The Outer Worlds 2

The Outer Worlds was a clever and genuinely funny satire of the dark side of capitalism on the backdrop of a campy old space serial; it had its flaws for sure, but I still found it a compelling journey and an interesting character study.  By contrast, the sequel is just constant grating Used Car Salesman dialog trying way too hard to outdo what came before.  Brandon Adler and Leonard Boyarsky's idea of "improvement" is to just make every character their personal sock puppets, constantly belting out "Look how smart we are!  Pay attention to our writing style and rapier wit!" while forgetting they have nothing to say that hasn't already been said better and funnier in the previous game. The gameplay has at least improved a little, adding in Fallout style perks upon level-up and encouraging more focused builds, though it's often frustrating to try and complete quests when you need a specific skill at a particular level and simply don't have any way around it, other than to quit out and go do more filler quests until you do.  "Flaws", an interesting if undercooked concept in the first game, now seem actively engineered to screw you over by turning you into an ineffective master-of-none character; none that I encountered ever seemed to offer a benefit worth the drawback.  Gunplay is just Borderlands Lite with its moddable weapons and overly spongey enemies that lack any real variety, and your comrades simply don't have much of anything in the way of customization; well, they do have upgrades you can find and perks to assign every five levels, but they have almost no tangible impact on making the combat feel any more deep or rewarding.  Outer Worlds 2 is your typical self-proclaimed intellectual with no real personality and nary a novel idea in its head, but that doesn't stop it from running its mouth and laughing at its own stupid jokes for a solid sixty hours; which is about forty more than I could bear.

They wanted to sell this at $80 when frankly it'd still suck even at $0.  Talk about a lack of self-awareness from such an "anti-capitalist" game... 

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: XBox Game Studios
Released: 2025
Platform: PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series, PC

Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhanced Edition

Neverwinter Nights is a series I'm not overly familiar with; I never played the original at all, and even though I did try out 2, I never got very far in since it's running on janky, dated code that makes it unpleasant to play on modern Windows.  I was hoping the Enhanced Edition would improve upon this, but they don't seem to have put a great deal of quality of life improvements into this remaster.  It runs at higher resolutions and without weird animation bugs but it still has bizarrely long load times, weird collision detection and a somewhat clunky UI (get prompted to save before I load?  seriously?).  I also had a controller plugged in that would vibrate during the bigger hits and couldn't find any way to disable it in the options.  Not to mention several options just seem to not work; I disabled switching characters when I click on them and it still happened.

As for the game itself, it's based on Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons, which is pretty jarring for someone who isn't overly familiar with the tabletop game and previously only played the Baldur's Gate titles.  You can freely swap between classes after gaining levels (with some exceptions) and now gain upgrades in the form of Feats and stat upgrades to tweak your character more and more into a niche playstyle.  Alchemy, crafting weapons and armor, and thief skills are now also available to any class, and there are so many sub-races that I just started getting choice paralysis before very long because there's so many damn options and no way to know which ones will actually benefit you or not (at least not without playing the game to death and memorizing every one of its maps).  Like Icewind Dale most of these seem to be pretty moot since the primary focus is just on endless dungeon crawling and combat, so there's little benefit to picking anything not geared specifically toward killing things more efficiently.  Crafting armor and weapons and alchemy also seems pretty pointless when you can just buy most anything you need for a pittance; I get that it's there for completeness owing to the more open-ended, roleplaying focus of the table top game, but if it's not going to be the slightest bit practical in a video game adaption, why include it?  The story also just feels very generic overall and the voice acting is honestly pretty crappy for a 2006 game, so... yeah.  I got bored of it real quick and just found myself replaying Baldur's Gate 3 again, rather than retreading a 'classic' that's aged like an isotope of hydrogen-5.

Developer: Aspyr Media, Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Aspyr Entertainment

Released: 2006, 2025

Platform: PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XBox One, XBox Series

The Outer Worlds

Obsidian Entertainment debuts a new game with gameplay much in the vein of New Vegas and writing and direction spearheaded by the efforts of Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain, two of the minds behind the 2D Fallout games.  But does the Outer Worlds provide an experience to rival the quality of their former efforts, or is this just another misfire for the company?

