1 of my preferred games on the Xbox 360 was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. That 2006 open-globe fantasy was huge and open-ended, and it signified what the future of games looked like. So I bear in mind having excited for the possibility of one thing like Oblivion and then The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in space when we began hearing that the new Bethesda game was going sci-fi. It took additional than 10 years, but we lastly got that game in developer Obsidian Entertainment’s The Outer Worlds.
Obsidian and publisher Private Division are releasing The Outer Worlds on October 25 for Computer, PlayStation four, and Xbox 1. It is coming to Switch sooner or later as effectively, and if you are playing on Computer or Xbox, you can get it as component of the Xbox Game Pass subscription. And you really should.
In his critique, GamesBeat managing editor Jason Wilson gave it a 91-out-of-100. He writes that the game is funny with fascinating quests that branch in compelling methods. I agree.
But I’m loving it mainly because it truly does really feel like the guarantee of an Oblivion, Skyrim, or Fallout in space — even if it is not fairly as open as these Bethesda games.
Skyrim in space
Let’s get this out of the way upfront. The Outer Worlds does not have enormous, endless environments like Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas. As an alternative, you dock your ship at many ports in a solar technique, and then you discover substantial — but noticeably finite — places. For instance, you can not stroll across the complete circumference of a planet. Even if a globe has many landing pads, they do not straight connect. Obsidian has cordoned them off into their personal zones.
But inside these additional compact spaces, The Outer Worlds nails the sensation of playing a contemporary Bethesda or Obsidian part-playing adventure.
You can go off and discover the globe in any order you want. If you construct your character to choose locks or speak your way into points, you can use these expertise to run by way of enemy encampments. And then you may well go back to town, accept a quest, and then discover out that you have currently picked up the relevant item.
These substantial arenas also do not funnel you down corridors. Certain, you can adhere to the road to your objective, but you can also climb up a mountain to come up from behind. For 1 mission, I did that and was capable to sneak up on some effective creatures from a mountain cliff exactly where they couldn’t attack me.
Space stations and cantinas
But does The Outer Worlds really feel drastically various from the Fallout games? Not constantly. The towns on frontier planets could almost certainly match proper into any of the current Fallout games. But it begins to really feel additional like an epic space-exploration adventure when you get on your ship or dock on a space station or an orbiting communications satellite.
And as I’ve played the game additional, even these town and wilderness spaces are beginning to remind me additional of Firefly than Fallout. And that is a pretty very good factor.
I wanted Outer Worlds to make me really feel like Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds in the space equivalent of the Wild West. And it absolutely achieves that, which is why it is promptly climbing my game-of-the-year list.