THE OUTER WORLDS.

• Author: Suderman, Peter

Looked at one way, The Outer Worlds, a sprawling, narratively complex role-playing game from developer Obsidian, is a bleakly funny satire of corporate power.

The game is set in an alternate future in which Teddy Roosevelt never became president, and thus never engaged in antitrust actions against large corporations. You play as an interstellar colonist awoken from cryosleep by a mad scientist after decades in a derelict spaceship. The scientist's goal is to get you to help him awaken the other colonists in order to spark a revolution against the Board, a corporate conglomerate that controls nearly all life and economic activity in the solar system--or at least appears to.

Much of the game consists of extended conversations with computer-controlled characters, in which they not only task you with in-game objectives but explain their philosophy and worldview. As you play, you encounter factions offering various models of both acceptance of and resistance to corporate rule...