The Outer Worlds | |
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Developer(s) | Obsidian Entertainment |
Publisher(s) | Private Division |
Director(s) | |
Producer(s) | Eric DeMilt |
Designer(s) | Charles Staples |
Programmer(s) | Mark DeGeorge |
Artist(s) | Daniel Alpert |
Writer(s) | Leonard Boyarsky |
Composer(s) | Justin E. Bell |
Engine | Unreal Engine 4 |
Platform(s) | |
Release |
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Genre(s) | Action role-playing |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
The Outer Worlds is a 2019 action role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Private Division. The game was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in October 2019, with a Nintendo Switch version released in June 2020.
The Outer Worlds received generally positive reviews from critics and sold over four million units by August 2021. A sequel, The Outer Worlds 2, was announced in June 2021.
The Outer Worlds is an action role-playing video game played from a third-person perspective. At the beginning of the game, the player will create their own player avatar. Players are also given six attribute points to put across six categories (strength, dexterity, intelligence, perception, charm and temperament).[1] These attributes determines the player's baseline ability in combat, stealth, and engaging in interaction with other non-playable characters (NPCs). For instance, a strong character has additional inventory space, while a cunning character requires high charm and perception to be persuasive.[2] Players also need to choose from one of 15 aptitudes which will give the player minor gameplay bonuses. Both aptitudes and attributes cannot be changed after the player starts the game.[3]
Players will eventually come into possession of a spaceship named the Unreliable, which will become the player's hub of operation. Though the player cannot control their ship directly, it serves as a fast travel point to access different planets.[4] Each location in the game are large, open spaces which can be explored freely.[5] Players will encounter various NPCs who will give players side quests and optional objectives and reward them with experience and an in-game currency named "bits", which can be used to purchase weapons and other items from different vendors.[6][7] The player can make numerous dialogue decisions which can influence the game's branching story. They can respond to NPCs in various ways, such as acting heroically, maniacally, or moronically if the player's intelligence attribute is below average.[8] Players also need to manage their reputation among different factions. Helping a faction increases reputation, while committing crimes and killing members of a faction with decrease it. High reputation with a faction may prompt vendors to give a discount to the player, and assist the player during the game's final showdown. Very low reputation may result in members of a faction attempting to kill the player character on sight.[9]
The player can encounter and recruit non-player characters (NPCs) as companions who have their own personal missions and stories. When accompanying the player, the companions act as an aid in combat. Each companion has their own individual skills and special attacks, and they can develop their own skill specialization. When exploring, the player can bring up to two companions alongside them while the rest stay on the ship. The presence of a companion may unlock additional dialogue options, and give players a passive bonus to their stats. Players can also direct the companions to certain locations, and adjust the aggressiveness of their AI behaviours. Each companion has their own weapons and armour, though they can be changed by the player.[10]
There are multiple ways for players to complete their objectives. Players can play offensively by utilizing the game's large assortment of firearms and melee weapons. Some weapons have unique damage types, allowing the player to inflict elemental damage on enemies. For instance, weapons with corrosive damage can melt away an opponent's armor. All weapons are divided into rarity; the rarer the weapon, the stronger they are. Weapons break down eventually, and must be repaired at workbenches with weapon parts. They can be further customized and upgraded to further improve their efficiency.[11] Weapons and armor, which can be used to boost the player's defense, can be collected through exploring the game world, or looted from enemy corpses.[12] Players may also find five unique "Science Weapons". For instance, the Mind Control Ray can confuse an opponent into attacking their allies.[13] Players can enter "Tactical Time Dilation" state, which briefly slows down time and reveals opponents' health statistics. Targeting specific parts of an enemy during this state enables players to inflict status ailments. For instance, an enemy will become crippled if their legs are attacked.[14] The player had a limited carrying capacity. Players will enter a state of "encumbrance" when the player is carrying too much items or wearing armor that is too heavy. Once in this state, players can no longer sprint or fast travel.[15]
Players can utilize stealth tactics, hiding in long grass and avoiding enemy's line of sights to avoid being detected.[16] Investing in stealth skills allows players to lockpick,[17] pickpocket other NPCs,[7] and wear a disguise to infiltrate otherwise restricted areas.[18] They can also use social skills (persuasion, lying and intimidation) to avoid combat altogether.[17] A large number of quests in the game can be resolved in a non-violent ways,[19] though it is also possible to complete the game despite killing all NPCs.[20] As player progresses in the game, they will gain experience, allowing them to level up. They can then unlock perks which grant them single bonuses or effects, and spent points on seven distinct skill types (Melee, Ranged, Defense, Dialog, Stealth, Tech and Leadership). Once sufficient points are invested in a skill type, they can opt to upgrade individual skills under each skill type, and receive a threshold benefits that further boost the player's ability.[21][22] The player may opt to gain flaws, which impede the player, in exchange for an additional perk point when the player fails certain gameplay segment repeatedly or engages in harming behaviours such as alcohol abuse or frequently falling from height.[23][24]
The game 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, which, by the distant future, have begun to colonize space and terraform alien planets to varying results.[25] Thousands of Earth residents, lured by the promise of a fresh start, sign up for the chance to travel to this new frontier.