Many longtime Fallout fans, myself included, were very eager to have its original writers return to the franchise with New Vegas.  I certainly was, and it didn't let me down, as I consider it to be one of the best games ever made despite its dated engine and a plethora of bugs.  Bethesda didn't feel the same way, though, as it fell short of their ridiculously lofty Metacritic and score stipulations and Obsidian was booted from working on any further entries in the Fallout franchise (and we all know how well that went for them).  Still, the blend of Bethesda's vast, open world design and Obsidian's talent for storytelling left many wanting more, and The Outer Worlds was seemingly made to fill in that void after eight years.

The engine shift away from Gamebryo to Unreal 4 certainly shows though right away, as the game is far less buggy than the 3D Fallouts and gameplay improvements and streamlines are many.  The somewhat clunky VATS system is replaced by "tactical time dilation" - slowing the game's action temporarily to let you perform actions, with each depleting a bar by varying amounts (moving consumes relatively little, attacking eats a big chunk of it).  It slowly refills itself over time, but some perks (like Reaper) can cause it to refill a big chunk upon killing an enemy, letting the player get on a truly impressive killing streak if they do it well.  This also has the benefit of making melee builds much more viable, allowing the player to even hold their own against hordes of gun-toting mobs with an axe, club, spear, and so forth.

Other common-sense improvements show up too.  Stealth is a good example of this, being less of a simple dice roll and instead having you stay out of sight in tall grass, behind cover, etc to avoid being seen.  One can also utilize a silenced gun or melee weapon to stealthily pick off enemies one at a time, unlike in many RPGs of this type where one enemy's death will cause all of the rest nearby to immediately know your position.  You also share a unified inventory and carry weight with your followers (up to two of which can accompany you at a time), and healing yourself will grant them some benefit too, keeping you all in the fight.

Weapon and armor modding return too, though it's not quite as extensive as earlier games' options.  Firearms generally get the most benefit from this, letting the player expand magazines or add scopes and silencers, while melee weapons can have handles that boost crit damage and attack speed, or mods that change the weapon's damage type (plasma dealing more damage to biological foes while electricity does more to mechanical ones).  Both types of equipment do degrade over time, but all weapons and armor can be broken down into generic "parts" that can be used to repair them, so it's rarely an issue.

The stat and skill system is fairly similar to Fallout's as well, though rather simplified in comparison.  One has the basic RPG attributes of Strength, Perception, Intelligence and so forth, which determine one's starting aptitudes, and they can further pick a "background" to get a leg-up in a skill or stat at the start of the game.  Leveling up and allocating points causes all skills under a particular heading (melee weapons, firearms, stealth skills, and so forth) to all power up, though once one hits 50 points in a single skill under that heading, they must then spend points on it individually to progress further.  Every 20 points in a skill unlocks a benefit, like doing extra melee damage or requiring fewer picks to open a lock, and "Perks" are gained every two levels that grant flat bonuses; disappointingly, though, these don't really tie in to your character build in any interesting way, but are just flat benefits like extra health, a boost to carry weight, and so forth.  Though once nice addition is that your recruited allies get their own sets of Perks and will progressively earn more after they travel and fight with you long enough; this makes you feel more like a cohesive team instead of just "the main character" and others just along for the ride.

A more interesting element of both the role-playing and character customization element is Flaws.  After your character fails skill checks too many times or endures enough injuries (being hit in the head, taking too much plasma damage or being harmed by a particular enemy type often), you have the option of taking a permanent disadvantage in exchange for a Perk point.  For example, you can take 25% more Plasma damage for a bonus Perk, or take a penalty to Perception and Temperament while being attacked by Canids, or, if you fail at sneaking, you'll lose a point of Personality during further attempts.  While you're by no means obligated to take one, it is sometimes worth it to gain that extra perk as well as shape your character more toward your particular playstyle.

