The Outer Worlds
The Outer Worlds is a 2019 action role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Private Division. Set in an alternate future, the game takes place in Halcyon, a distant star system colonized by megacorporations. In the game, players assume control of a passenger from a lost colony ship, who is revived by a scientist and tasked to rescue their fellow colonists and take down the corporations responsible for the colony's downfall. The game is played from a first-person perspective, and players can use combat, stealth, or dialog options when encountering potentially hostile non-playable characters. Players can make numerous dialog decisions which influence the branching story.
Led by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the creators of the Fallout series, the development of The Outer Worlds began in April 2016. Firefly, Futurama and Deadwood all inspired the game's world and characters. The team used striking color to depict its game world, and the team was influenced by the Art Nouveau style and the works of Alphonse Mucha and Moebius. The game was envisioned to be narrower in scope compared to other role-playing games although a number of locations and characters were still cut due to time and budget constraints, as well as the team's unfamiliarity with using the game's engine. It was announced in December 2018 and then released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in October 2019, with the Nintendo Switch port released in June 2020. Obsidian released two downloadable content packs, and a remastered version was released in March 2023 for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S as The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition.
The Outer Worlds has received generally positive reviews. Critics generally praised the game's writing, characters, freedom of choice, and art direction, though its combat was criticized for being bland. Many critics noted its similarity to the Fallout series. The Switch version was criticized for its technical issues. It was nominated for several end-of-year accolades, including Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2019. It was a commercial success, selling over four million units by August 2021, surpassing expectations. A sequel, The Outer Worlds 2, was released in 2025 by Obsidian and publisher Xbox Game Studios.
Gameplay
The Outer Worlds is an action role-playing video game played from a first-person perspective. At the beginning of the game, players create their avatar and are given six attribute points to distribute across six categories. These attributes determine the character's baseline ability in combat, stealth, and engaging in interactions with other non-playable characters. For instance, a character with points in strength has additional inventory space, while a character with points in charm and perception gains additional dialog options. Players also choose from one of 15 aptitudes which give minor gameplay bonuses. The chosen attributes and aptitude cannot be changed after character creation but players will get more attribute points as the game progresses.A spaceship named the Unreliable serves as players' hub of operation, where players can select fast travel destinations on different planets in the Halcyon system. Each location in the game is a large, open space which can be explored freely. Players encounter various NPCs who offer side quests and optional objectives and reward them with experience and bits, which are used to purchase weapons and other items from vendors. Players make numerous dialog decisions which influence the game's branching story. They can respond to NPCs in various ways, such as acting heroically, maniacally, or even moronically if their character's intelligence attribute is set to below average. Players also need to manage their reputation among the different factions in the game. Helping a faction increases reputation, while committing crimes or killing members of a faction decreases it. High reputation with a faction provides benefits such as vendors offering discounts. Very low reputation results in members of that faction attempting to kill the player character on sight.
Several NPCs can also join the player character's party as a companions and participate in combat. Each companion has their own individual skills and special attacks, and they can develop their own skill specialization over the course of the game. Each companion also has an optional quest line that can be completed. While exploring, players can bring up to two companions while the rest stay on the ship. The presence of a companion may unlock additional dialog options, and give players a passive bonus to their stats. Players can also manually direct the companions and adjust their combat AI. Each companion has their own weapons and armor, though they can be changed by players. The player character and companions have a limited carrying capacity, and can enter a state of "encumbrance" if they carry too many items or wear overly heavy armor. In this state, characters can no longer sprint or fast travel.
Combat
Players can play offensively by using the game's assortment of firearms and melee weapons. Some weapons have unique damage types, allowing players to inflict elemental damage on enemies. Weapons are divided into rarity; the rarer the weapon, the stronger they are. Weapons break down with use but they can be repaired at workbenches with weapon parts. They can be further customized and upgraded to further improve their efficiency. Weapons and armor, which boosts defense, are collected through exploring the game world, looting enemy corpses, or purchasing from vendors. There are also five unique "Science Weapons" with special and unusual effects. In combat players can enter a "Tactical Time Dilation" state, which briefly slows down time and reveals opponents' health statistics. Targeting specific parts of an enemy during TTD enables players to inflict status ailments. For instance, an enemy will become crippled if their legs are attacked.Players can use stealth tactics, such hiding in long grass and avoiding enemy's line of sight to not be detected. Investing in stealth skills allows players to lockpick, pickpocket other NPCs, and wear a disguise to infiltrate otherwise restricted areas. Players can also use persuasion, lying or intimidation to avoid combat altogether. A large number of quests in the game can be resolved in a non-violent ways, though it is also possible to complete the game despite killing all NPCs. As players progress in the game, they gain experience, allowing them to level up. They can then unlock perks which grant single bonuses or effects and spend points on seven different skill trees. Once sufficient points are invested in a skill tree, players can upgrade individual skills in each skill tree, and receives threshold benefits that further boost the player character's ability. Players may also opt to gain flaws, which provide a debuff, in exchange for an additional perk point. These can be obtained when players fail certain gameplay segment repeatedly or engages in harming behaviors such as alcohol abuse or frequently falling from height.
