THE ART STYLE AND GUNPLAY
OF THE OUTER WORLDS BRING
BIOSHOCK TO MIND“The idea that the game has been built
around is that there’s silly stuff and there’s
dramatic stuff, but it’s not always like this
separate thing,” Boyarsky says. “This
seems very silly, and hopefully humorous
on the surface of it. They’re making diet
toothpaste, but this relates to a much
bigger thing that’s going on in the world.”
Getting that research back involved
sneaking into a facility, shooting monsters
that have gotten loose and convincing the
facility’s guards that you’re on their side...
which led to their grisly death at the hands
of some bandits patrolling outside.
Of course, it didn’t have to play out like
that. You could shoot your way in instead
of sneaking, not bother talking to the
guards, or ally with them instead. Or you
could promise to help a captured outlaw in
the facility, then betray her—opportunities
for double-crossing abound.
The art style and gunplay of The Outer
Worlds bring BioShock to mind. The
animation and impact of shooting look a
bit stiff and simple, in the way shooter-
RPGs often do compared to a Battlefield
or Rainbow Six: Siege. But that didn’t stop
it from looking fun, with tons of choices to
make both in how you approach combat
and what weapons you use.
There are weapons that use light,
medium and heavy bullet ammo, as well
as energy and melee weapons. I saw two
of the latter, a lightsaber-esque sword with
a green laser blade, and a scythe with a
sick, dripping blade of red energy fit for a
sci-fi grim reaper. The damage you do will
be based on the stats of that particular
weapon and your character stats.
Like in BioShock, weapons are
moddable to do fire damage, shock
damage, and so on, but you can also
upgrade them to higher damage tiers.
There’s a nice zip to laser weapons and all
the graphical effects look great, like
they’re straight out of a pulpy sci-fi serial.
While your character has stats that
affect damage, this isn’t RPG combat
with dice rolls governing whether your
perfectly aimed shots hit or miss. Line up
a headshot, and it’ll hit. But for players
who care more about roleplaying than
shooting, the developers came up with
a ‘time dilation’ mechanic akin to
Fallout’s VATS. You can slow time tohelp you aim, and while time’s dilated a bit
of UI pops up next to the enemy you’re
aiming at. It’s an easy way to target body
parts, though aiming is still manual.
One of the last features they show us is
a system called ‘flaws’, which Cain says
he’s wanted to put into a game for years.
Flaws are character traits you can accept
after something happens in the game. For
example, after fighting a group of space
dogs called Raptidons, you might get the
option to take the flaw Raptiphobia, which
will make you weaker in fights against
them. Flaws are permanent, and you can
have up to three of them (or five on a
harder difficulty), but of course there’s a
trade-off: You get to take an extra perk
immediately. “A flaw can be a fear of
heights. There’s my favorite, robophobia.
We also have afraid of the dark. The game
may go, ‘Hey, you seem to catch on fire on
fire a lot. Would you like to be susceptible
to flame damage? If so, you can have
another perk right now.’”WHOLE NEW WORLDS
The area housing the research facility
wasn’t a narrow, linear path: There was
definitely room to roam, with enemies and
other locations to loot around the map.
Outer Worlds isn’t one massive world like
today’s open world games, but from what
I’ve seen, that’s a good thing. This is not a
game made by 800 people, and the
smaller environments look intimately
hand-crafted, but are still big enough to
hold sidequests and reward exploration.
One of the most exciting things the
developers talked about was the freedom
they’re trying to bake into The Outer
Worlds. “A lot of the map is opened up
right after you get your ship, so you don’t
have to follow the story immediately,”
Boyarsky said. “There are points of no
return, but we like to keep your options
open for as long as possible.”
There’s a degree of level scaling on
enemies, but within limits, which means
you’ll be able to travel to difficult places
early, if you want, and reap the rewards—if
you don’t die. It looks and feels like an
open-ended PC RPG, but on a more
conservative budget. I’ve only seen a small
slice, so it’s hard to say how unique the
many paths through the game will feel,
how rewarding it will be to take the ‘wrong’
way and carve your own path.
But the setting has an invigorating
personality to it, and I think it’s high time
we got a campier, more sarcastic Firefly to
Mass Effect’s wannabe Star Trek.
Wes FenlonThe Outer Worlds
PREVIEW
Smile!This guy looks like he’d
be harder to intimidate