![]() By the time we returned to extract bloody vengeance, we found there was a whole questline tied to the castle, which we circumvented by being jailed out of our stupidity and driven to revenge. Only, we didn’t die as is typical in other games – we were instead dumped into the ocean, where we washed up, barely alive and freezing, with only one day left to spare to pay off our debt to the village. We managed to bribe our way to the supply room, only to be caught and killed. The implementation of defeat scenarios – randomised outcomes that occur when you die in combat or are captured – also help you form your own unique stories organically.įor example, playing local multiplayer with my brother, we spoke to an NPC inside Vendavel Fortress who was seemingly friendly and offered us a place to stay, only to find ourselves robbed and thrown into a dungeon, where we spent two real-world days trying to escape, losing valuable time. ![]() While the presentation of the narrative is nothing fancy, with stilted animations and half-voiced dialogue with static NPCs owing to a small budget, there is charm to the game’s hands-off approach – you can engage with the world and learn its history, or simply focus on the task at hand, because you’re not a hero on a world-changing quest – just a nobody off on an adventure to survive. Many quests have timers, adding a sense of constant urgency (and curiosity) as to how things resolve depending on your choices, and whether you fail or succeed (or, in my case, choose the wrong dialogue!) ![]() You’re quickly let loose into the outside world to solve this urgent problem, and eventually choose from three faction-based questlines as you see fit, with multiple outcomes and dialogue to accommodate your choices and/or failures, and a surprising amount of variation on offer.įor instance, Cierzo (the opening village) can be saved or entirely destroyed depending on whether you fail a certain quest, while your pathway through the main story is unique depending on which faction you choose – the Holy Mission of Elatt (to be free of family debts), the Blue Chamber Collective (to begin a new debt-free bloodline), or the Heroic Kingdom of Levant (to be free of past ties entirely), with a fourth made available through the Soroboreans DLC. You apparently survived an expensive sea voyage, and the town gives you 5 days to pay the costs for failure and the loss of the other sailors. The story, in contrast, is a grounded and inglorious premise compared to the ‘epic’ approach of other fantasy RPGs after a barebones character creator, you (and a friend, if you have one handy) start as a humble commoner living in a small village, with a family debt that goes back generations. Such complexity is initially overwhelming and even a little clunky, but the ambition is alluring. You also only gain abilities and stat increases through quests or paying for training, rather than traditional XP. Food spoils and equipment deteriorates, you can’t fast travel everywhere, and there’s no waypoints to guide you. ![]() There are hunger, thirst, fatigue and warmth systems to tend to, melee, magic and ranged combat to learn, hordes of loot to scavenge, and crafting and skill systems to gradually upgrade through vendors. Outward is a third-person adventure that blends several action-RPG and survival systems together to offer a smorgasbord of gameplay mechanics and role-playing experiences.
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