The Outer Worlds does fall short in some respects, though.  Most prominent among these is that exploration is disappointingly limited for a space game; while you do get a ship relatively early on, you don't get to freely explore in space or even pilot it directly.  Instead, you just pick a pre-set destination and immediately go there to explore on foot.  Each planet has multiple destinations to land and explore, though these are relatively small - usually only a couple of square miles each, surrounded by tall mountains.  Granted, there is a lot to see and do in almost all of them, with NPCs to talk to, quests to undertake, enemies to fight and stuff to steal, though I'm always a little let down when a game set in the final frontier doesn't let you fully experience said frontier.  Combat does also start to feel a bit repetitive after a while, with a lot of the same small handful of enemies in any given area and little variation in their attack patterns or the strategies required to defeat them.  It does start to feel padded too, especially when you see the same handful of raiders and robotic enemies show up in almost every mission with only the most tenuous explanations given for their presence.

As is standard for Obsidian games (as well as the works of Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky), the Outer Worlds' greatest strength is in its writing.  Set in an alternate future that combines the feel of a mid-century space opera with the rampant atomic age feel of Fallout, the atmosphere is utterly fantastic.  Load screens and environments alike highlight the facetiously optimistic atmosphere while the player gets to explore the seedier side of the glam firsthand, experiencing a setting that is superficially impressive but quickly gives way to some very grim themes of human oppression and the devaluing of life in the name of profit.  But as with their previous works, it's all highlighted by a sharp wit and some very well-written characters, backstories and general lore.  Experiencing the grim joviality of this universe, getting to know your allies and their motivations and seeing the consequences of your actions unfold on the screen through the game's many branching story paths is a thrill, letting you really feel like your choices actually make a difference in this world and to these characters.

So while it has some hiccups, I think The Outer Worlds is a success for Obsidian.  Its gameplay is definitely streamlined compared to the games it draws so many elements from, which aids it in some ways and hurts it in others, but its roleplaying element is fantastic; your character's choices really do have consequences, and the story will play out very differently depending on who you make friends with, what factions you ally with or betray and, of course, what skills you use to further your ends.  The sheer imagination of its setting and the depths of depravity (and dark humor thereof) are great, and the quality acting and writing behind all of its protagonists makes it a journey worth undertaking in spite of the gameplay's shortcomings.

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

Publisher: Private Division
Released: 2019
Platform: PC, PS4, XBox One, Switch
Recommended Version: All versions released seem to be more or less identical, though I have only personally played the PC version.  The Nintendo Switch version is not yet released as of this writing.

Pillars of Eternity

Obsidian attempts to return to their genesis days in the 1990s with a crowd-funded RPG.  But do they manage to recapture the magic of their earlier hits, or is this just cheap pandering to fans of a bygone era?

Pillars of Eternity presents itself as a spiritual successor to the classic Infinity Engine titles, which doubtlessly won a lot of acclaim with gamers who remember an era when CRPGs were actually challenging and had some layered characters and moral ambiguity to them instead of being dime-a-dozen clones of railroaded, one-dimensional dreck like Mass Effect and Jade Empire. Either that or absolute trash like the Witcher, a franchise whose sole selling points seem to be its gratuitous nudity and constant use of profanity to get a snicker out of the twelve-year-olds in the audience. Unfortunately, while Pillars does capture the presentation of that era to a T, the same cannot be said for the gameplay.

The game seeks an awkward middle ground between abolishing the class system present in the Infinity Engine games and holding strictly to it. They "abolish" it in the sense that characters now have no armor or equipment restrictions (equipping armor now grants more protection at the cost of mid-battle health regeneration... which is so slow as to be effectively meaningless anyway) and access to a unified skill set for things like trap setting, stealth and crafting items and potions. They "uphold" it by maintaining the divided class system, with characters firmly fitting into the usual fighter/bard/mage/cleric archetypes, each with their own set of mechanics and leaning toward a particular prime statistic. It's a strange paradox that doesn't end up making much of a difference anyway, because odds are you're going to want to keep to a character's given archetype in order to get the most out of them. There's not a lot of point to giving your mage a sword or your thief heavy armor or spending valuable skill points teaching your fighter alchemy when he could just put those points toward being a much more effective fighter, now is there?

