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Outer Worlds Review – Tips

Woah, woah, woah! It’s Rizzo’s!

That is stuck in my brain now, along with “Fruity oaty bars, they make a man out of a mou-ouse!”

Never mind.

I started playing Outer Worlds on the day of its release. I finished it last night.

Outer Worlds

Outer Worlds

By “finished” I mean I got all the companions, completed all the companion quests, got all the science weapons, got warring factions talking to each other, rescued runaways (or reported back that they were dead), talked to the mad scientist (who wasn’t so mad after all), starred in a movie, killed Akande (she started it), and saved the galaxy. Or one little bit of it anyway.

I don’t have much time to play, and this took about thirty hours to complete. I got it on xbox gamepass. I would have been annoyed if I had paid full price (about $80) for it. It is fun, great, even, but just too short to justify that kind of price.

Character development is good, quests are not grindy, graphics are good if not dazzling (it uses the Unreal engine). The dialogue is very good, brilliant in places, and often funny or insightful.

The designers say you can develop your character and play any way you want. That is another way of saying that how you develop your character makes no real difference. Essentially you can put points anywhere and the game will still play out identically. The only exception is that to achieve the best outcome (getting different sides to talk to one another) in one particular scenario on Monarch, the second world you visit (not counting Groundbreaker), you must have a persuade skill of 55. Other than that, do what you want.

On the other hand, points into stealth/hack are pretty much wasted. There is always a way forward that does not require those skills. Put a few points into defence and whatever weapon group you prefer. Points in leadership raise your companions’ health and damage, but I think there is a better way to do this, and that is to raise science skills.

Science enables you to tinker with your and your companions’ armour and weapons, massively raising their damage and protection, and directly raising the damage of any science weapons you use. My weapons of choice were the prismatic hammer and the euthanasia kit, until I got Phin’s Phorce in Phineas Welles’ lab right at the end. That is one good gun.

The basic rule is, “Do the right thing.” Don’t steal, don’t kill anyone you don’t have to. Don’t kill anyone just because someone else tells you to. You can accept those quests, but talk to the intended victim first. In the case of Akande, when you get to her, just say no. She will attack you. Do what you need to do. Even though this is the right thing to do, this means you have no choice but to fight what is effectively the final boss, RAM, a well-amoured robot. This is the only fight in the game where you will need to think ahead.

Unless there was some reason not to (eg a companion quest that belonged to another companion) I used Sam and Felix for most missions. But when you get to Tartarus, take Parvati and Felix. This is because Parvati has a very useful knockdown effect which enables you to get past RAM’s armour. You can alternate her knockdown with using your own tactical time dilation to cripple him briefly, each time whacking at him with your plasma based weapon.

Equip Felix and Parvati with plasma weapons too. Kill the drones first if you can, so you can concentrate on RAM. Keep your companions alive for as long as you can. If you have taken one of the perks that enables you to revive them during a fight that will help, but the chances are you will have to finish the fight on your own.

You beat RAM by crippling him, whacking him, and then running away until your tactical time dilation has recharged. Using foods that boost health or health regeneration will help, but once I understood the mechanics, it was no problem at all.

Then you rescue Phineas Welles, he makes a speech about how wonderful you are, and there is a nice slide-show previewing a hope-filled future in which the remaining colonists on the colony ship Hope are revived and Halcyon moves ahead.

It is engaging and well-written, but is too short for the price, and has little (none, really) replay value. Don’t pay full price for it.

The Deletion of Faith

I was very pleased today to see the Google doodle commemorating the life and achievements of Elena Cornaro Piscopia, who lived from 1646 to 1684, and who in 1678 was the first woman in the world to receive a PhD from any university.

Google doodle of Elena Cornaro Piscopia

Google doodle of Elena Cornaro Piscopia

I was less pleased to see no reference in the doodle to Elena’s faith as a Catholic Christian, which was her guide and her motivation throughout her studies and her life. So deep was her faith and commitment that at age eleven she took a vow of chastity, and in 1665 at age nineteen became a Benedictine Oblate.

She was guided and encouraged through her academic career by priests who were both friends and tutors.

This is part of her Wikipedia entry:
“As a young girl, Lady Elena was seen as a prodigy. By the advice from Giovanni Fabris, a priest who was a friend of the family, she began a classical education. She studied Latin and Greek under distinguished instructors, and became proficient in these languages, as well as French and Spanish, by the age of seven. She also mastered Hebrew and Arabic, earning the title of “Oraculum Septilingue”. Her later studies included mathematics, philosophy and theology.

Elena came to be an expert musician. She mastered the harpsichord, the clavichord, the harp and the violin. Her skills were shown by the music that she composed in her lifetime. In her late teens and early twenties she became interested in physics, astronomy and linguistics.

