The Outer Worlds tips (opens in new tab) | The Outer Worlds companions (opens in new tab) | The Outer Worlds  Science Weapons (opens in new tab) | The Outer Worlds Slaughterhouse Clive (opens in new tab) | The Outer Worlds best guns (opens in new tab) | Outer Worlds Edgewater or Deserters | Give the Outer Worlds Targeting Module to Graham or Sanjar? | The Outer Worlds build guide

It’s also worth adding in a quick disclaimer about how weapons work in The Outer Worlds. Standard guns have basic names like “Assault Rifle”, “Light Machine Gun”, “Tactical Shotgun”, etc. You can find these in droves and when looking at your inventory screen, they’re on a standard black background. As you get further into the game, you’ll come across improved versions of the base weapons, indicated by things like “Mk2” and “Ultra” in the name.

Unique weapons will have special names and descriptions, and they’ll feature a gold icon behind them. These are usually slightly more powerful than their standard counterparts, although keep an eye on the weapon level and damage because you’ll outgrow the early ones eventually.

Finally, the Science weapons have a blue background, and there’s only five of them in the entire game. These have unique effects, and you’ll need to complete the Weapons from the Void quest to obtain them all. Since they’re so unique, we won’t be covering them in this guide, but we have a dedicated The Outer Worlds Science weapons guide that goes into detail on how to get each one.

Assault Rifle

Perhaps my favourite weapon in the entire game is the bog standard Assault Rifle. It uses Heavy ammo and has 24 bullets in a magazine, with each one dealing significant damage. You can install a barrel, magazine, and sight mod to it, and it staggers enemies.

When you make it to the C3 base near Devil’s Peak on Monarch, you can find the unique Assault Rifle called Thunder lying on the table inside the building. This does shock damage and carried me through to the end of the game.

Plasma Cutter

When it comes to the best melee weapons in The Outer Worlds, the Plasma Cutter wins by a long shot. This one-handed melee sword can be swung rapidly and as you’d expect, it deals some severe Plasma damage. You can attach both a Grip and Attack mod too, which makes the Plasma Cutter one of the best melee weapons to use throughout the game.

Tactical Shotgun

For those times you need to get up close and personal, the Tactical Shotgun is your friend. This is perfect for when you’ve got Mantisaurs or melee Marauders getting all up in your business, especially if you enable Time-Dilation and hit a few weak spots. You can install both a Barrel and Magazine mod to spruce it up even further.

Flamethrower

If you find yourself with a surplus of Energy ammo, get a Flamethrower out. It deals severe burn damage, as you’d expect, and is perfect for emitting continuous damage at multiple enemies at once. You can also install a Magazine mod to make it burn enemies and deal a specific type of damage like Shock or Corrosion. 

Light Machine Gun

Our final choice for the list of the best Outer Worlds weapons is the Light Machine Gun. Chances are, you’ll have a huge amount of Light ammo because Heavy and Energy seem to be harder to find. If that’s the case, whip out a Light Machine Gun and spray to your heart’s content at enemies, because you’ll start burning through your excess ammo in no time at all. 

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The colourful action RPG isn’t new, of course, having released this time last year on consoles and PC via Epic Games Store. Now, however, the one-year Epic Store exclusivity period has expired, which means PC players will finally be able to pick the game via Steam for the first time.

According to the Steam store page (opens in new tab), The Outer Worlds on Steam will feature achievements, full controller support, Steam trading cards, and Steam Cloud saving. It can also be remote-played on compatible TVs.

The critically-acclaimed sci-fi game is already available on Nintendo Switch, having been released on Nintendo’s hybrid console earlier this year (opens in new tab). There’s also already story DLC available for it, too.

“Obsidian’s talent for sharp writing, choice-based narrative, and complex role-playing systems have coalesced together to create one of the strongest new IPs of the generation with The Outer Worlds,” we said in the GamesRadar+ The Outer Worlds review (opens in new tab). 

“There’s plenty of room for improvement when it comes to making combat as compelling and rewarding as the rest of the game but, nevertheless, The Outer Worlds absolutely delivers on its premise as an immersive, full-bodied RPG that successfully picks up the baton where Bethesda has been dropping it of late.

“Those expecting a straight-up spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas might be surprised by Obsidian’s more contained and old-fashioned approach to science fiction, but stick with this unashamedly talkative tragic comedy, and you’ll discover one of the smartest games of the year.”

Looking for something new to get stuck into? Here are the best PC games (opens in new tab) right now.

