Very few games have boldly tackled the dystopian space western. Only one game truly comes to mind: the original Borderlands. Yet, looking back, it’s a raunchy, disrespectful dumpster fire that should only be lauded for its addicting gameplay loop and Pandora's atmosphere. It was an experiment that ultimately made games like Destiny possible, but what it positively nailed was the dystopian space western style. It featured corrupt corporations, disposable people, and an admittedly bleak view of the future. The world was palpably dusty and dry, with small ragtag settlements, and people just trying to get by.





This is what makes Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds such an interesting prospect. It took everything that Borderlands brought to the table and said, “I can do better.” The game features mature but witty humor, a similar dust bowl vibe but more artistically articulated, deeply corrupt corporations with squeaky wheels for the player to flip and use for their own means, and settlements of people just trying to get by. If Borderlands’ overall vibe was influenced by Mad Max, The Outer Worlds was influenced by an episode of Star Trek that went sideways. Where the former game feels inherently childish, the latter feels thoughtful and somewhat sophisticated.





Thoughtfulness is what drives the heart of The Outer Worlds. And that heart is exactly what makes up for many of the game’s shortcomings along the way.





Awaken, Traveler!





The moment Dr. Phineas Welles looks the player’s character in the face, they know that they’re in for a treat. They’re not burdened with mountains of exposition to ground them, instead they’re immediately shot to the planet below, Terra 2. Rather than waste the player’s time with winding up the game, setting the stage for a conflict, and drip feeding them moral information, they land in a world that already needs their help. There’s no introduction to a morality system, there’s no real up or down in The Outer Worlds, at least not immediately.





This is where the RPG really shines in this game: the player can dig in as much, or as little, as they like. They can spend the entire game being largely unaware of what’s happening and exploiting helpless people for their own gain. Likewise, the inquisitive player can talk to every named NPC, read reports on the dozens of computer terminals across the many different planets, and complete the full swathe of side quests. The player who digs in will be rewarded with an extremely well-crafted world that feels like it was functioning before they got there. All this information is delivered in a way that keeps the inquisitive player searching for more corporate secrets that will slowly sway their moral compass as they make decisions in the game.





Ultimately, the thing that The Outer Worlds gets right is the feeling of adventure. Many RPGs feel ham fisted, hollow, or simply dull to explore. It may have received some flak for lacking a true open world, but the small map sizes feel appropriate and keep the adventure focused on the story. Had it featured vast open worlds, it likely would have become a slog every step of the way. Very rarely did this sense of adventure give way to impatience and tedium, which really solidifies The Outer Worlds as a world that’s fun to be in.





One of the greatest triumphs the game has is its world building. Each corporation has a distinct jingle that plays at their respective vending machines, their workers spout their slogans liberally, and they all have their flagship products to sell. Each town has its own strife to deal with, be it starvation, secret operations gone deeply south, or splintered factions vying for power. While many of the details of the world will go unchanged by player choice, each settlement's fate can be greatly altered by player choice.





Sowing Peace Through Chaos





Player choice is the crux of this RPG. Other RPGs may lean into the loot grind, or exploration, but at the end of the day The Outer Worlds wants the player to finish its story. They don’t ask the player to make their own fun, but they also don’t force the player to make inconsequential decisions. The key characters in Halcyon system are waiting for the player to turn the tides of the colony toward utter chaos, corporate greed, or some other complicated middle option. Each choice the player can make feels (somewhat) reasonable, because the status quo is so dysfunctional that some change is better than none at all.





This focus on choice making does create a predictable overall plot structure, however. Each major settlement the player travels to has some variation on “solve our problem, shift the seat of power.” Spoiling the beats won’t do the game justice, but usually its some sort of dissenters vs. corporate stability plot that plays out. With that said, this is the prime focus of most dystopian adventures anyway, so it’s not like the structure is lazy. Rather, it seemed like The Outer Worlds had to relegate experimental story beats to its side quests to keep from infringing on player choice opportunities.





