I didn’t expect to like this game at all. Open world titles are never my thing. I hate when you are given a huge map with no direction and a bunch of map icons to go to. This game doesn’t do this in the generic sense, but with purpose and is better for it.

The main plot involves you being woken up by a scientist and sent to a planet to meet a contact of the man who saved you. You were in cryo-sleep for decades with the rest of your fellow colonists. Phineas Welles had enough of a chemical compound to awaken exactly one of the colonists and you were the lucky one. The colonist ship was sent from Earth to find outer worlds for habitation, but something went wrong. Now the ship floats in the midst of the habitable system, but no one can awaken them. Your grand mission is to work with Dr. Welles to gather the necessary materials to create more of the compound needed to awaken the rest of your crew. As a player, this driving force kept me playing until the end. I wanted to see if I could rescue the other colonists and as the journey to that destination progressed, I became invested in the world.

The entire system is policed by The Board. They’re a capitalist regime that only cares about their own lifestyle. There are other factions that you’ll meet throughout the story and they each have their own reasons for supporting or opposing The Board. You get to make decisions in regards to these conflicts and each feels impactful. The missions between them are very videogamey, but not in an offensive way. Each planet has its own problems and your presence can cause a huge wave of change as you continue to gather information and resources to reach your end goal. I found the stories of each community well thought out and felt my choices had an impact. This is hard to accomplish in an open world game and Outer Worlds actually delivers.

You also have companions with their own goals. To be honest, I only ever used Pavarti and Felix. They are two of the first companions you get and I really liked them. Parvati is just a small town girl with a desire for adventure and Felix is an anti-corporate man who wants to have stories written about him. Their dynamic was the perfect balance for my style of play and I really enjoyed their presence. The banter between them made me chuckle a few times. There are a few missions you can do for your companions, but I only did theirs and they were okay. I mostly liked their dialogue filling travel time, but traveling was actually really easy.

Fast travel unlocks once you discover a location. This made traversing the multiple worlds really easy. You could go off and look for things, then instantly teleport back to any location. It made exploration intuitive as most locations on each planet are used for a quest or two. Discovering a place and realizing there’s nothing to do there, traveling back to town and then finding a quest that sends you there never felt like a waste. I simply fast traveled back and did the quest. I really have a hard time doing side quests in any game and this was one of the first times I felt like I could without wasting a bunch of time.

Combat in this game is fairly standard. Your allies each have an ability that you can instruct them to use at any time, unless it’s on cooldown. Parvati slams an electric hammer down and stuns any enemies in the radius. This is extremely useful for crowd control and a great ability to have at all times (another reason to keep her in the party). Felix, on the other hand, dropkicks one guy. It doesn’t really do much damage, but it is really funny to have him dropkick a stronger enemy as the last hit. You have an ability as well, which is just a slowdown. I really didn’t use it much or ever level it up as it really wasn’t necessary. I think they just wanted to give you a power and weren’t sure what to do. It feels out of place and there are no other powers in the game, so I’m not sure the point of it. Regardless, it can be useful at times. Most often you’ll be shooting enemies and there are a few different types of guns in the game. The standard fare are here, but there are elemental versions of them as well. The elements don’t change much about how you use them, but the pulse variation does disintegrate enemies when you kill them which is a nice touch. Assault rifles and pistols feel strong, and spraying enemies with a flamethrower never gets old, but shotguns and melee weapons never felt great to me. The combat itself also didn’t present a real challenge, save the final boss. I still enjoyed the combat scenarios, but most of the time I felt unstoppable (not really a bad thing).

There is a skill tree system here as well. It opens up in complexity later, but never felt overwhelming to utilize. Most upgrades are just passive buffs, but some you’ll want to invest in early. I put most of my early points into guns, but realized about seventy-five percent of the way through the game that there was a hacking skill. I definitely recommend putting some points into that early as some doors and areas use a lot of hacking resources if you don’t level it up. Medical, engineering and dialogue all give you more options for how to tackle certain situations. Depending on how you want to play, the skill tree can help supplement your decision-making. You can also rest your points in the ship for a small fee (which I’m just now remembering as I write this) if you make a mistake or want to invest points into different stats. This system is one of the best implementations I have seen and I hope other games take note of it.

I’ll look back on Outer Worlds fondly as one of the first open world games I actually like. Its characters and plot all felt very coherent and the world of Halcyon was fun to explore. The systems of the game contributed to my enjoyment through affording choice and incentivizing discovery. Though the story was a little predetermined, you can still make your own path to the conclusion. I found myself mashing through dialogue near the end, but overall I enjoyed my time with the game. I wonder if the recently announced sequel will be just as good or a possible masterpiece…