Youcan’tjustreloadyourlastsave
when you lose a fight, because
Outward constantly auto-saves your
progress. Every lengthy trip across
the map (there’s no fast-travel or
mounts), every purchase at a vendor
or skill upgrade at a
trainer, every decision
in a questline, and
every single fight, is an
event that needs to be
very carefully
considered and
prepared for. The
auto-save and never-
die principles of
Outward are harsh, and feel
punishing at times, but beyond
making your failures meaningful they
also make triumphs monumental.
Combine this with enjoyable
survival elements and a brilliant
magic system, and Outward becomes
a rare gem. It’s got plenty of rough
edges, but it’s an RPG where
traditionally mundane tasks become
complicated, where normally simple
decisions become weighty, and where
it feels like every single choice you
make really matters. I love this game.Ialso,sometimes,hatethisgame.
Honestly, most of my stories in
Outward are of failure. The time I
spied a bandit in the distance and laid
out several tripwire traps only to
discover it was a bandit wizard who
then knocked me
unconscious from
range with ice magic,
never even getting near
all my traps. The time I
took off my bulky
backpack to allow
myself greater mobility
in a fight only to realise
I’d left my magic book
inside it, and thus couldn’t cast any of
the rune spells I’d just learned. The
time I walked into a castle and
chatted with a chieftain who was
perfectly friendly until he stripped
me of my belongings and threw me
into his dungeon.
I even failed my very first quest. It
seemed simple: earn 150 silver coins
to buy back my house (a lighthouse,
in fact), which had been repossessed
by my town’s leaders to repay a debt I
owed. I set out to recover an unusual
mushroom from a cave, hoping it’dfetcha nice price from a collector, but
alongthe way I lost a fight to two
bandits, who dragged my body back
totheir fort. I managed to find my
gear,escape, and heal myself, but I
stepped into a spike trap and lost
consciousness again. This time I was
dragged to safety by a mysterious
benefactor, but I woke up on the far
side of the map. By the time I made it
back home – which took me through
a fort filled with angry ghosts I was
in no way prepared to handle – it was
days later, and the time-sensitive
quest to buy my house had expired.
Now I owed 300 silver. It was nearly
a week later before I had a proper
bed to sleep in.
In any other RPG I probably
would have just reloaded my last save
and avoided most of those headaches.
But while I didn’t enjoy everything
about the difficult trip back home, it’s
now a part of my character’s long and
troubled history of devastating
failures and eventual successes.Onwards and...
There are downsides to Outward’s
systems, too. One quest sent me
searching for a hideout (bandits
again) and owing to Outward having
no quest arrows and not displaying
your own location on the map, it took
quite a lot of running around and
searching based only on the vague
directions I was given. While
exploring an area on some cliffs, I slid
down an incline and got stuck
between the cliff and a rock wall. I
couldn’t wiggle free and remained
trapped in the sliding animation.
Since you can’t fast travel or reload a
save, there I stayed, for two real
hours, hoping I’d eventually slip into
unconsciousness from lack of food or
drink or sleep.
It never happened. My meters all
ran down to zero, only resulting in
debuffs for my stamina. Even
contracting a disease from exposure
(I took off my clothing when it began
to rain) didn’t knock me out. I
eventually had to go into the game
files and delete my last severalNeedtoKNow
Whatisit?
AfantasyRPGwith
survivalelements
EXPECttOPaY
£35
DEvElOPEr
NineDotsStudio
PublishEr
DeepSilver
rEviEWEDOn
GTX 980, Intel
i5-6600K, 8 GBRAM
MultiPlaYEr
Onlineandlocalco-op
link
http://www.ninedots
studio.comHe stripped me
of my
belongings and
threw me into
his dungeonA
game where you can never die sounds like it’d make you
fearless. Why worry about failure when you simply fall
unconscious and wake up somewhere else? It turns out the
opposite is true in. Failure costs something more precious
than a videogame life – it costs time. Time to heal, to rest, to
repair gear, to travel all the way back to the site of your defeat to try, and
possibly to fail, again. Immortality is more terrifying than death.Spellbound
Be prepared to spendplentyoftimeintheunusual,
uncompromisingoutward. By Chris Livingston
BacKpacKevolutioN
Celebrating Outward’s various and wonderful backpacks
preservatioN
BacKpacK
Like an minifridge
on your back, it
keeps food fresh.Brasswolf
Also provides
armour, plus it’s a
grinning brass wolf.
Very metal.MefiNo’s
trade
BacKpacK
Ridiculously big.
Too big, probably.GlowstoNe
BacKpacK
It provides its own
light, so you don’t
need a lantern.scaled
BacKpacK
Craftable, roomy,
and doesn’t slow
your dodging down.Outward
rEviEW