The Outer Worlds (2019)

The Outer Worlds (2019), directed by Leonard Boyarksy, Tim Cain, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, published by Private Division

This wasn't the way you imagined arriving at Halcyon, a corporate-run colony far away from Earth. You are woken up by a mad scientist, Phineas Welles, running from the law, who quickly enrols you on a mission of saving your fellow colonists, who have been frozen for decades in a colony ship Hope, hovering stranded in the space. Something has definitely gone wrong. And they continue to go wrong when your escape pod crashes near Edgewater on Terra 2, crushing the man who was supposed to be your guide.

It doesn't take long for you to find the ship of the former captain, the Unreliable and to convince its on-ship computer ADA that you are now its rightful captain. After that is done, it is time to take a closer look at the world you've just thrown like a newborn babe.

The city of Edgewater is the first indicator of what the world of the bold, capitalistic, megacorporation ran world is like. One of the first quests you stumble upon is a task given you by the local gravedigger, who wants you to collect fees for burial sites. During this quest, you learn such truths, as suicide is considered illegal, as to kill oneself is to harm corporation property.  If someone was found of death through suicide, the whole city would be responsible for imbursing the company, so all kinds of loopholes need to be checked in order to make any suspicious death look something else.

Instead of displaying nationalistic pride, the people of the Outer Worlds pledge their life to the corporation they are serving. There are no national anthems, there are corporate jingles, during discussions, sales slogans are thrown as greetings. Everyone you meet is either an employee or a potential customer and everyone has to make a profit for one of the big corporations forming the Board that oversees the worlds of Halcyon.

In Edgewater, you meet two of the possible six members of your crew. Parvati is an engineer, awkward around people, but more than willing to leave the dust of her old home behind her. Vicar Max is a man of the cloth, looking for the greater secrets of the universe. If you are willing, both, just like everyone else joining the crew of the Unreliable, have their own side missions to complete. For Max, it is to help him to figure out the ancient philosophical dilemmas he has wrestled with, for Parvati, it is to help her find love.

Nyota, you find, later on, wants help in giving proper send off to her former teammates, Ellie to give her parents their comeuppance. Felix wants to reconnect with an old friend of his and finally, there is the cleaning unit SAM, which just needs to be re-activated. Depending on how you solve the respective quests of the crewmembers has an effect on how they evolve and what happens to them in the end.

The Outer Worlds has been compared to the Fallout series quite a bit. A short frolic through Edgewater shows well why that is. You can very freely choose with whom you stand in the world of corporate overlords. If you don't want to fight for the freedom of the people, you can always choose to side with the companies and the Board. If you want, you can even give up Phineas for the corporations.

This freedom of choice reminds me quite a bit of the Obsidian outing of modern Fallout, New Vegas, where you could freely do jobs to any faction you wanted with the cost of getting a bad reputation among others. There's a lot of freedom in how you play the game, ranging from being the shining beacon of hope to a bloodthirsty psychopath, who doesn't care who ends up in front of your barrel.

The location of Edgewater can be very freely travelled in any direction you want, but the game isn't a continuous open-world sandbox in the style of Skyrim for example. The world of Halcyon is built of smaller instances. So not only are the other planetary locations you visit separated on their own areas, the Earth 2 where Edgewater has also been divided into multiple separate locations you can travel between within your spaceship.

All of the game, including combat, is played in a 1st person mode. Because of the long cryosleep, your character suffers from time dilation. That is the games "scientific" way of telling why during the combat you can slow down time to make better hits. In many ways, it works like a simplified version of the VATS system used in Fallout games. The companions you have with you operate on their own, but can also be ordered around.

The character system works very well. The basics are built on perks and skills. Skills include things like weapons use, stealth and dialogue options. For the first 50 points, you can level all the subskills of one skill tree with a cost of 1 point. After that, each sub-skill costs 1 point to increase. Perks are gained every 3rd level, but as well by opting to take handicaps during the game, which are rewarded with 1 extra perk point. The perks influence different aspects, like increased carrying capacity to use of weapons.

Many reviewers have compared the Outer World on Fallout games, some even rubbing it on the face of Bethesda because of their disastrous MMO take on the series Fallout 76. While I don't know what is the current status of F76, it is easy to see why many parallels have been drawn between this game and Fallout. Not only is one of the directors Tim Cain who also had his hand in the creation of the original Fallout, but the style of the original Fallout series is also visible on the story elements of TOW.     

The world of Halycon is a satirical take of a future run by megacorporations, to which people are just a commodity, another cog of their engines. While it is heavy fisted on its approach, it still fits in the universe created for it. The writing is, for the most part, pretty solid and the characters you gather around you and meet on the way more than serviceable despite at times it is very easy to see where the game is going.

But what really matters, in the end, is, that the Outer Worlds is a fun game. It allows you to approach its quests the way you want to approach them. No matter what you choose, to be the hero or the villain, the game lets you do it. You can be the best, the worst or something in the middle. What really matters is, that just like in the original Fallout games, you can carve your path through the world the way you see fit.   

The Outer Worlds is available for PCs and consoles. For PC's you can get it from the Epic Store or Windows Store. It will come to Steam later on.