{"id":357,"date":"2021-10-12T14:55:05","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T14:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=357"},"modified":"2021-10-12T14:55:05","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T14:55:05","slug":"the-outer-worlds-pc-technical-review-no-sci-fi-computer-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"The Outer Worlds PC technical review \u2013 No sci-fi computer necessary"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Praise be: The Outer Worlds<\/i> is free of bugs (except the ones you shoot in the face). If you\u2019ve already checked out the review you\u2019ll know it\u2019s pretty much a less sprawling Fallout<\/i> game, and that should raise suspicions of it being more than a little bit broken. It\u2019s not. Across my two playthroughs, it proved to be remarkably solid.<\/p>\n

We can discuss that in detail a bit later, but considering \u201cFallout<\/i>-inspired\u201d and \u201cObsidian,\u201d I figured it was probably best to get that out of the way as quickly as possible. But now, performance!<\/p>\n

The Outer Worlds<\/b><\/i> system specs<\/b><\/h2>\n

Minimum:<\/b><\/p>\n

CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 \/ AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
\nRAM: 4GB
\nGPU: Nvidia GTX 650 Ti \/ AMD HD 7850<\/p>\n

Recommended:<\/b><\/p>\n

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K \/ Ryzen 5 1600
\nRAM: 8GB
\nGPU: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB \/ Radeon RX 470<\/p>\n

Reviewer\u2019s PC:<\/b><\/p>\n

CPU: Intel Core i7-3820
\nRAM: 16GB
\nGPU: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti<\/p>\n

Those specs are remarkably low, and it also only needs 40GB-ish of hard drive space. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d recommend playing The Outer Worlds<\/i> on the bare minimum, but I can at least confirm that it\u2019s not a hugely intensive game in most scenarios. Let\u2019s have a look at the graphical options on offer, do some screenshot comparisons that have driven me insane<\/i>, and talk about frame rates. That should give you a better idea of how your computer will handle it.<\/p>\n

Options and settings<\/b><\/h2>\n

The Outer Worlds<\/i> does not get high marks for its graphical options. Here\u2019s your lot:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

I do at least approve of the suggestion to put everything on max and then turn it down.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an FOV slider in another menu, so I\u2019ll at least give it a point for that. I\u2019m not impressed with how many of these options are lumped in together, though.<\/p>\n

Screen Effects is one thing you absolutely, positively want to set to Low, because it smears the entire screen with vaseline. It\u2019s responsible for horrors like chromatic aberration, lens flare, blurring things, and what appears<\/i> to be a very minor form of vignetting. It may also be responsible for anti-aliasing, unfortunately. It\u2019s incredibly hard to tell.<\/p>\n

The others are mostly self-explanatory, with the exception of Visual Effects. That\u2019s largely fancy stuff like lasers and explosions. The problem is that it\u2019s hard to tell where things like anti-aliasing fit in.<\/p>\n

Visual comparisons<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s have a look at some comparisons, and then we\u2019ll talk about why I\u2019ve been slowly going insane while writing this tech review.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Ultra.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Screen Effects Off.<\/p>\n

So, that\u2019s the difference between everything on Ultra, and everything on Ultra except we\u2019ve lobbed Screen Effects into a dumpster. Screen Effects blur everything to an extent that looks horrendous. Just disable them, for your own sake.<\/p>\n

For a laugh, let\u2019s also have a look at what happens if you turn the 3D Resolution down as far as you can. This effectively renders the game at a much lower resolution than your display resolution and then upscales it to fit your monitor.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

I now know what it\u2019s like to have serious eye problems.<\/p>\n

Yeah, don\u2019t do that. Now! A few shots showing the difference between Ultra and Low.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Ultra.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Low.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Ultra.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Screen Effects off.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Low. And one of the only ones with a really noticeable difference.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Ultra.<\/p>\n

