The Outer Worlds

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I first took notice of The Outer Worlds when the first trailer was released last December. This new first-person sandbox RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment piqued my interest with a trailer that looked energetic and fun in a way that Obsidian games had not yet been. My familiarity with Obsidian came from Fallout: New Vegas, and the infusion of frenetic tension with their proven aptitude for scope and storytelling looked promising.

Fast forward to when the game released and I queued up a video to see what it was like. I was taken in first and foremost by the character creation mechanic, but soon after by the story and narrative structure that seemed familiar yet flavorful. It immediately felt like I knew the recipe so well that I was compelled to take my turn in the kitchen and I bought the game without much preamble.

Having now spent my time with the game, I've found that it is a mashup of successful elements from other games. In fact, as I broke the game down into bite-sized pieces, I've found allegories to help me describe each of them.

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Gameplay: While a class war rages on in Fallout 76 following the release of premium subscriptions, let's ignore that dumpster fire to talk about The Outer Worlds. Fallout is the dominant flavor in The Outer Worlds. The sequences of questing, combat, and looting are nearly identical to any Bethesda RPG. As a result, the game feels like the Fallout sequel that 76 wasn't. When many gamers look at The Outer Worlds, Fallout is what they see.

The comparison between Fallout and The Outer Worlds is easy: visually and narratively the games have some similarities, but in terms of gameplay The Outer Worlds follows Fallout step-for-step. Questing takes place in story hubs, typically settlements or groups of NPCs, and that is where the narrative is driven forward. Combat invites a variety of strategies and the game's "sandbox" style allows the player to choose how to engage enemies. Looting directly or indirectly improves the player's combat ability and draws the player out into the "sandbox" before looping them back through a story hub. This is the basic flow of any Bethesda RPG, and it's the same in The Outer Worlds except that where Bethesda RPGs provide huge and vibrant worlds to explore to the point that you can forget your quests altogether, Obsidian designed The Outer Worlds without that scope. Clear, direct paths dominate your map and moving away from them slows your progress with simple-minded enemies who offer little to no reward. As you clear these enemies for the hell of it, suddenly you find your game world feeling empty.

As a result, the player is disappointed to find themselves corralled and railroaded from point-to-point. The quest selection is too few and the story hubs feel like they have more closed doors than open ones. Ultimately, when the game is done you don't feel like you've had the Bethesda RPG experience--you feel like the game is far smaller than you had been led to believe. From high hopes at the beginning, The Outer Worlds disappoints as the story and narrative turn linear more in the style of Mass Effect. As you clear your quest log, you find that apart from a smattering of side quests offering pointless rewards, a quest for each companion, and the main story quest, there isn't really all that much to do. The Outer Worlds is less of a "sandbox" and more of a scavenger hunt--every location serves a purpose and, once that's done, you never need to go back.

To sum it up, The Outer Worlds starts by opening up and showing you such a wide array of possibilities for play style, for locations, for enemies, and so on that you get drawn in. Before long, however, you find that the game has run out of new things to show you. Your Assault Rifle gets replaced by an "Assault Rifle II", you don't get any new visuals or interactions. Not at all unlike the marketing strategies of corporations which the game satires, The Outer Worlds sells you on an incomplete experience ripe for monetization by DLC expansions in the future.

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Visual Effects/Art Style: The visual elements of The Outer Worlds are stylized in a way that's reminiscent of Borderlands. There is further congruence in the role that corporations play in the game world. Lootable items are highlighted in a blue outline that leads the player to ignore other elements of the game world and makes it hard to perceive the details of the things you are looting. When you make a point of looking at the scenery, it seems like there was more attention to details than attention to the overall appearance. Individually, visual components are unique and interesting, but altogether they don't stand out from one another and they don't particularly feel like they fit into their settings. The environments feel like they were built-to-suit a linear and singular purpose leaving few paths for traversing and little reward for exploring. While the grass may look good to a pixel, it loses any appeal when it's the same textures over and over. The world doesn't feel lived-in, it feels manufactured and not in the satire-of-a-corporate-world kind of way. The artists did their job, sure, but the game ends up looking like it was built to a deadline and a budget.

Sound Effects/Music: I'm not sure if the soundtrack for The Outer Worlds was made before or after the rest of the game, but it doesn't connect to the experience. It offers a sense of wonder, space, and intrigue that the game itself utterly lacks. The soundtrack is good, but not fitting for this game. Can you imagine if the main menu theme was the introduction to an episode of Rick and Morty? Yeah, it's like that.

