I think the problem with ToW is that we believed in Obsidian, and felt betrayed, or at least speaking from my own perspective. I was sold. I bought the hype. I was fully into this Outer World thing, the intro music was catchy, the teaser looked amazing.
Then the game happened. Hours of dull walking through loot-brimming containers, all with the same generic loot, over and over. Mountains and mountains of pointless, irrelevant loot, that I somehow felt compelled to keep hoarding. I left the first planet (after the tutorial) with thousands of every kind of ammo, and wondered what's the point to even have an ammo mechanic.
Found out that the plot was "corps are bad, hiss!" at every step of the way. The first planet's plot was about people getting sick cus they only ate tuna and the corp was turning a blind eye on them. The corp that had monopolized the food supply in the planet and produced that tuna. Who knew, that eating only one thing would get people sick, it's not like people of the future of some alternate universe would be aware of that? And honestly, why would a corp care about the health of its workers and the people that keep the cogs running. After all "corps are bad, hiss!".
More dull planets follow, with more lazy level design, more mountains of irrelevant loot, and a laughably trivial difficulty that couldn't keep anyone engaged.
If this game has any merit, is in choosing its timing. That year was the most awful in the history of videogames in regard to RPGs, which led to a lot of people actually considering this wanting piece of crap a "RPG of the Year". But not only that, Obsidian also cleverly bounced off the Fallout76 catastrophe who had dozens of thousands of fans all over the world raging, and seeking refuge in The Outer Worlds, praising and elevating it beyond its station only as a way to add insult to Bethesda - "see idiots, this is how it's done!". A lot of people were more interested on pissing on Bethesda than really appreciating The Outer Worlds for what it is: A mediocre, forgettable game that had it all to be fantastic, and never achieved but an inkling of it.