The Outer Worlds & Thief Are Free on Epic

Monday, Undead Inc. will bring us Umbrella Corp when it releases in May, and Balloony is now on the Switch. Tuesday, SolForge Fusion is coming to Steam later this month, Hauma is coming to the Switch this summer, and details on Smiling Friends season two have been revealed. Wednesday, Saviorless is now out, making it the first Cuban indie game, apparently, and Embracer sells Gearbox to 2K but only after laying off a bunch of staff. Thursday, Instruments of Destruction is leaving early access in May, and there is a closed beta for Where Winds Meet later this month in the US and Canada.

Moving on to the Epic Games Store for this week, it is a double bill again with only one repeat. We’ll start with The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition, the super special DLC-included edition of Obsidians Fallout in space gameplay. Where I think both Bethesda and Obsidian failed regarding the Fallout in space thing is that Starfield tried to go too big while feeling small, and The Outer Worlds is too small for everything crammed in it to feel big. Out of the two, I enjoy The Outer Worlds all day long. However, I think it goes almost without saying that it is claustrophobic.

Speaking of an oppressive environment, Thief (2014) tries to smother you in My Chemical Romance-based teenage angst as it was by producers. Eidos-Montréal, sadly owned by Embracer, took a break from fumbling the first of the Deus Ex reboots. Deciding to do the very thing its next game was, pilfering the riches of Looking Glass Studios and watering it down until it became liquid tripe. Dry humor, wit, some actual character, and Taff are all gone, now it is a grumpy misery guts and a word I’m not allowed to say according to the style guide I wrote.

All this week, you can pick up the standard edition of Thief (2014) and The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition on the Epic Games Store until the morning of Thursday, April 11th. Moving on to next week, we’re talking about another repeat, this time in the form of a dystopian cyberpunk hack and slash-ish FPS, Ghostrunner. I get that the sequel only released last year, but another repeat? Between this and Prime, I’m surprised my head banging on my desk hasn’t gotten me some sort of attention from a professional. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing, expecting different results, which is oddly how science works too.