Synopsis
Setting
The Outer Worlds is set in an alternate future that diverged in 1901, when U.S. President William McKinley is not assassinated. As a result, Theodore Roosevelt never succeeded him, and the great business trusts of the era were never broken up, leading to a hyper-corporate, class-centric society dominated by the power of megacorporations. In the future following a global war and the invention of faster-than-light travel, various organizations and megacorporations begin to colonize outer space, often terraforming alien planets with varying results. Thousands of Earth residents sign up for the chance to travel to a new star system for a fresh start. The art, architecture, and technology of the colonies display a unique blend of Art Nouveau, steampunk, and dieselpunk aesthetics.On this frontier is Halcyon, a star system consisting of six planets: Hephaestus, Tartarus, Terra 2, Olympus, Typhon, and Eridanos. The system also contains the Charybdis Cluster, an asteroid cluster that includes the large colonized asteroids Scylla and Gorgon. The colony was founded and subsequently run by the Halcyon Holdings Corporation, a union of ten megacorporations who collaborated in the settlement of the system, with the ultimate goal of using them as large company towns. Being the most distant colony from Earth, travel to Halcyon requires the usage of both an advanced, faster-than-light starship and a ten-year cryosleep for all passengers. In 2285, two colony ships, the Hope and the Groundbreaker, are dispatched to colonize Halcyon. The Groundbreaker proceeds to colonize the planets Terra 1 and Terra 2 and is converted into an independent port and armored citadel by the original crew and their descendants, but the Hope and its cargo disappears in transit, slipping into myth among the citizens of Halcyon.
Plot
In 2355, the Hope is discovered drifting on the outskirts of the Halcyon system by scientist Phineas Vernon Welles, who manages to safely revive one of the passengers, the Stranger. Welles informs the Stranger that the Halcyon colonies have fallen on hard times due to the incompetence and greed of the megacorporation-run government. Welles tasks the Stranger with securing the resources needed to revive the remaining Hope colonists, and jettisons the Stranger in an escape pod onto Terra 2, where a smuggler, Alex Hawthorne, is waiting. The Stranger's pod inadvertently lands on top of Hawthorne, killing him instantly. The Stranger then takes over Hawthorne's ship, the Unreliable, piloted by an artificial intelligence named ADA. As the Stranger repairs their ship and explores Halcyon, they learn that Welles is wanted by the Board for acts of alleged terrorism and illegal experimentation, and must make another choice: continue helping Welles or betray him to the Board and assist with his capture.After leaving Terra 2, the Stranger is instructed to head to Monarch, a colonized moon orbiting the gas giant Olympus, where an information broker holds the location of a batch of dimethyl sulfoxide, a chemical Welles needs to revive the remaining colonists. Because landing on Monarch is prohibited due to a Board trade embargo, the Stranger must first retrieve a passkey from the Groundbreaker. The Stranger helps the Broker regain control of Monarch's airwaves so he can collect the intel. With the Broker's intel, Welles directs the Stranger to Halcyon's wealthy capital Byzantium, where the Minister of Earth, Aloysius Clarke, has just signed for a shipment of dimethyl sulfoxide. Tracking down Clarke to his townhouse, the Stranger learns that Clarke has been placed under house arrest by Board Chairman Charles Rockwell, the true recipient of the chemicals.
In Rockwell's private quarters, the Stranger discovers a video in which Rockwell announces the "Lifetime Employment Program"; the Board is conspiring to place most colonists in indefinite cryosleep, ostensibly in order to save humanity but in actuality to hoard the remaining food supplies for the wealthiest citizens. In order to store these frozen workers, the Hope colonists will be ejected into space, with the Hope turned into a vast cryogenic warehouse. The dimethyl sulfoxide is being used on human test subjects to attempt to recreate Welles' formula, in the hope that workers can be repeatedly pulled out of extended periods of suspended animation. The Stranger retrieves the chemicals, with or without killing the test subjects in the process.
Welles suggests using ADA and the Unreliables power to "skip" the Hope into the inner Halcyon system, placing it in orbit near his laboratory above Terra 2 so that he can begin the revival process. Sophia Akande, the Adjutant for the Board, instead proposes that the Stranger skip the Hope to Tartarus, a planet home to the Board's infamous Labyrinth prison complex, so that the Board can apprehend Welles and begin killing the colonists. The Stranger infiltrates the Hope and learns of what occurred during the ill-fated voyage; the Hopes skip drive developed an unforeseen fault, extending the planned 10-year mission to 60 years. As food rations ran out, some of the crew turned to cannibalizing the frozen colonists in order to survive, before staging a mutiny. The Stranger also discovers that they were not the first colonist Welles attempted to reanimate; he actually tried at least twelve times prior with fatal results for the colonists involved.
Wiring ADA through to the Hopes control system, the Stranger skips the Hope either to Terra 2 or to Tartarus. Depending on where the Hope arrives in Halcyon, the ending diverges:
- If the Stranger chooses to skip the Hope themselves rather than ask ADA to do it, and the game has been played with low-intelligence settings, the game ends here. The Hope is launched straight into Halcyon's Sun, destroying the ship and killing everyone aboard.
- If the Hope is skipped to Terra 2, the Board will apprehend Welles at his base and take him to the Labyrinth on Tartarus. The Stranger then fights their way through the prison to negotiate with his captor, forcing them to release him either peacefully or by force.
- If the Hope is skipped to Tartarus, an enraged Welles will travel to Tartarus himself and start a riot in the Labyrinth, taking Akande hostage in a bid to get to the Hope and her colonists. The Stranger must reach Welles and confront him, forcing him to release Akande either peacefully or by force.