That said, things are not all bad on the design front. Some of the class-specific mechanics are actually rather clever. For instance, characters now get skills that they can use a set number of times per battle, which is nice given that the game restricts supplies you need to make camp and you're generally running on a very limited set of resources, particularly early on on the game. Some of the ways skills implemented are also refreshingly clever - bard songs, for example, not only provide cumulative buffers for the party over time (via escalating song verses), but they can still move and attack while singing and cast unique spells once their verse count reaches a certain height, allowing them to serve well as both a back-line supporter and a decent ranged attacker. Monks utilize a somewhat similar mechanic, gaining access to more powerful skills as they take damage in combat and raise a "wound" counter - effectively, the more damage they take, the more dangerous they become. So yes, there are still hints of Obsidian's genius here - it's just a shame they're so few and far between that they might as well not exist at all.

The lackluster skill system may have been forgivable had the overall gameplay managed to capture the charm of its Infinity Engine counterparts, but alas, it does not. They seem to have missed the perfect balance those games achieved of "difficult, yet ultimately winnable and rewarding battles", omitting everything but the first and second words of that phrase. This primarily comes down to the combat engine in the game - to be blunt, fighting in Pillars of Eternity is downright miserable.

In contrast to just about every CRPG ever made, where they are the class who can single-handedly turn the tide of a battle, mages are virtually worthless in Pillars of Eternity. They have paltry damage output with their spells and only a handful of weak debuffs to use to maybe give their fighters a slightly better chance of winning out against the odds. Enemies ignore any shred of realism in their tactics, instead focusing on simply winning the fight as quickly and cheaply as possible. Mobs constantly outnumber the player and are consistently much stronger to boot, and all of them seem to follow the exact same AI pattern - beeline straight for your weaker characters on the back line, completely ignoring your front line fighters so they can tear into soft, vulnerable mage flesh with all the abandon of piranhas on a slab of raw beef. Then, once your support inevitably falls seconds later, they simply do a heel spin and focus on your fighters, shredding them in an instant owing to their superior numbers and the fact that they now have you effectively surrounded (which both incur substantial penalties to evasion rolls). Reload and repeat about two dozen more times per encounter until you eventually reach your boiling point and have to uninstall the game before you throw your keyboard through the monitor.

It doesn't help that in comparison to games like Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale, your options are frustratingly limited. This is in part due to those games' wider variety of character classes and (useful) skills, but also because the game is generous enough with potions, spell scrolls and other items that give you a temporary edge. You may not be able to win a lot of fights with sheer brute force, but you certainly had a plethora of other options to explore - buffering your party with potions and spells, laying traps and luring foes into them, tossing confusion and harassment spells at them from a distance, summoning monsters to draw some aggro away from your characters and put pressure on their spellcasters, and so on. Eventually, you'd find a viable strategy, and with a bit of practice, improvisation and luck, you'd pull out a victory. It felt rewarding in that way. You certainly wouldn't have an easy time just bum-rushing every mage you come across either, as every one of them came loaded with plenty of defensive spells to protect themselves and disruptive status abilities to keep you off their backs (and you would too, if you wanted your mages to stay alive). Here, you have no such luxury - spells are frustratingly ineffective across the spectrum, buffer items are rarer than Bigfoot and characters have very little to work with in terms of skills until the higher levels... but good luck surviving that long when even a lowly pack of wolves can wipe out your entire party in under twenty seconds. Oh, and don't try to run, either - they saw fit to disable map exit triggers while you're in combat, so it's do or die every single time.

