The Outer Worlds (2019): The Review

Overview

The Outer Worlds feels like the kind of RPG that could only come from a studio with Obsidian’s level of passion and understanding of the genre. It may not be flawless, but its sharp writing, memorable characters, dark humor, and tightly focused design give the adventure an identity that’s consistently engaging from start to finish. The Halcyon Colony is packed with personality, satire, and meaningful choices that make its world genuinely enjoyable to get lost in, and while the experience occasionally shows its limitations, the creativity behind it shines through constantly. More than anything, The Outer Worlds leaves you wanting more, not just because the journey is fun, but because its universe and the people inside it feel like they deserve a long future ahead.

Score: 8 out of 10

The Positives ✅

Capitalism has rarely looked as funny, or as horrifying, as it does in The Outer Worlds. From the very beginning, the game establishes Halcyon as a society so consumed by corporate control that human life itself has become secondary to branding, productivity, and quarterly profits. Workers die from preventable illnesses while companies debate whether paying for medicine would negatively affect revenue margins. Suicide hotlines advertise company loyalty. Graveyards charge families premium burial fees. Entire planets are run like customer service departments spiraling quietly toward collapse. And somehow, despite how absurd all of this sounds, the satire lands because it never feels entirely disconnected from reality.

What makes The Outer Worlds so compelling is how confidently it leans into that darkly comedic tone. Obsidian clearly understood that dystopia becomes far more unsettling when people living inside it have normalized the madness completely. NPCs casually defend corporations actively exploiting them because they genuinely believe that’s simply how the universe works. The game constantly balances humor and hopelessness in a way that feels oddly charming rather than relentlessly cynical.

At the center of all this chaos is the player character, thawed from cryosleep decades after a colony ship malfunction left thousands stranded in suspended animation. It’s classic science-fiction setup material, but the writing elevates it because of how reactive the world feels to your choices. Dialogue remains one of the game’s greatest strengths. Nearly every conversation allows room for roleplaying, whether you want to be intelligent, sarcastic, manipulative, compassionate, aggressively stupid, or some chaotic combination of all four. Obsidian’s writing thrives when giving players freedom to define their own personality, and The Outer Worlds constantly rewards that flexibility.

The companion cast especially deserves praise because they inject warmth into what could have otherwise become an overwhelmingly bleak setting. Parvati remains one of the most genuinely lovable companions RPGs have produced in years, largely because her writing feels refreshingly sincere. In a world filled with corruption and selfishness, her awkward optimism and emotional vulnerability become deeply endearing. Characters like Max, Ellie, Nyoka, and Felix all bring their own perspectives on Halcyon’s decaying systems, and their banter aboard the Unreliable gives the ship a comforting found-family energy that helps ground the experience emotionally.

The worldbuilding is also fantastic. Every colony, settlement, and corporate faction feels shaped by the same suffocating economic ideology while still maintaining distinct personalities and visual identities. Edgewater’s decaying factory-town atmosphere perfectly contrasts with Byzantium’s grotesque upper-class excess, where the wealthy live in luxurious denial while the rest of the colony collapses around them. The game constantly reinforces the idea that Halcyon isn’t failing because of one evil corporation, it’s failing because the entire system itself is fundamentally rotten.

Gameplay-wise, the RPG systems are accessible without feeling completely shallow. Character builds allow enough flexibility to support different playstyles, whether you prefer speech-focused manipulation, stealth, long-range combat, or chaotic gunplay. The flaws system especially stands out as one of the game’s cleverest mechanics. Instead of purely rewarding success, the game occasionally offers permanent weaknesses in exchange for extra perk points, creating roleplaying opportunities that make characters feel imperfect and human rather than mathematically optimized superheroes.

The humor also lands remarkably often. The Outer Worlds constantly throws ridiculous advertisements, corporate slogans, and bureaucratic nightmares at the player without ever fully slipping into parody exhaustion. The writing understands that satire becomes ineffective when every joke screams for attention. Some of the funniest moments are delivered completely deadpan, as if Halcyon’s residents genuinely cannot comprehend how insane their society has become anymore.

