The Outer Worlds recently released to massive critical praise. The game's multiple worlds, extensive customization options, and incredible writing have had gamers hooked into exploration the unknown areas. However, how does it hold up compared to Bethesda's Fallout 76? Has Obsidian created a game that is more Fallout than Fallout?

Story

The Outer Worlds' narrative starts off with you literally dropping into a new world after waking up from cryosleep. Within minutes you're talking, running, and shooting people. Eventually, you find out that everyone is ruled by corporations. Everything is monetized in some way, people are left in the dark, and most of the time people are pacified in any way possible.

Despite the world being a bleak hell, Obsidian was able to pepper in a lot of humor into this game. People making light of death, a book written in French that annoys a possible companion, and lots of incredible writing encourages player interaction with the various NPCs. So much went into ensuring this world felt alive and it shows, with an established culture build on corporate overlords. 

Best of all is the branching paths. Players are given multiple avenues to complete objectives. With some offering long term consequences. Encouraging players to replay and try out different options. And with a constant stream of interesting locations to explore the narrative rarely gets stale.

On the opposite end of quality, you have Fallout 76. The core mission has you following in the footsteps to locate your overseer. It ends with her leaving another message and that's it. With the exception of some profound moments where you learned how the Overseer got her position and what she sacrificed the story is bland and boring. And the optional quests offer nothing more than basic fetch, defend an area, and kill the target quests. If the quests even work as Fallout 76 is notorious for having broken missions. And to top everything off Bethesda decided to shift the established lore of Fallout to make this game possible.

Winner: The Outer Worlds

Gameplay

The Outer Worlds took a lot of inspiration from their previous project Fallout: New Vegas. With a large assortment of customization from weapons, skills, and companions. Players are able to fully create their own characters based on what they desire. Even those who choose to end things diplomatically have combat advantages for opting into those skills.

The combat system is much more fleshed out. With grounded FPS systems and easy access to your companion's skills and tactics. With plenty of armor and weapons to use and customize.

And you're going to need every advantage. The game is teeming with exotic creatures, deadly humans, and lots of robots to fight. With each battle building on your character's reputation. 

The Outer Worlds gives you ample ways of how you want to develop your character's legacy. Be a hero or a anti-hero. Cheat and steal or be honest and kind. The game provides dozens of optional quests to take part in and hundreds of characters to take to. 

Fallout 76 has cards, a broken environment to explore, and glitches that existed in Fallout 4. The enemies often respawn at a bizarre rate and the constant need to eat becomes a frustrating tedious task of locating food and water. Not to mention the game's numerous glitches at launch that made playing the game a huge pain.

The tedium of having to gather resources to repair your ever breaking gear became a tiresome cycle of gathering resources to kill more pointless creatures. The end game, if you can call that, has you fighting the same creature. Which is a Skyrim dragon disguised as a giant bat.

And things weren't bad enough, Bethesda incorporated pay-to-win systems such as the now infamous Fallout 1st program. Where players can pay $99.99 a year for $12.99 a month, which cost more than Xbox Game Pass or Netflix, for pay-to-win advantages, private servers, and more. And the service is also broken.

Winner: The Outer Worlds

Technical Stability

The Outer Worlds worked at launch. After a year, Fallout 76 still does not.

Winner: The Outer Worlds

Winner: The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds is an outstanding game. A lot of passion and dedication went into this title to provide dozens of hours of quests, areas to explore, and ways to build your story. Heck, the game encourages replayability since your story can take multiple paths throughout the game.

Fallout 76 is an early access title that was sold at full price that destroyed Bethesda's once acclaimed reputation. 

Adam Siddiqui,
Senior Editor, NoobFeed
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