The Outer Worlds review - funny business

Corporations have taken us beyond the bounds of our solar system, but the enterprises that built life on the galactic frontier have charged a heavy price. Business is now both god and king, as middle managers take on the roles of regional governors and a new religion preaches your place among the corporate gears. You're going to do your job until you can afford the rental fees on your grave site, or you're going to come out branded an outlaw.

In The Outer Worlds, you are very much one of those outlaws. Obsidian's grimly satirical RPG puts you in the boots of a prospective colonist who's freshly unfrozen after decades in suspended animation. But you're the only one who's awake. The Board - a bickering cabal of corporations that runs things in the colony - has left your colony ship to die, and you've only come through thanks to the somewhat-mad science of one Phineas Welles. The Board's got secrets and Welles needs resources to awaken the rest of the frozen colonists, which leaves you to hop between the colonies in search of both answers and chemicals.

While The Outer Worlds has been compared to Fallout ever since its debut - a combination of retro-futuristic aesthetics, first-person roleplaying, and involvement from the series' original creators will do that - in action it feels almost nothing like the Black Isle classics or the post-Bethesda open worlds. Instead, this comes across more like a lost mid-2000s BioWare game.

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