The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 15: The Outer Worlds

For more information on the GWJ CRPG Club, go here.

The Outer Worlds is the GWJ CRPG's Club's 15th winner, winning the vote by a single vote over Torment: Tides of Numenera.

The Outer Worlds is first-person action role-playing game published in 2019 by Obsidian Entertainment. Create a character, take on NPC companions, and explore an alternate future based on what the world would be like if President McKinley were not assassinated in 1901.

The game is playable on Windows, PS4, XBox One, and Nintendo Switch. There are also two expansion DLCs that add extra content to the game. Those are optional for completion purposes.

We'll be playing this game until December 31, 2021. This thread is for friendly discussion as we play through the game. Share your reflections, successes, defeats, tactics, wishes, impressions, and whatever here! The more conversation the better, so post away.

For BIG spoilers, please use the spoiler tag. (No! I am your father!) Tactics, strategies, general story progression likely won't need them.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to participate, and can start at any time, so join the fun! One quick favor: If you decide to play, make a post here along the lines of "I'm in!" to let us know. If you start and finish the game before the end, you'll level up your GWJ CRPG Membership.

Helpful Links
Steam ($23.99 <-- 20% SALE!)
Green Man Gaming ($16.63 <- SALE!)
GOG ($59.99)
Epic Games ($59.99)
Playstation Store ($19.79)
Game Pass (with subscription)
Is There Any Deal: The Outer Worlds
How Long to Beat (13-37 hours)
Fan Wiki
Wikipedia Page
Guide & Achievements Guide
Metacritic (82 metascore, 7.3 user score)
(Taking suggestions)

Members Completed
Sorbicol
Sundown
Redherring
ubrakto
Math
gewy

Members Playing
Godzilla Blitz
jdzappa
Neutrino
tundra
brokenclavicle
Bubblefuzz
hbi2k
Docjoe
Ted
LastSurprise
RnRClown

I am in! As a Fallout failure, I'm excited to redeem myself with a similar game. I won't be able to dig in for a week or so, as I'll be away from my PC for a bit.

I'm in! It may be a few weeks before I get started as I'm wrapping up other games, though.

This has been high on my interest list for awhile, but was waiting for the club to vote on it before playing it, since it seemed like it would come up sooner or later. I'm curious to see how the writing compares with other Obsidian games (particularly New Vegas).

I'm in. Been meaning to re-sub to Gamepass for a few other games anyway...

Sundown wrote:

I'm in! It may be a few weeks before I get started as I'm wrapping up other games, though.

This has been high on my interest list for awhile, but was waiting for the club to vote on it before playing it, since it seemed like it would come up sooner or later. I'm curious to see how the writing compares with other Obsidian games (particularly New Vegas).

I excited to give this a shot, too. First person and space isn't something we've done before.

EDIT: Meaty download, at 55Gb.

Woo hoo! Going to redownload this soon!

I’m in.

I have a half finished game of this I’ll pick up once I’ve got Disco Elysium out the way - I’m definitely in a better headspace now than I was a couple of weeks back. Might be more cathartic to play it now.

OK, I'm in now that I've subscribed to Game Pass. With the rollout of the Xbox cloud gaming, I can play from my Mac! I just need to get an Xbox controller.

I'm in.

So glad you're getting into a better space/healing (even if only a bit), Sorbicol

ubrakto wrote:

I'm in.

So glad you're getting into a better space/healing (even if only a bit), Sorbicol

Cheers @ubrakto. It was the funeral the weekend just gone and I think it gave us all a lot of closure. Many things planned to commemorate my friend in the coming couple of months which is what we’re all going to focus on moving forward.

Our numbers grow! Welcome everyone! I'm really looking forward to playing vicariously through everyone this first week.

Sorbicol wrote:
ubrakto wrote:

I'm in.

So glad you're getting into a better space/healing (even if only a bit), Sorbicol

Cheers @ubrakto. It was the funeral the weekend just gone and I think it gave us all a lot of closure. Many things planned to commemorate my friend in the coming couple of months which is what we’re all going to focus on moving forward.

