When The Outer Worlds 2 was shown at Gamescom Opening Night, I made a confession to the friend I was watching it with. I'm no sci-fi RPG fan – I only played the Mass Effect trilogy last year, if you can believe it – and The Outer Worlds is just as much of a mystery to me as Bethesda's Fallout games and, of course, its latest endeavor Starfield.
The truth is that I'm a medieval RPG girl. Give me magical settings and arcane legends any day, but put me in a space helmet with an alien blaster in hand and I'll probably lose interest by lunchtime. But having played Avowed earlier this year and fallen in love with Pentiment last Christmas, I felt compelled to take my friend's sage advice: to skip Fallout 4 completely, cross my fingers in hopes of a Fallout 3 remaster someday, and play another of Obsidian's beloved RPGs instead.
After years spent side-stepping those dead-eyed NPCs in Fallout's nuclear wasteland and explaining away my reluctance to play Starfield, I was surprised by how easy a concession this was to make. Even more striking, however, is the fact that I've already fallen for The Outer Worlds after a mere two hours of playtime.
Space boots the house down
Avowed, but in space. That's my only thought as I take my first steps on Halcyon. But I'm no Envoy this time around; I'm a space colonizer who used to work as a cashier, and after waking from a 70-year cryosleep, I've been sent on what feels like a wild goose chase across an alien planet to help some wacky professor rouse my fellow travelers from their own protective slumber.
I'm looking for a power regulator in a place called Edgewater. I'm also chasing down four poor souls who have yet to pay the town gravedigger for their own burial plots. There are roaming bandits called marauders skulking about the plague-addled township and I blast so many of them in such little time I may as well call The Outer Worlds a horde shooter. Do I need to sleep? Do I need to eat all these foraged bits of food I seemingly have no use for? I have no idea. In short: I love it here
Retro-futuristic 1950s vibes saturate everything, from the charming loading screen posters advertising Soylent Green-like saltuna to the hairstyles and speech mannerisms of each person I meet. Again, though, I keep forgetting what I am even doing here, but that doesn't matter when I'm so curious about my surroundings.
The Outer Worlds is no Atomfall or Bioshock, despite the shared taste for retro-sci fi. It probably bears more of a resemblance to Mass Effect than any of the best Fallout games, too (though please note: I have also never played the studio's own whack at the IP, Fallout: New Vegas).
But The Outer World stands apart through its quirky implementation of some truly iconic systems to add a little spice to the RPG norm. Specifically, I'm talking about flaws – which, weirdly, is something I've only seen used similarly in The Sims 4 Vampires and Werewolves expansion packs.
Hamartia
There's a cartoonish, wholesome charm about Obisidian's art style that stands in stark contrast with its more insidious space-corpo themes...
After two hours spent investing skill points into ranged weapons and the powers of sheer space-rizz, I've finally unlocked my first flaw in exchange for a perk point.
I'm Drug Addicted, I confess, having become very keen on huffing my health-boosting inhaler after all of those aforementioned run-ins with marauders. In exchange for a minor stat debuff in temperament, persuasion, and health, I'm awarded a perk point to use on anything I wish. These are only usually given when leveling up, so it feels like a small price to pay for an early-game boost.
Speaking of cheeky boosts, I'm thrilled to find that there's also a thievery system in The Outer Worlds. It ties directly to how faction and reputations work; do good things for the people of Edgewater (or their greenhouse-dwelling Deserters living just outside the city walls) and you gain a positive reputation. Steal or be a bit of a dick, and risk soiling your name – though since I stole it from the poor soul I'd flattened while crash-landing on Terra 2, that's not really my problem.
Thievery is very, very funny in this game, because I can't quite tell when I'm in an NPC's line-of-sight half the time. Avowed definitely feels more realistic in that regard, though it makes sense that a six-year-old game might have slightly stiffer NPC logic.
For example, when tasked with snooping through a doctor's things in search of leverage against his outstanding burial bills, I'm able to simply walk right past him and enter his back rooms without being stopped. I tuck myself behind a corner and read his emails – bingo, leverage found! – but when I crouch-sneak across the room to a nearby body and decide to liberate the corpse of its personal effects, the doctor suddenly comes running in accusing me of theft.
I'm able to casually brush him off with some light persuasion, thanks to pumping so many skill points into the gift of the gab, and I have a brand new armor set out of it. My reputation only tanks slightly, too, so I guess it really is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission in The Outer Worlds – just like in Avowed.
I didn't notice the hours tick by, but I seem to have accidentally gotten myself very, very into The Outer Worlds in what feels like no time at all. There's a cartoonish, wholesome charm about Obisidian's art style that stands in stark contrast with its more insidious space-corpo themes, and I can't help but love it. It's also pretty heartening to see how much Obsidian has developed its narrative chops since these early days on Halcyon, which gives me an even greater appreciation for Avowed's markedly stronger pacing and story structure.
With The Outer Worlds 2 inching ever closer on the horizon, boasting a refurbished Perks system that's apparently been "borrowed" from New Vegas, I finally understand and share the hype. Plus, if I can keep skirting Fallout and Starfield in the meantime, this is a win-win situation.
