Obsidian Entertainment’s Fallout: New Vegas spiritual successor is out on Friday, October 25, 2019. Being right around the corner, many are asking the question is The Outer Worlds open world? Here’s everything you need to know about the structure of this acclaimed new RPG.
Is The Outer Worlds open world or linear?
In our review, we called The Outer Worlds “so much more than Fallout in space,” and this also applies to the game’s structure. Unlike the wide-open settings seen in Bethesda’s RPG series, The Outer Worlds scales things back somewhat to offer large explorable areas that are self-contained. This means that each of the separate planets you visit in the game is exactly that; a separate entity unlinked from the others that can only be traveled to from the map screen.
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This doesn’t mean that you can’t head off and do your own thing when you land on a planet, however. Players do have a much greater degree of freedom than in a conventionally linear game, though should expect something on the scale of Mass Effect instead of the comparisons that are more closely being made with Fallout. At least in terms of the world structure, that is.
Interestingly, in an interview with Game Informer members of The Outer Worlds‘ development team shied away from the prospect of even going fully open-world in a potential sequel to the sci-fi RPG. “Possibly. But I think the franchise leans a little bit away from that,” said co-game director Leonard Boyarsky. “It’s a pulpy space opera where you’re a guy or woman who flies from place to place, exploring a solar system. So to have one giant map defeats that.”
While players do have a degree of freedom to explore the crazy galactic locales found in The Outer Worlds, don’t expect to be able to walk from one side of an interconnected map to the other. If Obsidian sticks to its guns, the same will likely go for any potential sequel.
