The Outer Worlds: Review After 100%

what's going on everybody mortem here this time bringing you a review after 100 of the outer worlds this is a first person rpg set in a sci-fi universe and it is an obsidian original ip couple things right off the bat gonna be some spoilers throughout this video not so much on the story or anything most of it's minor i'm gonna talk about the dlc towards the very end of the video and i will call out a separate spoiler for that because one of those dlc's very recently to the time of this video came out throughout the video there might be some minor spoilers in general so i'm just trying to warn people as best i can there second of all i like to review games after i 100 them basically because i feel it lends some credence to what i do but also simply because it sets me apart from other reviewers on youtube and if you want some proof of that feel free to go to my youtube channel there's a link to my steam profile you're more than welcome to check that out now before we fully jump into this review here i want to talk about some of the marketing that took place for this game because i think it actually hurt the game in some ways so a lot of this marketing that happened when this game was announced was like from the developers of fallout or people who have worked on fallout that kind of thing and i think that did a disservice to this game simply because fallout at this point is a very well established aaa franchise obsidian at the time this was made was a double a indie studio they've since been acquired by microsoft of course and let's be real all future titles will very likely be aaa but this particular game was not triple a this was a double a venture and they said that in several interviews they talked about how they had a very focused scope so one thing that i just really didn't like was that it was marketed in a way that would compare it to fallout and i say that hurt the game simply because it came out it was a double-a experience and everyone was talking about how it was compared to fallout and again that's how it was marketed so i can't fault those people for making that leap honestly i think the best thing you can do for this game is simply throw the notions of what you have on fallout and this being similar to that just throw it out the window yes there are some comparisons here and there but largely they're very different games and i wish they hadn't done the marketing like that but nonetheless this is a game that i still have quite a bit to say on that was just some stuff i wanted to talk about right at the beginning but now let's actually dive into this game so when you fire up the game you're gonna be met with difficulty now this is story normal hard and supernova for the most part i would recommend people play on hard especially if you've played a lot of rpgs maybe play on normal for the first playthrough kind of get your bearings and then i would recommend playing on hard after that because it's not that difficult and then there is supernova difficulty this is essentially like a pseudo survival mode it adds a lot of restrictions like only being able to fast travel to your ship having to eat and drink and sleep and everything but you can only sleep on your ship you can only rest and cure broken bones and things like that injury-wise on your ship just a lot of that kind of restrictions and simply because that doesn't really add any difficulty to the game unless you just really enjoy that kind of survival-esque mechanic it's not a difficulty i would recommend playing on most of the time now after that we see kind of an intro to the game which is us being woken up from some sort of cryogenic stasis by a clearly not the sanest guy in the world bit of a mad scientist type so this is where i want to take a moment to talk about the story not going to go into it too majorly outside of like the basic setup to actually set up the story of the game and kind of what where we are and what we're doing this mad scientist is waking us up from cryostasis on a ship called the hope the hope and another ship called the groundbreaker traveled to the halcyon colony to set up a colony here in a separate solar system of sorts now all these people should be in contact with earth and everything however as you soon learn from the mad scientist the people from the hope were never woken up for reasons that the story gets into when you get woken up and you come to you find yourself in quite literally an alien world however the colony is decently established now we'll get into kind of the world building of that situation here in just a little bit but the main thing i want to mention here is that i think the story is okay i liked it it's decent enough it's cohesive it makes sense and i will say that most of the choices your character gets to make are going to be centered around the main story we'll talk about the side content further on down the line but i wanted to mention this right off the bat here most of the major decisions your character gets to make are with the main story the dlc did add a few things where you could actually make some decisions however for the most part the vanilla game especially this is where most of your decisions were and truth be told even still there wasn't a ton of them but with all that kind of out of the way let's talk about our character setup this is an rpg so we're focusing primarily on attributes and skills each of our attributes here can be brought down one point to below average or buffed up several points and you get bonuses and detriments depending on what the stat is of course for instance strength gives us our carry weight as well as some melee damage and that increases as you put points into it now initially you'll have