The Outer Worlds: Every Little Detail We Learned From Playing

the outer worlds, details, hands-on, preview

The Outer Worlds is one of the most hotly anticipated games of Fall 2019, and for good reason. It marks a return to form for Obsidian Entertainment, launching a brand new IP seemingly inspired by their work on games like Fallout New Vegas.

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We recently had the chance to get some hands-on time with the upcoming sci-fi RPG, and we’re now eager to play more. With roughly two hours of playtime, we jotted down every little detail that we could glean, all for your perusing pleasure.

You can read our full impressions here, but if you’re just looking for some quick facts to look over in bullet point form, this is where you’ll want to be.

Continue down to see details about The Outer Worlds gameplay and story, and you can also check out our interview with the game’s Senior Designer, Brian Hines.

The Outer Worlds: Gameplay Details

the outer worlds, hand-on, preview, details

  • Three types of ammo; light, heavy, and energy
  • I was able to use three different guns in my playthrough, a sniper rifle with a long-range scope, a laser Gatling gun, and a hefty pistol.
  • By pressing RB you can instantly use your emergency Medicinal Inhaler, if you have items for it. This won’t instantly heal a chunk of health, but restores your health over a few seconds.
  • There’s a “Botched” section in your quest guide for quests you’ve messed up.
  • On the equipment screen, press down the left stick to compare weapons to your current one.
  • Companions have their own inventory, and you can trade items between them and yourself, basically making them easy storage.
  • You can command companions to use their abilities by hitting left or right on the D-Pad. These abilities will automatically be used on the nearest enemy.
  • Each time you level up you gain another point that you can put into perks.
  • You can switch weapons quickly by tapping Y, or hold down Y to bring up a weapon wheel.
  • You can fast travel to any town or major location you’ve previously visited.
  • Tactical Time Dilation, on the LB button, lets you slow down time significantly and aim. It’s kind of like VATS but with manual aiming. Recharges very quickly, especially if you invest in perks for it.
  • You can steal practically anything in town, but be careful not to get caught.
  • You can use the Charm stat to convince characters to trust you, in one case my Charm convinced the leader of Fallbrook, Catherine Malin, to give me a quest.
  • Certain enemies will have obvious weak spots, like Mantisaur Soldiers have a glowing green node on their stomach.
  • You get experience any time you use something like Charm, Lie, or Persuade in conversation.
  • Like in the Fallout games, sometimes when you kill enemies they’ll explode into bloody messes with body parts flying off.
  • In addition to shops, there are vending machines that you can use to buy new items, armor, ammo, and more.
  • Many melee weapons have different effects on them, for example, I bought a Plasma Cutter in Fallbrook that can cause fire damage to enemies when you hit them.
  • You can melee with ranged weapons, but it does almost no damage compared to using a melee weapon.
  • Weapons and combat have really good sound design, making each one feel weighty, even for laser weapons.
  • You can use Workbenches to apply mods to your weapons or Tinker with them, which will increase their damage output at the cost of bits.
  • At the Workbench I applied a mod to my pistol that made it shoot acid rounds, which would slowly drain an enemy’s health when the rounds hit them.
  • You can get experience for discovering new things, like discovering a vending machine netted me 300 XP.
  • Lockpicking is done automatically, there’s no mini-game involved, but you’ll still need sufficient lockpicking skill.
  • Some areas will have environmental hazards, like one area I ran through that had giant pools of bubbling acid that would damage any friend or foe that wandered into them.

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Author
Hayes Madsen
A connoisseur of all things RPG related, and always looking for the artistic expression in gaming. His love of Gundam is only matched by his love of Pizza. Playing Games Since: 1991 Favorite Genres: RPGs, JRPGs, Strategy,