Among them is Halcyon, a small, six-planet star system. Traveling to Halcyon requires both the usage of advanced spacecraft with a faster-than-light skip-drive and a ten-year cryosleep for the colonists. In 2285, two colony ships were dispatched to colonize Halcyon — the Hope and the Groundbreaker. While the Groundbreaker successfully arrived in Halcyon, colonizing the planets Terra 1 (later renamed Monarch) and Terra 2, the Hope and its cargo disappeared in transit, slipping into myth among the citizens of Halcyon. The Groundbreaker, meanwhile, goes into permanent orbit near Terra 2, with the original crew and their descendants converting the ship into an independent port and armored citadel.
In 2355, the Hope is discovered drifting on the outskirts of the Halcyon system by mad 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 various mega-corporations (referred to collectively as "The Board") that govern every aspect of life in Halcyon. 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 contact, smuggler Alex Hawthorne, is waiting. The Stranger's pod lands on Hawthorne, killing him instantly. The Stranger then took over Hawthorne's ship, the Unreliable, which is piloted by an artificial intelligence named ADA. As the Stranger repairs their ship and starts to explore Halcyon, he learns that Welles is wanted by the Board for acts of alleged terrorism and illegal experimentation, and must make another choice: continue to help Welles or betray him to the Board and assist them 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. As landing on Monarch is prohibited due to a Board trade embargo, the Stranger must first retrieve a passkey from aboard the Groundbreaker. The stranger helped 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 on 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 Unreliable's 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 Hope's 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 Hope's 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:
Regardless of the outcome, the Stranger is informed that contact with Earth has been lost, and that a Board troopship en route to the home planet mysteriously disappeared in transit. The Stranger is offered leadership of the Halcyon colonies and allowed to shape humanity's future however they see fit. With Halcyon free of Earth's influence the colony is free to shape its own destiny, either under the Board's Lifetime Employment Program or under the freedom brought by the loss of the Board's influence.
