I am finally breaking my big game duck. Yup, I’ve broken the legs of a 20ft high mallard. Ho ho.
Ok, actually, I”m playing Outer Worlds 2. I rather enjoyed the first Outer Worlds, and am hoping for more.
This time, the background is … well, imagine Amazon took control of Trumpcon, then invaded North Korea. The masters of the overprice merged with the masters of corruption to invade the masters of enslavement. In the game they’re called Auntie’s Choice and The Protectorate (which has nothing to do with the actual Protectorate, and might be a sneaky reference to Dishonored).
It’s too early in the game for me to be able to comment any further on the plot, except to say that you play a character who’s hunting down a traitor.
The game is massive. After most of a week, I’m still on the first map, the one after the intro, Eden’s Paradise Island (the irony of the idiocy of the name is gloriously Trumpian). I’m slow because I’m being completionist, exploring all the side missions I can find.
Visually, Outer Worlds 2 feels like the original Outer Worlds, on new, bigger, maps. They work, they do their job, and clearly people have put a lot of effort into them, but they don’t jump out and snag me, visually.
The writers have filled the game with side characters whose conversations are often short snippets of humour adding background and colour to the game. The main characters, the companions: well, I’m still in the game’s early days. So far, I’ve seen one possible gay ex–couple, which I could be misreading. I have to wait and see how these companions develop.
As you might guess from my emphasis here, I’m playing the storyline level of the game. I’m not interested in fights, I think mostly because fighting in First Person Shooters doesn’t seem to have advanced much since Doom: simply making the same mechanisms more complicated isn’t a dramatic advance, in my book. Anyway, I am interested in plot and characterisation, things missing in any real depth from the addiction I’m trying to break, No Man’s Sky.
The best thing so far, though, is not the characterisation, which is at least there (unlike NMS), and is developing depth across the board. No, the best thing so far is the music.
There are two ‘radio stations’, one for each side. Auntie’s Choice plays 1930s style swing ditties, the Protectorate play light classical with something of a pseudo–Victorian feel. Both have glorious satirical lyrics presented as though the satire was straight up truth: whoever wrote them must have had immense fun doing so, as would have those performing the announcers’ texts, singing the lyrics, and playing the music (I’m presuming it’s not all synth). I hear echos of US and UK radio stations, although to be fair to the few US radio stations I’ve heard, I’m not sure the two Outer Worlds 2 stations’ ‘adverts’ are exaggerated. What I don’t understand is why super dooper future societies still use the radio, but who cares. The music, at least so far, is one of the outstanding features of this game. I should warn you that there’s only so much music, so it often repeats, but it’s so good that’s no problem.
I’ll write more as I explore more.