Outward

The curious case of a good game that didn't go far enough

The little engine that tried.

Nine Dot studio really needs commended for Outward. I’m going to say quite a few things that aren’t really going to earn me any fans from the games community, but really? I say these things because I’m disappointed. I bought the game when it released, booted it up, obviously brought a buddy. We was excited for this challenging, open world survival experience. Very quickly my friend put the game down. We ran into a trap out in the open world and his character wasn’t killed, but launched through the map. An hour into the game and a bug had broken it for us. He rage quit, and I put it down for quite some time. Eventually I came back and really played through. Hours and hours of engaging with the game and the world (62.5 as of me writing this). I can’t deny the game has an allure, there’s something there. Visible effort to make what should be complex systems and a reactive world. But sometimes, trying hard just isn’t enough.

Let’s get the big one out of the way. Outward is essentially a PS1-2 era game. Yes yes, let the chorus of “Graphics don’t make a game better or worse bro” and “That’s such a superficial concern” and of course “Wtf are you talking about, it came out in 2019” commence. I got ya, but hear me out. Graphically it’s just that level. But graphics aren’t as important to me as functionality. So, let’s talk about how it functions. You remember back in the Final Fantasy disc days how impressive it was that there was a lot of NPCs hanging around, even if you couldn’t interact with them? That’s here. Hopefully you’re still in awe of NPC’s you can’t interact with walking several steps or standing near a workstation as if they actually use it. The dialog in the game is scant, and I get that voice actors are expensive, so they get props for using them the way they do (Voiced NPC’s say a couple of lines, typically from what the text on the screen will read, almost in a summary like manner). The combat doesn’t quite have that impact, most live action combat systems have these days. It’s a system that exists, and in fact. Let’s talk about that- My biggest gripe with the entire game.

Non-Committal Mechanics

Like that love interest that enjoys your company or perhaps some sexy time but is always in the “Not quite ready for a relationship” mindset. Outward has a lot of systems to engage with, but base level engagement and a tiny bit of exploration into those systems reveals a shallowness that is simply hard to overlook. Combat has a poise/stability system and building for it will net you free hits when your target is momentarily stunned. The thing is- Knocking down that poise even with the highest impact weapons will typically kill the enemy before you’ve exploited that system more than once or twice. At that point you realize, gearing for damage is just as effective, and my weapon choice (outside of finding an animation set I enjoy looking at) isn’t really relevant. The economy . . . exists. This one really bugs me. There is a shopping system, and the shops refresh their inventory periodically. With the definitive edition and/or the DLC’s, some shops have a bit of RNG added to their inventory refreshes. But here’s the thing: You can’t *really* make money off of what you craft. There’s scant few recipes that will net you an actual profit for collecting the ingredients and crafting them, but there is an enormous amount of things you can craft that are quite literally unsellable. In the first biome, if you take the time to explore, there is recipes and materials available to craft a number of interesting things, especially if you experiment with the free form crafting system that’s available (I love that thing, by the by). The vast majority of them are unsellable. What you can sell is near almost always worth less than simply selling the parts. The logic for this seems to be, almost anything that’s “makeshift” or “Wooden”, or a basic item (like a bedroll) you can’t sell. So you dump it in the world and. . . .it stays there essentially forever. I’m pretty sure items on the ground disappear at some point, but i’m like multiple in game weeks into my current playthrough and the center of the starter town is littered with things I couldn’t sell and didn’t want to carry. These systems could of been so much more. Shops that are currently specialized might of forced you to sell specific items to specific vendors. Makeshift items might be worth almost nothing, but as you learn better recipes, that require harder to get ingredients, you find yourself making much more money. When those shops refreshed, they could have changed the percent of profit on various items based on what you’ve been selling them. Sell a lot of Iron weapons? Those are going to cost less in the shop and net you less profit. Tired of wearing that custom blue sand armor? It’s now worth even more than you paid for it, because it’s not available in the shop regularly.

The survival mechanics, in pre-release videos, were touted as major considerations. “Plan your trip, make sure you have food and water, a way to sleep outdoors, and you’ve taken surprises into account”. I wish it was that serious, but it’s really not. Weather plays an effect, but that effect is a minor debuff, and the possibility of passing out and waking up somewhere else. Eating and drinking is such a minor concern that you can essentially gather things on your way, and most of what you gather will rot (then disappear from your inventory) before you actually need it. Your need to sleep is minimal, and almost all of these concerns can be minimized if not eliminated by passive abilities. Now I’m not saying I wanted them to be brutal or unrealistic, as I’ve noted in a previous writing. The idea that taking down a deer and only getting a single meal out of it because “reasons” has always irked me. What I am saying is that outwards survival mechanics feel like half measures. If they’d of went full-ass into them and ended my poor guy because he froze to death, or passed out from heat in the desert, or didn’t drink for a week? That would of been so much better than a minor and temporary debuff to my maximum stamina or movement speed.

