The Outer Worlds: Spacers Choice Edition Xbox Series Review

A few months and several patches from now, The Outer Worlds: Spacers Choice Edition might end up the definitive way to play Obsidian’s excellent, if traditional RPG – even if some of the divisive visual changes remain. This outsourced “remastering” promised a true “next-gen version”, with higher resolutions and framerates, but has launched in a shocking state and has a convoluted upgrade path. As a result, it now serves a reminder of how many corporations treat their legacy products with increasing disdain as they attempt to eke out a little more profit – a doubly problematic situation when the game itself is a critique of rampant corporate culture.

Life on the frontier

As there might be those who missed the original release, I’ll start with the positives. The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition is still the The Outer Worlds – a first-person RPG that shares plenty of DNA with Bethesda’s Fallout 3/4 and their own take on that IP, Fallout: New Vegas. Unlike those games, the scope of the narrative and world is reigned in for a tighter, focussed experience – though it’s no less dense when it comes to the importance of player attributes, companion interactions, and dialogue choices. The result is an engaging and more-ish RPG with the pacing ramped up to 11.

You play as a recently revived colonist left on ice for 70-years in the “Hope” colony ship, abandoned at the edge of the Halcyon colony as a combination of poor planning, shoddy construction, and corporate mismanagement. In The Outer Worlds, deep space colonisation efforts have been left in the hands of corporate entities that have commodified every aspect of colonial life: jobs, health, children, and even death. The existing colonies are floundering under their own bureaucracy and corporate ineptitude, while many colonists turn to marauding.

Saved by scientist-turned-corporate-fugitive Phineas Welles, the opening planet serves as an extended tutorial sees the player repair and assume control of the starship “Unreliable”, before the faction choices become clear and you can either help Phineas overthrow “The Board” and free the remaining suspended colonists, or side with the corporations and assist them in his capture. There are, of course, multiple companion quests and side quests to tackle on the way, before events culminate in two mutually exclusive ending sequences – with modifiers based on prior actions. With the Spacer’s Choice Edition, you’re also getting two lengthy high-level expansions – Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos – that add another 10-ish hours of quality content.

Diplomacy, deception, or disintegration

The Outer Worlds’ gameplay loop is thoroughly enjoyable – albeit classic to the point some might argue it’s dated. It’s satisfying not because any one element is incredible, rather because it does a little of everything at a brisk pace. You explore small but dense locations with little filler between quest objectives. You’re frequently finding new gear, levelling up, improving attributes, and assigning new perks (or flaws). Most quests can be completed in multiple ways, proving rewarding for those who explore, use skill-checks in dialogue, or just pull out a plasma rifle.

Your reputation with factions (and sub-factions) can fluctuate, so it’s wise to play all sides until the finale. For those worried their charisma- or tech-oriented builds means a dull, low-combat playthrough, The Outer Worlds still has no shortage of wildlife and bandits out for blood. Any class can wield any weapon, attempt most dialogue challenges, pick locks, or hack computers – you’re just more efficient or more likely to succeed at higher skill levels.

Talking skills, your companions play a big role in your abilities. Two can accompany you at any given time, providing unique comments on the location, each other, or even chip in during important dialogue sequences and suggest alternate quest solutions. Perhaps more importantly, they provide effective backup in a firefight if properly equipped, and boost your attributes based on their core skills. If you spend some time gearing them up, picking complementary perks when the level up, and fine-tuning their behaviours, you can cover almost any eventuality and become an effective all-rounder, regardless of your individual build.

Now I described the gameplay as “classic”, and it helps if you’re a fan of their prior games or the Bethesda-developed Fallout games. The world is a series of semi-open-world zones and large interiors connected by loading screens. The shooting is competent, but you’ll want to use the “slow-time” ability as often as possible. Most locations are packed with an absurd amount of loot, leading to frequent trips back to stores or workbenches to sell, scrap, and repair items. There are also hundreds of entertaining notes and environmental storytelling that encourages you systematically explore each area before moving on. I love it but those fond of cinematic games that simply funnel you between set-pieces might find the downtime an issue.

Was naming this edition after an untrustworthy corporation a meta-joke?

The marketing for The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition states: “better graphics, improved performance, additional animations, higher-res environments, and more”. That’s mostly true but with a severe caveat.

The game certainly renders at a higher resolution on next-gen consoles, the environments are more detailed with new props and embellishments, character models and animations look more lifelike, some backdrops have been enhanced, the weather feels more dynamic, and the load times are reduced to a few seconds. The improved volumetric lighting can look great, especially during dawn or dusk, but many regions display a dominant colour scheme – usually something garish and neon – that feels overbearing. On the gameplay side, the level cap has been raised to 99 to accommodate the expansions and their respective quests, NPC pathfinding has been refined, and basic enemies show a little more animation variety.

Unfortunately, performance is a joke in the release build. On PC, system requirements have risen slightly yet many user review are reporting halved framerates. On console, both the visual and performance modes have wildly variable framerates. It’s generally stable when exploring towns and interiors, but any trip into the semi-open-world zones can see the framerate plummet as you swing your view around, introducing obvious input lag during combat that makes for a jerky experience. That’s in stark contrast to the “next-gen aware” update for the original, which offered a mostly locked 60fps mode for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Practice what you preach…

So as it stands, The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition feels uncomfortably like an unoptimised and dubiously marketed remaster, with a vaguely described upgrade path that has left people confused. That all makes it difficult to appreciate actual improvements when the rubbish performance makes playing to unpleasant.

I honestly don’t understand a) how this got past QA and b) why it had to be rushed out before it was properly optimised? The Outer Worlds is a great game that deserves a larger audience, but all the Spacer’s Choice Edition has achieved so far is to tarnish its reputation.

If you’ve been meaning to pick up The Outer Worlds, wait on patches before trying the Spacer’s Choice Edition. If you’re desperate to play it now, just pick up the “last-gen” version as it’s still a great game and runs great backwards-compatible on an Xbox Series or PlayStation 5 console.

Disclaimer – This review is based on the launch build, once the game is patched we shall come back to this review and update it accordingly.