Sorry to hear about your loss, Sorbicol, but glad you're feeling somewhat better.

I’m in. Will probably start next week.

I've been absent for a while... but I'm in... thanks for running this thread GB

Looking forward to starting... soon.

On the PS4 pile, so i'm in for this one.

I'm in-- happy to have a Switch game to play while watching my respite charge.

I think I've gotten everyone into the first post, let me know if I've missed you.

I'm curious how much I'll feel like I'm playing Fallout while I'm playing this. The comparisons seem pretty direct. Well, except for the whole outer space thing.

tundra wrote:

I've been absent for a while... but I'm in... thanks for running this thread GB

For sure, happy to do so!

Late to the party but I’m in on this one, yay!

Booted up the game last night, just got through the opening cinematic and character creation. I'm going into this mostly blind, alls I know is that it's a game by the folks what made New Vegas, which is the best Fallout game.

This is one of my least favorite parts of CRPGs, where the first thing you do is make a bunch of important-seeming character creation decisions with far-reaching consequences while having zero context about the gameplay systems involved. I think I made my guy be good at shooty-shoots with bang-bang guns plus maybe some sneaky-sneaks, which if it plays like the modern Fallouts will probably be fine?

Modern games in the open-world Bethesda mold have gotten a lot better at giving you a little introductory quest that walks you through a little gameplay sample before asking you to make these decisions, and maybe it will still do that and there will be a point later on where it stops and says "hey buddy, you want to change any of this before leaving Tutorial Town?" But if not, if it really does frontload all these important decisions before ever allowing you to experience actual gameplay, that will be a bit of a disappointment.

I suppose I should probably just look up a guide, but it would be nice if I didn't have to.

I was going to sit this one out. But then I saw it's 66% off on the PlayStation Store. A bargain got its hooks in me, which feels thematically appropriate.

Going to wait until next week, at least, to start -- I'll be out of town until then.

So in the end I've started playing this as I'm in one of the longest gaming funks I've been in for some time. It was the only thing in my library I felt like playing, so I did.

I'll be cheating a little with this one as I'm about half way through my initial playthrough (i think) and despite spending a slightly confused half hour reminding myself how it all works and what I'm actually supposed to be doing, it's all come back to me now and I'm running around talking to people and shooting monsters.

I think it's a good, fun, untaxing game this. It's palette is terrific - lots of bright colours that contrast well against "bad" people or troops, good companions and multi, easily solvable quests, and the gun play is all very serviceable. For sure I can see how some people wouldn't get much from that, but to be honest some times that's all a game needs to provide - a bright, colourful world, and a reason to go off and explore around in it.

I've also got in on this. It's similarly a comeback game for me as well.

(I fell into a hiatus from the internet, which then extended to video games, television, reading, and ultimately any form of social interaction. Partly retreating from the uncanny abstract that can be the online realm. Partly spiralling from real world stresses. I was in a dense fog. If I were to attempt to describe it. Honestly, only work kept me to any type of schedule, which in turn became a therapeutic distraction. I could say more. I shan't. Time. Place. Desire.)

So. The Outer Worlds. It's the first game in a while which I have been able to find a rhythm with. I even became enthralled for a time. Escapism. Enjoyment. I'd forgotten what these were.

That said. It wasn't a natural coming together. I had a false start. I then continued to struggle. I wasn't succeeding at combat encounters. I wasn't intrigued by the story. I wasn't taking in the world building. I decided to plod on as it was the club choice, and it was pleasant to gaze upon. I wanted to try. I needed to.

Eventually I recalled how to better interact with a first-person shooter. I then began to lean on this TTD (Tactical Time Dilation) feature to scope out hostiles, and so too rebalance unfavourable moments. It's actually really cool! I slowly warmed to the first area and even to a few of its denizens. Belatedly. Now I find myself thinking towards when I can next boot up the game. Success. At least for now.