Planescape: Torment also offered a different, though equally elegant solution to this problem by de-emphasizing combat entirely, instead focusing on the game's storytelling element. Battling enemies took a back seat to exploring the vast, dense and bizarre new world you found yourself in, and they took great pains to make it just that; the story of Torment is conveyed through well over one million words of spoken dialog and narrative, and it's all immaculately written and presented. A solid 90% of the game's experience points were earned through completing quests, solving puzzles, exploring dialog trees and advancing the plotline. Yes, there was still combat, and you were often at a substantial disadvantage therein due to your character's inability to equip armor (in an unmodded game, at least), but that ultimately made little difference to the proceedings due to a unique trait of the story - namely, your character's immortality. No matter how many times you dropped, you could get back up and try again with only a minor setback, and the same was true of your allies due to a skill you earned early on in the game. But even then, you still had plenty of options to explore in order to overcome your opponents, and unlike Pillars, simply running away was also a viable one.

In conclusion, Pillars of Eternity is about as disastrous a misfire as a game can be.  It's long-windedly pretentious, witless and boring in its writing, with thoughtless and uninspired gameplay that's a pale imitation of a classic CRPG engine to boot. The fact that it's promoted as a "spiritual successor" to some of the most well-regarded PC titles ever made, is headed by those same developers, and yet is this bad is simply beyond belief. Obisidian, shame on you for utilizing crowd-sourced funding to release such a substandard product; we all know you're capable of so much better.

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Platform: PC, OS X, Linux
Released: 2015
Recommended version: N/A

Fallout: New Vegas

Several members of Fallout's original development team return to the franchise for another go.  But do they manage to make New Vegas live up to the franchise's legacy, or has Bethesda's acquisition of the franchise taken it too far down a new path?

Fallout 3 was a divisive game among long-time fans of the series; the game began as "Project Van Buren" under the development of Black Isle, but when Interplay encountered financial problems in the early 2000s, the studio was shut down and the game was cancelled.  The Fallout IP was later bought out by Bethesda Softworks, who decided to develop their own version of Fallout 3, completely discarding all of the work and concept done for Van Buren.  Bethseda's version eventually came out in 2008, prompting heavy criticism from long-time fans on almost every front, but most especially changing its gameplay style to more closely match Elder Scrolls with its first-person perspective and real-time action, making it feel more like a shooter with some RPG elements on top than a full-fledged role-playing game.

From a personal standpoint, I felt that Bethesda did a solid job with Fallout 3; while I take issue with some elements of it as feeling out of place (particularly the virtual reality segment and the extremely silly Liberty Prime), I felt that they put in a strong effort trying to reconcile the game's setting and lore with fan expectations, even going out of their way to address some common criticisms with in-game dialog (such as the disparate designs of the Super Mutants and their take on the Brotherhood of Steel).  They also took advantage of the 3D perspective to create a convincingly bleak Washington DC devastated by nuclear bombs and under a mutant threat, with some excellent visuals and a vast, convoluted network of subway tunnels and ruined buildings to explore throughout.  They even attempted to recreate some of the series' sly, dark humor with elements like a seemingly idyllic community that gives way to something much darker, and an innocuous building whose entrance is rigged with an elaborate Rube Goldberg device that eventually triggers a shotgun trap to blast the player.  The player even had the option to complete most quests in numerous ways, which showed that Bethesda was at least trying to emulate the free-choice of the earlier Fallout games.  While they didn't completely succeed at making Fallout 3 live up to the franchise's legacy, one certainly could not say they weren't trying to.

New Vegas was later announced, being heavily touted among series fans for reuniting some of Fallout's original developers with the franchise and promising a more authentic Fallout experience.  Indeed, the setting was even moved back to the western end of the country, reincorporating some familiar settings and factions from earlier games (including the NCR and the familiar reclusive, technology-hoarding Brotherhood of Steel) and even reintroducing some concepts from the scrapped Van Buren version of Fallout 3 (such as Caesar's Legion).  The game also returned to an almost entirely open-ended style, giving the player a basic premise and storyline and letting them reach the end in almost any way they pleased.

