The Outer Worlds touches down on Nintendo Switch, and while the game is easy to recommend, the Switch port really isn’t.
It’s nice to get the things you want. Sometimes.
Following the direction taken by the Fallout franchise, fans of the series were vocal in their desire for a more focussed, single-player experience. They wanted a game like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or Fallout New Vegas. Or, ideally, a combination of the two. Obsidian Entertainment heard that call, and that’s what the studio delivered – to considerable acclaim – with The Outer Worlds.
Another thing people want is for every game to be on the Nintendo Switch. Hence, a slew of ports from the last two Xbox and PlayStation generations. Some of these, like Alien: Isolation and the Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection, are excellent. Others, like Doom and The Witcher 3, are impressive despite their flaws. And others are just plain bad. Hello, Ark: Survival Evolved and Mortal Kombat 11.
Virtuos – the studio behind the solid ports of L.A. Noire and Bioshock – say their processes mean that virtually any game from the PS4 and Xbox One generation can be ported to Switch. The Outer Worlds gives Virtuos a chance to prove the point.
The Outer Worlds comes to Nintendo Switch content complete, with future story expansions also confirmed. Every mission, character, and weapon is here, compressed and squeezed into a 13.7GB file.
In delivering what people want, Obsidian has created a game that feels immediately familiar. The Outer Worlds presents a wild and imaginative new universe in which to tell stories, but the format and structure are true to the studio’s heritage. If you’ve played New Vegas or KOTOR2, the first hour of The Outer Worlds feels like slipping on a comfortable pair of old space boots. It feels good to be back.
The influence of the Fallout series and Bioshock casts a long shadow, of course, most obviously in the game’s retro-futuristic aesthetic. You’ll find it in everything from the architecture to the cheeky in-game advertisements that promise a better life for the inhabitants of the Halcyon system. To the game’s credit, it uses this hoary conceit to reflect the story’s themes of corporate servitude and rebellion with more grit and humour than is usual. Its satirical approach and political stance are far more in-tune with each other than in another recent Switch port, the otherwise wonderful Void Bastards.
The overall structure is also familiar. It’s a big game, but one we’d hesitate to term open world. A dubiously procured (but brilliantly named) spaceship, The Unreliable, acts as a hub of sorts, transporting you around a six-planet system to accumulate an impressively long list of missions and side-quests. Most destinations are large but self-contained areas populated by an assortment of aggressive wildlife, ne’er-do-wells, and quest-givers. We’ve been here before in spirit, if not location.
It makes for a focussed role-playing experience that is content to find breadth and depth in its characters. The game may be set in the expanse of space, but there’s a tightness of design here, a subtle but welcome guiding hand.
The Outer Worlds is also well written and acted. NPCs have seemingly limitless responses that reflect and respond to your actions throughout the game. The way characters refer to your exploits, however minor, generates a sense of connection and consequence to what you do. It feels like a minor but significant evolution in character interaction, even if the Elder Scrolls-style “straight to camera” conversation delivery isn’t especially modern.
It’s pleasing that The Outer Worlds places as much emphasis on words as it does weaponry. During my initial character build, I bumped my Charm stats right up and was delighted to find it made a tangible difference from the start. My persuasive patter helped me to avoid some sticky situations, but my cocksure attitude occasionally provoked trouble. Both felt consistent.
A feeling of choice and consequence is something that games continually strive to achieve, and although you’ll make some big decisions on your journey through The Outer Worlds, it’s the small moments that stand out.
Further examples can be found with your six companions, of which two can join your party at a time. They’re an engaging bunch, each with in-depth storylines to explore. It’s not Mass Effect 2, but there’s a nice “getting the gang together” vibe to proceedings, and their interactions are frequently amusing. The way companion stats boost your own character’s abilities is also neat, helping you bolster skills you may have neglected.
Indeed, once I had four companions in place, I was able to step back from the minutiae of character development and play with a more freewheeling style. Combat – which is a remix of Fallout’s V.A.T.S – is a satisfying and punchy replacement for chinwagging when called upon.
The Outer Worlds may be structured like a game from 2010, but there’s enough going on under the hood to distinguish it from other RPGs of its ilk. If only the visuals looked as good as something from 2010! Despite the confidence of Virtuos, the Switch version of The Outer Worlds is, technically, a bit of a mess.
We’re told the game runs at 720p in handheld mode and 1080p docked. The frame rate is also solid, bubbling around at 30FPS. However, in terms of overall image and texture quality, the game is a real disappointment. As you might reasonably expect, environmental detail is stripped back. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes stripped back to N64-quality assets. Plantlife in the overworld is an obvious and ugly example, but everything feels like the wrong size of compromise.
Picture quality is often blurry to the point of distraction, as if the image has been taken from a third-generation VHS copy. At a distance, buildings and objects look as though they have been rendered from clay, and pop-in is rife. Traversing at speed across the overworld can also trigger a loading icon that briefly interrupts play. Hopefully, future patches will improved things across the board.
These concerns are not solely due to the game being dragged kicking and screaming onto the Switch. It’s a garish game generally, with a rough-edged clumsiness to its design. Buildings, objects, and NPCs feel placed on the landscape at random, and the only locations that exist tend to be those that the story requires you to visit. And although I appreciate the smaller physical scope of the game, it’s inadvertently amusing to hear a companion exclaim they “haven’t been this far before” when you reach a destination after a 30-second jog.
It’s common for games to imply a larger world, something hidden just out of sight, but The Outer Worlds doesn’t manage to stick the landing. Thankfully, it paints its prettiest and most engaging pictures with its characters and dialogue.
The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch is a hard game to judge. The underlying quality of the narrative experience is there to be enjoyed in every glorious detail, but the technical shortcomings are hard to ignore. In a recent interview, production director Eric DeMil said that Obsidian is “very happy” with the game’s performance. I wish I could say the same.
I wanted a concise RPG in the Fallout style, and I’m glad Obsidian made one. I certainly hope the studio has the opportunity to tell more stories in this universe on Xbox Series X.
I also wanted this game on Switch, but in retrospect, I’m not sure it was a wise move. Sometimes, getting what you want is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Platform: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PC, PS4, Xbox One
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment/Virtuos
Publisher: Private Division
Release Date: June 5, 2020