This is the beginning of a quirky
romp across a solar system ruled by
brutal corporations. The Outer Worlds
is a light-hearted RPG that aims to
emulate the Firefly fantasy. You fly
from planet to planet, gather a crew
of misfits, pick your way through a
series of moral
quandaries, and shoot
people with laser guns.
The game’s
aesthetics and dark
sense of humor pitch
The Outer Worlds
against Bethesda’s
Fallout games, but
there are important
differences. True, you have ray guns
and companions who shoot enemies
for you, but this game isn’t a
sprawling sandbox experience. You
hop between planets and space
stations, exploring fairly large zones
full of corporate employees staving
off plagues and wild animal attacks.
Each area is loaded with loot and
sidequests, but it’s a tight and
prescriptive RPG.
That’s not a bad thing, but in a
world of 70-hour RPGs it’s best to set
expectations. The Outer Worlds is apulpy choose-your-own-adventure
experience. If you don’t go in
expecting a deep systems-driven
sandbox, it’s a pleasure to go through.
There’s still plenty to tinker with.
When you level up you get ten points
to pour into your character’s stat
sheet. I went all-in on
my handgun
competency to pay
homage to Obsidian’s
cult spy RPG Alpha
Protocol, but you can
also put stock in
personality traits such
as perception and
intelligence to unlock
extra conversation options.
You can also mod weapons to add
sights, improve their ammo capacity
or, most importantly, change their
damage type. There’s a loose rock
paper scissors system to combat.
Energy weapons mess up animals,
electric weapons mess up robots, and
pretty much anything messes up
humans. You don’t really have to care
about that if you don’t want to,
however. For hand-wavy science
reasons, you can slow down time and
easily line up headshots. You canequip melee weapons too and, if you
unlock the right skills, there’s a light
parry system that lets you block
precisely to rebound opponents.STAR TREKKIN’
Combat isn’t challenging, and
enemies fit into worn categories—
face rush melee types, sniper types,
dog types. But the Jetsons-style sci-fi
weapons are fun to use, and battles
are frequently hilarious. Enemies
explode into chunks with
enthusiasm, often while screaming
overwrought barks.
Fights exist to put some light
friction between meetings with The
Outer World’s oppressed but
surprisingly merry citizens. The
corporate colonies are full of
employees keen to do the best job
they can—largely because getting
fired can mean exile and death. The
story winds between pockets of
people trying their best to survive.
The game’s main dilemmas ask you
to side with one faction against
another. You’re free to play the
freedom fighter or a corporate shill,
but quest outcomes are frequently
messy and unexpected. Along with
multiple endings, that gives the game
some replayability.
It’s a fun journey. The advantage
of the planet-hopping structure—
rather than having a single
contiguous wasteland to explore—is
variety. It’s a colorful universe full of
lumpen spaceships. There’s a
category of games I think of as
Saturday morning cartoon games.
They lack depth, but they’re fluffy
and easy to enjoy. As I look back on
some screens as Pippin laser blasts a
marauder into a pile of dust, I realize
that’s what The Outer Worlds is to
me. If you meet it on those terms, I
think you’ll enjoy it.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A funny RPG that tours
a corporate-owned
solar system
EXPECT TO PAY
$60
DEVELOPER
Obsidian
PUBLISHER
Obsidian
REVIEWED ON
GTX 970, Intel
i5-6600K, 8GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
outerworlds.
obsidian.net79
The Outer Worlds is an
entertaining and
uncomplicated RPG set
in a colorful yet
dystopian universe.VERDICTThe story
winds between
pockets of
people trying
their bestO
n the edge of the solar system, an old scientist runs through
the corridors of an abandoned colony ship. He pauses before
a cryostasis control panel and, of all the thousands of
scientists and engineers he could thawed out, for some
reason he chooses me: a janitor called Pippin with a twirly
moustache and a wonky moral compass.SPACE ACE
Take a breezy tour of the Halcyon system
in THE OUTER WORLDS. By Tom Senior
GRAND TOUR Your guide to the solar system
1
TERRA 2
Your adventure
starts here! A lovely
planet, but look out for
marauders and alien
dogs.2
GROUNDBREAKER
A lawless trading
post that the system’s
corporations need too
much to conquer.3
MONARCH
Beware of this
largely abandoned hell
planet full of giant,
murderous insects.4
SCYLLA
A beautiful, peaceful
outpost on the edge of
space. A good place to(^3412) see the stars.
REVIEW