The voice acting is a bright spot that brings the various characters to life in a way the game does not. Milquetoast archetypes are livened by the acting and this makes for one of the best parts of the game. For the characters you spend time with, this feels right. For characters who only pop up a few times along the way, it's a bit jarring. On the one hand, you want to give time and attention to this part of the game and on the other hand you're hoping to find more narrative than most of these conversations ultimately offer you. This leaves you torn between slowing your progress and hunting for the experience you were promised. I'll spoil that search for you: take your time with the characters.

Story and Narrative: I've already mentioned the broad aspects of the story and narrative in the gameplay section, so I want to keep this short. The Outer Worlds lends itself to comparisons with Rick & Morty, Firefly, and Mass Effect. There's a crazy scientist on the run, a Robin Hood-esque captain trying to do a bit of good in a corporate galaxy, and a team of needy companions asking for someone to fix their dysfunctions. The story opens up after a few hours and the player is encouraged to find and complete quests at their own discretion, but this is only one layer deep. Completing quests means that the area they sent you to is now empty. The characters you helped lose interest in you, and as you complete hubs, you find that you have no reason to go back. The planets and towns aren't destinations and they aren't places you go to explore the game--and, for that matter, neither are the parts outside of the story hubs. The game is at its most memorable when it is also at its most linear. The "sandbox" in The Outer Worlds is the worst part of the experience and very likely one of the biggest reasons you would buy a Fallout-esque game by Obsidian Software. The linear sections seem to have been given more time and attention in development, but they don't last. It's like the game they wanted to make was too small, so they stuffed it with flavorless sandbox elements.

The Outer Worlds doesn't offer satisfaction like Skyrim does. Look at how a challenging quest made a moment for this Redditor:

Oh my god, I finally did it. After all this time. from r/skyrim

The Outer Worlds doesn't invite you to live in the world. When you go for a sandbox game, you want to act and think like you are really there like Fallout 4 did for this Redditor:

After spending countless hours perfecting a single settlement in FO4, I can't help but take offense when my settlers complain about "hard times" or how hungry they are. They live in a fucking resort compared to the rest of the Wasteland. from r/Fallout

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Entertainment Value:  With all of the remakes and remasters around today, The Outer Worlds doesn't suffer for being familiar. Mechanics and playstyles are easy to understand making the game easy to pick up and play. From the start, you'll feel like you're in control and although the game does expect you to figure out a lot of things by the time you gain your first level, you are helped by these things being similar to things other games you've played. This leaves The Outer Worlds difficult for new gamers and without a hook in the gameplay to keep old gamers.

The Outer Worlds starts well and finishes poor. Early on, the story and the world and the rapidly expanding options are enough to keep you excited to play. As the game wears on, the familiar and the repetitive aspects lose their luster. You are no longer finding new and interesting places to explore, you're just traversing as little as possible between fast travel points and skipping through dialog as you hunt for something to enjoy.

When I finished the game, I had no desire to keep playing. I wasn't interested in going back to try the other choices I could have made along the way. I felt like I had gotten the best experience the game had to offer for me. After a week of this, I did go back to try again to test those feelings. There is no new game plus, so from a new start I found myself rushing through the main story. I wasn't stopping to enjoy any part of the game. I now knew where to find everything, I knew that if there was a dialog option related to a skill I would choose it without reading, I knew that if I ran just far enough out of combat the whole area would reset sans whichever few enemies I had picked off the first time... In other words, I had solved the challenges. In a few minutes and on a higher difficulty, I had made more progress than I made in two hours on my first playthrough. The only thing to do was to rush along to major plot points, change the outcome, and then rush onto the next so that I could see two different sentences about my actions by the games' end.

In short, the game is entertaining once. You should wait to play this game. If they build the world up with DLC, that's a sign that you should wait longer. There is value in The Outer Worlds, there are brilliant moments and fun to be had, but it's nowhere close to worth it's price. Go play anything else and don't buy in until this game has more to offer.

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Conclusion: The Outer Worlds feels familiar, but lacks it's own identity. The Outer Worlds fails to make a strong impression on the future of gaming, instead choosing to live in the past. There's nothing in the game that's on the cutting edge of game design or technology, and that makes it the sort of game you can put on your wishlist for awhile and wait for a deal. Don't hurry to play this game, find it in your own time or not at all--at this point it doesn't matter. If more is added to this game in the future, then it only moves itself closer to being worth your time rather than adding value to a complete product.

