The Outer Worlds, there's a lot to praise about you, but you broke my heart.

What's more, it did it twice. There was a point in the game in which it made it sound, to me at least, that you could scan people, and look like them via holographic disguise. It sounded great.

Then it turned out it gave you holographic outfits for sneaking. No makin yourself look like a guard by copying an exact person via hologram.

I mean, it's my own fault for getting the wrong impression, but I was so disappointed.

Anyway, I've heard of a few games with transformative and wacky effects that ultimately deal damage, and I am just not on the same pages as those games. If I want to deal direct damage, there's tons of ways to do that. If I want to effectively give an enemy a status effect (or just mess with friendly NPCs, having silly low-stakes fun), that's what something like a shrink ray would be for.

I'm not 100% certain why I stopped playing The Outer Worlds without finishing it, as I remember having a few personal issues with getting in to it, but I'm pretty sure I quit very shortly after getting the shrink ray and learning how it actually worked.

You had to keep it aimed at an enemy to keep them shrunk, it hit them with a debuff, and it did damage.

This was after I'd devoted a significant amount of my skill points to Science with getting fun things like the shrink ray in mind.

I suppose it's fine, and I assume some people really liked the shrink ray as it was, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the straw that made me lose interest.

But then I'm someone who used to cast spells like Frog, Pig, and Mini on my own party members in Final Fantasy for the heck of it, so... Maybe I'm just unusual in what I want in my video games.