Here's an hour of side-quests from The Outer Worlds—including a murder investigation

Phil and I recently got to spend some time playing The Outer Worlds, Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming FPS RPG. It was a long, healthy session of the unfinished game, where we were each given time to explore the planet of Monarch in pretty much any manner we wanted.

Above, you can see about an hour of edited footage—some of it is mine, and some it is Phil's (and don't worry, I don't talk over the entire damn video). We both began with the same level 11 character and two companions, standing close to the city of Fallbrook. I began with one of my companions' side-quests and then get into a bit of mischief at the behest of a local drug distributor. Phil, meanwhile, turned in the other direction and wound up in another city, Stellar Bay, where he took on quests to track down a missing person and investigate the grisly murder of gambler. And we both fought a number of outlaws and alien monsters, and spent lots of time chatting with the locals.

Keep in mind that we were playing an unfinished build, and be warned that if you watch, several side-quests will be spoiled, though I don't think any major plotlines are revealed. You can read my impressions of my time with The Outer Worlds right here. And if you like stealth, I also have an article and video about how disguises work in The Outer Worlds

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Latest in RPG
Serana from Skyrim, modded to look like a desiccated corpse.
Skyrim realism mod fixes your vampire girlfriend, giving her a voice and look more suited to someone who just got out of a coffin after 2,000 years
Minthara BG3 looking upset
Another round of Baldur's Gate 3 unearthing reveals Minthara can end up living in a sewer, an unused beach ending, and more
Person battling bizarre four-eyed monster with stylish UI elements surrounding them
Persona and Metaphor: ReFantazio's UI designer is open to accessibility options for players who find the stylish menus overstimulating: 'That is something we understand we'll need to work on and provide in the future'
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth money farm - Super Crazy Delivery
Like a Dragon series director sums up why sidequests are essential to a great RPG with a single metaphor: 'a good main dish alone will not earn you a Michelin star'
Image of a sweetroll with a candle in it
Bethesda marks Oblivion's 19th with a sweetroll, a candle, and absolutely no happy birthday gift for fans eager for the still-unannounced remaster
Fallout 76 ghoul screenshots
Getting to level 50 in Fallout 76 to become a ghoul actually isn't as daunting as it seems, which is why I created a new character
Latest in News
Serana from Skyrim, modded to look like a desiccated corpse.
Skyrim realism mod fixes your vampire girlfriend, giving her a voice and look more suited to someone who just got out of a coffin after 2,000 years
Gabe Newell looks into the camera, behind him is a prop of a turret from Team Fortress 2.
Gabe Newell's cult of personality is intense, but a Valve exec who worked with him says his superpower is how he 'delighted in people on the team just being really good at what they did'
Image for
'No real human would go four links deep into a maze of AI-generated nonsense': Cloudflare's AI Labyrinth uses decoy pages to trap web-crawling bots and feed them slop 'as a defensive weapon'
The Spy from Team Fortress 2 holds up a folder with an accusatory expression.
One of Valve's original executives shares a very simple secret to its success: 'You can't use up your credibility' by trying to make bad games work
The Razer Huntsman Mini 60% gaming keyboard floats in the teal PC Gamer deal void. The per-key RGB lights are on.
The most adorable Razer keyboard features not only an almost half-size form factor, but an almost half-size price at only $70
Inzoi
Ultra-realistic life sim Inzoi has officially shoved Hollow Knight: Silksong and Deadlock out of the way to become Steam's most hotly-anticipated game