It was mediocre while riding on the tsunami of hype following the total trainwreck of a launch of Fallout 76. It's announcement fit perfectly with all the news of how many problems there were with Fallout 76. Fallout 76 was just a really bad idea from the start, used an engine not suited for it's purpose much like Descent to Undermountain, rushed to release, piss poor marketing decisions like the canvas bag thing and the life sized helmet with the toxic dust lining, and so on. Then Obsidian announced Outer Worlds made by the guys behind the original Fallout, when the current guys that own Fallout just released a bad idea done with the license as poorly as humanly imaginable. There was a mountain of hype for a game that probably wouldn't have gotten it otherwise.
Was it a bad game? Not really. Was it a good game? It had it's moments. Was it a great game? Absolutely not. Did it ever stand a chance of living up to the hype it had? Not in a million years.
This is also a big problem with the AAA gaming thing. You would think that someone at Private Division, who published Outer Worlds, would have seen this once in a decade event going on where your competition implodes itself and you have something in the works that just might capture the hearts and wallets of everyone pissed off at Bethesda for years to come. Instead of leaning in to the Fallout thing, given Outer Worlds time to rework things, though, they were still pushing for an episodic, consequence free, casual shooter CRPG. They had the best set up to launch a franchise even if it took an extra year, but they mandated a disaster to fit in to their quarterly release schedule.
. My excuse I was on a $1 Game pass month, and thought why not. It's an insidious mechanism, drawing a deadline within which you have to finish a game, baits fools like me.
