The Outer Worlds: Tell Me What I’m Looking For

Hey Kayla,

You mentioned that you wanted to talk about The Outer Worlds as part of our end of the year coverage, so here we are. I’m not gonna lie to you, this is the letter I’ve been struggling with the most in our series. I haven’t finished the game. I’m honestly not sure if I ever will. Every time I go to dip back, I remember that I’ll mostly be dealing with story missions that want to sport a veneer of anti-capitalist thought, but can’t seem to follow through with it, all while fighting bullet sponge enemies that get tired extremely fast. The politics of this game feel really overstated, while somehow not really saying much, and it makes progressing through each story mission grate a little more, knowing that the options I’ll be presented as solutions will never carry the weight I wish they did. 

So, you might be asking: “Caitlin, why didn’t you just bail and have me write a love letter?” Well, there are two reasons. The first is I just genuinely want the chance to write with you about something. The second is that I want to talk about this game, I’ve just been having a hard time finding the words. But I think a conversation I had with a friend recently can help me unpack it a bit.

While talking to said friend about why I found The Outer Worlds to be boring, he said this: “so like, I don’t mean this in a mean way, and I hope it doesn’t offend you and definitely feel free to correct me, but I feel like (especially lately since you’ve had to play so many of them, you don’t really enjoy PLAYING games lol. Like it seems like you love a lot of the different parts of what games give you, but you’ve never really been down with the nuts and bolts mechanics of actually playing video games.” And you know what? He’s right. 

The actual act of playing games isn’t fun to me. I don’t like them as a site of play. I really only like video games that have narratives that really stick out to me, or that capture some part of my imagination. The only time mechanics really interest me is when they feed back into what the narrative is trying to do (shout out to last year’s Vampyr).  How shooting a gun feels, or what drop rates or IVs look like has never been something that’s captured my interest. And that’s not a dig at anyone who finds those kinds of things meaningful. My brain just doesn’t work that way. 

Unfortunately, The Outer Worlds’ story just hasn’t been doing much for me. Which is frustrating because there are some really cool moments that I loved sprinkled throughout. Like Parvati. I could describe to you the individual moments with her that I’ve adored, but honestly, like the rest of the internet, I just love her overall. I will say her romance arc specifically really melted my heart and made me smile. And I’ve had others, like discovering that cows just randomly show up in the ship from time to time and no one ever explains it other than the ship mentioning there’s manure. Or going out in search of what I thought was a little boy who had run away from home, only to find out that he was actually a 42 year old man desperate to get away from his overbearing mother. 

These vignettes fucking rule, but when I put them into the context of the game’s bigger picture, they lose their oomph. They’re bright spots in an otherwise dull journey through a vaguely political Fallout clone with too many mean bugs and not enough mean bug ladies. That being said, I know you found something special in the game, and that has me curious. So tell me, Kayla, what exactly got you so hooked on The Outer Worlds? What am I missing?