The Outer Worlds Spacers Choice Edition

The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition is a first-person sci-fi action RPG for PC, now serving as the current definitive storefront version of Obsidian Entertainment's corporate-colony adventure. It combines the base campaign with both story expansions, expanded character progression, visual improvements, and newer gameplay updates including throwable grenades.

The original base-game listing has been delisted from the affected PC storefronts, so players searching for The Outer Worlds on Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, or the Xbox PC ecosystem will generally encounter Spacer's Choice Edition instead. Existing owners of the original game retain access, and eligible saves can transfer forward into the updated edition.

A first-person RPG built around choices

The adventure begins when a colonist is revived aboard the Hope and pulled into a conspiracy involving Halcyon, a distant colony controlled by competing corporate interests. The player creates a custom character, chooses a background and attributes, then develops a role through skills, perks, equipment, and dialogue decisions.

Halcyon is not one seamless open-world map. It is a connected collection of planets, settlements, laboratories, industrial facilities, asteroid locations, and orbital environments. The Unreliable acts as your mobile base, letting you manage companions, store equipment, select destinations, and return to a ship that gradually becomes the center of your campaign.

The main loop alternates between exploration, quest decisions, combat, conversation, looting, and character development. A mission may be solved with weapons, stealth, persuasion, intimidation, hacking, lockpicking, science, or faction leverage, depending on the build and previous choices.

Combat is played from a first-person perspective and mixes firearms, melee weapons, armor, consumables, weapon modifications, and character statistics. Tactical Time Dilation temporarily slows the action, allowing you to target enemy body parts, inspect combat information, and create openings against dangerous opponents.

Skills, companions, flaws, and faction reputation

The skill system is designed around broad categories rather than isolated abilities at the beginning of progression. Investing in dialogue, stealth, tech, leadership, or combat can unlock several related benefits before more specialized choices become available. This makes hybrid characters practical without forcing every player into a narrow class.

Dialogue skills are especially important. Persuade, Lie, and Intimidate can unlock alternate conversations, while Science, Engineering, Medical, Hacking, and Lockpick skills open different approaches to quests and restricted areas. These checks do not replace combat entirely, but they create meaningful routes around some encounters.

Companions are a major part of the campaign. Recruitable crew members have individual missions, personal motivations, unique skills, and combat abilities. You can take companions into the field, use their special attacks, benefit from their skill bonuses, and decide whether their personal goals fit the direction of your character.

The flaw system adds a risk-and-reward layer to progression. Certain repeated actions or hazards can offer a permanent drawback in exchange for an additional perk choice. Accepting flaws is optional, but players who want unusual builds may deliberately take on weaknesses to gain more customization.

Faction reputation also shapes the way Halcyon responds to you. Supporting one group can damage relations with another, alter access to locations or rewards, and change how later quests unfold. The game encourages replaying with different allegiances, skill priorities, companion combinations, and moral positions.

What Spacer's Choice Edition changes

The edition is more than a visual package. It includes improved character models, higher-resolution environments, updated lighting, additional animations, reworked vistas, and broader presentation upgrades intended to modernize the original PC experience.

Character progression has an expanded level ceiling, giving established builds more room to develop across the campaign and its additional content. Companion behavior and combat presentation were also improved, while the updated edition adds grenade gameplay through three throwable types: Explosive, Bio-Mass, and Frost grenades.

Grenades occupy the weapon radial interface and introduce another way to control groups, exploit enemy weaknesses, or pressure targets hiding behind cover. Their addition is particularly useful for players who prefer tactical preparation over simply relying on conventional firearms.

The edition also includes later balancing and bug-fix work. Unique weapons and armor received usability adjustments, and unique equipment can be modified while preserving its defining special property. These changes give more of the loot a reason to remain useful instead of becoming disposable as soon as a stronger item appears.

Included campaign and story expansions

Spacer's Choice Edition includes the base game and all add-on content, so it is the complete single-player package rather than a standard edition that requires separate expansion purchases.

The first major expansion, Peril on Gorgon, sends the crew to a mysterious asteroid connected to a failed scientific project. It expands the investigation-driven side of The Outer Worlds with new locations, characters, weapons, quests, and a darker mystery built around corporate experimentation.

