. An interesting thing the game does during dialogue is shifting the game's perspective to a full view of the person you're talking to. Here, you get to see the character in question emote, look around, or do idle animations depending on what you say. It's a cool approach that adds even more personality to the characters, but I found that the animations in these moments can be a bit hit or miss. CHARACTER PROGRESSION: The Outer Worlds is an action RPG where the combat is a first person shooter. You run and you gun like any other shooter, but in addition to that, you have to worry about stats, skills, party members, and items. There's a lot to take in, so I'll split up gameplay into sections. At the start, you're thrown into a character creator. In addition to designing your character's look (the options for which are pretty expansive), this is where you build your character in terms of their stats and skills. Here, you assign or take away points from your main stats (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, etc.), which influence the values you get for your skills. You also get a head start on figuring out your skill build here, which I'll get into later. Once you've done all that, it's off to the races. Stuff like completing quests, discovering points of interest in the world, and killing enemies give you XP, and when you level up, you're able to assign points to skills and even unlock perks. Your skills are the most important numbers you need to keep track of. The skills are split into categories like, melee, ranged, tech, stealth, etc., and each category has individual skills (e.g. melee covers one-handed and two-handed weapons). Each individual skill influences an action you can do in-game; skills that pertain to melee and range weapons naturally increase your damage, but you also have skills like Hack or Lockpick, which allow you to perform said actions if your skill level is high enough. You are free to assign skill points depending on your play style, so if you wanna go in guns blazing, pump it all into combat skills. Personally, I found building on non-combat skills to be more fun, as being able to just sneak, hack, and lockpick my way through the game made it more exciting to me. There are also skills that give you additional dialogue options, which are my favorite sort of skills in any RPG. If your skill level is high enough, you can easily lie, persuade, or intimidate your way out of any situation, and I found a ton of enjoyment in such scenarios. When you reach a certain number of points for a particular skill, you unlock all sorts of passive buffs. For instance, reaching the 20 point threshold for Sneak grants you the ability to use sneak attacks, which does a significant amount of bonus damage. Many of these buffs are quite helpful, but a few are RNG-based, so the question of whether or not it's worth assigning a ton of points to particular stats can have different answers. As you level up, you'll also be able to unlock perks, which are a whole other category of passive buffs you can give yourself. The effects you get vary greatly, from movement speed increases to stat bonuses. For the most part, they're helpful, but apart from a select few perks, none of them seemed to really impact my gameplay all that much. An interesting way to get additional perk points is through Flaws. If you find yourself in unfortunate situations (e.g. getting attacked a lot by a certain enemy, taking specific damage from something), you get the choice to activate a Flaw. Doing so gives you one additional perk point to spend at the cost of stat penalties in certain conditions (there's one that debuffs you if you're facing mechanical enemies, for instance). It's a neat tradeoff mechanic, and I also find the unlock method for them amusing; just take stupid damage like an idiot. COMBAT AND ARSENAL: Like I said, this game is an FPS. If you know how to play one of those, you'll be mostly fine. The Outer Worlds has a mechanic called Tactical Time Dilation which slows down time. It doesn't last too long (once the meter runs out, you're right back in the action), but it gives you enough time to position yourself, aim, and even highlight enemies so you can learn more about them. If your weapon skill is high enough, highlighting enemies in TTD gives you the option to target certain body parts for serious debuffs; for example, you can Maim enemies by shooting at or whacking their limbs. TTD is a valuable mechanic that's worth using all the time, as it adds a bit of strategy to engagements and can make certain fights significantly easier. Weapons are either ranged or melee, with ranged being split to handguns, long guns, and heavy weapons, and melee split into one-handed and two-handed. There are a good variety of weapons for each category that fit different play styles (you have shotguns, LMGs, assault rifles, pistols, all sorts of whacking sticks, etc.), but I found little incentive to really switch up my arsenal of four weapons once I found the ones I was most comfortable with. That isn't to say there is no benefit to doing so; I just rarely, if ever, encountered a situation where I felt like I absolutely had to switch. Aside from weapons, you'll also be equipping armor, which is split into the helmet and the main armor/outfit. They primarily determine damage reduction, but certain armor pieces also give passive stat bonuses, so depending on the situation, there may be cause to switch to armor with a lower rating in exchange for a helpful stat boost. Other than that, this bit is straightforward. Both weapons and armor have a durability counter, so you'll have to keep track of what you have on you lest they reach zero and break. You can acquire weapon and armor parts either by scavenging or breaking down unwanted weapons/armor, which you can then use to repair the weapons/armor with wear and tear. From my experience, I was rarely in a situation where I lacked armor or weapons, as scavenging yields a lot of good shit, so I assume this mechanic only becomes really important on higher difficulties. In addition to repairing, you can also tinker with weapons/armor (raising their damage output/armor rating respectively), as well as install mods on certain weapons/armor. These mods mostly give you stat bonuses and passive buffs, but in the case of weapons, you can completely change the type of damage the weapon deals when you use it. Tinkering is a great