In 1669, she translated the Colloquy of Christ by Carthusian monk Giovanni Lanspergio from Spanish into Italian. The translation was dedicated to her close friend and confessor, Fr. Gianpaolo Oliva. The volume was issued in five editions in the Republic from 1669 to 1672. She was invited to be a part of many scholarly societies when her fame spread and in 1670 she became president of the Venetian society Accademia dei Pacifici (The Academy of the Peaceful).

Her PhD was conferred on 25 June 1678, in Padua Cathedral in the presence of the University authorities, the professors of all the faculties, the students, and most of the Venetian Senators, together with many invited guests from the Universities of Bologna, Perugia, Rome, and Naples.

The Lady Elena spoke for an hour in classical Latin, explaining difficult passages selected at random from the works of Aristotle. She was listened to with great attention and when she had finished, she received plaudits as Professor Rinaldini proceeded to award her the insignia of the laurea, the book of philosophy, placing the wreath of laurel on her head, the ring on her finger, and over her shoulders the ermine mozetta.”

Elena is not alone in having her firmly and repeatedly expressed views of what guided her work and gave it value, deleted without mention from secular re-tellings of her story.

The latest example is the film biography of JRR Tolkien, which somehow manages to get through two hours of story-telling without even a passing reference to the fact that Tolkien was a Catholic Christian, who was vocal throughout his life about the fact that his faith was his light, his guide and his motivation.

If you leave out the central motivation and guiding principle in someone’s life, you are not leaving something out, you are simply not telling the story.

This deletion of any references to faith in the lives of Christian artists and scholars extends into their work. Peter Jackson’s shallow but commercially successful parody of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a perfect example.

Tolkien described The Lord of the Rings as a work of Catholic theology, and it is. But any references to faith, to providence, the nature of sacrifice, service and leadership, the structure and meaning of the universe, to sacraments; for example the baptismal saving of the company from the servants of death through the wild waters of the Bruinen, the Lembas or waybread given to sustain the hobbits on their journey, and the absolution of Boromir, are carefully skirted around or left unmentioned.

I won’t even start on Disney’s appalling mockery of the Narnia stories. If you take out the heart of a story, there is no story left, only cheap thrills and silliness.

Perhaps the most egregious omission from Peter Jackson’s movies was the huge gap in the story where Tom Bombadil should be. A casual watcher of the movies, someone unfamiliar with the books, would probably not notice the absence. But Tom Bombadil and Goldberry tell us half of the purpose of the quest.

Defeating evil is not just about destroying evil in the form of Sauron (sauros, Greek, means lizard or dragon) and the ring. It is about restoring the good.

In Bombadil and Goldberry, in their laughter and song and dancing, in their imperviousness to evil, and in Bombadil’s naming of animals, Tolkien paints a picture of Adam and Eve before the fall, and therefore of God’s original plan for humanity – a life of joy, of laughter and dancing and song, of bliss in the little things, without fear or sickness or knowledge of death, or the possibility of using others or being used by them.

The quest is not simply the destruction of an evil object, but the restoration of hope, of love and truth and joy and peace. Bombadil and Goldberry show us what that can mean; the end point and purpose. The Lord of the Rings is not the story Tolkien told without them.

Faith is essential to Narnia, to the Lord of the Rings, and to making sense of the lives of Tolkien and of Elena Cornaro Piscopia. Our understanding of them, of their work, and of the meaning and purpose of our own lives, are very much poorer without it.

Life

Gary Larsen is one of the greatest cartoonists ever. What a pity he actually retired when he said he was going to! I am hoping I may have a the same privilege sometime in the next five years.

Gary Larsen Butterfly Life

Gary Larsen Butterfly Life

Life. It’s not really like that, thought it sometimes seems so.

Julian of Norwich had it better, when she said “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Wynford Wilde Author Website

I just finished the author website for Wynford Wilde. This is the place to go for news on upcoming adventures in the Jennifer Jones series, starting with Dark Turnings, which is now available for Kindle or in paperback.

Describing myself as a best selling writer was just wishful thinking a week ago, but within three days of being launched my short story Encomium had shot to number two on the bestseller list in its number one Amazon category, and the top ten in two others:

Wynford Wilde’s sci-fi adventure Encomium hits number two on Amazon’s bestseller lists after only three days

Fast-moving Fantasy Adventure

My new book was released today, 5th of May 2017.

I like it, but more importantly, people who have read it tell me they enjoyed it too.

A fast-moving fantasy adventure for young adults. In the tradition of The Hobbit, it has the same moral heart as The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

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