six points to put into these skills with you having to put at least three points into an attribute to take it to its max level and thus give you the max bonus so a couple of things here one the affected skills are basically pointless the main thing you want to pay attention to here is the bonus you're getting from raising these skills because it's essentially impossible to make a wrong decision here because of the way the skill system works which we're going to get into next the only way you could really mess this up is if you were deliberately trying to like if you put all of your points into charm which gives you bonuses to your companion's abilities and stuff and then chose to be a lone wolf which is another type of build you can do and not even recruit the companions so like again intentionally trying to screw that up is basically the only way to do it most of these bonuses here are nice and they can give you a substantial bonus if you are trying to spec into something but again you'd be hard pressed to make a wrong decision here now when we have skills they are broken down into types of skills and then the actual branches including the skills so we have melee for instance which gives us one-handed melee or two-handed melee and those are separate skills now for the first 50 points in our skills we put points into the main branch which is melee so we'll put points into melee until those skills reach level 50 and we get 10 points per level and once they reach 50 then we are forced to specialize between one-handed and two-handed melee in that particular example now right here at the beginning of the game we get two points and now these points are actually a 10-point boost to two of the actual like branches of skills so you would add maybe a point to stealth or in a point to dialogue for instance and that would give 10 to all of those skills which is interesting but the problem is this is a relatively shorter game now the dlc tried to address this and frankly it didn't do it very well so this last rank you can see on the right hand of the screen here is the 150 rank skill virtuoso ability that is new with the dlc they originally capped out at 100 and because you could put points all the way up to 50 before you had to specialize you could essentially become a jack of all trades and in the main vanilla game when it first came out that was basically the most effective thing to do was to not really specialize per se and much of anything besides maybe a weapon but with that in mind as we put points into each skill here you can see that it'll give us a percentage boost based on what the skill is simply by putting points into it and then at 20 40 60 80 100 and 150 we unlock a relevant extra effect which can be extra weapon reach extra time in the tactical time dilation which i'll get into here in a little bit unlock power attacks things like that the lock pick will actually give you an ability that will let you see what's inside a container to see whether it's worth even bothering to lock picket i said the dlc addressed the jack of all trades thing but it didn't do it well so what do i mean basically the 150 virtuoso bonus sucks so you have to put so many points into this skill to unlock that and most of them quite frankly aren't worth the investment there's a couple of them that you kind of have to max out for achievements but that's done through a real quick character retrain which you can do basically whenever so even that's not much of a detriment my main problem with these virtuoso milestones so to speak is just that they're pointless like why is this here and the answer is obvious they were trying to address some criticism i just i don't think that was done well it feels like a band-aid on a gaping wound in my opinion and because of that even still with the dlc added most the time it's better to just kind of go very broad with your skill selection because very few things in the game actually require a really high skill check there are some stuff in game and there's stuff in the dlc of course which added the extra skill ranks so obviously they put some stuff in there but the main game doesn't have that many but alright that's enough about skills the next part of character creation is actually aptitude this is pointless all this does is give you either a three percent damage type reduction or a plus one bonus to a particular skill but as i just mentioned you get 10 skill points to spend per level plus you get to give them to a bunch of skills at once until they hit 50. so giving me a plus one bonus to something is dumb so outside of the novelty of selecting a background which is essentially what an aptitude actually is it's pointless this didn't need to be here or at least they should have given it more substantial bonuses from there we move on to appearance you're only going to see your appearance in your character menus they will not come up in any other part of the game you don't really see yourself in cut scenes anything like that the only time you really see yourself is literally in your inventory screen so it was nice of them to add it always makes you feel a little more connected to your character in general appearance you're not really going to see it so just something to keep in mind there we've made our character we get thought out from the hope and we get sent to the emerald veil immediately and that is where the actual game kicks off and we're able to control our character so this is a good time to talk about the world building as we're going through and we first land on the planet right after this it gives us a small little tutorial section which is pretty quick and then it kind of lets you loose on the game the tutorial itself is pretty solid i didn't really have any