Civilization: Beyond Earth

Civilization: Beyond Earth

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Civilization: Beyond Earth is the newest installment in the growing Sid Meier's Civilization franchise. This new game changes from the historical fiction inspired gameplay of its predecessors to a futuristic, science-fiction inspired game. As a franchise well-beloved in spite of consistent reiteration, this was a risky switch of genre for Firaxis Games and, while I appreciate the developers trying something new, Civilization: Beyond Earth ultimately leaves something to be desired.

My own experience with the Civilization franchise began many years ago with Civilization III. While not the first in the series of games, the first five iterations all kept to a single premise--reimagining world history. It was this aspect which drew me to take my first turn far more than the turn-based strategy style or the thrill of planning to crush my foes over LAN. I spent the most time with Civilization IV and still some 150 hours with Civilization V, which I liked less in general for its changes to the gameplay and specifically for the way diplomacy worked. My quibbles over Civilization V aside, Civilization: Beyond Earth has done something that no other Civ game has ever done--moved from history and to prophecy.

This past weekend, Civilization:Beyond Earth was available to Steam users for a "free weekend". Previously, I had played the demo of the game also available through the service, but had not felt enticed to purchase the game. Now, having completed an "epic" length game, I'm satisfied with that decision and would like to share my thoughts on why.

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Gameplay:
The very first thing that struck me as I started up Beyond Earth (after getting past some curiously long loading times) was how similar it seemed to be to Civ5. In terms of appearance, user interface, and options much of the game felt familiar.

As I took to exploring the map I found that there were far more impediments than before. Mountain ranges stretched further and canyons scarred long stretches of terrain which I could never cross. Beyond simply limiting movement, these impediments also served to diminish the effectiveness of ranged units. I see this change as a positive one on the aggregate. It asks the player to balance his military units differently, invites new strategies to approaching points of interest, and most of all gives the map a bit of character.

Choosing how to advance my civilization meant choosing between three "affinities", calculating how I wanted to mete out my civilizations "virtues", and developing technology along new, more complex lines. Affinities decide what ideologies your civilization takes on as it advances deeper into the future. The choice between harmony, purity, and supremacy on a new planet is a matter of philosophy, but none restrict your playstyle. For example, in my playthrough I chose to pursue harmony in order to reach transcendence and commune with the intelligence of our new planet, yet in order to do so I killed most of the indigenous life and repelled the miasmic gas covering much of its surface.

Virtues can be likened to Social Policies from Civ5 with the only new mechanic being bonuses for pursuing a single branch or a single level (i.e. taking the starting virtues in each branch). In my game, I made every effort to expand my civ while making its health (like "happiness" in Civ5) my priority. The addition of new cities far outweighed the effect that buildings and virtues could have in increasing my overall health and I was left struggling to get a positive score for most of the game. While it was frustrating to experience, this left me feeling like the designers had paid some mind to balancing the new game against landgrabbing and in favor of civ development.

The technology trees were refreshing, however, as there was no longer a single path to a given tech but rather a web of paths. There is a steep downside, however, because most of the new technologies would have fallen under the category of "future tech" in previous iterations, the tech web becomes a mire of neologisms that isn't intriguing when considered from the historian's perspective. While this isn't purely a bad thing, it diminishes a part of the game which I, for one, deeply enjoyed. All in all, the depth provided by choices of affinity, virtue, and tech leaves the player with many ways of experiencing a single style of play; whether you like to play a diplomat, a warmonger, or a cultural phenom, you can do so in a variety of ways.

While the new virtue system led me to believe that city management would be emphasized, in actual fact it didn't seem all that important. Rather, the biggest new mechanic was the management of trade routes to and from individual cities. It was no longer a matter of a road connecting two civs, but instead of a worker-type unit carrying resources between individual cities both domestic and foreign. Due in part to my inexperience with the new game, building city improvements was largely a "build it and see" experience. I knew that I wanted buildings which increased my civ's health, but the difference between building an aqueduct and a cytonursery is a matter of fact versus fiction. This was one of many instances where the lack of concrete imagery and history diminished the experience I have come to enjoy and expect from a Civ game.

