The Outer Worlds

What do you feel is important when playing an RPG? Is it about a convincing and well-crafted world, about diversity in locations and enemies? For experienced RPG developer Obsidian Entertainment it's all of that, but with an even bigger emphasis on the player's freedom to choose their own course of action inside the game world. At least that's our impression from our recent studio visit and preview of Obsidian's upcoming single-player sci-fi RPG, The Outer Worlds. In their latest game, Obsidian aims to provide almost complete freedom of choice to the player, something which could make it stand out among sci-fi RPGs that follow a more linear storyline.

Obsidian's largest team yet, with previous experience on {Pillars of Eternity} II, {South Park: The Stick of Truth} and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, has been working on The Outer Worlds for over two years now. Our impression of the game's atmosphere is that of general light-heartedness, with a big comical element in the dialogue. It's going to be singleplayer only, limited to a first-person view with a familiar first-person shooter GUI and your party of three in the top left of the screen. The only time a third-person view comes up is when you're idle for some time. The game has a colourful 19th-century art nouveau-inspired style with lots of clunky mechanical technology. In the words of lead designer Charles Staples:
"It takes place in an alternate future where humanity has expanded. The game takes place in a colony on the edge of known human space, [which] was founded by a corporate board of ten corporations. They sent two main colony ships to found the colony, of which along the way one made it and one did not. The player was aboard the one that did not. [After 70 years] a crazed scientist finds the player and thaws him out of hibernation and asks you to save the rest of the colonists." 

Immediately after the game starts, Obsidian gives players the freedom to choose their course of action. While we were watching a gameplay preview, co-game director Tim Cain explained: "the scientist wants you to help collect more chemicals to save the other colonists. But you don't have to help him do that, you could decide I'm going to hand him in to the evil board of corporations and turn this guy in to see what happens. [If you do so] you'll get a lot of money and get to live in the city of the elite [called Byzantium]." Cain continued: "It's really important for us that players can drive the story. We want this to be as open-end for players as possible. [...] Players can drive the story, be any kind of player you want to be. You want to be an anti-hero, you want to be a hero or you want to be a psychopath?"

Throughout the game, your home is a spaceship orbiting the game's two main planets: the successfully terraformed 'Terra-2' and the much less successful, alien-ridden world nicknamed 'Monarch'. Senior producer Matthew Singh told us that "your ship is your means to move between different locations. It's not like you'll be charting your course on a map, [but] there will be a travel system from your ship itself." The whole game map will be more or less free to explore from the start, but the enemies in some parts will be too difficult to visit early on.

Both planets have been colonised by the aforementioned corporations. These corporations are all-defining in The Outer Worlds: everything from cities to factories and every man-made item you'll come across are branded by them; and the people in the game identify exclusively by the corporation they're affiliated with. Each corporation is a bit different: for example, one corporation is characterised by building cheap but low-quality products such as armour and weapons, while the Aunty Cleo corporation specialises in food and recreational drugs (players can decide to use a number of drugs). Options for weapons modification differ by corporations as well.

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Shaping the story are your character's abilities and their interactions with your so-called companions. Firstly, the player chooses their own characteristics based on an elaborate skill tree. On one hand, for example, there's a tech skill branching out into science, medical and engineering skills. Furthering the engineering skill will allow you to tinker with and upgrade your weapons, while the science skill lets you build special weapons such as a shrink ray. The latter shrinks both aliens and people, reducing their strength complete with squeaky voices for shrunken people. On the other hand, there are skills such as intimidation, lying, persuasion and leadership. These skills allow you to take special actions to steer the course of the storyline in a certain direction, something that should also add to the game's replayability. Moreover, you can also choose to add faults to your character, for example a fear of heights. They are irreversible and add personality, as well as certain perks.

The player's companions are the second factor driving the storyline: you pick them up along the way and they will populate your spaceship. They will react to the player's characteristics: for example becoming more effective with strong leadership skills or frustrated if you choose to develop a dumb character (yes, Obsidian's freedom means you can also play as a dumb character). You're able to take up to two of them along on a mission at which point they will complement the player's own skill-set. During the gameplay preview we witnessed how the companions can also be drawn into the game's dialogues and respond to how you handle situations. If you choose to become very good at lying, this will open up opportunities to manipulate your way through the game world, but companions might decide they don't like it and leave you. Romance will not be in the game, though.

Besides the story, we were able to catch glimpses of what to expect walking around The Outer Worlds. According to Charles Staples, the game's look and feel is "inspired by Art Nouveau art, and Mobius has been a bit of an inspiration for us as well. We're taking a lot of inspiration from the gilded age of sci-fi and the Robber Barron's era." To us this translates to a sort of {Bioshock} meets {No Man's Sky} aesthetic, the latter because of the very colourful palette used in The Outer Worlds' locations. On Monarch there's colourful red, green and yellow earth-like trees populated by native aliens such as Raptidons, a sort of aggressive mixture between fish and reptilians. We also spotted concept art of a big insectoid 'Mantisaur' and there's also lots of creatures genetically engineered by the corporations moving around, such as a fat snake engineered for leather production. There will not be sentient aliens however, meaning The Outer Worlds is inhabited by humans, androids and alien critters.

Among the locations you can travel to, we observed a space station with neon-lit bars and a large canteen; a rocky asteroid base overgrowing with big clusters of reddish mushrooms and there's going to be one big city for the rich called 'Byzantium'. The player's playstyle determines how you experience the locations. As Matthew Singh explained: "if you decide, I want to go here and murder everybody that's possible". This means that whether the main city Byzantium becomes your home or everyone in it your enemy is up to the player.

For the rest, The Outer Worlds has its fair share of features we know from other RPGs; {Borderlands}-like rifles, revolvers and handguns, as well as chargeable energy weapons. There's also laser-powered melee weapons such as axes and mauls and the game features a 'tactical time dialation'-mode that slows down time and allows you to aim for a successful headshot. When we asked about space battles, Staples replied it was "an interesting idea, but not something we're working on right now."

In our opinion, The Outer Worlds seems to have its own atmosphere and light-hearted mood that sets it apart from the usually more serious and dark tone of sci-fi RPGs, including the upcoming {Cyberpunk 2077}. If Obsidian is to be believed, there's going to be a lot of freedom to experience the general storyline in many different ways and this could make The Outer Worlds a very entertaining experience. Further reveals will tell it will have enough gameplay diversity to draw gamers to these outer reaches of space.