complaints it teaches you the basics and that's all you really need for this game anyway but the one thing i do want to mention about the tutorial is it brings up tactical time dilation which i mentioned passingly earlier the tactical time dilation is the ability to slow down time to give yourself a chance to plan and then it'll slowly slowly slowly drain until you start moving and taking actions and then it'll start draining very quickly now i like this actually so this is an rpg mixed with sort of an action game because of that i think this actually works really well for the people who aren't like you know quick reflexes action guy it gives you a chance to actually plan out what you're doing it's very good at lining up head shots for a sniper things like that there's a ton of bonuses you can put into specking into tactical time dilation that make it incredible and it is a very strong way to play the game so i just kind of wanted to give a brief explanation of that first things first with the world building let's talk atmosphere so the halcyon colony is primarily controlled by corporations everyone is essentially an employee of a corporation being an employee for a corporation is all-encompassing and like it's your entire life all you do is essentially work for this company in some capacity or some way everyone is referred to as employees it's kind of this like dark humor vibe to it it's like this weird mix between like 1950s style ads but also the worst human rights violations you've ever seen so it's it's a very unique atmosphere that they managed to put together here and that's that's pretty classic obsidian i don't think i've played a game yet of theirs that the world building wasn't on point now when it comes to actually exploring this world we're going to be hopping between planets ships orbital stations essentially this is like a hub system so it's kind of semi-open world in that way there are some larger areas that you can absolutely go out of your way to explore the game definitely wants you to do that but keep in mind it is more of a hub system rather than a full-blown open world so you're going to be getting a ship pretty early on in the game and then you'll be able to fly from place to place which are essentially your hubs a lot of games do this so i don't think i need to explain it too much but i will say in order to go to new places you need nav keys for your ship to navigate there part of unlocking new hubs and progressing the story usually involves somehow getting your hands on the nav keys to go to the next place which is essentially the main story for the most part and then there is the combat and the flaw system the combat itself is mostly okay you know it's a first person shooter type there's also some melee weapons there's enough build variety there to keep you kind of interested there's enough weapon types to keep you kind of interested there after having played through the game many times i actually still don't really have a problem with that particular aspect my only real complaint is that the combat feels floaty there's not a lot of impact to it and it's an rpg so i kind of give it a pass in that regard but the combat doesn't feel very substantial in a lot of ways it's hard for me to explain that specifically so sorry if that doesn't do much for you i do want to mention one thing though because it drives me crazy you don't get to throw grenades or anything like that in this game there is no throwable however one of the weapons you can pick up is a grenade launcher how are you going to put a grenade launcher as a weapon but not let me find and throw grenades what is that the other system i want to talk about in this part of the video is the flaw system mostly this comes up during combat not always by any means but i feel like that's the most natural place to put this system as you level up every other level i believe it is you get perk points to put into perks of course that then help you specialize your character this is where a lot of your character power comes from is these perks now because it's every other level there's a set amount of them the exception to that is through the flaw system as you explore and interact with the world you you can come into contact with certain things that will trigger the possibility of taking a flaw for instance say you get hit by robots a lot the game might notice that and be like hey you get hit by robots a lot would you be willing to take more damage from robots permanently but also get a perk point in a trade-off for that this is a system that sounds really cool in theory but the problem is there just isn't enough of them and it winds up not being as fun as it sounds for instance one that i almost always take is as a sneak character if you're in places you shouldn't be sneaking around you can potentially get the paranoid flaw which is that you know while you're sneaking around you take a bunch of negatives but here's the thing if i'm playing a character that's specked into sneaking around the negatives for that which are usually like combat stuff aren't going to affect me because i'm sneaking so all that is is essentially a free perk point and it winds up being a lot of stuff like that plus just a lot of the negatives in general aren't strong enough to justify a perk point taking extra damage from enemies i can now one shot because i have extra perks isn't really much of a trade-off i guess is what i'm trying to say i love the concept the execution needs work i guess is probably the best way to sum up the flaw system now out in the world all of your skills are pretty well represented so you're going to be meeting and talking to a ton of people in each place because this is a full-blown colony there's plenty of people