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If you’re still unsure whether you should the game a go, then consider giving Alex’s The Outer Worlds review (opens in new tab) a read over – spoilers, he liked it and it’ll get you excited for it, 100 percent. But, in brief, The Outer Worlds is a story-driven role-playing game from the team behind Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Set in a distant future where corporations rule everything, you play the role of ‘The Stranger’: an unlucky colonist who was lost in transit on their way to a new life. It’s all about choices and the consequences of them – Obsidian confirmed before release that every NPC in The Outer Worlds can permanently die (opens in new tab), for example. SO, all this makes The Outer Worlds perfect if you’re a fan of franchises like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls.

If you want to actually see what it’s like then check out 20 minutes of raw The Outer Worlds gameplay footage (opens in new tab) from the Tokyo Game Show last year. And if that convinces you to fork out for the best Outer Worlds price currently going then you can also take solace in the fact that Microsoft believes The Outer Worlds will be “an enduring franchise”, hinting at a sequel (opens in new tab) already.

It’s very much worth noting that while it is indeed out for most platforms, it isn’t quite there yet for Nintendo Switch players – you guys have to wait a little longer ahead of its June 5th, 2020, release date. However, you’ll still find the latest and greatest Outer Worlds pre-order prices below for Switch to get ahead of the game and nail your copy down with.

The best Outer Worlds prices and deals

Rather unusually, but in an excellent, refreshing kind of way, The Outer Worlds is not a game of many different editions. There’s no extra fuss here: no super mega huge collector’s editions with statues or special editions with digital-only bonuses, just the game, for the best price, on your platform of choice.

Getting the most out of The Outer Worlds

Undoubtedly, you’ll want to optimize your gaming setup to get the best out of your The Outer Worlds deal. If you’re a console gamer, then we’d recommend you check out upgrading to the top models of the major consoles available with either one of the best PS4 Pro deals (opens in new tab) or one of the best Xbox One X deals (opens in new tab) going. If PC is your gaming haven, then consider boosting your setup with one of the best gaming PCs (opens in new tab) or best gaming laptops (opens in new tab) to immerse you in the glories that The Outer Worlds will bring to your eyes. And with the advent of a Nintendo Switch release date, you should definitely check out the best Nintendo Switch bundles (opens in new tab) going too – though Switch stock is pretty hard to come by nowadays, we’ll tell you that for free.

Speaking of being immersed in The Outer Worlds’ environments and lands, make sure you see it as crisply and beautifully as possible with one of the best gaming monitors (opens in new tab) or best gaming TVs (opens in new tab). These will give you the best means to enjoy every detail but also smooth out your gameplay too. Finally, ensure you have a solid gaming sound system (opens in new tab) or go for one of the best PS4 headsets (opens in new tab), best Xbox headsets (opens in new tab) or one of the best PC headsets for gaming (opens in new tab).

It does seem like a massive undertaking, and of course no one can upgrade all of this at once, but if you can upgrade or optimize any of your setup in these areas, you’ll have an even better time with The Outer Worlds.

Looking for another game to get a deal on or pre-order?

From recent big-hitters that are out in the wild, to the biggest games yet to be released that you can pre-order right now, there are several pages which will serve you well if you’re looking for the best price and the right version of games for you:

• Animal Crossing New Horizons price (opens in new tab)
• Doom Eternal price (opens in new tab)
• Resident Evil 3 Remake pre-order (opens in new tab)
• Final Fantasy 7 Remake pre-order (opens in new tab)
• The Last of Us 2 pre-order (opens in new tab)
• Ghost of Tsushima pre-order (opens in new tab)
• Marvel’s Avenger’s the game pre-order (opens in new tab)
• Cyberpunk 2077 pre-order (opens in new tab)

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You’re only allowed to take two Outer Worlds companions with you at any one time so you want to make sure you make the right choice. How you want to approach a mission, or the actual mission itself could mean swapping out faves to get bonuses and advantages. Some will help with shooting, others are better at more stealthy activities like lockpicking and hacking, while some can make conversations easier. 

So, if you want to staff up The Unreliable, and know who to take when, here are all of The Outer Worlds companions and where to find them.

The Outer Worlds tips (opens in new tab) | The Outer Worlds  Science Weapons (opens in new tab) | The Outer Worlds  Factions (opens in new tab) | The Outer Worlds Slaughterhouse Clive (opens in new tab)| The Outer Worlds best guns (opens in new tab) | Give the Outer Worlds Targeting Module to Graham or Sanjar?

