The Outer Worlds – Review

The Outer Worlds has been one of the most anticipated RPGs of this year. Now, it has finally been released and it surely hasn’t disappointed. Being developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the creators of one of the best RPGs in the Fallout series, Fallout New Vegas, we surely expected a lot from this title and it delivered! This game offers a hell of a lot of freedom of choice and multiple outcomes for almost every quest. Accompanied with a great story in a futuristic world with a lot of retro elements, this is a game with high potential!

Story

The Outer Worlds has a fantastic story that will take you to multiple planets where you can help the inhabitants as side missions while investigating things for your main mission. It all begins with you being in hibernation on an abandoned colony ship. A scientist called Phineas Welles frees you and wants you to help him free the rest of your fellow frozen travelers. He sends you down to a planet in your hibernation pod. After you’ve crash-landed on a planet all alone, it’s up to you how you’re going to set your mark on these worlds in this space colony full of different factions. The pod you’re inside lands perfectly onto the person waiting to escort you, leaving him squashed underneath it. After a short while, you’ll encounter his ship. You will take possession of the space ship as its new captain (the old one’s dead anyway) and this will become your main mode of transportation between the planets in this space colony.

As you progress through the game, you can recruit six potential characters to accompany you on your journey. Each of these characters will have their own background story and also their own personal quests that you can take on. This game can be taken on as a lone wolf, but the companions are written so well that it’s a delight to have them around. When in conversations, they will chime in on conversations you’re having, showing their opinion about matters and they will act as sounding boards at crucial decision points. Another great thing about the game in this category is that you can complete a quest the way you want. For example, you can take on a quest to kill someone, but eventually talk with your target and choose to kill the quest giver for your own gain. When completing quests for certain factions, you’ll earn a reputation for that faction that will reward you with discounts at their vending machines and other benefits you’ll discover along the way.

Graphics

The graphics of The Outer Worlds are simply stunning. We’ve played it on a PS4 Pro and it looks awesome. The combination of retro elements with the futuristic world created in this game is a perfect match. The conventional weapons look pretty common with a lot of details while some futuristic energy weapons are designed with both retro and futuristic details. The enemies also look great but some do look the same as others. Take Marauders, for example, a low-ranked Marauder doesn’t look that different than a higher-ranked one. The sky looks really great with beautifully designed planets that take up a lot of space accompanied with a lot of colors that give you the feeling you’re high when looking at it. A lot of neon is used in signs and billboards spread across cities.

Sound

The game is fully voiced with each character having a voice that perfectly fits their personality. When playing the game, you’ll constantly hear a piece of background music that really fits the space theme the game has. When looking at the Fallout New Vegas, the game was full of 50s music, but this game doesn’t have this at all. There’s no radio to listen to when blasting through your enemies, which would’ve been enjoyable in this game. Aside from the easy background music, the game’s quite quiet, so you can really focus on all the environmental sounds of the nature and beasts around you which does have its own charms.

Gameplay

The Outer Worlds is a fantastic first-person action RPG that will take you to diverse worlds with a lot of different factions on a space colony far away from earth. All the RPG elements in this game are developed perfectly. The amount of freedom you have in completing your quests, the progress of the main quest and all the dialogue options make it feel like you have full control over what you want to do. You can be friends with all of the factions or you can make enemies of them. It’s all up to you and this is definitely one of the greatest aspects of this game.

In many things, The Outer World resembles the Fallout games. Many skills will influence the way you can handle situations. A higher level in dialogue skills will allow you to persuade or intimidate others to get extra rewards or skip annoying errands you need to perform to acquire something from someone. Higher skills in melee or ranged weapons will allow you to increase your damage output, and other skills, like engineering, will allow you to improve your armor, and resolve technical issues in an easier way than would be required when on a lower level. There is a level cap of 30, so maxing out all the skills is not possible, luckily, you can respec your skills and perks on your space ship to change your playing style if you want.

The gameplay of The Outer Worlds is just like any other FPS with the addition of a time-slowing skill called Tactical time Dilation. This skill is similar to Fallout’s V.A.T.S. system as it will slow time and will show you the effects of your shots at specific areas on your target. The more you move, the quicker the skill will run out. As you progress and level up, you can increase the duration and recovery of this skill and it can be used a lot when upgraded well. This does make the game a bit easier, but also a bit more fun.

The weapons in the Outer Worlds can use three different types of ammo, light, heavy and energy. The light ammo is used for pistols and light machine guns while the heavy ammo is used for bigger guns like assault rifles, heavy machine guns, and rifles. The energy ammo is used for shock-based weapons, plasma weapons and special variants of conventional weapons that use energy as ammo. There are a lot of unique weapons to find in this game as you progress through quests. These can be dropped by specific enemies, pickpocketed from certain NPCs or acquired as rewards from quests.

You can also modify your weapons with mods that you can purchase in shops or find in containers throughout the world. These modifications include sights, magazines and barrel mods. These can increase the efficiency of your weapons, increase the damage output or change the ammo type through a barrel mod without requiring other ammo variants. As you increase your engineering skill, you can acquire mods through scrapping weapons and armor.

Armor is also found in many different variations that will each have their own effects on the level of your skills. Equipping the right armor with the right mods at times will increase your skill by a lot of levels so you can activate some speech checks that would otherwise be impossible with your current level. The amount you can carry can be increased immensely so your looting addiction can be satisfied. Unique variants of weapons and armor can be acquired throughout the whole game as you complete quests, defeat unique enemies and more. As you level up, you’ll find stronger variants of weapons and armor to fight against the enemies that also grow stronger. You can upgrade your weapons and armor by tinkering with these items. The cost of tinkering will increase exponentially, making it unaffordable at some point. Some unique weapons will be too weak later in the game, but you’ll find new unique weapons as you progress so you won’t really miss those first finds.

Conclusion

The Outer Worlds feels just like you’re playing a Fallout game, only in a whole different universe and time, and it may even be called better. The interesting side quests will lengthen your playthrough, as they tear you away from the main quest at hand. Most characters in this game are created with a unique personality and each is interesting to talk to. We didn’t even encounter the smallest bug in our playthrough, which means the developers have surely taken their time creating this game. It will keep you eager to explore more as each new place is interesting, and the multi-layered quests are just so interesting that the game won’t become stale or boring.

Nickskuh

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Administration is my job but gaming is my passion!

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