\"Low<\/p>\n

Low. Yes, I had to zoom in on the items on a counter to find some really noticeable differences.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really<\/i> hard to tell the difference in most of these, as long as we\u2019re not accounting for Screen Effects. On some of the shots, you can definitely see improved shadows, but I daresay a few pics actually look better on Low. Figuring out which shots were on which settings slowly drove me mad, as did textures taking time to load, and things changing between the time of screenshots, and aaargh<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The Outer Worlds<\/i> is one of those games that has a visual quality that sits on the edge. Lip-syncing and animations are stiff and fairly unimpressive, but the vistas are to die for. It looks better in screenshots than it does in motion, I\u2019m afraid, but it\u2019s still hard to say it ever looks bad<\/i>. It just rarely impresses.<\/p>\n

While the visuals aren\u2019t too obviously different, there is<\/i> a noticeable difference in the frame rate. In that top comparison shot showing how awful the Screen Effects settings are, Ultra would sit at about 75 FPS, while Low would go up to 100. Quieter internal areas could hit 120 FPS. Meanwhile, busier areas with lots of characters and interactive objects \u2013 a cantina, say \u2013 can drop to about 40 or 50 FPS on Ultra, while sitting at 60-70 on Low.<\/p>\n

\"Amelia<\/p>\n

This is on Low. Could you tell?<\/p>\n

I never really saw The Outer Worlds<\/i> drop below 35 FPS no matter my settings, but spinning around rapidly definitely caused some stuttering as it tried to catch up. Most of the time, I played with things on High; it made me feel like I was making things look nice, while not impacting the frame rate too badly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that I played at 2560\u00d71440, with the FOV bumped up to 90. If you\u2019re planning on playing in 1080p or with a lower FOV, you\u2019ll doubtless have a better frame rate.<\/p>\n

Not another bug hunt<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"Companion<\/p>\n

At least it controls wonderfully on mouse and keyboard. Keys are largely rebindable: A few that shuffle you into menus can\u2019t be changed, but everything else is fair game. There are some holdovers from console controls \u2013 a weapon wheel that you can use if you object to the number keys, and holstering your weapon is done by holding reload \u2013 but for the most part the controls fit perfectly on mouse and keyboard.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s talk about bugs. With the Fallout<\/i> inspirations and Obsidian\u2019s occasional reputation of being forced to release games in an unfinished state, you might expect the worst. You shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Across two playthroughs, I encountered one major bug and pretty much no minor ones that I can recall. The major one was near the end of the game and resulted in a crash to desktop on entering a room. At a guess, something was amiss with the cutscene that played there\u2026 but this was easily bypassed by just shooting the people in the room. That was going to be the result anyway, so not a huge loss, and I\u2019m hopeful that bug will be fixed shortly. And that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

The end of the world(s)<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"Auntie<\/p>\n

Nobody would expect it to actually be a secret lab, right?<\/p>\n

There were a fair few minor imperfections, like rag dolls going a bit wonky, but nothing particularly worth noting. Not everything can be picked up or lobbed around and this is in Unreal Engine 4 rather than Gamebryo, so there\u2019s probably less room for stuff to go horribly wrong, but hey \u2013 I\u2019m not complaining about something working.<\/p>\n

The short version is that The Outer Worlds<\/i> holds up just fine on PC. I\u2019m more than slightly miffed about the rubbish graphical options because having more discrete settings would mean I could make it look quite a bit nicer. With luck, someone will find console or ini tweaks and we can find ways to individually switch on and off specific things.<\/p>\n

For now, though, stick Screen Effects on Low and then set the rest according to your computer. With that done, you hopefully won\u2019t hit any issues with this otherwise decent PC version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Praise be: The Outer Worlds is free of bugs (except the ones you shoot in the face). If you\u2019ve already checked out the review you\u2019ll know it\u2019s pretty much a less sprawling Fallout game, and that should raise suspicions of it being more than a little bit broken. It\u2019s not. Across my two playthroughs, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[478,479,480],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}