The Outer Worlds was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Take-Two Interactive's publishing label Private Division.[26] Though Obsidian was in progress to be acquired by Microsoft Studios at the time of the game's announcement, the project had been under development before that point, and Take-Two had secured the publishing rights prior to Microsoft's acquisition offer.[27]
Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the creators of the Fallout series, served as the game's directors, taking inspiration from Fallout, Firefly, Futurama, Deadwood, and True Grit.[28] The duo directors described the game as "the combination of [Boyarsky's] dark morbidity and Tim's silliness", and they hoped to seek a balance between silliness and drama when creating the game's tone and narrative.[29] Romantic options were initially considered, but the feature was eventually cut by the studio.[30][31] The game's writers include Boyarsky and Megan Starks.[32][33]
The game was in development since 2016, when Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart mentioned that a small number of people in the studio which included Cain and Boyarsky were working on "something completely new" in the Unreal Engine during an interview with Game Pressure.[34] Obsidian later revealed the game's development in 2017. In December 2017, Private Division announced the project as their first slate of published games.[35] It was announced at The Game Awards 2018 and was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on October 25, 2019.[36][37] In March 2019, it was announced that the game would release exclusively on the Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store, with its original Steam release being delayed until October 23, 2020.[38][39][40] Fan response to the announcement was negative.[41] A Nintendo Switch version was originally scheduled to be released on March 6, 2020, but was delayed to June 5 due to issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.[42]
The game's first piece of downloadable content (DLC), Peril on Gorgon, was released on September 9, 2020.[43][44] The second DLC, titled Murder on Eridanos, was released on March 17, 2021.[45]
On March 7, 2023, a remastered version of the game called The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition was released on PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S. The remaster was developed by Virtuos.[46] Spacer's Choice Edition has updated visuals and a higher level cap.[47] It includes the base game and all downloadable content. The remaster has been criticized for introducing stutter to the game and generally performing worse than the original.[48][49][46]
Aggregator | Score |
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Metacritic | PC: 82/100[50] PS4: 85/100[51] XONE: 85/100[52] NS: 66/100 [53] |
Publication | Score |
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Destructoid | 9/10[54] |
Easy Allies | 9/10[55] |
Electronic Gaming Monthly | [56] |
Game Informer | 9.25/10[57] |
GameSpot | 9/10[58] |
GamesRadar+ | [59] |
IGN | 8.5/10[60] |
PC Gamer (US) | 79/100[61] |
PCGamesN | 7/10[62] |
The Outer Worlds received "generally favorable" reviews from critics for most platforms, except for the Nintendo Switch version which received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.[50][51][52][63]
Writing for Game Informer, Joe Juba praised the game for its soundtrack and for assembling an "excellent cast of voice performers,"[57] while Daniel Bloodworth of Easy Allies found that the game was "incredibly well-written," but criticized the characters as appearing "rigid, lacking body language" during dialogue interactions.[55] The reception to The Outer Worlds' combat system was more mixed. Whereas the game drew acclaim from Josh Harmon of EGM for the depth of its melee combat mechanics,[56] Tom Senior, writing for PC Gamer, noted that "combat isn't challenging, and enemies fit into worn categories."[61]
By February 2020, The Outer Worlds had sold over two million units.[64] By May 2021, the game had sold over three million units.[65] By August 2021, it had sold over four million units.[66]
The game was nominated for a number of awards for its writing, voice acting and visual design – taking home five awards from the 2020 NAVGTR Awards,[67] and winning the Big Apple Award for Best Game of the Year at the 2020 New York Game Awards.[68]
Year | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
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2019 | Game Critics Awards | Best of Show | Nominated | [69] |
Best Original Game | Won | |||
Best PC Game | Nominated | |||
Best Role-Playing Game | Nominated | |||
2019 Golden Joystick Awards | Ultimate Game of the Year | Nominated | [70] | |
The Game Awards 2019 | Game of the Year | Nominated | [71] | |
Best Narrative | Nominated | |||
Best Performance (Ashly Burch) | Nominated | |||
Best RPG | Nominated | |||
2020 | New York Game Awards | Big Apple Award for Best Game of the Year | Won | [68] |
Statue of Liberty Award for Best World | Nominated | |||
Herman Melville Award for Best Writing | Nominated | |||
23rd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards | Role-Playing Game of the Year | Won | [72][73] | |
Outstanding Achievement in Story | Nominated | |||
20th Game Developers Choice Awards | Best Narrative | Nominated | [74] | |
SXSW Gaming Awards | Most Promising New Intellectual Property | Won | [75][76] | |
Excellence in Visual Achievement | Nominated | |||
16th British Academy Games Awards | Narrative | Nominated | [77] | |
2020 Nebula Awards | Game Writing | Won | [78] | |
GLAAD Media Awards | Outstanding Video Game | Won | [79] |
On 13 June 2021, at Xbox and Bethesda's joint E3 presentation, The Outer Worlds 2 was announced for Xbox Series X/S and PC.[80]