Outer Worlds Review: An Unexpected Gem

As many gamers and sci-fi fans will know the game Outer Worlds released on the 25th of this month. Made by some of the original creators behind the much beloved Fallout franchise, the Outer Worlds features a distinctive art-style, fantastic characters, solid gameplay and an intriguing story at a time when all too many games coming out these days are ham-fisted, over-monetized, broken and buggy garbage. That said lets get down to some specifics.

To start with I put well over thirty hours into this game over the last five days and in that entire time I encountered precisely one bug, yup, just one and it was nowhere near a game-breaking bug. I experienced no crashes, no broken areas, no AI path finding issues, the graphics were solid with very little pop-in or similar issues and considering I was playing on a non-pro PS4 I think that's quite impressive. Outer Worlds runs quite well, it feels good to control your character, I never got my character stuck or could not get where I wanted to go. The environments are large, open and rich in detail and have very little loading. You can enter and exit most buildings without having to see a loading screen and those screens that are there are both interesting to look at and not very long. Rarely have I seen an RPG launch in such a solid and bug-free state. Compared to a Bethesda release this is night and day, there is no comparison. Even Mass Effect and Dragon Age proved more buggy at launch when I played them. Considering Obsidian is not the largest or best funded studio out there this is also quite impressive. It really shows what can be accomplished when a studio prioritizes quality over quantity and monetization.

That same attention to detail and polish carries through to every other aspect of the game as well. The voice acting, character design and plot are all excellent. Even though a significant amount of playing this game is spent just talking to characters nearly every conversation and every character you talk to is interesting and memorable. Every shop keeper, guard and corporate executive you speak to is different and well crafted. Perhaps most impressively the dialogue options you can choose from generate appropriate and unique responses. Outer Worlds is not like some RPGs where no matter whether you choose to be angry and rude or happy and polite you receive the same canned responses to each option, instead it does feel as though your character is having a conversation where the NPC is responding appropriately to what you are saying.

The weapons and armor are are similarly well crafted being diverse but still easy to understand and use. It is not necessary to micromanage randomly generated stats, a player does not need to spend twenty minutes out of every hour comparing various weapons, armor and gear to determine what is actually better. Each weapon has a distinct function with little overlap allowing for a variety of combat and play styles that all feel and function quite well. Enemy variety is solid and well done with each area featuring different enemies with different capabilities that require different methods to deal with effectively. Which is engaging enough before you even get to the handful of science weapons in the game. From a shrink ray to a goop gun the science weapons allow for some really goofy and over the top tactics. Having difficulty fighting that terrifying mantiqueen? Shrink her down to a fraction of the size with much reduced damage and armor and then blast away. Struggling with that heavily armored robot, try hitting it with the goop gun and causing it to levitate in the air for a bit before crashing to earth and having to slowly regain it's feet all while you and your companions blaze away. Outnumbered? Hit one of your strongest enemies with a mind-control ray and watch them tear into their friends and allies with abandon. Combined with some powerful, if repetitive, companion abilities and the Outer Worlds gives the player a multitude of engaging and satisfying ways to level the playing field and take on even the most challenging of enemies in a variety of ways. 

In total the player can recruit up to six different companions, from a renegade Byzantium socialite to a weaponized cleaning bot each companion is unique and brings their own distinct brand of character dialogue and skills to the player party. Each of these companions has a quest related to them and these range dramatically in substance and tone but they all help expand on and add depth to each character. All of the companions in Outer World have their own abilities that can be unlocked, most of these are fairly generic and include buffing the character's toughness or damage output but each character also has several abilities unique to them that increase the skill bonus they provide to the player or enhance one of their capabilities. You can also alter the weapons and equipment of each companion, tailoring their arsenal to be complementary to each player. One of my favorite things about the companions is that upon returning to your ship each time one or more of them will be engaged in some specific activity or dialogue between themselves. They might be competing with each other at target practice in the cargo hold, passed out drunk in their bunk or arguing about theology in the common area. These little scenes help break up the action and help the various companions feel more like a familiar crew than a random scattering of un-lockable walking weapons with little personality like companions can sometimes feel like in RPGs.

