All week, I've been exploring the furthest reaches of space. Admittedly, this hasn't meant leaving Earth once - let alone Newcastle. That's because for the last few days, I haven't stopped playing The Outer Worlds.
The Outer Worlds is Obsidian's latest open-world, first person shooter RPG. You're taken through the distant space colony of Halycon, after being awakened from cryo-sleep on a spaceship missing for 70 years and presumed destroyed.
After a chaotic rescue from a scientist with no small resemblance to Back to the Future's Doc. Brown (albeit with more warrants for space terrorism, but hey - don't judge) you're quickly pushed from orbit into the colony and asked to save it. You land on someone.
With your feet firmly planted on alien ground, you're set loose to make your own way in the universe. Halycon is set in a future where corporations and capitalism have run rampant, with society ruled by the iron-fisted Board. Citizens are contracted to work for the rest of their lives, with a couple of fun little footnotes in the contract. Suicide is illegal, as it's vandalism of company property. If someone gets sick (and they will) they best hope they're valuable enough to the company to be given medicine, or they'll go without.
The Outer Worlds boasts a rich lore, and captivating stories are waiting to be found on the various planets, asteroids and satellites you'll pay visits to. One memorable space station had papers and terminal entries chronicling the author's slow and reluctant descent into insanity, and had me racing through corridors trying to find the next entry and discover what had happened there.
The writing team in Obsidian have an impressive portfolio of well-written RPG's, and The Outer Worlds comfortably stands among them. Without a doubt, the dialogue and scattered texts are its strongest feature. NPC's are an interesting source of backstory and humour, and the hilariously dry dialogue options will feel familiar to anyone who has played Fallout: New Vegas. There were countless conversations that I found genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, and the witty writing remained consistently entertaining all game long. The difficult choices and diverse set of options for handling a situation were excellent, and would easily call for multiple playthroughs to see the consequences of your actions from another point of view.
The companions/crew members you'll pick up along the game add a whole new level of depth. Each bring their own nuanced personalities, and I felt guilty if I wasn't taking one of them along on enough adventures. You can take two companions out at once, and each pair has their own unique conversdations with eachother. No two pairings are alike, and I completely finished the game without hearing a single recycled conversation between companions. I loved hearing Felix attempt to explain the fictional sport of Tossball to Parvati - she has as much understanding of Tossball as me (It's a mix of baseball and rugby, except it's not and also it is), and pretends to follow along for all of five minutes before giving up. Combined with a personal quest for each companion, your merry family of misfits feel like real people and are a pleasure to be around.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is a real weakness. While the first person gunplay isn't exactly boring, it rarely felt very engaging or generally all that interesting. I noticed around halfway through the game that I was rushing through gunfights simply to progress the story played on hard mode and felt the game was too easy until much later, where it suddenly spiked. There's just enough guns in the game to be passable, but considering its setting the variety did feel a little stale. In a world hundreds of years in the future I hoped for all manner of weird weaponry, but it's plagued with carbon-copy rifles and pistols . The elements (plasma, shock and ballistics) behind each item were fun to play with, but I landed on a short range of reliable weapons fairly early on and was rarely offered anything that seemed very exciting.
Luckily, even the most tedious of shootouts were beautiful. Graphics are usually a big area for compromise on my PC, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well the game ran. With some minor downgrades to shadows I was able to keep almost everything running on high to very high, keeping The Outer Worlds a very pretty game.
From your ship you're able to see whichever planet you happen to be orbiting, and in space even the worst bandit-ridden planet can make for a spectacular vista. The arts team - like every other team in Obsidian - paid great attention to detail, and the result is the feeling that you've stepped into a world that already existed before you. My most memorable moment in the game was when I opened the doors to the Groundbreaker, and revealed a neon-soaked street covered wall-to-wall in holographic advertisements.
As well as the gameplay, I felt like the only other real weakness was in the pacing of the game. The main story is short, and often relies on mandatory side quests to fill it out. The ending arrived several hours earlier than I was expecting, and the second half of the story from Monarch onwards felt slightly rushed. I was excited to visit the capital city of the colony, Byzantium, but when I finally arrived I found very little to do there. Progressing through the game felt like falling through a funnel, and options for open-world exploration definitely narrow out as the game comes to a close in the later areas.
Overall, some impeccable writing and beautiful setpieces gave The Outer Worlds a soaring, successful launch into bravely-chartered new IP territory - a land that few established RPG studios feel willing to explore nowadays. It's a stunning example of how much fresh air a new title can bring, but I feel the real excitement is in the hands of Obsidian. While The Outer Worlds was a huge success, choosing to build on what's been established here could make for a truly iconic RPG.
85/100
The writing, scenery and companions gave The Outer Worlds some high peaks, but it was marred with average gameplay and a weaker second half.