If The Outer Worlds may very well be summed up in three phrases, I’d go together with “capitalism is unhealthy.” That message is dressed up with foolish mascot costumes, over-the-top promoting, and cheeky dialogue, however when you scratch at that silliness, the satire turns into fairly clear. The Secret Stage animated anthology spends one episode on this world, following an illiterate trash orphan named Amos as he tries to scrape up sufficient bits to enroll in a harmful job as a take a look at topic. There isn’t a number of crossover with the unique recreation’s characters, however the core thesis stays the identical: dwelling below unchained capitalism is a nightmare, and any society that performs by these guidelines can’t prosper.
Within the Outer Worlds episode of Secret Stage, Amos is a scrappy orphan with a crush on Felicity, a candy younger scientist with the ambition to flee this mundane life. Felicity has since left to go work for Auntie Cleo, one in all area’s infamous megacorps. The Outer Worlds takes place in the distant Halcyon system, which was dominated by a set of 10 firms making up a bigger holdings company. They’re horrible leaders, targeted on earnings over folks to an nearly comical extent.
Amos sees an opportunity to reunite with Felicity by signing up for a dangerous gig as an Auntie Cleo take a look at topic, and he throws himself into it with boundless enthusiasm. Amos’ dedication to the job does completely nothing to protect him from the horrible unwanted side effects. I’m positive a ton of labor went into this Secret Stage episode to guarantee that every element was good, from pale posters plastered on a metropolis wall to the procession of facial expressions Amos makes as acid eats away at his arm. Auntie Cleo runs a office that may make Jeff Bezos blush, and the consistency with the primary recreation makes the horror actually pop. The Outer Worlds offered tons of equally terrifying eventualities, however hardly ever lingered on them — Secret Stage actually properties in on this one man and the way a lot his life sucks.
It’s, in fact, a tremendously miserable episode, because of its restricted perspective. A part of the explanation I cherished The Outer Worlds a lot was not simply due to its anti-capitalist world-building, however as a result of it was unafraid to present the protagonist a gun and the company to shoot practically everybody within the recreation at any time. Certain, I’d usually detect infuriating eventualities from the indoctrinated folks dwelling below these insurance policies, like a man who couldn’t settle for medical care from a megacorp he wasn’t below contract from, or self-harm being penalized as injury to firm belongings. However I additionally had a shotgun and the liberty to make use of it liberally, so it labored out in the long run.
Amos and Felicity don’t take pleasure in any of those liberties. There’s one tearful “are we the baddies?” speech, however no actual catharsis or freedom for both of those characters. It’s efficient world-building, I suppose; a quick glimpse on the wider universe outdoors the sport. But it surely’s additionally form of an enormous bummer. I can discover related tales of dashed goals and lives spent in squalor and battle by merely looking my window at at the moment’s world. In Secret Stage, a colourful anthology meant to have fun the worlds of gaming, that very same situation is simply miserable. At the least we all know a sequel is on the way in which, which can permit me to get again to coping with these questions of morality with a few sassy companions and a hi-tech shotgun.
All 15 episodes of Secret Stage are actually streaming on Prime Video.