Parvati

The first companion you can get in The Outer Worlds is Parvati, who you’ll find in Edgewater on Terra-2. The first time you head up to speak with Reed Tobson as part of the main quest, Parvati is in a debate with Tobson about fixing something before your arrival interrupts them. Listen to what Tobson has to say and Parvati will offer to accompany you, at which point you can accept or decline.

Skills

• Persuade
• Lockpick
• Engineering

Ability

Overload: Parvati slams down her hammer creating a blast wave that shocks enemies and stuns automechanicals [Outer World’s name for robots].

Vicar Max

Vicar Max is the head of the church in Edgewater, and he wants you to help him find a book. Once you’ve got Parvati in your party (which is a very satisfying rhyme), the two will have an interesting conversation, and you can decide whether to bring Vicar Max along for the ride or not.

Skills

• Intimidate
• Hack
• Science

Ability

Trickshot: Max examines and evaluates his target and spiritually enlightens them with a blast from his shotgun.

Sam

Sam is a friendly janitor robot you can find already aboard The Unreliable on the top floor, inside a small closet. Interacting with the sleeping automechanical will lead you on the quest called The Cleaning Machine, in which you have to find an Acid Steeper to get Sam up and running again.

Skills

• Intimidate
• Hack
• Science

Ability

Decontaminate: Sam jumps in the air and slams down near his target spewing out caustic cleaning fluids all around to get out those really tough stains.

Felix

When you dock at the Groundbreaker for the first time, the first group of people you’ll come across include Felix arguing with a Corporate Trooper outside of Customs. Speak with him and he’ll eventually apologise for taking up your time, so venture into Groundbreaker and carry on with your exploration. When you go past him again, enter conversation and you’ll be able to acquire his services.

Skills

• Persuade
• Sneak
• Lockpick

Ability

Dropkick: Felix charges his target, leaps into the air and slams into the target with both feet.

Ellie

Inside Groundbreaker, you’ll find the Medbay. This is where you can find Ellie arguing with one Dr. Mfuru about a patient, Jessie, and how Ellie wants to be able to see her but she isn’t permitted into the quarantined zone. As you’d expect, you can offer to sort out Ellie’s problem for her, which you need to do by acquiring a Mardet ID cartridge and disguising yourself in the restricted area. Complete the quest, which also involves speaking with Udom Bedford, and you’ll be able to have Ellie tag along when finished.

Skills

• Lie
• Medical
• Engineering

Ability

Quick Draw: Ellie quickly draws her pistol and fires off a series of precision shots at her target.

Nyoka

When you eventually make it to Monarch, you can grab the sixth and final companion, Nyoka. She’s inside the bar directly in front of you when you descend from the landing pad in Stellar Bay, and speaking to her sends you on a quest to get some pills for her. Return with the “medicine” she requires and she’ll be your tour guide on Monarch, then follow you wherever else you go.

Skills

• Lie
• Sneak
• Medical

Ability

Barrage: Nyoka uses her personally modified LMG to deal damage to her target and set enemies near it ablaze.

The post The Outer Worlds companions appeared first on Game News.

When I first dropped out of the little tutorial ridge and into the proper map of Emerald Vale, The Outer Worlds’ first region, I grappled with an unfamiliar feeling. I took a tentative stroll around the exterior of my new starship, and I could see I was actually covering a decent stretch of the map in the process – I could probably walk across the whole thing in a minute or two. That’s what the feeling was! I wasn’t overwhelmed! I wasn’t underwhelmed either, in fact I was whelmed just the right amount. I know huge maps in games are often pushed as selling points, but they’ve become something of a liability for me.

Collecting friends

Make your adventures in space a little more familiar with our guide to which Mass Effect companions have the closest Outer Worlds counterparts (opens in new tab).

See, I’ve been playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons in the last few months, and it’s made me realize that I want a video game RPG to treat me like a good Dungeon Master. Set up a story, thread it through interesting places, and give me just enough room to explore and experiment without losing sight of the larger goal. Granted, some of the best tabletop RPGs (opens in new tab) are built to work with no pre-made story whatsoever, but if that’s what you’re after there are stronger choices than – sorry, I’m digressing about the comparative strengths of tabletop RPG design again.

I need a video game to act as that kind of Dungeon Master, because I know exactly what will happen if it isn’t. I’ll follow the main story to a new area, try to do all the quests and see all of the things it has to offer, then in the process I’ll get a little too close to a new area and discover another set of new quests and things, which I’ll feel obligated to start on now for fear of forgetting them later or missing out on easy synergy.

