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Yes, the tutorial in the beginning, is useful, and the information is technically all there in the codex. But, there’s a lot of little gimmicks hidden in this gem of space-faring absurdity that are a bit hidden. So, here we are to give players the scoop with 10 things you didn’t know you could do in The Outer Worlds.
10 Holster Your Weapon
I mean it goes without saying that you can, but the game never outright tells you (at least as far as we can remember). Now, holstering was a thing in Fallout: New Vegas, but that was because having a weapon drawn would invite conflict and negative karma.
In Outer Worlds, there’s no downside to keeping your weapon out at all times. But, we sort of felt weird about nonchalantly sticking a gun in every vendor’s face, so this extra feature absolutely helps immersion. And, doing it is pretty simple! Just hold down the reload button, and you’ll holster the equipped weapon. It’s also a great tool for screenshots. Now if only there was a third person camera too, like in New Vegas.
9 Complete All Aspects Of Optional Mission Objectives for Extra EXP
This style of playing is only obvious to previous Obsidian fans or RPG fanatics, but its quite easy to “game” the quest system. Basically, a fair amount of Outer Worlds’ quests have optional objectives, even multiple at times. These objectives auto-update no matter the decision.
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Usually, when there are multiple, the player is only meant to do one. However, clever players can do all optional paths for extra EXP. Our favorite example is the quest to get Nyoka her Pep-Pills, which has about 4 or 5 different routes for completion. Once players get there, let us know how you figured out how to do every optional path, because it works like a puzzle.
8 Play Both Sides
Most RPG games with “choices” love to pretend that they have a grey zone, but most of the time it boils down to helping every lost kid sort of good or the kicking puppies type of bad. In fact, that same karmic imbalance is why many people loved New Vegas more than Fallout 3, as there were plenty of choices in that game that could be described as both good and bad.
And Obsidian is back to show us their way of moral neutrality with the conflicts in Outer Worlds. From the surface, most of it looks black and white, corporate-control or freedom at a price. Basically, Phineas or the Board. But, once players get further in, they’ll notice how many paths the game actually has. For example, we remained Neutral with the Board even after our ending has us overthrow them entirely. Heck, the last mission was supposed to be a gauntlet-style combat run, but we walked through in disguise the entire way.
7 Avoid Combat for 90% of all confrontations
Another reason many Fallout fans ended up preferring New Vegas out of the rest of the franchise is due to Obsidian’s dialog choices. Most of the speech options in Fallout 3 would lead to combat, no matter how many skill checks the player passed. But that wasn’t the case in Fallout: New Vegas, players were blown away that they could talk themselves out of a final confrontation with Legate Lanius in any of the endings where you confront Caesar.
And after finishing Outer Worlds, we’re happy to say this dialog-centric design is still there. Players can avoid most of the combat in the game if they want too. Heck, with high speech and sneak, they might never even need to shoot a single bullet!
6 Stealth Kill With Melee Weapons
It’s never directly said during the tutorial section of the game, but melee weapons absolute count as “quiet kills”. Though to be fair, that’s only if there’s no one else around, and almost any gun works as a quiet kill if it’s in an enclosed room and only takes 1-2 shots.
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The way stealth kills work in Outer Worlds is strange. It’s a bit too simplified for our tastes, however we got used to it pretty quickly. But we found that using the snazzy scientific Prismatic Hammer power attack from behind is the best way to go for a sneaky melee build. So, if you’re worried about alerting enemies in a populated area, all you’ve got to do is take out a big stick, tip-toe around, and swing away!
5 Use Your Companions Stats, Armor, and Carry Load To Buff Your Own
It’s made clear as soon as Pavarti joins the party in Edgewater that Companions play a huge part in Outer Worlds. Sure, players can go it alone and get some pretty strong Perks for doing so, such as Lone Wolf or Soliloquy. But, Companions are a bigger advantage in our opinion (at least on any mode other than Supernova). That said, it’s not entirely clear how the skill, armor, and carry load buffs from companions work, so we’ve done the math for you.
For example, say Pavarti’s Lockpicking skill is 40 on its own. Then, according to our math, she’ll buff your Lockpicking skill by 10 whenever she’s in the party. Why? Because their buff to the player’s skills is 1/4 of their own. Remember though, each Companion only has 3 skills. We’re not sure if the same applies for their carry capacity or Armor rating, but we’re 100% sure ours went up after putting heavy upgraded armor on our currently equipped companions.
4 Make The Boss Monster Fight Its Minions
We’ve noticed something odd from all the comments we’ve read from players. Essentially, previous Obsidian Games fans are gravitating towards the Science Weapons, while new fans are gravitating towards the “Unique Weapons”. Why is that? Well because Obsidian Fans read all the perks and saw just how much having a high science skill and the two science weapons perks could buff their damage. Plus a lack of mod-ibility with the Unique Weapons turns a lot of people off who like to control every variable.
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There are two weapons this makes a huge difference with, the Prismatic Hammer and the Mind Control Ray. And a technique that not many players are aware of is that you can actually use the MCR to make Mega-creatures kill all their own minions! And this can even be done with a low science skill! The Primals on Scylla are a perfect test subject for this, and they make for some easy early-game exp too with this tactic.
3 Be a Jack of All Trades
In most RPGs, players usually have to either respect or wait until another playthrough to specialize in different aspects. Basically, one playthrough is for melee weapons, one is for guns, one is for hacking/lockpick, and one is for stealth. This was also sort of the case in New Vegas. But, Outer Worlds is different.
Thanks to the armor buffs, companion buffs, the way that groups of skills level concurrently until 50, and consumables, players can 100% succeed at most, if not all, skill checks. Of course, doing this requires switching armor whenever you need to hack, drinking Soda whenever you need to Lie to someone, and only using Felix and Pavarti if you want to Lockpick. These are obviously only a few examples, but a person who can micro-manage will totally be able to open every door, lie to every NPC, and efficiently use all weapons.
2 Change Your Loading Screens Based On Past Decisions
Again, fans of New Vegas won’t be surprised by this, but the decisions you make throughout the game absolutely play a part in how the final mission goes. Characters will show up to help, more enemies with appear, etc. It was the same in the post-apocalyptic Mojave RPG, where the act of storming the Hoover Dam drastically changed depending on the friendships made by “The Courier” along the way.
Outer Worlds has actually added onto this formula, and now the propaganda on the loading screens will actually change as well depending on the big decisions made on planets like Monarch and Terra 2. And that’s not even counting all the subtle dialog changes and options that appear based on past actions.
1 Cheese Your Way To Free Flaws
The Flaw system in Outer Worlds is a fresh and unique take on a pretty dated mechanic thanks to Bethesda’s Fallout games. Perks are neat, but we’ve seen them for over a decade now. And, it’s not like Flaws are all too different since they trade a consequence in for an extra skill point. Still, the idea of punishing players for hurting themselves in certain ways or against specific enemies is novel, and we had fun finding out about all of them.
However, players who want some early game Perk points can absolutely abuse this new system. For example, there’s a flaw that comes about after breaking your legs due to fall damage a certain number of times. If a player didn’t care about movement speed, they could easily just jump off the same set of stairs time after time until this flaw pops up.
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