I'll colour a few story and character impressions on the next contribution. It's a miracle I even formulated this one.

Oh. Yeah. I'm in!

Put a couple hours in over the weekend, enough to get back in the loop of "get quest, go talk to person or kill thing, go back to questgiver, wash rinse repeat." This is very much modern Fallout with the serial numbers filed off, and that's fine by me.

I've been doing a bunch of side quests and putting off the main quest, because I'm pretty sure it's getting close to the point where you make your first Big Decision(tm), the equivalent of nuking or sparing Megaton in Fallout 3.

Spoiler:

I need a macguffin for my ship, and I can steal it from either the Big Evil Corporate Cannery Town or the Tree-Hugging Space Hippie Commune. Stealing it from either will have the side effect of cutting power to the settlement, making it defenseless and effectively uninhabitable. The Big Evil Corporate Cannery Town says stealing it from the hippies will make them come back to work; the Tree-Hugging Space Hippie Commune says stealing it from the cannery town will make all the corporate drones come out to the woods to be hippies.

Except... is it just me, or does the hippie plan sound like the most naive thing in the world? Isn't the far more likely thing that the corporate cannery town, upon losing power, would send their armed corporate thugs that they've got patrolling their town to shoot the one hippie with a gun in the head and take the part they need from the hippie town?

Unless there's some hidden third option that I'm not seeing, this seems like a total no-brainer to me.
Yeah, it sucks to rip off those kindly hippies, but it's not like I'd be doing them any favors in the long run if I sided with them either.

Finished up the first area and got my spaceship running. So, I recruited the preacher with a mysterious past and the wide-eyed engineer. When do I get the hooker with the heart of gold, the wisecracking pilot, the warrior woman first officer, the educated but sheltered young doctor, the morally ambiguous muscle, and the psychic waif?

Glad to hear people are enjoying it so far! It sounds like a perfect game for what I'm feeling at the moment. I should be able to start in a few days.

And I'm off!

I roll basically the same character I do in all these types of games, which is guns, speech, and lockpicking. That lets me see basically everything I want to see. The way they combine skills means I also get more stealth that I usually do, which is fine.

I've put a bit over 3 hours in, which was enough to get to Edgewater, meet the leader of the cannery (who I am absolutely going to find a way to betray), collect and knock out some sidequests, then get to the deserters camp, and collect some of their sidequests as well. So I'm running around, shooting things, looting everything that's not nailed down, stealing a little here and there, and basically doing that Fallout thing. I don't think I've played one of these open world Western RPGs for awhile, but it still fits like a comfortable glove. It's fun!

Also, this game is very colorful. Lots of greens and reds and nice moons and rings in the sky box. It's very nice to look at.

Played for a few hours today, exploring the starting areas and getting to know how things work. Fortunately things work in obvious ways and explain themselves nicely. Just missing some grenades or something that does damage to multiple enemies.

So, I’m into the final area of the game - I think my game must have been more advanced than I thought it was. I should get this finished tonight.

I should be back home this weekend and am looking forward to starting in.

Well - I've finished. I think I was a little further along than I realised.

I enjoyed this game as slight as it is - It's got a lot of surface but not the greatest depth - a sort of "Fallout Lite" as it were. To some extent I think that helps, as it means it doesn't out stay it's welcome. It's really quite refreshing to play an open world game where the colour palette is multicoloured and not just green and brown and grey, with some of the locations really quite good to look at. The characters are by far the best part of the game, with Parvati a particular standout. I really enjoyed all the companion quests and it felt that considerable more effort had been made in those quest lines than some other aspects of the game.

The point of no return finale was a little bit average, but served its purpose. Overall I quite liked the idea that the story isn't about saving the universe, just the little part of it you inhabit.

I can see i would return to this at some point in the future, maybe when the DLC is mega cheap. I'm not sure how much replay there is in trying a different character as such as I don't think it would impact the game play all that much. That said maybe a a little more focus on diplomacy might be a more interest way to approach some situations.