The heavy handedness is like a shield for any real critique. Like it is a barrage of “wouldn’t this be messed up?” with no sense of the society this would create beyond these individual fucked up corporate acts. I was shocked that I got more out of fallout 4 than it. I think why is because as lib or limited as fallout can be, you get to actually see a society, even just in its ruins. You get to hear about how government and corporations interact, how institutions degrade or are strengthened to oppress more effectively, how average people just sorta accepted these extreme violations of their humanity through cheap goods and advancements in luxuries. It does not just have a mega corp operate on its own doing bad super capitalism as a monad, no when Nuka-Cola is doing evil it is subsidized by the US military to help with weapons research and in turn has part of its themepark just be a recruitment ad. You get this interplay, like quantum being started by a Nuka-Cola scientist as a horrific weapon, that Nuka-Cola could also use by making a barely non-lethal drink out of.

Outer Worlds felt like it was always a series of onion headlines and nothing more.