The Negatives ⚠️

For all its strong writing and worldbuilding, The Outer Worlds occasionally struggles to fully escape the shadow of the games people immediately compared it to, particularly Fallout: New Vegas. While the game absolutely succeeds as a focused RPG experience, there are moments where the overall scope feels noticeably smaller and less ambitious than its inspirations.

The biggest issue is probably the world design itself. While the individual hubs are visually distinct and full of personality, many of the explorable areas feel surprisingly limited in scale. Planets initially create the illusion of massive open-world exploration, only for players to realize most locations are relatively compact zones rather than fully interconnected worlds. That smaller scope isn’t inherently bad, but there are moments where Halcyon feels less alive mechanically than the writing constantly insists it is narratively.

Combat is another area where the game feels functional rather than exceptional. Gunplay works well enough to support the RPG systems, but encounters rarely become mechanically exciting beyond experimenting with different weapons or companion abilities. The tactical time dilation mechanic is enjoyable initially, but combat overall lacks the depth needed to stay consistently engaging across the entire runtime. Enemy variety especially becomes repetitive after enough hours, with many encounters blending together mechanically.

The main story also occasionally resolves conflicts a little too neatly considering how morally complex the setting initially appears. The game presents corporations as deeply entrenched systems of exploitation, but some major decisions and endings simplify those issues in ways that can feel less nuanced than the worldbuilding surrounding them. There are moments where the satire bites sharply, and others where it feels slightly softened to maintain player empowerment.

Some companions, while charming, also receive more meaningful development than others. Parvati understandably became the fan favorite because of how well-written and emotionally grounded she feels, but certain other crew members don’t receive the same emotional depth or narrative focus by comparison.

And honestly, there’s a lingering feeling throughout The Outer Worlds that the game could have benefited enormously from a slightly larger budget or broader scope. The foundation is excellent. The writing is sharp. The ideas are compelling. But occasionally the experience feels constrained in ways that prevent it from fully reaching the heights it’s clearly aiming toward.

The Experience 🎮

Playing The Outer Worlds feels like wandering through the galaxy’s most cheerful societal collapse. Everywhere you go, corporations are actively ruining people’s lives while insisting they’re improving customer satisfaction metrics in the process. The game constantly balances comedy and tragedy so closely together that it becomes difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

What surprised me most was how emotionally attached I became to the crew aboard the Unreliable. For all the satire and political commentary surrounding Halcyon, the game’s heart ultimately comes from these smaller personal relationships. Talking to companions between missions, helping them navigate their fears or insecurities, and slowly watching them become a dysfunctional little family ended up mattering to me far more than the larger political conflicts themselves.

There’s also something refreshing about how roleplay-focused the experience feels. Modern RPGs often claim to offer player freedom while quietly funneling everyone toward the same personality archetype underneath. The Outer Worlds genuinely allows players to shape conversations and situations in ways that feel reactive. Even small dialogue checks can dramatically alter how encounters unfold, which makes character-building feel meaningfully connected to the narrative instead of simply affecting combat efficiency.

At the same time, the game carries this constant undercurrent of sadness beneath all the humor. Halcyon is funny because it’s horrifying. The corporations running these colonies have commodified absolutely everything, labor, medicine, death, even human identity itself. Yet many citizens continue defending the same systems exploiting them because they’ve never known anything else. That bleakness gives the satire real weight rather than reducing it to simple punchlines.

And honestly, I appreciated that the game never became overwhelmingly cynical despite its themes. There’s still optimism hidden underneath the corporate absurdity. Characters still form friendships. People still try to help each other. Small acts of kindness still matter even inside a broken system. That emotional warmth keeps the experience from collapsing under the weight of its own dystopian worldview.

By the end, The Outer Worlds didn’t feel like a massive genre-defining RPG revolution. It felt like something smaller but still deeply valuable: a smart, funny, sharply written science-fiction adventure that understands roleplaying is ultimately about people more than systems.

And honestly, spending time in Halcyon was worth it for the conversations alone.