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, the player assumes control of a passenger from a lost colony ship, who is revived by a mad 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 social skills (persuasion, lying and intimidation) when encountering potentially hostile non-playable characters. The player can make numerous dialogue decisions which can influence the game's branching story.

Led by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the creators of the Fallout series, development of the game began in April 2016. Firefly, Futurama, Deadwood and True Grit 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 smaller in scope when compared with other role-playing games, though a number of locations and characters had to be cut due to time and budget constraints, as well as the team's unfamiliarity with Unreal Engine. Announced at The Game Awards 2018, the game was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in October 2019, with a Nintendo Switch version, developed by Virtuos, released in June 2020.

The Outer Worlds received generally positive reviews. Critics generally praised the game's writing, characters, freedom of choice, and art direction, though its combat was criticized. Many critics noticed the game's similarity with the Fallout series. The game was a commercial success, selling over four million units by August 2021, surpassing expectations. It was nominated for several end-of-year accolades, including Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2019. Obsidian supported the game with two downloadable content packs, and re-released the game in March 2023 for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S as The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition. A sequel, The Outer Worlds 2, was announced by Obsidian and its parent company Xbox Game Studios in June 2021.

Gameplay


The Outer Worlds is an action role-playing video game played from a first-person perspective. At the beginning of the game, the player will create their own player avatar. They are also given six attribute points to put across six categories (strength, dexterity, intelligence, perception, charm and temperament). These attributes determines the player character'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. Players also need to choose from one of 15 aptitudes which will give the them minor gameplay bonuses. Both aptitudes and attributes cannot be changed after the game starts.

A spaceship named the Unreliable served as the player character's hub of operation. Though the player cannot control their ship directly, it serves as a fast travel point to access different planets. Each location in the game are large, open spaces which can be explored freely. Players will encounter various NPCs who will offer 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. The player character 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 character's intelligence attribute is set to below average. Players also need to manage their reputation among different factions. Helping a faction increases reputation, while committing crimes and killing members of a faction decrease it. High reputation with a faction may provide benefits such as prompting vendors to sell at a discount. Very low reputation may result in members of a faction attempting to kill the player character on sight.

Several NPCs will also join the player character's party as a companion, and 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, players 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.

Combat system
There are multiple ways to complete objectives. They can play offensively by utilizing the game's large assortment of firearms and melee weapons. Some weapons have unique damage types, allowing players 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. Weapons and armor, which can be used to boost the player character's defense, can be collected through exploring the game world, or looted from enemy corpses. Players may also find five unique "Science Weapons". For instance, the Mind Control Ray can confuse an opponent into attacking their allies. 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. The player had a limited carrying capacity, and will enter a state of "encumbrance" when they are carrying too much items or wearing armor that is too heavy. In this state, players can no longer sprint or fast travel.

Players can utilize stealth tactics, hiding in long grass and avoiding enemy's line of sights to avoid being detected. Investing in stealth skills allows players to lockpick, pickpocket other NPCs, and wear a disguise to infiltrate otherwise restricted areas. They can also use social skills (persuasion, lying and 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 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. 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.

Setting
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. 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.

Synopsis
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:


 * 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 will be launched straight into Halcyon's Sun, destroying the ship and killing everyone aboard.
 * If the Hope was skipped to Terra 2, the Board will apprehend Welles at his base and take him to the Labyrinth on Tartarus. The Stranger fights their way through the prison to negotiate with his captor, forcing them to release him either peacefully or by force.
 * If the Hope was 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.

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.

Development
The Outer Worlds was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the developer behind games such as Fallout: New Vegas. Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, the creators of the Fallout series, served as the game's directors. Both worked together at Interplay Entertainment and Troika Games before departing for other studios. Cain joined Obsidian in 2011, and when given the opportunity to create a new intellectual property for the company in April 2016, invited Boyarsky to join him as his co-director.

Gameplay
A prototype was developed six months after the commencement of development, showcasing the three main pillars of gameplay: combat, stealth and dialogue. The game is a classless role-playing game, as the team wanted players to build and optimize their character as they see fit. The core gameplay was described to be "good enough basically but then fun to extend". The upgrade system allowed players to create "hybrid" characters, who excels at two out of three ways of gameplay. For instance, a combat/stealth character may use a sniper rifle to take out enemy from afar while remaining concealed, while a stealth/dialogue character can make use of disguise to infiltrate restricted areas and talk their ways out when they were caught. The team also introduced "Leadership" skills, which allowed companions to help out or further boost a player's attributes, though it had to be rebalanced at one point because companions became too powerful and players can complete the game without ever engaging in combat. Originally the player character had access to special abilities, though they were later changed to companion skills to make them more involved in combat and further highlight their personalities. The team also designed options for players who favour combat over dialogue, and develop alternative ways for players to obtain essential information should the NPCs involved in the quest is killed. A pacifist way of play was planned, though this was scrapped because it created many unforeseen technical issues.

