Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds is one of our most highly anticipated releases of the year and for good reason: this space-faring adventure recalls classic RPG titles such as the studio’s Fallout: New Vegas, one of the best RPGs ever made. In fact, the developer has an excellent track record of great RPGs, including more recent titles like Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny. Every new Obsidian project, especially one conceived and directed by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, creators of the Fallout series back in their Interplay days.

“They sort of took this very Brazil corporate dystopian model and injected Tim’s silly Futurama/Simpsons humor to it, which is a similar special sauce they found success with in Fallout games,” Dan McPhee, The Outer Worlds narrative designer, says at E3 2019 regarding the game’s initial conception under Cain and Boyarsky’s leadership.

Indeed, the surreal Terry Gilliam sci-fi film does come to mind when you hear the game’s premise. The Outer Worlds’ story is set in a space colony that has essentially been bought, twisted, and corrupted by various corporations.

“The basic idea is that corporations can buy colonies and star systems, then send their people out there to colonize them, mine minerals, and bring it all back to Earth,” McPhee says. “[The Outer Worlds] is on the very edge of space, the Halcyon Colony. 10 corporations formed the board that bought the place. They send out two ships, one that gets there and one that didn’t. That ship came in sort of 70 years late to the party. That’s the ship the player wakes up on and is dropped in from.”