outer worlds is really great imo. i don’t even care about the bugs or the kinda pedestrian combat with how lovely the dialogue writing is and how good it is at letting you play it the way you want.
i love being a compulsive liar and seeing how much trouble that gets me into. i think it’s clever how trauma (in my case, a couple near death experiences involving robots) becomes a permanent part of your character (my character now panics around robots & becomes clumsy and unfocused, so i have to hang back and rely on my party to fight them.) everyone is gay as hell. i got a room of armed goons on my side by realizing they’re all intensely high on fumes from living in the bowels of a starship then convincing them the thing i needed from their storage is actually full of horrible insects and i need to take it away immediately. there’s a goofy jock party member with a bedroom full of anarchist lit who goes on soliloquies on the joy of sport and how satisfying it is to deck your boss. there’s a side quest where you help another party member ask out her new cute butch engineer-captain crush by just like, being a good friend? (my partner and i keep screaming like fan girls over those two lol)
like yeah it’s pulp but it’s well executed pulp with a lot of heart?