Sad as it is to say that one of the original game’s biggest pluses, its artistic design, seems to have been hampered in the pursuit of sharper visuals and better fidelity. As these side-by-side comparisons of the game show - left image, the PS5 remastered version right, its original PS4 version running in backwards compatibility on the same console - what the remaster may offer in increased clarity, resolution and depth, it so equally takes away in artistic and aesthetic consistency. How, you might ask? Surely the Spacer’s Choice Edition hasn’t intentionally removed details or aspects of the game on purpose? It must have added at least something, right? Well, yes and no. Compared, shockingly of all, to its former PS4 form and how said iteration, by way of backwards-compatibility, may in fact still fair better. The usual spiel we’ve come to expect from any sort of remastered game making the jump from generation of consoles to the succeeding next.īut while I’d love to continue that prior admiration for what The Outer Worlds is in 2023 - via what it’s now become in this supposed remastered and improved form - it’s rather puzzling (and met with a few double-takes as of late) to report that I have reservations for how The Outer Worlds running natively on PS5 seems to subtract from the experience rather than add to it. A great game made even greater? Sign me up - The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition billed as “much more than just a visual upgrade.” Promises of 4K images, 60FPS, improved this and tweaked that. Thus, on paper, the prospect of a remaster - to remedy that which it faltered on on occasion, namely its performance and its visual fidelity - is a no-brainer. A testament to the writing first and foremost, but praise too for its artistic design and quest structure that something as affront as its performance could not put a significant enough dent into to truly ruin the experience. A game that would in time receive its due accolades wider afield. “It’s not the best choice…” the cheerily-assured, boardroom-approved motto begins, “…it’s Spacer’s Choice!” That, on its own, is all you need to hear in order to get a good read on the kind of tone Obsidian originally took and succeeded on when The Outer Worlds originally released nearly four years ago on PS4, Xbox One & PC.īut it says something more that even with that game’s criticisms at launch - its rough edges, technical shortcomings and instances where the game seemed to struggle to maintain even a semblance of a stable 30FPS target - it quickly became one of my (and many others’) personal favorite releases of the year. That being one of the Halcyon system’s most repeated, most tongue-in-cheek but most crucial gags when it comes to the parodying of a corporatist far-future, run amok. As anyone who’s experienced 2019’s fantastic RPG and invested a sufficient enough time to get accustomed to that game’s lore, world-building and general habits so far as common-day lingo goes will attest to. That picking this particular name was too easy a title not to pass up for coverage’s sake. I wonder if anyone at Obsidian, Private Division - or anywhere else this remaster’s sub-title was decided on - was aware of the fact they were setting themselves up to be the butt of the joke this time round.
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