The game was designed to be accessible to all playstyles. The Tactical Time Dilation system, which briefly slows down time during combat, was designed to prevent new players from being overwhelmed, while giving veteran players more options to defeat their opponents. Weapons in the game were altered by their levels as well as their branding. For instance, Spacer's Choice provided clunky guns that were sold cheaply, while other brands provided additional modification slots. The game also features a number of "Science Weapons". These weapons were designed to be wacky, outlandish and unconventional, and ideas for some of them originated from gameplay bugs. Flaws were introduced as a permanent debuff to the player. They were designed to alter the game's difficulty without fundamentally changing the overall experience. A number of flaws were removed. For instance, there was once a flaw which prevented a character who lied too much from ever telling the truth, and a flaw which auto-selected dialogue options for players who frequently skip dialogue. Character creation in the game was significantly streamlined. The team wanted players to customize their characters as they progress, and did not want to overwhelm them with information early in the game. The game also actively prevented players from specializing until later in the game, with a system that allowed multiple attributes to be upgraded at once.

Story and characters
Boyarsky led the writing team and placed a large emphasis on developing the game's characters. The player character and Phineas Welles were created early in the game's development. Inspired by Fallout, the player character was a frozen colonist who was not familiar with the new world. As player progressed in the game, they will learn more about the Halcyon colony and its inhabitants alongside the protagonist. The player character therefore, was considered to be an unknown variable in a world where every one became accustomed to corporate rule, and had the option to side with different factions. The main character is a silent protagonist as the team preferred a blank state character whose action and personality is completely shaped by the player as they play. Welles, who was compared to a "mad scientist" by the team, was inspired by Rick from Rick & Morty and Walter Bishop's performance in Fringe.

According to the team, the companions were "more involved" in the story of The Outer Worlds when compared with Obsidian's previous games like Fallout: New Vegas. They had their own opinions and will react to player's choices and interject during conversations with other NPCs. Most of the companions in the game were based on "basic archetypes" with the exception of Ellie and Felix, who originally were placeholder companions in the vertical slice of the game. These characters were usually deeply involved in a conflict, and once the conflict is resolved, the narrative designer responsible for writing the character will be free to take them to any direction. The game originally featured six human companions, but one was cut and replaced with the janitor robot SAM due to time constraints. Ellie was described to be a "professional pirate" with a dubious moral compass; Parvati was considered to be a "sweet" and "naive" mechanic who did not fit into the hyper-corporate society well; Felix was described as a "rebel without a cause" who only wanted to "smash the system"; Nyoka was envisioned to be a "tough huntress", and Max was designed as a "travelling priest".

Discussing the moral choices featuring in the game, Boyarsky added that the game provided options for how players wanted to shape their character, be it heroic, evil or dumb. The choices featured in the game were often morally grey, and the game informed players of the consequences of their actions, and it was up to them to decide "what [they] care about". The Board was not depicted as a completely antagonistic figure. Representatives from the Board attempts to persuade the player to join their cause because they felt what they were doing were ultimately good for the colony. The game ends with the player siding with either Welles or the Board, though it provided ample opportunities for players to double cross them. Smaller decisions in each location will affect the state of the world and the fate of other non-playable characters.

World design
Art director Daniel Alpert described the game's aesthetics as the "Old West" set in the future. Since the core premise of the game revolves around space colonization, Halcyon was envisioned to be a "frontier kind of space colony" with a "strong element of heavy machinery". The art team utilized the Art Nouveau style to depict the corporations and the "elitist" large cities in the game. The Outer Worlds utilized vibrant colors to depict its game world, and the team was inspired by works of Alphonse Mucha and Moebius. The use of striking color also helped the world to feel more "alien". Since the game was set in a space colony, the team wanted Halcyon to be "familiar, but also slightly different". The game's loading screens featured propaganda images made by the Board to depict the consequences of the player's action. Each corporation also has their own unique color scheme, so that players can identify various company towns easily. Boyarsky further added that the environments and art style of the game were inspired by dieselpunk art.

The universe of the game was inspired by Fallout, Firefly, and Futurama. The corporations in the game were inspired by mining towns in the early 20th century which exerted a large influence on common commodities. Boyarsky described the Halcyon system as a "corporate utopia, where they can control every aspect of people’s lives". In the game's world, people were "trained from birth to put the company first". While the game explores themes such as capitalism and bureaucracy, the game was not intended to be "politically charged" and the team did not want to lecture players on these topics. Despite the game's dystopian setting, it had a humorous tone. Cain and Boyarsky felt that the subject matter was too grim and the experience would become monotonous and depressing without a change in tone. They described the tone 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 so that the juxtaposition between the game's dark themes and its lighthearted delivery will create more "emotional resonance" with their audience. According to Cain, the game became progressively dark towards the end of the story. The writing team was also inspired by Deadwood, Brazil, True Grit, and the works of Coen brothers and Wes Anderson (such as The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou).

