It’s a good time to be the creators of
Fallout. Not Bethesda, the studio behind
the disappointing Fallout 76: It’s a bad
time to be Bethesda, with new Fallout 76
problems popping up every day. But it’s a
great time to be Tim Cain and Leonard
Boyarsky, who designed the original
Fallout in 1997. From the hour of gameplay
I glimpse in a demo at Obsidian’s offices,
The Outer Worlds looks exactly the game
anyone disappointed in Fallout 76’s
multiplayer focus will want to play: An RPG
shooter, with a focus on roleplaying.
SPACE COWBOY
There are signs that you’re playing a
game designed by Tim Cain and
Leonard Boyarsky, if you know
what to look for. One, there’s
never just a single path through a
mission, but always the golden
trifecta: Fighting, talking, and sneaking.
Two, a unique vibe stemming from what
Boyarsky calls “the combination of my
dark morbidity and Tim’s silliness”. Three,
bending over backwards to prioritize
player choice in a world that’s often silly,
despite being all shades of gray.
“We can’t seem to get away from it, not
that we want to. That’s what appeals to
us,” Boyarsky says. “The ability to not only
make your own decisions, but also not
having a clear-cut, ‘What is the best
choice, here?’ That’s where players have
to start really thinking, ‘What do I want to
do as a character,’ as opposed to, ‘I always
play the good guy, so I’m always going to
pick helping people.’”
After two years of secrecy, the leads
were eager to talk about everything. The
demo started on the player’s spaceship,
which you’ll acquire in the first act, and
then use to hop between locations on a
pair of planets at the edge of humanity’s
settled systems. You’re a bit out of place:
You’ve been pulled out of cryosleep after
what should’ve been a fatal amount of
time on ice, and from there you’ll be thrust
into the midst of a bunch of corporations
and outlaws vying for power.
“You were part of a ship that got lost,”
Boyarsky says. “You have been frozen for
70 years. If you’re frozen for more than ten
years, it’s a really bad thing. This [scientist]
figured out a way to save you, and he
needs you to help him get more chemicals
to help save the rest of the colonists. But
you don’t have to help him do that. You
can go to the ‘evil board’, the Halcyon
corporate board, and turn this guy in and
see what happens if you do that.”
“You get a lot of money,” Cain adds.
One of the two main planets has been
terraformed and is kinder to human life,
while the other hasn’t, making it home to
more alien predators. Your ship will serve
as a base for you and your companions,
much like Mass Effect’s Normandy. You’ll
be able to chat with them and pick up
companion quests, as they all have their
own reasons for tagging along with
you.
I watched them head to a frontier
town to respond to a distress call,
then take a mission from a researcher
to retrieve his research into hunger-
suppressing toothpaste. Like everyone
else in Outer Worlds, he works for a
corporation. Everything is branded, and
the company that sells you lunch is likely
also manufacturing weapons or drugs.T
he Outer Worlds is not just sci-fi: It is
exuberantly sci-fi. Blood-red trees
pepper valleys of strange cylindrical
rocks and alien shrubs. A spaceship
rumbles overhead, coming in for a landing at the
nearest spaceport. Rings grander than Saturn’s
carve an arc across the horizon, and a field of stars
shines impossibly bright in the afternoon sky. It’s a
world I already know I want to explore: The
colorful vistas of No Man’s Sky, but in an RPG that
looks and feels very Fallout, just a million miles
away and pre-nuclear armageddon.
Fallout’s creators are back, and
they’re shooting for the moon
THE OUTER
WORLDS
YOUR SHIP WILL SERVE AS A
BASE FOR YOU AND YOUR
COMPANIONSRELEASE
2019
DEVELOPER
Obsidian EntertainmentPUBLISHER
Private DivisionLINK
http://www.bit.ly/theouterworldsNEED TO KNOW
FIRST
LOOKThe Outer Worlds
PREVIEW