Eventually, I’ll realize that I’m halfway through completing 20 different things and I won’t feel motivated to finish any of them – all the while being invested enough that the thought of abandoning them all to return to the main story will make me feel a little sick to my stomach. Especially with games like The Witcher 3 (opens in new tab), that odd breed of RPG that has the absolute gall to sneak some of its best stories into side quests! I mean, it’s great, but God! How am I supposed to deal with not finishing them?!

It’s become worse as I’ve grown older and developed more interests and obligations outside of playing video games (no, it’s not all just D&D, but also yes a lot of it is D&D). I have a harder time justifying the time I’d need to spend to bring myself back to the quest journal equivalent of inbox zero. I respect and commend people who can look at a huge RPG world and savor the hundred or more hours they foresee in exploring every last corner, but that ain’t me any more.

The good news is that I’ve discovered a dark secret about myself: past a certain point, I feel roughly the same sense of pride and freedom whenever I finish off any zone in an RPG, regardless of how big it is or how much time I spend there. Thus, The Outer Worlds’ mercifully manageable zones become little puzzle boxes of satisfaction as I work out how best to see every sight, meet every person, and check every box before I fire my ship back up and take off for the next one.  It lights up all those neuron pathways and shoots out all those happy brain chemicals that clearing Desolace in World of Warcraft did back in 2005, with far less danger of being sent to an entirely new zone that, gosh, I’d better fully investigate now that I’m here.

I’m still making my way through The Outer Worlds, but with everything I’ve heard from my colleagues, it won’t ever get too much sprawling than what I’ve already experienced. There will be cool new worlds to explore and interesting new people to meet, but never too much at once. I am pretty excited about that.

Keep an eye on our guide to upcoming Black Friday game deals (opens in new tab) for savings as the retail mega-event nears.

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“The first company was Spacer’s Choice, which was a riff on Trucker’s Choice Pep Pills from The Simpsons,” Cain says of the game’s many caricatured companies. “I imagined it as a company that made almost every type of product, but none of them were good. But they were cheap. After that, I created a rival company, which was Auntie Cleo’s, and they tried to differentiate themselves as better than everyone else. Other companies quickly followed based on the needs for certain products in the game, like C&P for food, Hammersmith for weapons (oddly enough, they sold no hammers), Brook & Olson for armor, and Rizzo’s for candy and soda.” 

As it happens, The Simpsons also inspired one of the game’s central religions: Scientism. “Scientism started with its name, yet another Simpsons reference (their official name, ‘The Order of Scientific Inquiry,’ came later),” Boyarsky says. “After settling on that, I began exploring what type of religion could be worthy of that name, and what type of purely materialistic religion the corporations might espouse as a way to remove everything spiritual from their workers’ lives.” 

For more from Cain and Boyarsky, including their favorite character pairings, check out the full interview here (opens in new tab). 

If you’re looking for Black Friday assistance as we get deeper into November, check out our roundup of the best Black Friday game deals (opens in new tab). 

The post Obsidian explains how The Simpsons and capitalism shaped The Outer Worlds appeared first on Game News.

For what it’s worth, speedrunner It’s Jabo (opens in new tab) wasn’t aiming for 100% completion, instead choosing to rush through the campaign as efficiently as possible. Still, it’s an impressive show of combat finesse and familiarity with the map. Even more impressive is how the speedrunner is able to engage in unrelated conversations – both jocular and quite serious – with the comment stream while executing his speedrun with exact precision.

The sub-25-minute run comes shortly after an also-impressive 31-minute run by the same speedrunner. In that previous video, It’s Jabo said it was an early run and that more attempts were to come. Only two days later, the speedrunner broke his own record by a substantial margin, shaving roughly six minutes off the first run. It’s Jabo says they employed a number of tricky methods to maximize time.

“So this run utilises a lot of new tricks, first of all, we have the jump at the start of Monarch that skips running around the entire level – this saves around 90 seconds but makes fighting in the later sections a little bit harder as we are unable to get the revolver Mk2,” reads the YouTube video description.

If you like visually digesting games in bite-sized formats, watch someone honk through Untitled Goose Game in less than four minutes (opens in new tab), and if you’re just landing your first spaceship, be sure to consult our Outer Worlds tips (opens in new tab). 

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Booty talked extensively about how Microsoft approaches acquiring third-party studios, during which he revealed that there are “projects underway at Obsidian that we’ll learn about in the future that they’ve already started working on”. How intriguing. To add to the excitement surrounding this revelation, Booty went on to talk about The Outer Worlds a bit more, expressing Microsoft’s high hopes for the game and the potential it holds for the future. 

