Recent reviews by Dwigt

Relaxing feelsgood! Nice updates with content/quality of life. Early access game that is really shaping into a game that you can play and chill. I use it to detox from competitive games lol

(tl;dr Scoring system in middle)

*Movie trailer voice-over*
In a world where the landscape is nothing but lootbox, monetization focused "games" which really are just psychological addicting cash machines for corporations like Electronic Arts, Bethesda, Activision, Epic Games, etc. to make obscene amount of money for as little effort as possible-

Comes a Single-Player (genre deemed totally dead by "E.A. Sports, It's In The Scam" right around when God Of War PS4 came out) game made by goodguy(and goodgirl and goodnon-binary and goodattackhelicopter) dev team. No episode-formatting, or day-1 dlc, or cosmetic store. A middle high-tier fairly priced game with a great presentation, setting, story, voice-acting, and interesting stealth mechanic with a non-annoying and tight-yet fluid escort system. Think modern ICO with more stealth and quality of life with big emphasis on story, and plot in a dark but wonderous setting.

The beginning sets up everything very well without coming off as phoney and gives you a lot of incentive to continue and find out what happens next while exploring a very rich detailed world in a setting that isn't very common. Situations occur in a nice pace and by the time you are starting to familiarize yourself with the mechanics the plot starts to accelerate. It is a great balance of cinematic audience participation with immersive mechanical sequences and the transitions between the two states are very well done.

Will update as I play more!


TL;DR-
Completely Arbitary Scoring System - C.A.S.S. - Add up which thumbs you agree with and if you come up with-

+4, insta-buy now (check https://isthereanydeal.com/game/outward/info/ first)
+2, buy this game on sale, wishlist it now and waitlist it on ITAD to alert you to price drops
+1, do more research, watch streams/reviews of trusted non-shill paid actor content (good luck finding that in 2019)
0 or negative score - Try to improve yourself as a human being and help others and yourself to lead better lives, jk, stay classy

👍 If you like a Medieval setting featuring the black plague
👍 If you like stealth mechanics
👍 If you like single-player narrative with strong connections between characters akin to well-developed movies/tv shows
👍 If you're tired of live-service monetization and promises of fixed games in a year+ but lootboxes and day1 dlc at launch and miss the days of buying a full-featured game experience with all content planned at launch, delivered
👍 If you want to support good people and play a part of improving the video-game industry
👍 If you like unique experiences set in a underused beautiful setting with stark contrasts, great art, voice-acting and intrigue

-

👎 If you just want to spend your $20 allowance on a skin to show your friends and random strangers how cool you are and how much they suck
👎 If you only play games in the top 5 twitch most viewed flavor of the week and call games with active playerbase less than 8 million "dead game"
👎 If you think games like Anthem and Fallout 76, companies like EA, Bethesda, Activision, Epic Games, etc. deserve even more money so they can fire more of their employees and give bigger bonuses to CEO
👎 If you don't like stealth at this time
👎 If you prefer ONLY action/shooting experiences at this time
👎 If you cannot play as a female protagonist

Conclusion and Summary-

This is a very nice start and I really hope there will be more. Judging by the title and a bit of research pre-release, it sounds like they designed this as a self-contained experience but with room for expansion. The world is really interesting and it's such an untapped market with much potential.

I definitely think we need more games like this in all the aspects it hits (setting/story/characters/mechanics/graphics/price model/etc.) and hope this succeeds as much as it deserves and really look forward to more and I literally uninstalled 3 open world loot box games, and many more I'm ashamed I ever even tried, to purge my game ssd and make room for Innocence and other better experiences. I feel no compulsion to reinstall those bandwagon generic majority wastes of space when I can just play this and others like it. As soon as I find more time I plan on 100%ing this and wish Asobo Studio the best and kodos to Focus for giving a non-battle royale microtransaction game a chance to shine!

May
All
Good
Now
Only
Love
Intensely
Absolute