As I've grumbled about quite often in the past few years, The Outer Worlds failed to land with me the way I wanted it to, which has grown into something of a dichotomy for me considering it has become readily apparent that the excitingly revealed 'Avowed' was going to be another game in that exact style. I ummed, and ahhed, pulled at my teeth, tore out my hair- but nothing could get to summon up that same level of wonderment I felt when first viewing that trailer all those years ago- this with little else to turn to I have to rely on- bleargh- hope to fuel my wanton ambition. At least that was until I decided to bite the bullet and finally finish of The Outer Worlds the way I had failed to do several times across the years. Over the past few days I finally bit fully into The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition.
You see, the one aspect of The Outer Worlds I had somehow managed to miss were the two DLCs that Obsidian released while the game was still in a support cycle- and considering some of my most favourite moments in previous Obsidian games came from their DLC, I really wasn't giving myself the full picture. This grinding my way through The Outer Worlds so that I can reach the DLC and give the full experience a fair shake was the only thing that made sense to me- plus it would give me an excuse to replay through everything I did like about The Outer Worlds, rather than dwell on that disappointing main narrative which had left such a sour taste in my mouth all these years. And I am glad to report that there has actually been a shift on my feelings and thoughts regarding the game.
First, I totally forgot how sarcastic the game was. Largely in it's characterisation of the Player Character- but pretty much every character has a dry retort packed away somewhere in their unhinged diatribes aside from, probably, Felix- because he is the most boring character. There are so many delightfully inconsequential dialogue trees you can hop down with characters that exist simply to screw with the peace around you- and I really like that unique level of flippancy which is indicative to how the general feel of The Outer Worlds' worldbuilding is. I'm pretty sure every single terminal entry in the entire game has at least one 'corporate hell' joke or pun stuffed in there somewhere. It's like the team committed themselves to only writing lore entries when they thought up a joke to slip in there for prosperities sake.
I also totally missed how decent the game's straightforward levelling system is at allowing you to go crazy with a custom build. Whereas I tried to do my stealth assassin routine for the original game, specialising in pretty much anything I thought that I would need, totally lowballing how much space the game would give me to max out everything. (There is no possible way to max out every stat, I would later learn) This time around I picked a direction congruent with the character I was roleplaying and stuck rigorously to it, a loud violent handgun expert with a healthy heaping of scientific knowledge to make the most out of all those unique science weapons. And with that vague direction in mind, I quickly ended up making a character who was broken pretty much at the start of Act 2 and only got more devastating as the game went on. The final boss of the game, whom I spent 25 frantically desperate minutes carefully whittling down in my original playthrough? I melted it in 15 seconds this time around. Same difficulty. (I guess picking a trade really helps sometimes.)
Peril on Gorgon actually reminds me vaguely of a much more exploration-friendly version of Dead Money from Fallout. Exploring a dead and deserted facility whilst you pick through the corpse learning what secrets were buried when the asteroid was abandoned, all whilst fighting through hoards of Marauders who seem to infest the planet. There are no unique enemies to the DLC, rather disappointingly, but there are some interesting new revelations about the world space that justify such a direction. I actually really love the mystery Gorgon presents and think it's concise but consequential narrative and ultimate choices were honestly superior to the core game- even if the twist was nicked wholesale from Mass Effect Andromeda.
Murder on Eriandos, on the otherhand, feels like Obsidian stretching their chuckle muscles once again to let everyone know that they haven't lost their touch. I'd call this the 'Old World Blues' of The Outer Worlds, with the added stipulation that this is no where near as hilarious as Old World Blues. Eriandos is practically dripping with snark and farce as you investigate the murder of famed starlet Halcyon Helen. Flirting with Noir at times before the sheer weirdness of the meta plot cuts through all that and by the end of the adventure there is no pretense left- the story goes into full silly mode and abandons the veneer of serious murder mystery they teased- which would be a faux-pas if it didn't match the tone so acutely. I definitely laughed the most during this quest mod and though Gorgon had me more invested, Eriandos is a must play for anyone sailing through The Outer Worlds.
I must admit that The Outer Worlds saved their best content for these DLC snippets, and perhaps that is aided by the fact that this arguably flimsy setting works best in bite-sized snippets, rather than stretched across an entire system of people we're supposed to care about. It's kind of like imagining Pillars of Eternity if the entire world was just the Dyrwood and you had to wrestle with the moral weight of bad things happening to those various factions of awful people- who cares! But when you take a small community out of them, such as for The White March, and flesh them out- I can care a bit more about the horrors that befall them. And maybe, taking that feedback into account and learning from it, Obsidian can do what they did with Pillars 2 and make the world of The Outer Worlds 2 feel more real and worthy, thus empowering the weight of the tales they wish to spin. They've done it before, and seeing this formula work in The Outer World's DLC- I'm a little bit hopeful they can do it again.
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