Even on Switch, the Outer Worlds captivates.

When the Outer Worlds was announced, I was instantly intrigued by the sweet temptations of the gameplay loop of role playing rigamorale. While not the greatest RPG fanatic of all time (I still struggle in Skyrim & still die A LOT in Fallout 1), I still love the genre and its beginning to suck away all my free time like a fresh newborn. Even then, I had just been gifted a glorious Nintendo Switch for my birthday, and was eager to play more games on the go like those glorious gamers in the commercials. Buying every story or RPG based game on the Switch store I could, after beating Breath of the Wild & Skyrim my spirit longed for rich role playing realism in a sea of games that seemed eager to be abandoned by fearful developer pirates who just wanted a quick hand of loot. Quickly after this I picked up the Witcher 3, a game I previous bought on PS4 but almost instantaneously disliked at the time due to my immature immediate indecisiveness to keep playing, grinding, etc. The game sat on my shelf for about a year, but after buying it on the switch, it instantly became one of my instant favorites & I was packing my bags for the RPG bandwagon.

Then, like a sign from the gods themselves, here comes the Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment. The developer is known for making some of the popular RPGs ever made like Fallout: New Vegas & Pillars of Eternity. The developers prided themselves on making a no-nonsense game that people could love with no loot boxes, micro transactions or anything, which has been sorely lacking in the game industry as of late. After keeping a close first persion POV on this game when it released for consoles, I eagerly awaited it to release for the switch. After all, the game had gotten so much praise online for it’s story & gameplay. However, it sat in nebulous silence for many weeks, and I got nervous.

“BUT HOW DOES IT LOOK?”

When the game got closer to launch, many a weary eyed war torn game lover like myself kept a watchful yet fearful eye as the developers kept silent about the game. Many other developers had pulled similar sick tricks before, deciding to pull back the horrifyingly cruel curtain of lackluster effort to port games to the Switch year after year. Obsidian made promises that it would keep the game at the “highest quality standard” of an Obsidian game (ported by Private Division), but as we all know, whenever a company doesn’t show any gameplay for a game even weeks until its release, its a worrying sign, a looming storm cloud in the far distance signaling a gloomy day on the horizon. I frequently searched the game online, to my horrified eyes I nothing, no gameplay, no trailer, nothing. My heart sank faster than the Titanic. I was bracing myself for disproportionate amounts of disappointment, while trying to stay positive about the game simultaneously.

“OH, NO.”

Flash forward a few days before the release on June 6th, and I was frantically scanning the web like a sick person who just looked up their symptoms on WebMD. I couldn’t find a lot of information, except for two scolding hot takes on the game which said it looked “horrifying”. My heart sank. My worst fears had manifested, I couldn’t decide if I was more upset with myself for letting myself get too on track with the destructive hype train, or if I was more upset with the developer for obviously playing with our emotions and then bragging about being able to port any game to the Switch, when this game came out looking like Frankenstein’s monster.

Non-existent textures, blurry edges, and the game looked like a PlayStation 2 port of the same name. The game had insane load times, almost a full 3 to 5 minutes depending on which areas you were traveling to. The pop in was so bad at times I’d have to wait for the game to catch up to me to progress. The blurry textures also made picking up or finding objects in the environment hard to see. Even with all of these complaints, after many hours of playing I got into the groove of the game, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it and soon realized, if you take the game for what it is, minus the graphics & waiting room level load times, it still had still the same core experience that made the original game a hit in the first place.

“OH YES.”

Once I was able to finally accept the rough framerate, PS2 era graphics & insane load times, (or maybe Stockholm Syndrome set in), I started to love the game like I knew I would. It was everything I’ve ever wanted, a space epic RPG with a solid story & clever writing. Everything Firefly was meant to be for TV, basically. Being able to persuade people & guards to give me things like some sort of space-faring Tom Sawyer made all of the issues all worth it. The progression & upgrades all felt important and useful, I actually cared about the characters and the universe & I spent upsetting amounts of time switching, styling & debating over simple things like the helmet design to match my parties’ unique style. The world felt lived in even though it still suffered from “big town/small group of people” syndrome that other RPG’s face.

My only real complaint (if I can even call it that), is that the game is “too short”. That’s an extremely broad way to describe it without spoilers, but the game feels like a Thursday night cop drama that starts out slower but finally gets insanely good in the last 5 episodes. That’s not to say the game isn’t well balanced, the game’s scope & pace is totally understandable for the size of the team and the level of transparency was surprisingly very clearly stated before the release to temper expectations. Still though, I couldn’t help myself yelping in shock as the credits breezed by me. I wanted to spend more time in this world seeing what Terra 2 had to offer.

Thankfully with patches being constantly added to games nowadays & the developer stating that more was on the way, a sigh of relief hit my mind when I saw the release date for the new DLC. The game got a second wind on the Nintendo Switch, so hopefully they prioritize it more than they have previously, and we can end this notion that the Switch deserves less needs to end. The Outer Worlds is a great game that deserves its moment for lightyears ahead.

-CLWDWLKR