It's not gibberish, it's an `Id`, which is the type of data Salesforce stores for all `Lookup` or `Master Detail` relationships. If you want a linked name, you will need something more like the below. I would change the `var` to `assignment` to be less confusing.

You can actually just switch from `outputText` to `outputField` because you are using a reference `Id`. But if you are doing this using a record's own Id, you may need to construct the linked name yourself, which would look like:

    <apex:outputLink value="{!$Action.User.View, user.Id}">
        {!user.Name}
    </apex:outputLink>