The Outer Worlds is a Fallout 3/New Vegas-styled RPG that also draws a significant amount of inspiration from the first two Mass Effect games, and all of these tried-and-true elements have coalesced into something decent but uninspired. First, though, a little backstory—I put in three different key requests for this thing for three different platforms, only to have all three rejected the day before release. That’s not only humbling but also hilarious when you consider The Outer World‘s emphasis on a big corporation screwing over the little guys who are just trying to do their jobs. Self-awareness isn’t much of a thing in the gaming industry. Anyway, I was able to get a $1 subscription to Xbox’s Game Pass service that The Outer Worlds is currently available on, and outside of some bugginess and performance/audio issues that my bruised pride feels fit to mention first, it’s a perfectly serviceable game so desperate to relive the magic of its decade-old open-world RPG format that it forgets to create any of its own magic.

First and foremost, you can kill just about anyone, which is a feature that has all but disappeared in the years since Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura offered players that same level of freedom. I’ve encountered no plot-crucial characters who can’t be shot in the face. The only characters who I haven’t been able to finish off are companions, and even they’re vulnerable before joining up. Starting a firefight is liable to draw in everyone nearby, however, and since areas are small hubs that inevitably contain one or two characters your companions like, random acts of violence can result in missing out on content. That’s a far more elegant way of keeping players from using your game as a mass-murder simulator than making characters invincible, and I approve.

If you allow a companion to become attached to a certain character and subsequently cause their death, they can even leave your party. It’s an interesting system. I’ve unlocked 5 companions and only feel remotely attached to one of them thus far, though. One of the things I’d heard about The Outer Worlds is that its writing is fantastic. I disagree; the game appears to be unable to decide whether to treat its corporation-first setting as a joke or play it totally straight, so the tone often lands in an uncomfortably noncommital spot between the two.

Outside of the weirdly adorable Parvati, the first companion most people will find, there’s nothing interesting about any of them. There’s a guy who’s basically religious and whose name I can’t recall despite having spent hours with him in the party, a guy named Felix with no discernible personality whatsoever, a brusque medic named Ellie, and a robot party member clearly inspired by Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic‘s HK-47 but devoid of that same quirky liveliness. Everyone is either bland or interesting solely because they’re invoking other, more original games, which summarizes The Outer Worlds as a whole: superficially fun, but largely hollow and uninteresting outside of its references and occasional humor.

The Outer Worlds impressions: More of the same first appeared on Killa Penguin