Got The Outer Worlds, on the strength of a lot of praise as “more Fallout: New Vegas” and so far eeeeh. It just feels a little recycled and second rate, unclear where it stands in the “AAA quest-driven open world” metagenre.
The nicest change from the previous first-person Fallouts, it feels less like an isometric world awkwardly inhabited in 3D. FPS combat is actually viable, slightly better than Skyrim and slightly worse than later Mass Effects. The V.A.T.S. -replacement is a slow motion that allows for better manual targeting, and the “inhaler” system makes health items part of the flow rather than a weirdly instant interruption.
The mechanics are streamlined. Attributes are stripped down to 6 with a 1-5 range, there are 7 main skills that each split into 2 or 3 specializations at skill level 50. (They do give interesting bonuses every 20 points tho.) There are 3 kinds of guns, each of which uses one of the 3 kinds of ammo. They are smoothly level-upgradeable, so not the reliance on finding one-off special versions as in Fallout.
There is a perk system, choosable every other level OR in return for accepting “Flaws” triggered by things you encounter, which is interesting. From the beginning, one available perk allows you to fast travel encumbered; common Borderlands-style vending machines also make the loot grind smoother. Smaller sub-regions starting with full (but initially unmarked) maps make blind exploration less of a thing.
From Borderlands it steals 4 hot-swappable weapons and lootable containers distinguished by color, but it’s not a loot-shooter, not least because stray items are scattered about indistinct from background objects until you’re pointing at them in pickup range.
The scenery is more colorful, which only makes you realize that indistinct grey rubble was hiding the behind-the-curveness of their visuals, here super-visible cause all the “looks” they go for I’ve seen better before.
Like, that’s the third-best grey-soiled valley with reddish grass and yellowish foliage I’ve ever seen in vidya. The fourth best take on those cliffs of hexagonal stone pillars. The third-best “Art Deco futurism” style. Maybe the second best Old West/Dirty Space Frontier look, but that’s where they transparently ripped the less interesting bits of Firefly into the Fallout house style.
The one thing from F:NV though, oh, the writing… well it does have a more robust dialog system than most, with multiple speech skills and branches triggering off attributes, skills, clothes, companions, and previous actions.
And there are multiple ways to complete missions, and like NV it pushes back on genre awareness: doing everything and choosing the “I’m the BEST boy” options doesn’t always lead to the best result. But honestly on that level I’d recommend Witcher III or Kingdom Come first, what I’ve seen so far is still a little broad and blunt.
The Fallout series could have atmospheric storytelling and abandoned messages from both the pre- and post-apocalypse, on the ironic themes of “gee this consumer utopia is great, hope its basis in militarism and corporate greed never comes back to bite me” and “well, it looks like we’ve managed to survive in this harsh frontier after all, time to ::TOTALLY DESTROYED BY THE SAVAGE WORLD::”, so far what I’ve seen that’s been collapsed into “gee, this savage frontier based on militarized corporate greed is a utopia, time to ::DESTROYED BY BOTH::”
And like, that’s maybe the third-best riff on Objectivism/Scientology I’ve ever seen in vidya? Maybe?
I dunno, I’m still in the first zone, maybe it gets better, and it’s certainly above whatever Fallout 76 was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I conk out on it faster than 4.