After being asked if Xbox has plans to make an Outer Worlds 2 and if it could it be a big Microsoft exclusive going into the future, Booty said: “I think that’d be that kind of game. From what we’ve seen of the Outer Worlds, my hope is that that’s something we can build and that it really becomes an enduring franchise and it really starts to grow and we can help expand that.” 

When approaching the subject surrounding making a series an Xbox exclusive, Booty explained that it depends on if it suits the franchise and whether it would benefit from being open to all platforms, or be better supported by the resources Xbox can put into it. Booty explained that he believes The Outer Worlds could be a franchise Xbox helps to build on in future because of its big universe and narrative. 

In the rest of the interview, Booty shed more light on the future of Xbox’s game library and revealed that several Xbox exclusives are in the pipeline, which is good news ahead of the release of the Xbox Project Scarlett (opens in new tab). Whether these exclusives will be ready for when the new console is due to release in holiday 2020 remains to be seen. The Outer Worlds is set to release October 25 and looks set to be one of this year’s most exciting releases. To hear a sequel is already in the realms of possibility is pretty exciting. 

Want to know more? Check out our preview and find out why The Outer Worlds is the best RPG Bethesda never made (opens in new tab).

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From seducing robots in binary code to discovering a pen full of “cystypigs” (genetically engineered sow bred to grow bacon flavoured tumors for public consumption, obviously), The Outer Worlds is already tickling rib cages as potentially one of, if not the funniest game of the year. As aforementioned, much of that humor derives from the game’s pointed jabs at the excesses of capitalism, via its setting of a faraway space colony owned and run completely by private industry. Dan McPhee, The Outer Worlds’ Narrative Designer, explains why Obsidian decided to point the spotlight on consumer culture for this particular space western adventure. 

“It gives us some fun stories to play with that we can’t really tell in other settings,” he explains. “The general theme of this very corporatised rule-based society is that everyone wants to have a job and work their way up the ladder, and that gives us a lot of room to work with player freedom in a way that other games don’t.” Thus, as part of Obsidian’s world building for this heavily commercialised new frontier, the player will come across all manner of weird and wonderful advertisements for its fictitious marketplace of sci-fi products. Think Fallout’s Nuka-Cola, then imagine entering a galactic superstore where that’s just one item on the shelf, and you get the idea.

False advertising

When I asked which of these fake commercials were the most fun to create, McPhee starts rattling off several at once, which gives you a good idea of the level of imagination that goes into even the smallest details of Obsidian’s latest universe. “There are so many! I like Spacer’s Choice because their slogan is ‘It’s not the best choice. It’s Spacer’s Choice.’ There’s also a product in the game called Saltuna which is technically salmon and tuna genetically mixed, but everyone just thinks it’s salty tuna!”

That scrappy, absurdist aura of comedy bleeds into The Outer Worlds’ gameplay, too, especially with regards to its character progression system, made up primarily by Obsidian’s familiar system of perks and flaws. Fight too many robots, for instance, and your completely customisable hero can find themselves plagued with Robophobia, which awards you with an extra perk point, but makes you weaker in combat during any future encounters with robots. 

“A lot of perks are systems-based depending on your build,” McPhee tells me. “We’ve put in a lot of perks to suit a variety of different playstyles. Depending on your stats, for example, your character can be of below average intelligence, which unlocks dumb dialogue when speaking with other NPCs. That’s a super fun thing to play with, and a fun call back to New Vegas, too, which hopefully a lot of fans can appreciate.”

Alternatively, invest enough points into your character’s powers of persuasion, and they can charm their way out of several situations, with other potential dialogue options including the ability to lie, intimidate, and even potentially romance. During the demo, which sees you infiltrate a factory farm harbouring those aforementioned cystypigs, we encountered several suspicious guards who approached with accusatory questioning, but each tailored dialogue response from our wiley spacefarer provided an impressively convincing set of answers. 

Final frontier

That level of player freedom extends to everything in The Outer Worlds, which frequently presents narrative splintering decisions for players to carve out their own stories, but never punishes you with the kind of binary morality systems that role-playing veterans are used to. In that sense, The Outer Worlds is shaping up to be a distinctly Obsidian RPG in all the right ways, with all the character depth, emergent freedom, and narrative complexity that Bethesda fans in particular have been dying to see more of since 2015’s Fallout 4 (opens in new tab).

In the absence of a game of that nature from Bethesda itself anytime soon, The Outer Worlds might just look like the next best thing by default, but don’t be fooled. This has every chance of becoming your favourite new reason to avoid all social gatherings, lose countless hours of sleep, and never leave the house again.   

The Outer Worlds release date (opens in new tab) is set for October 25, 2019, when it launches on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. 

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