Gameplay
Both New Vegas and Outer Worlds are the same breed of FPS-RPG. In both games you gain new gun after new gun because you are able to loot everything an enemy has on them. Neither do anything spectacularly different when it comes to the shooting side of gameplay. Both games don’t offer much strategy outside of shooting until their health bar is empty. However, where they diverge is the biggest divide between them.
New Vegas has the VATS system, a Pip-Boy given power to pause time and stack up shots against one or several of an enemy’s body parts, each with their own accuracy percentage. Once the player has set up their shots, time resumes and the game automatically fires for you.
The fact that VATS completely freezes time and doesn’t resume until you choose gives you a tactical advantage and allows you to plan. VATS lends a strategy element to New Vegas. Do you go for the head which has a 30% chance to land, or go for a limb that guarantees you do less damage?
The closest Outer Worlds gets to VATS is called Tactical Time Dilation (TTD) and is explained as a sort of brain damage your character has acquired due to cryo-sleep complications. As the name implies, TTD slows down time, giving you time to place a few shots while dodging enemy fire. The issue with TTD is that it uses a gauge for duration and it doesn’t feel nearly long enough when you are first starting to get used to it. TTD feels arguably forgettable without spending perk points to bulk it up.
The Outer Worlds was never going to stack up against VATS as it was something Obsidian obviously couldn’t copy if they were trying to make a game feel unique.
