True to my previous statements, I decided to start playing Outward to see if what I feel is inefficiency and impracticality on the part of a Let’s Play I’m watching is truly those things or if the game really is just that punishing. I’ve even got a friend playing it with me, so we can really replicate the recorded experience. Albeit with the benefit of having watched the stream and having a wiki open on my second monitor. So it’s not exactly the same, but it’s similar enough that I’m pretty sure that some amount of what I’m seeing in the LP is the players’ reach exceeding their grasp. I’m sure some amount of this is the constant awareness that what they’re doing is being recorded and will be put online for entertainment purposes, so they don’t want to spend forty hours doing incremental small journeys out into the wilds to safely collect resources, earn money, and buy skills before they really strike out into the world. I mean, I haven’t done that yet, either, but I am in the process of doing that, to the tune of buying all the basic skills available to me in the starting city that meshed with my chosen sword-and-shield approach. I will probably buy more, yet, just to keep beefing up my repetoire of abilities so I can bust out the appropriate weapon as needed, but I think we’ve hit the point of being as ready as we can be to really make a go of things in the wider world beyond our small town’s gates.