Be the Unplanned Variable

In The Outer Worlds you are the unplanned variable in the colony’s corporate equation: the character you decide to become determines how the player-driven story unfolds.

Choices reach four systems

The publisher states that your choices affect the way the story develops, your character build, companion stories, and endgame scenarios. That is an unusually explicit list, and it means a decision made for narrative reasons can still change what your character can do.

Factions are the political layer

Halcyon is a colony at the edge of the galaxy owned and operated by a corporate board, and you encounter various factions all vying for power. Since the board controls everything, siding with anyone is a position on the board as much as a personal choice.

The colony is not finished

Terraforming the colony’s two planets did not go according to plan, leaving alien monsters in the middle of corporate infrastructure. That mismatch is the setting’s engine: the plans of powerful people meeting a place that does not cooperate.

Play the character you want

Obsidian’s stated tradition for this game is that how you approach it is up to you. With flaws, companions and factions all feeding the same story, the useful habit is deciding who your character is before optimising what they carry.

Start with the character’s weaknesses in trading a flaw for a perk, then decide who travels with you in building a crew with agendas.