Outer Worlds: 10 Ways It Blows Fallout 4 Out The Water

7. Quests Aren't Just Checkboxes

Though Fallout 4 still had a wealth of varied, creative content to tackle, it did admittedly rely on some pretty basic quest structures for a chunk of its side missions. Everyone remembers Preston Garvey's constant nagging for you to do procedurally-generated busywork for him, while other missions required you to find specific items or build certain structures - essentially little activities without any real story behind them.

It was never as bad as an Ubisoft game, but at times it did just feel like you were mindlessly checking items off a list while completing quests, rather than engaging with the game in a genuinely substantial way - being told to do things rather than discovering them for yourself.

Even in the few hours I spent in The Outer Worlds, that doesn't seem to be the case. While you of course still have quest givers, each mission felt varied, and didn't just have one static way of completing it.

Likewise, more often than not missions would begin in an emergent way, rewarding you for simply interacting with the world. Whether this came from listening to a man claiming he'd found a dead body or trying an intercom at a random settlement and discovering someone in need on the other side, missions always felt spontaneous, rather than gameified and fed through the U.I.