In that way, New Vegas was very much a return to what drew people to Fallout in the first place - namely that it was an actual role-playing game.  The player was free to interact with NPCs and complete quests in any order and fashion they wished, and no matter what choices they made, all were equally valid.  The player could also ally with or make enemies of the numerous factions in the Mojave, each of which had their own motivations and quest lines to follow, and their choices in any given area and with any faction would unlock different ending scenes.  This, paired a vast number of minor quests to complete, NPCs to interact with and areas to explore, gives New Vegas the feel of a sprawling adventure.  The sheer amount of content New Vegas provides, as well as the fact that completing some quests will also close off opportunities for others, ensures that the player can only see a small fraction of what the Mojave has to offer in a single playthrough, lending the experience tremendous replay value.

The gameplay also returns to Fallout's style of design in some ways despite retaining Fallout 3's engine.  The player is given a selection of Traits as the game opens (giving them both advantages and drawbacks right out of the gate), and there is a much heavier emphasis on skill checks than there was in Fallout 3 - nearly every quest in the game has at least one dialog or option that can only be passed if a given skill is at a high enough level.  These generally allow the player to avoid a difficult fight or, should they choose to fight anyway, give them an advantage.  Should the player wish it, they can also choose the "Wild Wasteland" trait to unlock some sillier events (usually in the form of pop culture references) and give the game a bit more of an off-beat vibe a la Fallout 2.  There are some new options to provide a different gameplay experience as well, such as weapons that can be outfitted with modifications for a variety of benefits, a crafting system that allows for new types of equipment, stat-boosting "chems" and even new ammunition types (such as armor-piercing rounds and energy cells that do more damage at the cost of causing weapons to decay faster) to be created, and even a "hardcore mode" that makes healing crippled limbs more difficult and requires the player to periodically eat, sleep and drink or suffer stat penalties (and eventually die).

The game's writing also proves to be a strong point; as per Obsidian standards, it conveys a sly yet confident tone throughout, with well-written and complex characters as well as some surprisingly funny off-beat humor.  Even the add-on DLC missions show a surprising amount of effort in this regard, making every effort to expand upon the lore of the Mojave (and the Fallout franchise as a whole) and culminating in a showdown with one of the most well-realized and interesting rival characters in any video game, let alone an RPG.

The biggest shortcoming of New Vegas, however, is definitely its engine.  While I didn't mind the transition to a 3D action-based style of gameplay as much as some, the fact that Obsidian had to work with the same buggy, limited engine that Oblivion and Fallout 3 sported definitely hampers the experience in some ways.  In addition to the usual complement of awkward wall clips and enemies ragdolling in silly ways (sometimes rocketing into the air after taking a fatal blow or clipping into scenery, unable to attack or be attacked), the vast web of scripted quests, objectives and placed objects also ends up pushing the Gamebryo engine to its limits, frequently resulting in things like markers pointing to misleading locations or NPCs and objects simply disappearing, leaving some objectives unable to be completed.  Indeed, almost every quest in the game has at least one or two bugs associated with it, and while I personally didn't encounter any that made the game unwinnable, the fact that innocuous actions can sometimes render quests unable to be finished can result in a fair bit of having to load back earlier saves and repeat work already done.  Indeed, even the game itself seems to acknowledge this, frequently making auto-saves and giving the player a grand total of 1,000 save slots to utilize (which can quickly fill up one's hard drive if playing on the console versions).  Several patches have been released to fix the most egregious bugs, but even with all of these, New Vegas remains a notoriously volatile experience.

In spite of that, however, New Vegas provides a fantastic role-playing adventure, giving the player a tremendous amount of freedom to explore a vast, dense web of lore and interesting sights.  The strong writing also proves to be a great asset, highlighting Obsidian's talents at their best and ultimately leaving the player lamenting that, in spite of the sheer amount of content the game provides, they were prevented from including even more due to time constraints and engine limitations.  And that they may never get a crack at the series again as New Vegas ultimately fell short of Bethesda's lofty expectations for sales and review scores...

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Playstation 3, XBox 360, PC
Released: 2010
Recommended version: All versions are plagued by their own sets of bugs, glitches and crashes, but the PC version is the most stable in my experience.  It also allows for fan modifications (including several prominent bug fixes) and the use of console commands to bypass a plethora of glitches without having to redo entire quests, so that is the one I recommend.