Now if only any of the characters were interesting.
It's less of a problem that there is no interesting characters in that game, problem is that the devs either fuck them up or make everything a lulz so random joke. I love Outer Worlds but holy shit, the direction of that game is all over the place.
Salt Factory made a perfect analogy in his review: Imagine you have this friend, he comes to you late at night and he tells you that there has been an emergency and you need to drive him somewhere right away. You get your keys and you go to the parking lot, there your friend starts laughing hysterically that this was all just a one big joke. He just wants a pack of smokes from the gas station, so you begrudgingly take him there since you might as well, you're in the car.
Then he comes over again later and tells you that there has been an emergency for real and begs you to hurry. Can you guess what happens next?
The worst example of this is Max's companion quest, the ending just kinda forces you to do drugs and stop caring about religion, because lol so random? You don't even get an option to skip the drug sequence and translate the damn book in French, you would think it would be there so you would get a different ending with Max but whatever. Not like we want choices and consequences in our RPG anyways when we can just have a little laugh at the end of the quest instead.
When the stakes become high enough that the game wants you to take it seriously, not only is it still cracking jokes the entire way thru but you also get some of the most black and white writing I have ever seen out of Obsidian. Really, this is the kind of stuff you would expect out of Bethesda, there is basically zero reason to side with The Board unless you're playing as a comically evil character. Not like it matters, the two paths don't change at all. If you side with The Board you get one extra mission and the last two missions have a variation, ie the bad guys are friendly but now you have to shoot someone else. The two paths are literal reskins of one another. It's disappointing, but hey, at least it's kinda like New Vegas lite when you take a look at the entire package, which is enough for some people.
Dread Wolf? That's another story. The writing here is not only marvel tier slop and woke to high heaven, but the game treats you like a literal retard or a small child. I have no clue why this game isn't rated T, barely anything of note other than sex is shown to warrant the rating. The game also barely feels like an RPG, it's clear this was going to be a GAAS free mobile slop that was changed at the last minute, so now you have a shallow, empty single player "RPG" with netflix tier writing and characters that offers no challenge and has no stakes during gameplay so that nobody feels uncomfortable when playing. Disgusting.
Makes Outer World's cardboard cutout universe and story as well as gameplay look like something you would see in a proper CRPG.
