Outer Worlds has even less variety than Starfield. Every quest is awful. Everyone is in universe mentally retarded. Combat is just "shoot until dead" since AI is even more retarded and just zerg rushes you. It's ungodly expensive to upgrade weapons that you're encouraged to do so. It just becomes a looter shooter where you use the latest gun you got after leveling up. Companions are useless and annoying. There's like 10 total guns and 10 armor sets. My dumb ass even got all the achievements in that game near its launch because I desperately wanted the game to be good but no, it never was. It simply existed.
Game is much smaller and more focused, which is something that Todd could have learned a thing or two from instead of just creating 1000 planets, 980 of which are empty and have boring AI generated events. Note that OW has only a few select locations, but each one has something on it, be it a quest, a few towns or what have you. This is what Starfield should have done.
I disagree about the combat, while it is true the enemies are stupid(as if Bethesda AI was any better) and that there is small amount of arms available, each fulfills it's purpose and the game has a quick-paced feel to it. To compare it to Starfield, the latter has a jetpack, which doesn't add much to the game unless you're in a rare instance of a vertical or zero-gee environment, where as OW has Bullet Time that can completely turn things around at a critical moment. Starfield has no equivalent to VATS, where as I think this is a viable evolution of the mode(try looking what Bethesda did with it in Fallout 76, it sucks). Moreover, OW has blood and gore plenty, Starfield meanwhile? That would be too much work, forget we already have all the coding and assets from Fallout and Skyrim.
One thing about companions, while it is true that they are "useless and annoying" they have their own Leadership skills you need to raise, they actually become very powerful at higher levels to the point where you barely have to do any of the fighting yourself(at the cost of you not being as good at combat yourself, likely investing the skill points into stealth or diplomacy instead. Roleplaying and build nuance, remember that little feature?)
You say that the game "merely existed", but look at the reaction you and others itt gave. It's much more than "merely existing", more like an affront to nature to me. You think anyone else will have a reaction that strong to defending Starfield several months down the line?(If you do, please direct them to me. I love bullying Bethesda fanboys).
Oh, I almost forgot because it was a given, but do you know which space RPG has had an optional Survival mode available from day 1, with the base game fully adhering to it instead of acting as a poorly thought out feature tapered on in the last minute? Yep, just like New Vegas, OW has one too, very similar to the one in that game too. Starfield, where is your survival mode? Even Fallout 4 got one eventually!
I could go on(very easily), but my point is that OW is exactly what the game was SUPPOSED to be like, and Starfield isn't just inferior(or at best on a similar level) to Obsidian's "mid game" but also brings pretty much nothing new to the table that Fallout 4 or Skyrim didn't have, again unless you consider Space Combat or Lego Blocks to be a groundbreaking new feature worthy of 70$ and an SSD.
at least it doesnt had a so quirky asexual dyke who lore dumps her entire fucking life history in the first 2 hours of the fucking game
Someone clearly haven't taken a good look at NPCs and characters in Starfield!
