I started to play it over the winter, didn’t get very far due to no fault of the game. I think I got busy for a bit, and then I always have a hard time picking games like that back up after a break. Have to remember what’s what and who’s who etc.
Anyway, the icon is still on my desktop and it’s been catching my eye lately. Maybe time to look at it again.
Played it and finished it. Set in New Mexico, between the events of FO and FO2. You are the typical guy in a cave with amnesia, but you don’t have anything to do with the Vault Dweller or Chosen One. Scope is about the size of FO, a bit fewer quests. Original plot and lore. Very dingy morality throughout. Language English first not, for the writers. Ball-breakingly hard in early and mid game.
Got cut off in mid post. Anyway, it’s almost adventure-game esque in how it forces you to save resources. The quests and gatekeepers for a quest chain could use more information about what you’re supposed to be doing, where you can find what you need. and which quests will annoy other factions. Take notes. There’s a quest guide on steam that’s a lifesaver for avoiding getting stuck.
Still a neat mod, and recommended for fans of FO1 and 2.
I was under the impression that most of FO2 was completed after Cain, Boyarsky, and Anderson left Interplay, but it seems I was mistaken. I looked into it a bit more and most of the main quests, characters, and settings were already in place by the time they had a falling out with Interplay over team structure and where the company was heading. Urquhart, Avellone, and the rest of the team who stayed with Interplay/Black Isle Studios (and would later form Obsidian when BIS was shut down) pretty much just put the finishing on the game. So it appears the game for the most part was the exact same team that did FO1.
Edit: I still think FO2 could have been a bit more streamlined, though. It seemed that there was a lot of “let’s add a quest to make the game longer” stuff going on there. I felt NV actually pared that aspect down. Then again, many of the Troika guys had joined Obsidian again after Troika folded, so maybe there was a better sense of editing with the original team mostly back together.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against long games and getting my money’s worth, but tacking thing on for length’s sake interferes with the narrative.
I’m still playing 4 way more than 76. Just went into VATS to shoot three raiders through a hole in a wall, one shot per raider. Turned out they were all lined up and I took 'em all with a single .308.
Had no idea that could happen.
Heads up -
If you bought the red power armor helmet in the Nuka-Cola branding, which was sold separately at GameStop, you should know that it’s been recalled because it’s full of killer mold.
The silver version of the helmet that came with the collector’s edition of the game is fine. It’s just this red Gamestop one that is the problem.
Here’s an article about it from Polygon. They have photos of the helmets if you want to compare it to your own:
Here’s the product recall page at the US Consumer Safety Commission
And here’s a quote from the Polygon article:
Man, I am so glad I did not buy this on-going disaster.
However, the squatted domain of Fallout First is comedy gold.
From the article, bolding mine:
Ouch.
The domain squat was hilarious.
That said, the whole debacle could not be a better selling point for The Outer Worlds, which could be described approximately as “Fallout in Space,” is by the maker (Obsidian) of Fallout: New Vegas, and comes out today.
The Outer Worlds comes with the Xbox Game Pass, which is $1 for the first month on the PC. Hard to beat that.
I’m waiting to download it. Both The Outer Worlds and Red Dead Redemption 2.
The Outer Worlds is a shameless Fallout clone, but better in like every way.
This game is the biggest pile of shit I can remember. There were bigger launch disappointments (No Man’s Sky, for example), but at least in NMS they tried to make the game a better product as time went on.
With this game, Bethesda seems to be seeing how far they can go to fuck their customers and make something worse. Every time I hear something about this game it’s some new disaster.
First, they sell a $13/mo subscription like it’s an MMO. But of course there’s no persistent world you’re paying for, you’re just getting the ability to run a private instanced server. Oh, so it’s a server rental? No, it’s not - the world only exists when you’re around. It’s not persistent. Your friends can’t play when you’re not around. If you leave, the whole thing shuts down. So you’re paying $13 a month to be able to run what is effectively a local host (not sure if it’s actually hosted in this way technically) and to expand your backpack, which is apparently a big deal in terms of convenience.
The latter part is especially disgusting - they give you an inconvenience (a fixed amount of backpack space) and then want $100+ a year to expand that limit they put on you. That’s so arbitrary and such a horrible incentive system.
Okay, so that’s bad enough, and greedy as shit, but of course the bad doesn’t stop there with Fallout 76. Not only are they gouging their players with this ridiculousness, it doesn’t even work anyway. From a reddit post:
It almost feels like this game is the result of a bet between billionaires about how bad you can mistreat your player base and still get players. Whoever bet the “you can be comically shitty and still keep players” side of that bet looks like they won.
I forgot I had setup an alert on isthereanydeal.com, so when it triggered I had another look and a sniff and removed it from the waitlist.
Outer Worlds doesn’t grip me as much, too cartoony for my taste. One of the reviews I saw yesterday mentioned that it does not really give you the chance to just wander about the map and see what you encounter. It’s a more guided experience.
Still I have 3 months of Xbox gamepass from my new PC, so I’ll probably play it when I activate the gamepass.
Okay, embarrassingly stupid question.
We’ve got an Xbox One, that we use as a media center. It’s (usually) signed in under my account. Both my wife and I are intrigued by a couple of single-player games coming up. If I bought one copy of The Outer Worlds, for example, would we both be able to play our own campaigns, without messing up the other person’s game?
If you play using different Xbox accounts, you can both play without effecting the other player’s game.
If you both play using the same Xbox account… it really depends on the game. Most games allow you multiple, independent save files, but a few use a model where you only get one save file per account, and if you want to start a new game, you necessarily must erase your previous game.
I don’t know for a fact which way Outer Worlds works, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t allow multiple, independent save files. Every other title from these developers has, and the kind of games they make (heavy character customization from the start of the game, branching storylines where different player choices lead to different endings) kind of demands it, so player can try out all the different options without losing all their progress.
Now I have to decide which to play…Outer Worlds or Borderlands 3.
Well, for me, the problem with Outer Worlds is the decision they made to go exclusive for Epic’s launcher site…which, frankly, sucks. I’ll probably wait until (or if I guess) it comes out on Steam.
It’s a one year exclusive on Epic, then it comes out on Steam.
Outer Worlds has been on my Steam wishlist for just over four months.
Thanks for this - I just signed up for my month.
There’s actually a lot of impressive content on their service and quite a few games I’ve been waffling over getting or not. I may keep it for a few months and play through some of what’s there.