Outer Worlds features a number of different environments from broken-down space stations to abandoned asteroid mining outposts, monster filled forests and bubbling acid pools. Every locale feels distinct and is just dripping in detail. No matter where you go in Outer Worlds the environments are visually impressive and expertly crafted. Never does it feel like you are walking into yet another version of the same exact locale as it does everywhere in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Instead of making their open world areas huge and giving players dozens of different spots to loot and clear out that are more-or-less completely unremarkable and interchangeable Obsidian has gone for smaller but much more unique environments that have obviously each been hand-crafted and are not just drag-and-drop copies of the same temples, ruins and caves that are so typical to open world games these days.

The player ship, the Unreliable, has an interior layout that will be quite familiar to anyone who watched Firefly. While not as large or impressive as the Normandy from Mass Effect the ship has all the amenities you could ask for, places to store spare gear, berths for your six companions, a kitchen and common area, cargo hold, engine-room, a cramped bridge and spacious captain's quarters.

However the game is not perfect. Any hardened RPG player will likely feel little challenge playing this game on normal or even hard difficulty. Companions can boost various stats and enough levels and upgrades can be acquired to cover a variety of necessary skills without feeling any pinch. I was able to get through most of the game without even bothering to use half of my available skill points or perks, it was only at the very end that I needed to put some effort into winning combat or obtaining the skills necessary to move through the levels more easily. However Outer Worlds does feature a Supernova difficulty where companions can suffer permadeath, where you have to engage in light survival mechanics and where the greater challenge of the game forces the player to specialize and take full advantage of the various game systems that could otherwise be ignored on easier difficulties. Given that the campaign in Outer Worlds runs 30-40 hours depending on your play style and speed it is certainly worth multiple playthroughs and a player may well benefit from a first playthrough on normal or hard difficulty followed by a playthrough on Supernova to experience the Outer Worlds at it's best with all systems firing.

My only other nit-pick of note is that the pacing of the story really seems to fall apart in the third act. Throughout the game the player works through two major open world areas, the Emerald Vale on Terra 2 and the environs around Stellar Bay on Monarch, formerly Terra 2. Several smaller areas including the asteroid mining outpost of Scylla, the city of Byzantium and the settlement of Roseway on Terra 2 and several space stations can all be explored but these are all a fraction of the two main exploration zones. The game is well paced up through Monarch but afterwards when heading into Byzantium the game feels like it skips a few beats, almost like there was supposed to be a third major area to explore and factions to get to know that are just missing. Perhaps the developers didn't have enough time or had to cut corners and the game does come together well enough at the end but I could not help but feel a bit disjointed in the third act. Byzantium in particular just felt very empty compared to the previous urban zones the player could explore in Edgewater and Stellar Bay. There weren't as many NPCs to talk to, quests to take, or buildings to explore. In fact unlike the other city-areas most of the buildings in Byzantium require a loading screen to enter which made the city feel even smaller by comparison.

Still a somewhat shaky third act to the story does not ruin the experience and I still found myself totally engrossed as I pushed to complete every quest before the end. Not since the first Dragon Age game have I been forced to more carefully ponder the consequences and possible outcomes of my decisions in a game, weighing up my competing loyalties to different factions before making a decision. Some of the outcomes came as a real surprise while others I was able to tie up surprisingly well despite the conflicts involved. The Outer Worlds definitely rewards players who take their time and consider their choices and I even took the time to load back and retry certain events making different decisions just to see how they would have played out.

In conclusion the Outer Worlds has solid action, excellent story-telling, satisfying RPG mechanics and a fantastic world that is a joy to explore and engage with. This game is a must play for any RPG or science fiction fan, if you ever played and enjoyed Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic, Fallout or Bioshock then give this game a try. I can't wait for future expansions or a sequel, whatever Obsidian does next I will certainly be checking out. 

P.S. Yes the Outer Worlds is currently exclusive to the Epic store on PC, though it is also available on the XBOX games pass and can be downloaded and played for free on console or PC if you have that service and thus avoid the Epic games store. I chose to pick it up for the PS4 and played on console to avoid using the epic store. If using epic is also a non starter for you then I would recommend picking the game up on console or going through the XBOX games pass.