Obsidian's Leonard Boyarsky and Brian Hines went to the E3 Coliseum stage to give us a 22-minute gameplay demo of their upcoming game The Outer Worlds. The demo was essentially a full mission played live on stage. The game looked like it has the potential to be great in this short slice. If you'd like to watch the full thing, peep the trailer below.

This was very much a guided demo. Hines was doing most of the talking and, at times, it was hard to hear him over the in-game dialog. That said, I did appreciate how much world-building history he was sharing. This world feels lived-in, which is something I personally look for in my RPGs.

The devs put a lot of focus on explaining some of the finer points of various game mechanics. We saw that your skills would change which dialog options are available to you. They also spent some time talking about the tactical time dilation system. Essentially, this is V.A.T.S from Fallout. Your character is suffering from hibernation sickness, which has the positive side effect of giving you the ability to slow down your perspective of time. This allows you to set up shots and observe key details about enemies on the fly.

 

For the demo, the player character was focused on upgrades that improve the leadership skill. This makes your companions more powerful, which we saw in the form of the newly revealed Nyoka unloading her chaingun into your foes. It was a cool moment and the leadership tree will likely be a great path for players who don't love FPS games.

It's hard to say one way or the other until I actually get my hands on the game; however, the game looks very promising. We'll know for sure when The Outer Worlds releases on October 25 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Stay with DualShockers for all the news coming from E3.