The second expansion, Murder on Eridanos, moves the story to a luxury resort setting where a high-profile murder investigation becomes a broader conspiracy. Its detective structure, unusual suspects, and distinctive setting provide a different tone from the main colony conflicts.

Both expansions integrate with the same character, equipment, companion, and skill systems as the main campaign. They are best approached as additional story routes for an existing character rather than separate games with unrelated progression.

Players comparing editions should therefore focus on ownership and storefront status. The current package includes the campaign and both story expansions, while the original base-game listing is primarily relevant to existing libraries and save compatibility.

Who should play it?

This is a strong fit for PC players who want a compact, authored sci-fi RPG with branching quests, skill checks, companion stories, and a satirical corporate setting. It rewards reading dialogue, investigating locations, and thinking about consequences rather than treating every objective as a shooting gallery.

It also suits players who enjoy experimenting with builds. A persuasive negotiator, stealth specialist, technical problem-solver, melee bruiser, or firearms-focused character can all work, and the game supports respecialization when you want to rethink your choices.

Players looking for seamless spaceflight, large-scale planetary simulation, or unrestricted sandbox exploration should set their expectations differently. The Outer Worlds emphasizes handcrafted quest hubs and character interactions over a simulation of an entire galaxy.

For a larger space sandbox with ship construction, faction campaigns, and more open-ended exploration, open-world science-fiction RPG exploration like Starfield is the broader alternative. The Outer Worlds is more focused on authored quests, dark comedy, and consequences inside a smaller colonial system.

PC features, controls, and language support

The PC edition supports keyboard and mouse controls as well as controller play. Steam players also receive platform features such as achievements, cloud saves, and family sharing support, while the game remains structured as a solo campaign with AI-controlled companions.

There is no online multiplayer, cooperative campaign, local co-op, split-screen mode, or competitive mode. Companion characters can accompany you during missions, but they do not represent additional human-controlled players.

Storefront behavior depends on where the game is owned. Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, and the Xbox PC ecosystem have carried the current edition, while GOG provides an offline installer option that does not require GOG Galaxy for installation.

The PC storefront listing supports English full audio and subtitles or interface text in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese. Players should distinguish between full voice acting and text localization when choosing a preferred language.

Similar PC RPGs

Players who enjoy The Outer Worlds for its crew relationships, branching dialogue, and spacefaring political conflicts may also want story-driven science-fiction squad RPGs such as Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Mass Effect is more cinematic and third-person, while The Outer Worlds gives more weight to first-person exploration, skill checks, and satirical faction choices.

The two games share a focus on recruiting a crew, making consequential decisions, and balancing combat with conversation. Their structures differ, however: Mass Effect presents a connected trilogy, while The Outer Worlds centers on one character's journey through Halcyon and its two integrated story expansions.

The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition FAQ

What is the current PC name of The Outer Worlds?

The current PC storefront name is The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition. The original base-game listing has been removed from the affected PC storefronts, although existing owners can retain access to the original edition and may receive the updated edition according to their platform entitlement.

Does Spacer's Choice Edition include the DLC?

Yes. It includes the base campaign, Peril on Gorgon, and Murder on Eridanos. No separate purchase of those two story expansions is required when buying the complete edition.

Is The Outer Worlds multiplayer or co-op on PC?

No. The game is a single-player RPG. You can recruit companions and bring them into missions, but there is no online co-op, local co-op, split-screen, or competitive multiplayer.

Is The Outer Worlds an open-world game?

It is better described as a connected, hub-based sci-fi RPG. You explore multiple planets, settlements, facilities, and orbital locations, but they are not presented as one continuous open-world map with unrestricted space travel.

What are the new grenades in Spacer's Choice Edition?

The updated edition adds Explosive, Bio-Mass, and Frost grenades. They are selected through the weapon radial interface and provide additional area damage, corrosion, and crowd-control options during combat.

Which languages are supported on PC?

English is supported for interface, subtitles, and full audio. French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese are supported for text or interface localization, with voice availability limited compared with subtitle support.