I’ve started play The Outer Worlds via Microsoft Game Pass, because paying $1 to play a new release that I’m interested in seems like a decent deal. So decent, in fact, that I fully don’t understand how the economics of this works. I would have paid full price on Steam for Outer Worlds, but since the game is EGS exclusive for a year, that didn’t happen, and instead I paid Microsoft a buck, of which I’m guessing Obsidian (Outer World devs) get very little of. I’m sure they got some money from EGS to be exclusive, and I’m also guessing they got money from Microsoft to be on Game Pass, but are those two sources of revenue greater than actual sales of the game?

Note, even with the Game Pass option, I still would have bought Outer Worlds on Steam, as I’m guessing DLC is coming at some point, and perhaps it’s a game I want to replay at a later date. Plus I do value the tracking aspect of my Steam account, and I like seeing all my games in one place, enough so that I’ll ‘overpay’ when given the option. But here I didn’t have that option thanks to EGS, so a buck it is. Sorry but not Obsidian.

As for the game itself, I’m not very far in, but have seen enough to talk a bit about it.

First off performance of the game was initially odd. It defaulted to near-ultra on my PC, with a frame rate of around 80-90 according to Fraps (not being on Steam meant no FPS indicator via Steam, yay…), but the game felt like it was running below 30 FPS when moving about and in some combat situations. It was just sluggish and off. But then I capped the FPS to 60 in the game, turned everything up to Ultra, and it feels much better. I haven’t looked into whether G-sync was an issue here or just not having the framerate fluctuate solved my problem, but either way it was an odd first impression in terms of graphics/performance. That said on Ultra at 3440×1440 the game is gorgeous, and finally we have a Fallout game with good-looking character models!

And make no mistake, this is a Fallout game just without the IP and the setting (more on that shortly). The gun play, the overall gameplay style, the character progression; its all Fallout. And that’s a good thing! With Bethesda busying wasting the Fallout IP on F76, it’s nice of Obsidian to come along and give us Fallout: Alien Planet.

That said, I am a bit confused as to how to approach this setting from a roleplay perspective. You play someone who was in cryosleep for 70 years, in a setting where corporations own everything, including people. Is my character familiar with corporations having this much power? Am I supposed to play someone with the morality of a 2020 non-Trump human, or someone who understands but maybe doesn’t accept the setting of Outer Worlds? Early dialog options give you the chance to be unaware of how the setting works, but you can also pick options that show you do, so which is it? Maybe this clears up a bit further into the game, but right now it has me confused, especially because the first follower you get is also a bit ‘grey’ in this regard, while seemingly everyone else in town is 100% aware of how things are.

More later I’m sure as I dig deeper.