The Outer Worlds plays just like a Fallout game. That's a pretty tepid description and an obvious comparison. It's easy to take one look at the game, which strongly echoes the mechanical form of the Bethesda RPGs, and think you know what to expect. The developer, Obsidian Entertainment, was responsible for the cult-favorite Fallout: New Vegas after all. But The Outer Worlds doesn't just play like a Fallout game. It is, surprisingly, the best possible version of a Fallout game--a potent distillation of what made that series so beloved in the first place.
The Outer Worlds adopts the most compelling
innovations of modern Fallout games, emphasising immersive exploration
and impactful, action-oriented combat in a game engine (Unreal Engine)
that actually makes those things feel good by contemporary standards. It
shares Fallout's satirical but incredibly bleak look at the future, but
is free of its tired tropes. Critically, The Outer Worlds exhibits the
same depth of soul as the early Interplay and Black Isle Fallout games
(as well as other games in the '90s PC RPG genre) with a genuinely
complex, interconnected narrative web of relationships and events that
feel like they can change in a seemingly infinite number of ways based
on the character you want to be, the variety of choices you can make,
and the actions you take.
Given the studio and the key people responsible (original Fallout creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky),
that last trait isn't surprising. But it's not the only element that
makes The Outer Worlds an excellent space Western adventure--that's just
the incredibly sound foundation that elevates the game's great
world-building, wonderful characters, and multi-layered quest design, on
top of punchy combat and consistently sharp writing.
In
The Outer Worlds, you are just one of the thousands of people left in
hibernation on an abandoned colony ship, when a scientist of possibly
ill repute frees you and enlists your help in saving the rest of your
frozen peers. After a rigorous character creation process--involving a
slew of variable attributes, perks, and aesthetic customization--you
crash-land on a planet, alone, and from there, how you make your mark on
the Halcyon system is up to you.
The
crux of this sci-fi setup is that, among other things, the Halcyon
system is owned and run entirely by a board of corporations, and their
presence is a big deal. Whole planets are owned by corps
looking to use their ecosystems as part of a larger supply chain, and
numerous vending machines from different companies populate towns,
trying to attract you with their bright logos and jingles. In fact, The
Outer Worlds is saturated with strikingly colourful locales; the planets
you'll visit are impressively varied and sometimes beautiful, flaunting
an H.G. Wells-like retro-futuristic aesthetic, the antithesis of
grimdark cyberpunk.
On the first impression,
corporations appear as a mostly aesthetic layer folded into the world. A
number of the companies mentioned seem to mostly just exist as
manufacturers of weapons and consumables--a piece of flair to keep the
tone light in the same way that the Circus of Values exists in BioShock,
but it's far more ingrained than that. Corporate capitalism so deeply
affects everything in The Outer Worlds, and explorations into how it can
affect society on a variety of levels is a surprisingly well-considered
constant, despite the semblance of parody. You'll meet sympathetic
workers whose livelihoods are only made possible by offering themselves
to exploitation and indentured servitude, white-collared outlaws who are
more bureaucrats than pirates, and well-meaning middle-managers who are
trying to change the corporate machine from the inside. You'll find
moderates, idealists, extremists, and most things in between and around
the fringes, all of which have their own feasible ideas about how to
best serve the colony or themselves. By the time the climax hits, it's
clear that The Outer Worlds has its own stance on this bleak future, but
that doesn't stop the world it creates, the sojourns you take, and
characters you meet along the way from being any less fascinating.
There are plenty of characters in The Outer Worlds who I
didn't like. Reed Tobson, for example, is a snivelling factory chief in
the early hours of the game who I didn't have to think twice about
undermining, and Felix, one of your potential companion characters, had
such an annoyingly naive personality I avoided talking to him as much as
possible. The Outer Worlds allows you to kill any character in the game
(bar one), and the world will reshape and move on without them, but
there's something to be said for game's depiction of its unappealing
people, whose portrayal I admired despite my distaste. You'll talk to a
lot of people in The Outer Worlds. How much you do is up to you--you're
allowed to cut straight to get to the point or dive deeper--but chatting
to the game's entire supporting cast of non-player characters is
something that never gets tiring, even if you don't care for them,
purely because of how strong the game's writing and vocal performances
are.
I never felt like I had to endure stretches of
pointless or overly dramatic exchanges, both because of how focussed and
subtle the script seemed to be, as well as the variety of response
options for my player character which kept conversations flowing in
largely natural ways. Numerous considerations for the world state let
conversations take into account things you may or may not already have
done throughout your campaign; brief and subtle injections of
worldbuilding and lore stop conversation from being too matter of fact
without losing the game's identity, and some exceptional low-key wit
works very well in sparking a periodic laugh without humour feeling like
a sticking point. Solid, consistent voice direction helps keep the tone
firmly measured, meaning the hours you spend absorbing the world
through its people are always engaging.
