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.

EA's Bad Business

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One of the first steps in understanding the gaming industry is knowing the players. I remember when I first began to recognize certain developers as sure signs of a game's quality, and, in part, it has been through the development of that knowledge that my understanding of the industry has grown.

Electronic Arts is one of the best known and most vilified publishers making games today. Within the gaming industry and the gaming community there is no company which is regarded with greater scorn and outrage. And yet, in spite of being named "Worst Company in America" by The Consumerist in 2012, Electronic Arts has not found itself being pushed out of the market by conscientious consumers. In fact, they have continued to grow into one of the industry's largest publishers.

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I find  myself to be one of those disgruntled by their business practices. Rather than elude to that displeasure with snarky gibes, I will directly rant about some of what I find unappealing.

When I say that customer service is not a focus of the company, I do not mean to point at anecdotal evidence posted anonymously to web forums. What I do mean is that the company is clearly more focused on pleasing their investors than their customers. I am a firm believer in good customer service. It is important that business be conducted between people and that those people feel a personal obligation to be good to one another. The best business decision is often not the best human decision, but gains in social well-being have a better kind of value than simple profit. EA's propensity to think with their wallet has, time and again, raised the ire of the gaming community.

Take their recent release, Titanfall, for example. The game was sold for top dollar and, meanwhile, EA tried to snag $20 dollars more of pure profit by offering a "Digital Deluxe Edition" which included a "Season Pass" to future and, as yet, unannounced downloadable content packages. This meant, essentially, paying EA more money in order to receive absolutely nothing of value in return. Anyone who has stayed awake in a basic accounting class has an understanding of the time-value of money, but let me explain it quickly here. The time-value of money is the basic principle to explain why $20 today is worth more than $20 dollars a year from now. In short, it's better to have money right now than it is to have money at some future time. By selling something they haven't made yet, EA can cash in on quick profits and then squeeze the most value-for-dollar out of the deal while the consumer is left without recourse. To make matters worse, the "digital" part of the "Digital Deluxe Edition" means that there is no physical hardware to produce or ship, they merely lend you the pleasure of downloading the software from their servers at the cost of just fractions of a penny.

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Now, as an investor, if you see a company selling a product for top dollar plus a premium while only spending a few cents to take that product to market, you see a pretty savvy investment. The fact that EA has the wealth to run large-scale advertising campaigns means that, when paired with a great developer, they can bring a pretty good game to massive popularity. And when you've done your research and found out that that company sells millions and millions of copies of its product, well, let's just say you go shopping for a bigger wallet.  As a consumer, on the other hand, you see yourself being treated like a child's piggy bank--heartlessly smashed and taken for every last cent you own.

But EA have found even more devious ways to hide fees and charges in their products. They take parts of the game and hide them behind paywalls and in pre-order exclusives. Look at Star Wars: The Old Republic, if you'd like an example. The myriad ways in which the game is locked down for those "free-to-players" to whom the game is advertised is frankly astonishing. I have found myself disgusted on multiple occasions by the nooks and crannies which the game gouges the player for (or, rather, the payer). On the one hand, if you are a subscriber to SWTOR, the game is brilliant. On the other hand, if you want to try the game before you buy into it, you'll leave with only a taste of what could have been. It has created a lose-lose scenario where there needn't be one; the player loses out on what truly could be an immersive, exciting experience, and the game makers lose out on a possible subscription. And if you're still not convinced, look at Mass Effect 3. An entire character is missing from the game for those not willing to cough up their cash early--and he's one of the most interesting characters you'll encounter across the three titles (currently) in the franchise.

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EA is beholden to their shareholders before their customers. They make decisions on that line even when it means pushing a product into the market before it is ready and in spite of the desires of the artists crafting that product. They take the art away from their artists. They change the development goals to suit their marketing strategies.  EA acquires intellectual property assets and makes drastic changes, betraying the desires of the fans. Regardless, it is these fans to whom the title will be marketed and EA reaps the benefit of their highly desirable word-of-mouth advertising. They restrict digital transactions through their PC game platform, Origin, which has been found to have dubious tracking software that surveys the user's online activity. And one more thing, they don't make single player games anymore--everything is online, everything is multiplayer, and nothing feels connected to the innovation and experimentation that has brought the gaming industry to where it is today.