Overall, the gameplay in the new Civilization leaves me wanting something more. Turn processing takes too long, especially later in the game, and the game itself hasn't done much to invite new playstyles or refresh old ones. While things look a bit different at the end I'm left feeling like I haven't played a new game. All in all the changes and improvements don't amount to much more than I could have seen coming from  robust DLC or an expansion.

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Visual Effects/Art Style:
Even more than Civilization: Beyond Earth's gameplay reminded me of Civ5, the graphics felt exactly the same. I'm sure that side-by-side I could see some improvements, but there was nothing new in this game that made an impression graphically. With an entirely new planet to play with, that's a big disappointment. It's not that things aren't different, it's that they're the same. New units and new buildings have different skins, but operate and behave the same way. Combat looks a little smoother, but not in any ways that stand out. The maps themselves look and feel more dense than before, but the entire palette relies too heavily on green and blue leaving too little contrast and vibrancy for an exciting, alien world. This is even more true if the player chooses to follow the "harmony" affinity as I did, which makes units and some buildings take on this same overused color palette.

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Sound Effects/Music:
With the singular exception of the occasional audio clipping during loads, the soundtrack in Civilization: Beyond Earth is terrific. As I played, the music brought me to reminisce on Mass Effect, Halo, and even Jurassic Park. It created a wonderful ambience such that at times I preferred to listen rather than play the game.

Yet that's not the whole story. While the soundtrack is great, it often felt disconnected from what was going on in game. It was immutable whether I expanded, developed, or waged war. In times of peaceful trade and bloody warfare it didn't meld itself into the background of the experience and instead just hummed along over the top of everything. So, while I would absolutely recommend listening to the soundtrack on its own, there is no greater level of appreciation to be had from taking it in alongside the game.

The soundtrack is quite possibly the best part of the new game.

Story and Narrative:
In a game traditionally defined by the player's choices, story and narrative can vary wildly or not at all from game to game. In my games I often find myself considered a "warmonger" by the other civilizations by the time the game is ended, and I've come to embrace that. It's the way I choose to play the game and in Civilization: Beyond Earth I am given a variety of ways I can go about playing in that way. The variety of possibilities in the game is something to be applauded. It's not as simple as "this player plays like this and that player plays like that" because there are many ways of going about things and many ways of coming to the same conclusions. Pursuing different tech or different affinities can make the same essential story feel different.

Now while this is satisfying in theory, what is lacked is a significance to it all. Whether one wins by diplomacy or warfare, the story that one has told still has no characters and no setting. The alien planet and the post-earth civilizations have no historical basis. While I appreciate a good piece of science fiction at least as much as the next guy, there was an important aspect of the old Civilization games which came from seeing history interact in new ways. It was a sort of enlightenment to see how the course of a civilization might be shaped by its leaders and ideologies and Civilization: Beyond Earth seems to assume that fans of the franchise were ready to move beyond that rather than deeper into it.

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Entertainment Value:
So far I've spent about six hours with Civilization: Beyond Earth and I have invested $0 in it. Given what I have experienced I am satisfied to leave it at that.

While Civilization V changed gameplay elements and upset the way the game had been played for years, it was still the same experience at its core and that was the experience I was paying for when I bought a Civilization game. Civ5 wasn't my favorite iteration, but it was a true successor. Civilization: Beyond Earth feels like an entirely different game borrowing Civilization's gameplay (and, to a point, it's graphics as well). It's the odd cousin, the ugly duckling, the sore thumb, in a well beloved and long-running franchise. While it opens up the game to some very exciting ideas through the Steam Workshop and modding communities, the game alone is not worth the investment of time and money.

I hope that in a few months there will be another free weekend and that modders will have infringed on copyrights from games like Halo and Mass Effect, but I just don't have any desire to own the game by itself.

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Conclusion:
When I reached the end of my playthrough (about 150 turns later than expected) I was welcomed with a single pop-up congratulating me. Feeling like I had accomplished all that I desired to in the current game (again, about 150 turns before the actual end...), I chose to exit the game expecting a few pages of statistics and time-lapses. When I saw that I was in fact just being returned to the main menu I was disappointed and a little mad. It wasn't a big deal in previous games. It wasn't like I spent hours mulling over where and when I could have and should have expanded or attacked, it was just something nice to see--a reminder of where I had come from and where I had ended up. The end of a game in Civilization: Beyond Earth is like a song which has already gone on for too long missing the last beat. It's a sour way to wrap things up and doesn't appreciate the time and energy the player has spent playing the game.