around despite it being just a space colony out there most of them work for corporations of course like i mentioned so they're all kind of doing their thing and when it comes to talking to people i wanted to mention this specifically because this is probably the one time it's worth mentioning the attributes more than normal because depending on your attributes it can unlock conversation options with them for instance if your perception is so high it can unlock options if your intelligence is high or low that can unlock different options for you so just stuff like that when you're out there talking to people i do want to talk about the side quests for this quite a bit here the side quests are to sum it up not great all the choices you get like i mentioned are in the main quest primarily that means for the side quests majority of them are basically simple tasks that you go do you go get something you bring it back that kind of thing it lets you choose how you approach that mission often there's very much so like you know do you sneak in do you go in guns blazing is there a way around this path if you explore enough that kind of stuff that definitely exists but that quest is basically going to resolve the same way or you're going to kill someone that basically fails the quest that's essentially the only thing you can do with most of the side quests that does change a little bit with the dlc they did again try to address those criticisms but it doesn't change the fact that in the vanilla game that's very much so the case the main quest again does have some pretty cool options to choose from but there's only a handful and because of that and the fact that this is a double a game which is inherently a little shorter uh first time i played it it took me like maybe 20 30 hours to run through the entire thing that's basically all the side quests and everything i can see how those boring dull side quests would put somebody off and the story themself of the side quest can be interesting there are some really like genuinely conceptually interesting side quests simply from like the what they're telling me about the universe right some of them definitely add to the world building the problem is is that the actual structure of the quest is the same thing it's just essentially a fetch quest and i think that's just where the game can feel really shallow because of how they structured the side content now i want to talk about companions before we move on to the dlc so none of them are romanceable this was a double-edged game today straight up said they didn't have the budget to do that fair enough i suppose personally i don't really care about romance in games i know that's a big deal if i do videos about romance stuff it always does well because people are just interested in that kind of thing but i could not personally care less so it did not bother me at all that none of these people were romanceable most of them are just okay i mean none of them really stick out to be honest with you parvati probably has the individually best written and told story her character is very well written her voice actor did an amazing job and honestly i think parvati is the standout for sure which is good because she's the first one you meet now there are others there is ellie who's like a doctor turned smuggler type she is probably my second favorite just because she's funny if nothing else and then you have felix which is like a dumb jock guy so felix is like really into this sport they've made up for this universe called toss ball best i can tell it's kind of like lacrosse but he's definitely that type and because of that he doesn't have a lot to say his story is okay again then there is vicar max vicar max is a vicar he is like part of the religious church that has formed in the colony where they talk about the law all the time he himself is pretty funny he has some moments in his quest that like genuinely made me laugh the problem is is that they don't even try to flesh this out enough and i feel like they relied on those gags too much and it just gets weird and ridiculous pretty quick then there is nayoka she actually had probably a decently meaningful story you avenge some of her old friends that was shown off in the demos that they gave for the game and then the last companion is actually a robot you can find the pieces for and put back together it doesn't have much to say it's just kind of a robot so there's that it's quest is putting it together and with that let's talk about the dlc so peril of gorgon was pretty cool i ironically seem to have the exact opposite opinion of most of the dlc that everyone else seems to have and that parallel of gorgon was meh murder on eredanos was amazing i'm the exact opposite of that i thought parallel on gorgon was really good and the murder one that just came out was okay so parallelon gorgon tells a story that explains the marauders so as you're kind of out and about exploring the world and everything you'd be hard-pressed to miss the marauders they're everywhere now throughout the main vanilla game you're told that these people basically went off on their own because they didn't want to be part of the whole space corporation thing and most of them are insane at this point presumably from living in the wild well parallel on gorgon really dives into why that is and gives an actual really cool reason for it that makes perfect sense in this dark humor world that quest line can end like four different ways and honestly i just had a lot of fun with it now the murder on eredano's one that just came out it's okay i'm gonna get into some spoilers for this and because it just came out i really do want to mention that if you haven't played this particular dlc now is probably the