And yet, in spite of all of this, I do not completely hate the company. In an industry which is growing as fast as the gaming industry has been, and within worlds of "good guys" and "bad guys", there will always be a villain. There will always be something, somewhere, cashing in on the growth for all that it's worth. EA, for all their indecent practices, is a legitimizing force in the gaming industry. Pushing sequel after sequel, unoriginal idea after unoriginal idea, puts games on the same plane as Hollywood movies. It means the market is not starving, is not shrinking, and is impossible to ignore. It puts controllers in the hands of the young and the old alike and, whatever their opinion, it makes them acknowledge the medium--and that means legitimacy, which is something mere dollars cannot buy.

So, the moral of the story is this. Let EA make games for everyone else. Let them sell Mom and Dad on the latest VR system. Let them rot the brains of the young with flashy images. Let them be the villain, and while they are busy raking in their money, keep your eyes open for the heroes. Focus the power of your own entertainment budget on the companies, games, and most of all on the people who deserve it. It isn't easy, finding games worth your time and money, but that's why I make these posts. That's what this blog is here for--to bring you the games you won't find on your own, that you won't see advertised on television or in ads of Facebook. I'm looking for the diamonds in the rough, and if you are, too, then I'm sure we can find something worth putting the power of our dollars behind.

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Post E3 Rant

It's been awhile since I made a post, so here's a short one about E3 and what I've been playing these past few weeks.

Even after E3, I haven't found something new to be really excited about. That isn't to say that there weren't plenty of new announcements, nor is it to say that I won't want those games more when more information on them is available, but the sheer number of new games that are sequels in established franchises is what gets to me: Assassin's Creed 5, Batman Arkham Knight Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Dragon Age: Inquisition (sound), Fable Legends (sound), Gears of War 4, Halo 5, The Legend of Zelda for Wii U, Mass Effect 4, Starfox for Wii U, The Witcher 3. If you're a gamer with shallower pockets than you'd like, these are all games to wait for. Pre-ordering any of these (or, for that matter, believing any of their hype) is a mistake and is going to leave you disappointed. For now, let the critics sort them out and just forget about their (game-breaking) pre-order bonuses.

Now, Assassin's Creed is set up for reiteration and some others, like The Witcher 3 and Batman Arkham Knight, have only drawn upon a fraction of their total lore, but it is clear that many of these sequels are only being made for the security of their namesake. Both The Legend of Zelda and Starfox for Wii U are pointless entries in an already protracted catalogue, for example. Sure, many gamers are (inexplicably) excited for these new games, but I find it highly unlikely that those gamers are really interested to see anything new in them. Remember Starfox Adventures? The one where Fox isn't in his Arwing for most of it? It was awful. So while more of the same thing isn't always bad (like with pie!) it leaves me altogether nonplussed.

And then there are games like Mass Effect 4 and Halo 5. Both original trilogies have ended and it's as though no one learned anything from Star Wars. A new beginning is the answer to a good ending, but apparently the heads over at Electronic Arts and Microsoft won't let a good thing go when it's over. And from a business man's perspective, their sunk costs in advertising the previous games will make the public more receptive to their next marketing campaign--so, why shouldn't they? 

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Because anything that climaxes has to then fall, which means things are wrapped up and the story should be ended. The story that Mass Effect promised to tell is over. The ending wasn't the best part, but that doesn't mean you can take it back and it doesn't mean that the story isn't over. All Bioware can do now is try to prolong the life of a dying franchise and hope that they can turn it into some kind of money-vomiting zombie like Call of Duty or the Sonic franchise. EA ought to let Mass Effect go and invest somewhere else, but I'm relatively certain that they won't. And, for that matter, Dragon Age didn't see much improvement the last time they made a sequel--so it's time for some new title all around.

And as for those poor souls at 343 Industries, I hope they've all come to terms with the fact that they'll be making Halo games until they quit, die, or more likely get fired. The sheer merchandising efforts poured onto Halo over the last few years is evident of a powerful company throwing its financial weight around: Books, Audiobooks, Action Figures, Animated Movies, Live-Action Movies, and Animated Movies That Look Like Live-Action Movies! The artists working on Halo have done wonders for growing the lore, but over the next decade or so that won't save the franchise from its doom. They can tell new stories until they're blue in the face, but they can't relight the fire that made Halo the exciting, new game franchise that it used to be. That means they are relegated to selling a simpler, less exciting product to an older, less exciting market.

