Ever since The Outer Worlds was revealed at The Game Awards 2018, many gamers have been wondering just how the new title from Obsidian Entertainment would play, and how it would differ from the company's prior efforts. Recently, the project's co-director Tim Cain and lead designer Charles Staples decided to shed more light on these matters by showing off some new gameplay focusing on the tactics of combat and explaining the kinds of options players will have therein.

According to Staples, The Outer Worlds is "an RPG first, but it still looks like a shooter, so it needs to play like a shooter", which means that small-scale encounters with enemies can be handled with relative ease by directly engaging and blasting to them to bits, but larger skirmishes will ultimately require more strategy. For instance, bigger firefights and more difficult baddies with special abilities and tactics may require a stealthier approach at first, the use of the VATS-like system known as Tactical Time Dilation (TTD), or more focus on directing one's companions in battle.

Speaking of the game's companions, Cain explained that he and the team wanted The Outer Worlds to support companion combat so as to introduce what the co-director calls "the leadership role", which has the leader character swapping companions in and out in order to gain access to their skills to fit different situations. For instance, if the player isn't too proficient in combat, one can gain the combat skills of their companions to make up for it. What's more is that companions have special abilities or moves that can be used in "certain scenarios to inflict certain status effects on enemies", with specific perks being on the table as well to change how the special abilities work in various respects.

The Outer Worlds will also contain a wide variety of different weapon types so as to give players a bunch of different ways to approach combat, with there being handguns, long guns, heavy weapons, energy weapons and bullets, and melee weapons. The action-RPG also has a lot of "brands" for these weapons, such as Spacer's Choice, which breaks down more frequently than others, but can be repaired more easily. Certain weapon brands will even have mod slots that allow for the addition of gear such as silencers, scopes, bigger magazines, and so on.

Taking everything here into account, while The Outer Worlds definitely looks like it will be forging its own path as far as combat is concerned, there's no doubt that Obsidian has taken some inspiration from its previous titles–namely Fallout: New Vegas. As previously mentioned, Tactical Time Dilation looks very much like Fallout's VATS with specific tweaks, the companion system sounds a lot like the one in New Vegas, but with certain adjustments, and the weapon types seem similar to those in any number of first-person shooters. That said, it doesn't necessarily mean The Outer Worlds will be a bad game, for we will simply have to wait and see just how the open world title plays when it comes out later this year.

The Outer Worlds is currently scheduled for release in 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: Game Informer – YouTube