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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 unforseen 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. Phineas, who was described to be a "mad scientist", 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 deepy 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 featrued 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 gave players multiple opportunities to double cross both Phineas and the Board. The game had two core paths (either siding with Phineas or the Board), though smaller decisions in each location will affect the state of the world and the fate of other non-playable characters.

World design
The universe of the game was inspired by Fallout, Firefly, and Futurama. The corporations in the game were inspired by mining towns in the late 19th century which exerted a large influence on commodity and consumer groups. 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". Despite this, the game was not intended to be "politically charged", and despite exploring themes such as capitalism and bureaucracy, the game did not want to "lecture" players on these topics. Despite the game's dyspotian setting, it also had a humerous tone. The duo directors felt that the subject matter was too grim and the experience would became monotomous and depressing without a change in tone. They 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. The juxaposition behind the game's dark themes and its lighthearted delivery created 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 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 described as a feral, laweless 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 developent, such as an overworld region in Terra 2 which connects 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. The team had plans to create a third planet, though content for it were integrated into the asteriod Scylla, which was build out quickly by the team since it had no settlement and did not require intricate art design. The team compared the game's length 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.

According to art director Daniel Alpert, the game's described the game's aesthetics as the Old West 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" in its visuals. As development progressed, corporations played a larger role in the game and the art team began to utilize the Art Nouveau art style to depict the more "elitist" large cities. The Outer Worlds utilized striking, vibrant colors to depict its game world, and the team was inspired by 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 company town easily. Boyarsky further added that the environments and art style of the game were inspired by dieselpunk art.

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 announced at The Game Awards 2018 and 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 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 asteriod 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 pack s were included in the game's Expansion seaspn 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.

Reception

 * After effect of Disco Elysium