Nowhere
does the strength of the game's characters shine more strongly than in
your companions, however (except for Felix; that guy is a weenie). You
have the option to recruit six predetermined characters to accompany and
assist you in your adventures, though the game does have tools to
bolster a lone wolf character too. But having companions along for the
ride is a delight, and that's, again, because of the strength of the
character writing. Companions instantly feel like fleshed-out characters
of their own accord, not like they simply exist to revolve around you.
They'll converse privately with each other and chime in on conversations
you have with other characters in the world, acting as sounding boards
during key moments. They can, in extreme situations, leave you of their
own accord if they strongly disagree with a course of action. It's all
mechanically conditional, of course, but the illusion the game builds is
so endearing--spending time with these folks feels just as valuable as
your pursuing the overarching goal.
Companions have
their own customisable skill trees, equipment loadouts, combat tactics,
and special abilities you can command them to use, which, with their
cinematic camera angles, inspired battle cries, and useful status
effects, never become unsatisfying to initiate. The other major tool at
your disposal in combat, provided your character's weapon skills are
high enough to use it, is Tactical Time Dilation (TTD)--a time-bending
mechanic that slows the action to a crawl, allowing you to give yourself
some breathing room in order to analyse enemies and take the time to
execute precision attacks. Hitting certain locations on enemies will let
you do things like cripple or maim them, or inflict weapon-specific
effects like bleed damage or knocking them unconscious. Using TTD
tactically to take out key targets and attempt to control the flow of
battle makes it an entertaining and useful tool, but its availability is
limited and not something you can rely on entirely until you get to
meaningfully upgrade it much later in the game.
Despite
having strong RPG foundations, the combat in The Outer Worlds is very
much focussed on first-person action, incorporating things like parries,
blocks, and dodges on top of an array of melee weapons and firearms.
There's a hectic and fast-paced fluidity to combat that feels very good,
however. That's aided by some enthusiastic sound design, which does
most of the heavy lifting in giving all weapons some satisfying
feedback. A range of "Science weapons" bring some creative diversity in
your arsenal, and features guns that have unique, entertaining
properties like shrinking enemies or turning them against each other.
The only problem with combat is that on the game's
recommended Regular difficulty, it eventually turns into a cakewalk.
This is satisfying in a way, of course--all the points I pumped into
maxing out my handgun skills, thus becoming best gunslinger in the
galaxy, did actually make me feel utterly invincible. But, it also meant
I didn't feel pushed to explore the game's slew of combat-adjacent
mechanics nearly as deeply as I would have hoped. Things like elemental
damage, equipment modding, companion synergies, and the special effects
allowed by consumables (which, by the way, are incredibly difficult to
parse in the game's icon-heavy menu), could all be safely ignored. The
Outer Worlds has a "flaws" system that lets you purposefully shoulder
restrictive debuffs in certain situations in exchange for an extra perk
point, but it's completely optional and rarely worth the tradeoff.
Jumping into the "Supernova" difficulty level in a subsequent
playthrough changes all that, however--combat danger increases, your
ability to save your game becomes restricted, and survival mechanics
like hunger and thirst are introduced, making all of the game's
mechanical considerations feel far more vital. The game is more
challenging and interesting because of it, but its demanding nature
definitely makes it more of a second-run option.
Toe-to-toe
combat is not the only solution to your problems. The Outer Worlds
allows for a variety of avenues for alternative and passive
solutions--stealth, hacking, and speech-related options are available
throughout the game, provided you pass the skill checks. It's nigh
impossible to complete the game without getting into at least some
combat, unfortunately, but to the game's credit, virtually every quest
in the game, big or small, features branching options in terms of their
paths to success and how you deal with the big, final choices you have
to make to resolve disputes, which are often deliciously grey. It's at
the level where you'll always be considering the additional ways you
could have achieved something, whether that be taking a different route,
finding more information out in the world, or killing the quest giver
and everyone else in the town.
When
you hit the end, the game runs through a whole slew of epilogues that
describe how you resolved the game's numerous major variables and what
became of them, and being shown all your exploits after some 30 hours
makes the whole journey and your unique path through it really feel
quite meaningful. It's difficult to know the full extent of just how
many directions something can go, and the end result of many quests can
likely only ever differ in a small handful of ways, but this perception
of freedom and possibilities on your first run is inspiring.
I
finished The Outer Worlds wanting more, eager to jump back into the
world to see extra things. It's not a short game, but it's one packed
with such a steady stream of wonderful characters to meet, interesting
places to explore, and meaningful, multi-layered quests to solve, that
it didn't feel like there was any room to get tired of it. I wanted to
rewind the clock and do everything in a completely different way. The
Outer Worlds is consistently compelling throughout, and it's a superb
example of how to promote traditional RPG sensibilities in a sharp,
modern experience.