time to cut away from the video skip maybe more towards the end murder on eredanos happens when you watch an etherwave transmission which is basically tv of halcyon helen dying who is like the main star of that show per se and then it's announced that she was murdered on eredanos and you get called in to investigate because you're piloting the ship that actually belonged to a freelancer known as alex hawthorne now because you have his ship they think that's you and they hire you to investigate this first things first they give you this little like clue finder thing like right as you come up to the scene of the crime so to speak it's essentially a scope that you look through and then as you're looking through it it'll point out clues and stuff for you it feels pointless you can only use it on eredanos it's only for this little investigation most of the clues that it sees are essentially just ways of telling you stuff without telling you stuff to me it felt like an unnecessary gimmick i feel like they could have easily written around that thing and it felt like they added it just because they wanted to say they added something new now moreover you have to investigate all the possible suspects here this investigation is nonsense because as you investigate everyone if you're paying attention you quickly realize none of these people could have possibly killed her which means the only logical conclusion is that one of the people hired you to investigate probably killed her sure enough that turns out to be exactly the case and that's fine it's a video game like the twist there didn't need to be like amazing or anything but ultimately this leads to one of like two endings despite their supposedly being an investigation i guess that just annoyed me because everyone's talking about how awesome this dlc is but like you know parallel and gorgon had like four different endings several of which i had to like go out of my way to find and while i enjoyed the atmosphere and everything of eredonos they added a lot of like really cool stuff especially the parasite thing as some of you may have seen aerodonos introduces these parasites that are like symbiotes with people if they get into your bloodstream they can just like pop out of your body and potentially drive you insane so that's like a whole thing that was really cool it was it was hard to see that and not be like wow that's something else but with that out of the way i still think the dlc was pretty good i'm not mad about it i actually had an expansion pass so i got it without having to pay again for it so to speak anyway because you know i paid for the expansion when the game first came out overall the dlc was pretty good i definitely personally preferred parallel on gorgon but obviously that's more of a personal opinion anyway i want to talk negatives before we wrap this up so my criticisms of this game are simply that it is very short for a game that's trying to charge you full price the outer worlds has always been sixty dollars it's on sale right now for half off because the dlc launched last week but it's still 60 bucks and this is a double-a experience i think they could have charged 50 and had a huge pr win over it so i don't know i don't know that that's a knock against the game per se it just annoys me that they're charging 60 for what is relatively a short game now i think the game and both of its dlcs are worth 60 dollars but just the base game i don't think they should be charging 60 bucks for that quite frankly and then of course again as i mentioned wasn't wild about most the side quest i liked what they added to the world building but the quests themselves were pretty eh and then as i mentioned because you can be this jack of all trades character and there's only a few different decisions and most of them mostly wind things up in the same place anyway because of those things there's not really much replay value in a game that is trying to sell you on builds and decisions they kind of weirdly shot themselves in the foot in that regard and then my last big criticism is that most of these characters are forgettable and i don't necessarily mean that in a mean way none of them overstay their welcome it's just that the game is relatively short and a lot of these characters don't get fleshed out so what you're actually meeting is like two seconds worth of a personality which is coded in that 1950s dark humor corporation stuff i mentioned earlier and it's hard to get invested in some of these characters because of that outside of your companions again most of these characters are forgettable there's a few i remember mostly from the dlc's but a lot of the other characters throughout the game are just forgettable that said a full opinion i would recommend you buy this game on sale honestly like i mentioned i'm not wild about its price tag of 60 even today i think if 60 included both of the dlcs that would be a pretty good deal however as it stands again buy this on sale it's a fun game don't go into it expecting this aaa fallout experience and you'll have a good time but just remember it's a double leg game so hedge your expectations a little bit and i think you'll have a much better time with that out of the way guys truly thank you so much for watching this video is already shaping up to be fairly long as far as some of these reviews go so especially if you listened all the way to the end here truly just thank you for watching may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 124,469

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, The Outer Worlds, Peril On Gorgon, Murder On Eridanos, DLC, New, Obsidian, Microsoft, Review

Id: bsMQKyuemm8

Length: 26min 35sec (1595 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021