way to make sure your gear can handle tougher enemies if you don't feel like switching, but the cost of tinkering increases the more you do it. Speaking of damage types, weapons can have or be modified to output plasma damage, shock damage, and more. These inflict status effects on enemies, and certain damage types do extra damage to specific enemies. While I got by simply using regular bullets, it definitely helps to have weapons that inflict different types of damage. Healing is pretty simple thanks to the Combat Inhaler, which is mapped to a specific button. By default, the inhaler has a healing item called Adreno equipped, but with high enough skill, you can add consumables to the inhaler to augment that healing with other effects. The consumables you find range from food items, to beverages, and even drugs, and they can give you stat bonuses or helpful buffs. I didn't really find myself in too many situations where I felt like it was vital to use these consumables in combat, but some of them are quite helpful with certain skill checks (like using Lockpick or activating special dialogue prompts). There are only a small variety of enemies, and once you figure out their weak points or acquire the most effective weapon, most engagements will be trivial. Coupled with the straightforward weapons and somewhat standard customization/upgrade mechanics, I feel like the game has decent but not remarkable combat. The most I can say is that TTD is fun, but that's about it. EXPLORATION: Halcyon has you explore a small assortment of areas, from planets, to moons, to asteroids, and even a large ship. Though styled like an open world game, the game's various areas aren't too large, so exploring everything won't take that long. Some of the areas do suffer from the problem of too much empty space, but for the most part, all the points of interest are relatively close to each other. Throughout your journey, you'll visit towns, encounter vending machines (from which you can purchase items), find workbenches (this is where you tinker, add mods, and repair weapons/armor), take side quests from NPCs, loot the shit out of every item you see, and run into enemies. You can go out of your way to look at everything, but once you've found all the important shit and talked to all the named NPCs, there isn't much else to find. The game keeps track of your reputation with certain factions. If you help out people of a specific faction in quests, they think more positively of you, which leads to vendor discounts (not the most impactful benefit, but it's something). If you do anything to piss them off (which includes, but is not limited to: stealing, trespassing, and murdering), your reputation decreases. Do this enough, and you'll be marked "kill on sight", which means setting foot on the faction's turf means you'll be met with lethal force. Though I like seeing tangible gameplay consequences for your decisions, and I do see the fun in going scorched earth and pissing everyone off, it just makes the game harder to explore, plus you can get locked out of certain quests. On the subject of quests, there are a ton of side quests, ranging from random NPC quests, faction-specific quests, and quests focused on your party members. I found that pretty much all of these quests were worth doing, as they either added a brand new layer to the world of Halcyon, led to interesting character interactions or discoveries, or even unlocked new story options. The best part is that a lot of these quests tend to be on the way to the main quest, so I ended up clearing everything in my playthrough. Early in the game, you acquire a spaceship, which serves as your fast travel mechanic between worlds. There are also fast travel points on each individual world, but they require you to find said points first before you can use them. Perhaps the least enjoyable mechanic in my view is the weight mechanic for all the items. All the loot you pick up has an assigned weight value, and if the sum total exceeds your character's weight limit, your move speed takes a significant penalty and you can't fast travel. While I don't usually mind games that challenge you with limited inventory, I think this is the least fun way you could go about it. It basically punishes you for picking up all the shit you see (which is hard to do because there are a ton of items lying around and enemies drop all sorts of things) by making you slower. At least make the penalty something more dire instead of something that's just a chore. COMPANIONS: Throughout the game, you'll be able to recruit six companions. A maximum of two can join you at any given time. The companions have their own weapon and armor slots, as well as their own perks, all of which you can manage yourself. Primarily, each companion gives you stat bonuses, allowing you to get past skill checks you otherwise couldn't on your own. I found myself switching up the party to get the skill points I wanted for specific areas. You can change the AI's behavior in combat, allowing the companions to be more aggressive or passive depending on what you need. You can also issue commands on the fly, like telling them to move to a specific spot or to target a single enemy. Each companion also has a special ability that does something unique in combat, but I rarely ever used these. VERDICT: The Outer Worlds really impressed me with its player-driven story and its freedom of choice, and I had a blast carving my own path in Halcyon. Though some aspects of the gameplay didn't really do anything for me or simply felt average, I enjoyed using subterfuge to get through the game, using TTD to eviscerate enemies, and exploring as much of the story and the characters as I could with side quests. Overall, this is up there as one of my favorite adventure games. If you're looking to be a space adventurer yourself, like the idea of an RPG-FPS hybrid, and/or are intrigued by how much you can influence this game's story, I think The Outer Worlds is well worth checking out. The only thing I will say is that it's pretty short for an RPG (I did all the side quests and clocked in at only around 20-something hours), so if you're one of those people who's particular about the price-to-time ratio, you might want to wait for a sale (this game is still a full $60 last I checked). Check out The Outer Worlds on Steam: The Outer Worlds on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
June 2024
Derryck
|