If you can produce a game every 5 years for 30 years, then by the time you're done you'll have attracted the attention of at least one solid demographic. In theory, as that demographic ages, you can target your products to their age bracket and keep profiting. In reality, me at 5 years old was interested in entirely different games than I was at 15, and I can't imagine myself at 15 is going to have much in common with myself at 30. That's the problem with franchises like these, we tire of them after awhile. Call of Duty and EA's sports franchises are great examples of just how quickly a franchise can become tired if you release annually, and, likewise, are good examples of how to survive in that afterlife. Mario, the patron saint of long-lasting game franchises, has found that the best way to remain relevant is to innovate the game itself while leaving the established story on the liminal edge. Smash Brothers, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Mario Galaxy--they all focus the players attention on the innovation to the gameplay itself and away from a rather unimportant narrative. This will not work for a franchise wherein the narrative is meant to drive the gameplay i.e. Halo, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fable, Gears of Wars, etcetera).  Their best chances at reiteration come from their multiplayer aspects, but nothing can cure the fact that you can't leave the story out of a game about a story. Halo has been tried as an RTS title to little success, and BioWare shelved their own Mass Effect FPS project before anyone got a good look at it. Fable Legends looks poised to try and change its skin with its new 4v1 play-style and some pre-fabricated character classes, but I hold little hope for this one to do anything important in the land of Albion (I did sign up for the multiplayer beta on their website, though).

But let's not focus on just the negatives. I don't think all is lost for these franchises if they can change the way their DLC packs are perceived by the gaming public. With a few notable exceptions, most of the DLC that I've played in my life has been underwhelming (i.e. Horse Armor). But this needn't be so; I've felt for years that if EA, for example, should support their sports titles with roster updates even after the newest iterations were released for a nominal fee? I'm more willing to buy a game that I can continue to use for two or three years at a time--much more willing than I am to buy one full game every four or five years. The point I'm making is this: I'd rather buy good DLC for an older game like, say, Mass Effect 2 than another entry in that series sans Shepard. I would rather be the Master Chief again than some colony-world bumpkin who idolizes him. I would rather have the titles I'm invested in supported than be asked to buy a new one. Selling new games is important too, but those should be new games instead of the high resolution reiterations that the industry is seeing over and over again.

 The lesson here is this: Let a good story be over once it has been told. It's better to trust a game company to make good, new games than trust an old franchise to hold everyone's attention.

/rant

http://fanboygaming.com/a-fangirl-weekly-discussion-dlc-worth-buying/

As for what else has been going on these last few weeks, I still think Smite is a great game that is well-supported and worth your time, but Elder Scrolls Online has been having a tough time vying for my attention lately. My brother recently went back to playing Rift after being disappointed by WildStar and I dabbled a bit when he asked me if I wanted to play too. However, to my surprise I found myself wanting to go back to a different universe--a galaxy far, far away in SWTOR. What I found there was EA up to its old tricks--adding gambling to an already addictive genre of game in what I can only assume is some depraved, cash-mad sociology experiment. I did get a cool chestpiece out of the deal, though.

I'll elaborate more on why EA is evil in another rant in the near future, but I would like to take the chance to mention their recent summer sale, which was something I hadn't expected from them. Typically, EA only sells their games for top-dollar, but a few weeks ago they put many of their games on sale for around 50% off. I snagged Titanfall and a PC version of the original Mass Effect, both of which I have been enjoying a great deal. It was Titanfall on sale that really shocked me. It's their newest big game, though I guess they have mostly been pushing it for Xbox One. I'll share more of my thoughts on the full game in a future post. In any case, their sale was likely an attempt to grab a little attention before the slurry of internet chatter began to focus exclusively and reverently on the Steam Summer Sale (going on now!). All in all a smart move from EA  to license some digital rights and a welcome opportunity for me to get some games I've wanted at a price nearer to their real value.

And before I sign off I should mention the Steam Summer Sale at least one more time. It's pretty great and all, but this year I'm just not seeing many games that I really want to buy. Even the super-cheap indie ones either don't appeal to me or I already own them. Still, there are a few days left and it only takes one super deal to make all the time and attention I've payed worth it (because the trading cards certainly aren't doing it for me).