I feel like there's something missing from The Outer Worlds

The central conflict of The Outer Worlds is that there isn't enough food to feed the people, and there aren't enough trained researchers to figure out how to grow more food. The Board wants to reduce the population to match the food supply. Phineas prefers to revive the frozen researchers on the lost colony ship, putting more minds to work on the problem of food production. What seems strange to me is that they both treat the greater mass of unskilled laborers as a problem to be worked around, rather than a resource to be tapped. Sure, they're ill-educated and heavily specialized, but they're still capable of creative problem-solving within their niche. And we've seen that the Board rewards corporate politics over actual talent, meaning the townships must be full of low-ranking but talented people whose aptitudes are going to waste. Real science is incremental, made from many small discoveries by many people, and the idea of a few great men and women arising to save and/or cleanse the masses feels oddly Randite.

The worst take I’ve seen in . . . Well, six hours

“People who grow food deserve fair pay for their labor. Therefore, we can’t give free food to starving people.”

I dunno about growers, but what about when the people who pick the food ARE the starving people? One way or another, resources need to be distributed to them, whether that’s food, or money to buy food.

The Outer Worlds has weird priorities

There are two separate endings that you can only get if you murder Parvati’s girlfriend, depending on when you do so. They’re heartbreaking and beautiful, and I have no idea why they were created. There’s no quest associated with killing Parvati’s girlfriend. You don’t get anything for doing it. She doesn’t attack you or obstruct you in any way. The only reason to do it is if you’re just killing everything in your general vicinity.

I’ve seen two different trailers for The Outer Worlds play up the fact that you can kill almost everyone. The game certainly does a good job of responding if, say, you murder Ellie’s parents in front of her. But I’m not sure by what metric this makes for a better game than just doing the “essential NPC” thing Skyrim does. Why is killing, specifically, a thing that needs to be so integrated into the game that you can do it any time to anyone?

(I know Undertale addresses this, but I don’t like Undertale either.)