More than anything the game is missing "final touches" that would make it look and feel polished. The units behave the same as they always have, the cities are just as static as they have always been, and the environment doesn't feel alien with the single exception of miasmic gas hanging over some tiles. If they really wanted to sell players on their new environment and mode, then more attention should have been paid to entertaining and delighting them rather than giving them what they were already accustomed to seeing. Civ5 took some major steps away from its predecessor in terms of gameplay and maybe Firaxis didn't want that kind of heat from its fans again, but Civilization: Beyond Earth already upsets so much of what was done in previous iterations that leaving much of anything the same doesn't serve the interested players.

Personally, I hope that the franchise returns to the historical fiction inspired gameplay of its roots, perhaps taking some of this newest game's improvements along the way. As of today, however, a new announcement has been made for the franchise:

Sid Meier's Starships looks like an "all-in" from the franchise on its new mode. While not explicitly a turn-based strategy game, Starships looks like an announcement which prophesies the direction that the franchise plans to take. This leads them away from the fans who have supported them in the past and into a new genre already mired with half-finished kickstarters and well-beloved indie titles. It's not that leaving your fans behind to do something new is a travesty on any level, it's just that it's a big investment to make into a genre which already has it's darlings.

Smite is (still) the best game you aren't playing

Back in August, I wrote my first post about Smite. Lately, I've been playing the game again quite a bit. A few friends of mine are playing it with me regularly and I find myself wanting to post about it again.

Since August, the game has received updates and new gods. The interfaces have undergone numerous face-lifts and the game modes have been expanded and refined. The new mode, Assault, is a copy of League of Legend's ARAM (All Random All Middle) and works very well in Smite. Randomly assigned gods push players to learn new characters and play-styles while making teamwork essential to victory. Not only does this make the mode exciting, it also encourages players to branch out in other gametypes. Several older gods have gotten new looks along with brand new gods from Central American and Chinese mythologies. Unlike new characters in LoL, they don't come out overpowered to garner interest and instead require the player to learn a new combination of abilities.

The game does a great job of just being fun to play. Since I've been learning to play with more gods, I've grown more enamored with the variety of play and importance of teamwork. Over the course of just a single game, as a team learns to play with one another, you can witness huge swings of momentum that turn a blowout into an exciting comeback. Too few games offer that kind of emotion.Smite is a game where even when things seem lost you can come back and win with a little luck and the right items.

And speaking of items, it's one of the things I still don't love about the game. There are a few that are essential, and a number that simply aren't. It would be nice if there was a greater variety in what items were good for each character, but as it is there are a few that are simply too good. It's not a huge problem; there are some items obviously geared toward certain styles of play while others offer better all-around stats. That said, it makes the game a little easier to learn, and that's good for helping out new players a bit.

In certain gametypes, the right items can be game-breaking. Hi-Rez removes some items from certain types, but it's still possible to make certain gods nearly unkillable and others so deadly that, all other things being equal, some games are decided before they start. In the real world, of course, "all other things" are never held equal, and sometimes you can have a lot of fun stealing victory from a match you shouldn't win. But, in any case, it's a problem when the players are being assigned gods (like in the ARAM-style Assault Mode) that can't do the job.

A good game lets you start it up and get playing fast. Smite could do this better. Queues tend to take about a minute and a half, whereas in games like LoL and Starcraft 2, queues can take only a few seconds. Their current queuing system is pretty dedicated to the countdown aspect, with a new round of each game type beginning every 4 minutes, but if I never had to sit in another 3-minute queue I'd like the game more.

All that aside, there is truly just one thing keeping me in this game: I'm playing it with friends. The simple fact is that without a few people who want to play with me I wouldn't still be playing this game. It takes too much teamwork and I haven't found many other amiable players online. I worry that the community in this game is toxic in the same ways as the LoL community. Old players should try to be more understanding of new players and, if they can't be encouraging, should at least offer substantial criticisms that describe what was being done wrong. It doesn't do the team any good to throw insults--if something isn't working, you should fix it, not yell at it.

If this game keeps finding ways to improve itself, and if my friends stay interested in playing it, then I expect this will not be my last post about this game. I really look forward to people finding the game and the community of players growing. It should be coming out of beta in the near future and so I'm hoping to see it make a splash with a little well-placed advertising (Steam sale, anyone?).