Common Sense Media Review
By David Chapman
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Hilariously mature sci-fi hit gets a definitive upgrade.
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The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition
What's It About?
It's time to thaw out of cryosleep once again and revisit the Halcyon system in THE OUTER WORLDS: SPACER'S CHOICE EDITION. This is The Outer Worlds the way it was meant to be played, remastered with enhanced graphics with more animations, better game performance, an increased level cap, and all the downloadable content from the original release packed in for good measure. Here in the Halcyon system, corporate greed is good and consumerism reigns supreme. You, along with your fellow colonists aboard the transport ship Hope, have been deep in cryosleep and drifting in space for more than sixty years. After being revived by a crazed scientist, you're sent planetside to try and get the resources necessary to wake up the rest of the Hope's colonists and settle on this strange new world. After crash landing on Terra 2 and "borrowing" the identity (and the spaceship) of the poor sap you landed on, you've been given a new lease on life. Of course, what you choose to do with it is up to you. Will you save the Hope's colonists and lead a revolution against the Board and its corporate conglomerate? Or maybe you'll choose to be a cog in The Board's machine, offering up your services to its marketing and propaganda campaigns? Then again, maybe you'll just ignore it all, choosing the side of chaos and carving a path of murder, mayhem, and destruction in your wake? Just remember that, in The Outer Worlds, all deposits may be non-refundable … but satisfaction is guaranteed.
Is It Any Good?
When The Outer Worlds was first released, its over-the top sense of humor and entertaining story, coupled with the insane freedom of choice it offered to players, struck a chord with audiences. The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition takes everything that made the original a hit and repackages it to make the most of the current generation of gaming hardware. While the original game was already a fantastic piece of futuristic sci-fi eye candy, the Spacer's Choice Edition takes all of that and cranks it up to an eleven. The visuals are much more more detailed and the animations run much smoother than ever before. This version gives players a higher level cap too, adding extra flexibility when it comes to experimenting with different builds combining higher level abilities across the seven different branches of the skill tree. And as an icing on the corporate cake, the Spacer's Choice Edition also includes both the Peril on Gorgon and the Murder on Eridanos DLC (downloadable content) expansions, adding hours of additional story content to the base game.
For those that missed The Outer Worlds the first time around, one of the biggest draws was the freedom it gave to play the way you wanted. Want to make a stand for the downtrodden while rescuing a ship full of stranded colonists? Go for it. Maybe you want to sign up with the corporate overlords and keep the people under their sway instead? You can do it. Or perhaps you feel like tapping into your inner anarchist and causing chaos wherever you go. This is your story to tell the way you want and the game encourages you to write it any way you see fit. This freedom also carries over to the gameplay as well. Combining skills and abilities, you can come up with any number of creative ways to deal with enemies. Use your stealth to pick off foes from the shadows, or go in guns blazing and use your time dilation to dish out a series of precision shots and wipe them out before they even get a shot off. Then again, you could just skip all that violence and simply talk your way out of a fight. Again, it's all up to you and how you want to play. And with The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition, any way you choose to play, you'll be playing the best possible version of this hilariously fun and (im)mature space age adventure.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about choices and consequences. What are some of the ways that the choices we make might affect the way others act towards us? How can decisions made in the moment affect events in our lives down the road? When given choices in a game, do you prefer to act more like your true self, or do you tend to live out a different direction?
What are some of the ways that The Outer Worlds: Spacers Choice Edition parodies the way corporations influence our daily lives today? What are some of the ways, positive and negative, that corporate actions impact our daily lives?
Game Details
- Platforms : Xbox Series X/S , PlayStation 5 , Windows
- Pricing structure : Paid ($59.99)
- Available online? : Available online
- Publisher : Private Division
- Release date : March 7, 2023
- Genre : Role-Playing
- Topics : Adventures , Fantasy , Animals ( Wild Animals )
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : September 29, 2025
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