Combat feels like they forgot to put impact in, and as a last-minute patch they added the poise system. In most games with a live-action combat system, when you hit something or it hits you, there’s an “thud” moment. There’s more of it in souls like games, and less of it in Assassins Creed games. But it’s fairly ubiquitous throughout gaming these days and has been for quite some time. Outward doesn’t have that, unless you’re blocking, and even then, it’s fairly minor. Your weapon animations don’t feel floaty, per se, but when you hit something there is no impact. If I’m swinging a giant claymore at a Pearl Bird or an Alpha Tyrannosaur, it feels the same. This also has the secondary effect of you falling into a combat loop of needing to attack and then press block as soon as your animation finishes, because your attack isn’t going to interrupt or stop the enemy attack animation. Moreover- Weapon debuffs and Dots (damage over time, for the three people who read this far and don’t know what that is) end up being what you build to, as you can simply apply damage, or a debuff then wait out their health or stamina bar without risking getting hit because you didn’t click block or dodge after your attack animation fast enough. There’s a lot of talk about how this combat system takes skill to learn and master. It really doesn’t. It’s very simple to understand and deal with, the issue is that it simply doesn’t function like any other combat system logically would. It’s incomplete. Without the impact that these weapons should have, it’s no deeper than the Skyrim’s “Bash bash block, block/shield bash” combat. Trading blows when you could be intelligently timing your attacks and defensive moves. Yes, you have options. Traps, ranged combat, magic, etc. But these systems don’t fare much better. Low to no impact options to add false depth to a combat system lacking oompf.

An exploration game with extra steps

The primary loop in outward is going to be like this:

Gather supplies and equipment.

Go to place.

Beat up a few baddies.

Loot.

Go to town and sell.

Possibly upgrade gear/skills

Go to next place.

Outward’s exploration is made artificially harder by a map that you’re supposed to do minor land navigation with via landmark recognition and in-world signposts. But with a little common sense and memory you’ll quickly figure out where you and where you’re going. It does add a tiny bit of excitement and sense of accomplishment when you get someplace you want to go for the first time, but it feels almost like a padding mechanic. As if the devs looked at it and said, “if we tell people where they are at all times, they’ll easily hit all the locations around them and breeze through the biggest segments of our game”. Really that is the thing with outward, isn’t it. The exploration and finding the little locations are the largest portions of the experience. The various stories and quests are there, scant, but they exist. The story itself is there, again, scant but existing. The vast majority of your playtime though is going to be spent exploring. I suppose that, for me, is what makes all of these half measures so disappointing. More brutal survival mechanics and a harsher penalty for not being properly prepared would make this vast segment of gameplay so much more interesting and engaging. They have built such a vast, beautiful, weird world. As you walk through it you find things you want to explore and learn more about. But most of it is just empty window dressing. Why are there floating rings around the Ley line mountain? What is it about being near one that makes everything purple? If I can find scant few animals, how are the bandits I randomly run into surviving? Where are all the travelers and traders going from town to town? Who are these bandits robbing besides me? How do these merchants get their supplies? If I have to camp in the wilderness occasionally, and I can find dead adventurers and traders, where are all the living ones to leave these corpses? I know from a logical standpoint these corpses are essential point of interest chests, but they bring up these questions. I’m exploring a nearly empty world. They clearly thought of these things, otherwise the corpses wouldn’t exist and the dialog about the world outside of city walls being dangerous wouldn’t be neccassary in even a flavor sense, so I simply can’t wrap my mind around only going to the halfway point of barely populating the world. Especially after several prerelease videos touting the “hunting” of animals and how big of an accomplishment that was going to be for you. I expected to have to learn how to hunt and skin an animal, how to fish, how to mine. My expectations were dashed.

A love for what might have been.

I’ve spent a lot of time complaining here. Pointing out the flaws and blemishes of this game. But it is an amazing game, if you can see it for what it is. I can, but as I play, I always notice these halfway points. I want these things to get better, perhaps in the sequel. I want an economy I can wander the world and manipulate. Trading from place to place as I move from biome to biome. I want my glorified camping simulator to be more. I want to be more engaged and feel like I have to be more considerate about the choice I make and gear I bring with me. I want to feel like there’s more considerations in place that simply the weight I’m able to carry vs what I’m actually carrying. I can see the intent here. I love the direction this wanted to go. But it simply didn’t get there. Be that because of budget, hesitation, a fear of player backlash or perhaps a lack of creativity, I’m not sure. But I want more from Outward. I want it to be more, do more. I want to keep playing it, to live in this world they’ve presented me with and really marvel at the vistas and mysteries.

I guess that story and hope will have to wait for a second game though.