Companion quests feel on somewhat on par with the stakes brought by Mass Effects' beloved companion quests, with fewer consequences. During my playthrough, I only completed Vicar Max’s and Parvati’s quests, but they were a delight. Vicar Max is revealed to be a deeply disturbed man on a crisis of faith journey, while Parvati is just trying to find her place in the world. I didn’t feel as drawn to the other characters that joined the crew for one reason or another. In fact, it seems like Obsidian knew that the Vicar and Parvati were going to be the ones accompanying the player the most, so they gave them the best first impressions.





Overall, Obsidian has crafted a story, world, and cast that feel real enough. Where their progeny stumbles a bit is in its minute-to-minute gameplay.





Tripping Over Limitations





Perhaps The Outer Worlds could have fared better if it had more non-combat options. That’s not to say that the combat is bad, but its certainly not on par with the rest of the game’s quality. Likely because if its engine, it feels reminiscent of Fallout and Skyrim, with janky guns and low impact melee combat. Difficulty is also an issue: some encounters are remarkably easy, and others are shockingly hard. Playing on hard mode is for FPS veterans, but even that becomes a walk in the park (until the very end of the game).





It’s not that enemies aren’t lethal. Because in groups they will certainly mop the floor with the player if they’re not careful. It’s just that some guns can put out some real horsepower damage. The player can add some skill points into science to tinker with their weapons and workbenches. Tinkering can upgrade damage of weapons up to five levels past the characters’ level. While it does become expensive, leveling up a plasma rifle means many near one shot kills at any point in the game.





The larger issue with the combat is that its expected when exploring Terra 2, Scylla, and Monarch. Avoiding combat with named NPCs is easy enough with higher speech skills, but there's no way to avoid fights out in the wild otherwise. The autosave system is also not overly generous, so if the player dies during combat, they could be set back several minutes. This is not a huge issue on smaller maps, like the maps on Terra 2 and Scylla, but it’s certainly more of an issue on the gigantic Monarch. Plus, the enemies on Monarch are much harder. It was a welcome challenge at first, but until the player finds “ultra” tier weapons, the enemies feel brutal.





When it comes down to it, it’s likely that the combat is balanced well, and my own desire to rush toward the end came from the poor performance of the game and the bugs. My last five hours with The Outer Worlds felt like a total slog because of the persistent micro-stuttering*. By the end of the game, the stutters were persistent, and the bugs were frequent. The game would crash to the desktop randomly during loading screens, and at the very end of the game, it would consistently crash walking through a mandatory doorway.





The only way I could solve the bug was to attack the character I needed to talk to in the room, which was not at all what I wanted to do. I was able to get around the bug by finding a back door into the room, but it was certainly not the intended entrance. Thankfully, finding the back door allowed me to be more diplomatic, and achieve the ending I had hoped for.





*I have a mid-range PC and had to fiddle with settings quite a bit to get the game running smoothly. Be aware that performance mileage may vary, and it might be worth it to hold off until a few more patches and GPU driver updates arrive to smooth out performance for PC. I have heard that the game is more stable on consoles, as long as you can deal with frame drops from time to time.





Closing Thoughts





At the end of the day the big question is: does it stick the landing? Yes, it does. However, it’s not the "near perfect RPG" that many reviewers have praised it as. The inflated scores and overall hype surrounding The Outer Worlds follows the drought of truly good RPG games in the past few years. Bethesda has failed to deliver their usually stellar content, so when Obsidian stepped in to fill the void, this game seemed like a feast. Obsidian did a very good job in the world building and character development end of things, but the game really does suffer from a gameplay standpoint. By the end I kept saying “I just want this to be over,” because I really wanted the payoff for my efforts.





The final moments did feel good, in that “congratulations, you picked the happy ending!” sort of way. For me it was serviceable and left an overall good taste in my mouth, but it didn’t leave me feeling like it lived up to the other high points of the game’s story. Going into this adventure with tempered expectations is the best thing to be done. Forcing it to be the greatest RPG ever made, or the Fallout killer is going to make it struggle under the weight of the task. Approaching it with an open mind, and an appreciation for its atmosphere will really let The Outer Worlds shine its brightest.