The game features a number of locations: Terra-1 was a feral, lawless planet whose occupants staged an uprising against the Board, while Terra-2 was more refined and more influenced by corporatism. Roseway and its quests were among the first to be created in the game, and served as a guide for the creation of other locations. Each region in the game had its own narrative while being tied to the overarching story. The team avoided creating a large continuous environment, because it would not generate "the space opera fantasy/pulp sci-fi fantasy feel" the team was aiming for. Several locations in the game were cut early in development, such as an overworld region in Terra-2 connecting various settlements such as Byzantium and Edgewater, partly due to budget constraints and the team's unfamiliarity with the Unreal Engine 4. This resulted in the critical path of the game being shorter than expected. Some of the scrapped content was integrated into a location set on an asteroid (Scylla), which was created quickly since it had no settlement and did not require intricate art design. The game's length was comparable to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, which took players 15-40 hours to complete depending on their playstyle. The game's smaller scope allows the team to focus more development time on developing alternate paths and narrative choices.

Release
In December 2017, Private Division, an independent publishing division under Take-Two Interactive, announced the project as their first slate of published games. It was officially announced at The Game Awards 2018. 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. The Outer Worlds was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on October 25, 2019. 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. Fan response to the announcement was negative. 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. The Switch version was developed by Virtuos.

The game's first piece of downloadable content (DLC), Peril on Gorgon, was released on September 9, 2020. The DLC pack added a new location, a new story campaign, and three new science weapons. In this pack, the player must investigate a science outpost located on an asteroid and uncover the mystery behind a failed science project. The second DLC, titled Murder on Eridanos, was released on March 17, 2021. In this pack, the player must solve the murder case surrounding a famous actress named Halcyon Helen. Both DLC packs were included in the game's season pass. 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. Spacer's Choice Edition has updated visuals and a higher level cap. 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.

Critical reception
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.

Many critics noticed its similarity to Fallout games. Sam Machkovech from Ars Technica wrote that the game was a "dizzying, dense shot at reclaiming the indisputable glory of Fallout: New Vegas". Adam Rosenberg from Mashable also remarked that The Outer Worlds was essentially a Fallout game but one with its own distinct sense of identity. Freeform character building was strongly praised by critics for allowing each player to have a distinct experience, encouraging them to experiment with different gameplay styles and increasing the game's replayability. Joe Juba from Game Informer wrote that the game's flexibility made the game "satisfying" to play for supporting various playstyles, and compared its space-faring narrative to Mass Effect. Its use of Unreal Engine was praised by GameSpot's Edmond Tran for making exploration and combat feel better than those from Fallout games. Some critics felt Obsidian played too safe with the title, with Eurogamer's Edwin Evans-Thirlwell calling the game forgettable.

Gameplay was considered to be serviceable, with several critics noticing the game's lack of enemy variety. Alex Award from GamesRadar found it to be rudimentary and compared it unfavourably with other first-person shooters, while VentureBeat's Jason Wilson found the combat to be bland and the choice of weapons to be unimaginative. Several critics noticed that the gameplay was too easy in its standard difficulty mode. Matt Martin from VG247 felt that combat was uninteresting and an obstacle for exploration, Tom Senior from PC Gamer felt that its system were uncomplicated and generally lacked depth, while Steve Boxer, writing for The Guardian, praised the game not being too "complicated" to play. Tran praised the combat system for being fast-paced and hectic, and liked how the game offered numerous opportunities for players to progress. Dan Stapleton from IGN also wrote that Obsidian distinguished The Outer Worlds with "clever" adjustments such as the skills and perks systems, and original features such as flaws, and remarked the TTD system enabled faster and more precise gameplay. The game's environment diversity and art style were praised by critics for further enhancing its worldbuilding and making the experience to feel consistently fresh.

The narrative received generally positive reviews. Boxer strongly praised the game's writing, calling them "razor-sharp", and enjoyed the game's comedic tone. He further praised the game's characters for being emotionally resonant. Avard also called the characters "the most well written, multi-faceted, intelligent and human NPCs" he had ever encountered in a video game, and liked the morally grey choices players had to make in the game. Wilson wrote that humor was the best part of The Outer Worlds, describing it as a "funny and an effective critique of corporate culture", though Machkovech and Evans-Thirlwell found the game's depiction of capitalism and usage of stale sci-fi tropes to be monotonous and one-dimensional. While the writing was praised, the story received mixed opinions. Avard described it as a "masterfully constructed branching narrative" and Stapleton, despite remarking that the game was not as big as those from BioWare and Bethesda Game Studios, wrote that the game nonetheless "packs in a large portion of flexible quests and conflicts" within its smaller locations. Several critics remarked the opening segment of the game to be slow and aimless, as the wider overarching story faded into background. Juba criticized the outdated quest design as choices always involved siding with one of two factions or finding an optimal third option through completing side quests. Fraser Brown, also from PC Gamer, called the game Obsidian's "most conservative RPG", and that decisions made by players rarely felt impactful. He compared the game unfavourably to Disco Elysium, which was released in the same month.

Sales
In the UK, it was the fourth best-selling game at retail in its week of release. It was the second best-selling video game in the US, behind only Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). In November 2019, Take-Two Interactive revealed that the game had been a commercial success, significantly exceeding the company's expectations.

By February 2020, The Outer Worlds had sold over two million units. By May 2021, the game had sold over three million units. By August 2021, it had sold over four million units, becoming one of Private Division's most successful games.

Sequel
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.