The Outer Worlds is an extremely well-crafted first-person RPG created by developer Obsidian, and it's also very much a spiritual successor to a previous game in their catalog - Fallout: New Vegas. It takes the impeccable story and dialogue that fans of that game loved so much and mars it with polished up gameplay and mechanics. It's a game that, unlike most, gives the player a genuine sense of freedom and choice.
I must emphasize the word "genuine" here because there are thousands of games that are heralded by their creators as giving the player "freedom of choice". What these developers really mean by that though, is that they give them an illusion of choice.
Take for instance a little known game - Bioshock. In Bioshock, a major element of the game is the Little Sisters. Once you eliminate the Big Daddy protecting them, you're presented with a choice - harvest them or save them. Now, aside from the perk, you get upon making your choice, your ending is changed - you could end up with a "good" ending if you've saved Little Sisters or a "bad" ending if you've harvested them.
There is a major flaw with this system, however - you must save all the Little Sisters in order to get the good ending - if you even decide to even harvest just one Little Sister, you are automatically labeled as a "bad guy" in the game's eyes.
What makes this inherent illusion (or limitation) of player choice so awful is that there is no room for a grey area. The game views your choices in a purely black and white manner. This game design is apparent in tons of games too - take for instance Undertale, where in order to get the true ending you have to have not killed/defeated a single opponent in your entire playthrough.
While I will give Undertale some slack since the game sort of encourages you to play through the game multiple times and there are additional endings aside from just a good/bad option, it's still a pretty lousy mechanic that can be discouraging for players that either accidentally kill/defeat an opponent, or for those not interested in performing multiple playthroughs just to get a "real" ending to the game.
Look at Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as well for providing choices that have no real impact on the game’s story. In the game, you can decide to help the Spartans or the Athenians conquer regions - but really the only thing that’s doing is giving you an XP boost and some loot. Who you decide to help does not affect the outcome of that story - and after you conquer a nation with a faction, you have the ability to do it all over again with the other side.
What has made The Outer Worlds stand out so much from the rest of these games is that it's clear the game was designed with player choice in mind. Whereas in other games like Bioshock it's clear that player choice isn't something that the game is focused on - instead it’s the wonderfully crafted narrative that the team created that's Bioshock's focus.
In The Outer Worlds, you can literally talk your way out of situations if you desire, and if you've allocated enough points to the corresponding skill trees. You don't have to though - if an NPC wants you to track down another character in the game, you can just as easily tell them to fuck off and kill them right then and there. The Outer Worlds is interested in giving you as much freedom as possible for you to go about scenarios how you see fit. There is almost never less than two options on how to go about anything the game wants you to do.
One of my favorite examples from the game is a mission you do near the halfway point on the planet Monarch. On the planet there are two warring factions: the Iconoclasts and MSI Throughout your time on the planet you will find yourself performing tasks for at least one of these factions' leaders, and eventually, you'll reach a point where a gunship crashes with powerful technology on it. It's at that point where you have the choice as to which faction gets the tech.
I found myself extremely enthralled in what decision to make as I had spent so much time working with each faction and had got along well with both. It made the decision on who to let have the technology tough.
What astounded me even more about this quest, however, was that there's a third option where you can sequester a peace broker between both factions - however, if you were unable to gain the trust of the Iconoclast's faction leader in previous quests, you're gated from the option.
I’ve read from others that this path being hidden hindered their enjoyment of this particular questline, but it only strengthened my love for it. Having these tucked away branching paths is what makes the choices you’re making feel more natural and fluid in the game world.
The amount of depth that Obsidian put into giving you choice in how quests play out was a breath of fresh air that I desperately had been looking for. The example I mentioned isn't even the only time this happens in The Outer Worlds - and it makes a second run-through of the game all the more palatable.
It’s freedom of choice like this that makes other "open-ended" games feel less fluid and more mechanical. When "player-choice" is actually just that, and it’s not "railed-choice". Whereas some games will make you feel like you're in a haunted house where the darkly lit rooms are trying to mask the walls and the masked cast members (see: Red Dead Redemption 2), The Outer Worlds makes you feel like you’re part of a reactive world that is cognizant of your presence.
And while I’ve heard some players cry against this notion because of the game’s admittedly flat ending sequence, it still takes the myriad of choices you made throughout your 15-25 hour playthrough into consideration - something that can’t be said about a game like Bioshock, or many story-driven games that give you some degree of freedom.
It’s actually The Outer Worlds that made me look back at all of the games I’ve played in the past and made me recognize the ones that really did give me that freedom - like Shadow the Hedgehog.
It’s a game that is widely accepted to be a poor attempt at revitalizing the Sonic franchise for a new audience, and I would agree with them. However, the one thing that I believe Shadow the Hedgehog does right is giving people a degree of freedom with their choices. I mean, just look at the loading screen you’re brought to when you complete a level in the game.
The game provides you with a branching storyline that you’re allowed to move along the scale of good or evil however you choose. Once you reach the end of your path, you’re then presented with one final choice as well which affects the ending you receive. So, in total, there are dozens of different story paths and 16 different endings for Shadow the Hedgehog, which in my opinion is insanely ambitious for an action platformer in 2005 (or for pretty much most games during that time).
To distill it down to brass tack’s - The Outer Worlds is a great game, and after running into a deluge of video games that just felt like nothing I did in the game world mattered, it felt like a genuine breath of fresh air. If you’re looking for a game to really make you feel like you’re living in the world, I suggest trying it out. And for those looking for an even deeper experience - play the game on “Survival” difficultly. Either way, strap yourself in for a good time.
