When The Outer Worlds was announced last year, it traded a lot on the involvement of the original creators of Fallout and developer Obsidian's work on Fallout: New Vegas. At the time, you could see why: they're basically making one of those games. What didn't come across was just how much like Fallout: New Vegas the game looks like.

The Outer Worlds is set in a world where humans have successfully colonized space, humanity now stretching out across the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But, predictably, a bunch of corporations have taken over everything and made life hell. That's where you come in to either fix things, make them worse, or whatever. Obsidian emphasized that player freedom is paramount in The Outer Worlds, so how the story plays out and what your role will ultimately be will depend your actions.

The demo didn't dig into how that plays out, though. The demo ran us through a smaller mission wherein they had to infiltrate a slaughterhouse and take out its owner, Clive Lumbergh (or just sabotage the factory), so that the de facto head of the city, Catherine Malin, can take control of the place and get her cut of the profits. Simple enough job. Getting the job took a bit of convincing, however, as Malin wasn't immediately convinced the player character was trustworthy. Thanks to their high speech skill, of course, it was easy to assure her.

I was immediately struck by how much the game resembles Fallout. From the way conversations zoom in on who you're speaking to, stiff animations and all, to the dialog boxes and even the choice of font, it definitely looks like one of those games. I suppose it's not surprising given Obsidian's work on Fallout: New Vegas, but it's still surprising the degree to which The Outer Worlds resembles that game past the basic gameplay structure.

As they prepared to head out of town and toward the mission, they took a moment to go over their character's equipment. For the demo, they made a build that was focused on tech, which allows them to make their weapons stronger. Combat plays out mostly as a standard first-person shooter would. You can slow down time to help line up your shot and generally give yourself some time to think, but the whole it generally seems to move at a steady pace. Guns have both a primary and secondary fire, the rifle they used alternating between full-auto streams of bullets and a slower series of orbs.

Once combat finished, a message popped up to say they contracted a new flaw. The flaw would make them take a hit to their stats while being attacked by dogs in exchange for some extra skill points. It presents a sort of risk versus reward scenario where you have to decide whether you'll take a small debuff in exchange for strength elsewhere. Flaws are entirely optional, so could theoretically never need to worry about them.

There are multiple ways to get inside the facility, and the path the presenters chose was a hidden entrance behind a waterfall that lead straight to the pig pens. They made a note to talk about the pigs, called cystypigs, which are covered in bacon-flavored tumors that are used to as the source for the meat they process here (gross), as an example of the dark humor the game is going for.

Moving through the pens proves to be a good choice as it allowed them to quietly move deeper into the complex. Stealth in The Outer Worlds seems to be the traditional sort — just be quiet and stay out of sight — rather than dictated by stats, which, assuming that's definitely the case, would definitely be welcome. As they moved farther in, they came across an intercom system overlooking a heavily guarded room. Using the intercom provided a couple options to disperse the crowd: lie and say they'd been called to join the boss for dinner, or, if you're intelligence stat is low enough, say something "dumb" and absurd and hope for the best. They elected to lie, as one of their party members gave them an extra stat boost there (your party's stats are added to yours for certain skill checks). Apparently dinner with the boss isn't something you want to be invited to, as everyone cleared out instantly, one saying they quit.

With the area clear, they were left with the choice of how to complete the mission. Sabotaging the machinery is one possibility, though they didn't have the skills necessary to do so. Thus they chose the direct approach and made their way toward Clive. Instead of just killing him, however, they decided to chat, maybe learn a bit more about him. He quickly proposes a counter offer: kill Catherine and he'll give you a lifetime supply of meat. That left them with three options: uphold the original request, take the counter offer, or find some sort of solution that satisfies both parties. With these choices before them, the demo ended.

The Outer Worlds is out on October 25 for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

Callum Rakestraw, NoobFeed