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The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition is a game I’ve had in my Steam Library since 2020 since it showed a lot of promise. I saw that for $10 more I could get the upgrade to this special edition now in 2023 with better graphics and all DLC included. So I figured to play this version instead since it’s the definitive edition that Private Division had for this game. The graphics are beautiful and this game feels as if the legendary Bethesda would make a new FPS/RPG hybrid that combined Fallout/Elder Scrolls with the silliness of Borderlands and the companion teamplay aspect of Mass Effect mixed in.
In theory, mixing all these kinds of elements into a single game should work but unfortunately, it doesn’t in this case. The customization option for your character is nice and the characters you meet along the way are interesting but after the first few hours of playing The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition, this game gets so linear to the point of sheer boredom.
The story was interesting at first but then fizzled out over time with more intertwining stories that were dumb and not all that fun. All this game boils down to is “go fetch” quests, decent weapons but nothing extraordinary, and enemies that are so repetitive, it took me out of the gaming experience. Every encounter was fighting 2-5 enemies at the same time, numerous canisters you can shoot that do AOE damage to them, and that’s it. Repeating that every single encounter was frustrating and felt like the same scripted event every time. There weren’t even any fun mini-bosses or anything to break things up.
The weapons are the same run-of-the-mill kind of nonsense without anything creative until you get to the final 25% of the game. The same with armor as I’m not sure why they didn’t mix things up or create actual tier armor sets or something to make it more diverse. It’s the same 3 or 4 looking guns/armor without any variety. You will collect the same kind of lame, uninspired grey weapons and hundreds of the same generic helmets and chest pieces to sell because they are useless. The weapon mods are somewhat interesting but eh, been there, done that.
The RPG elements of the game are decent but again, nothing innovative, just what has been done to death over the last few decades in this space. The tech trees are okay and the companion option/abilities are good, but it’s not anything that dramatically changes the game. I barely noticed most of these tech tree abilities doing anything except help you run faster or hold more useless loot, so I'm not even sure why it’s there. I guess to make sure it checks the RPG box? Either way, this is mostly an FPS game of running around doing quests you won’t care about after a few hours.
It also boggled my mind as to why they didn’t add a “Loot All” option around the 2-5 enemy groups you fight instead of having to “Loot All” on every individual corpse. When you use special weapons that vaporize enemies, they turn into a pile of dust which can sometimes make it hard to find since, you know, have to do it one by one, which eventually gets to the point where you stop caring and just want to burn through the game to be done with it already.
The soundtrack is good and the cutscenes of the action abilities your companions do is pretty fun the first few times you do it. The thing is, it’s the same cutscene with the same weapons used every single time so it loses that novelty as you keep using those abilities. Again, this game got so generic, boring, and repetitive that I couldn’t wait to finish it. There was nothing here that was all that epic or fun that hadn’t been done to death already thousands of times in these FPS/RPG hybrid games.
The two expansion packs, Murder on Eridanos and Peril on Gorgon, are decent and add on as two separate storylines, but it’s more of the same as the main game. One is a murder mystery and the other is a walkathon with endless walking for even longer “go fetch this or kill that person” nonsense. This would have been a great opportunity to mix things up but again, Private Division dropped the ball here.
I give The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition a 2/5 for a very generic and forgettable experience. There isn’t anything fun or creative in yet another FPS/RPG hybrid clone that tries so hard to be quirky, silly, and serious but fails when it matters most. The gameplay gets boring a few hours in and there’s way too much walking/teleporting in this game. The main story, side stories, companion quests, and both DLC stories are all okay but nothing that blew me away. All the fights were repetitive and even the ending was a snoozefest. If this game is severely on sale and you also love playing FPS/RPG hybrid video games, it’s worth trying since the graphics are absolutely beautiful. Everything else? Barely passable.