The Outer Worlds, an action role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Private Division took many of us by surprise. It’s an excellent game that quite honestly does action role-playing genre right. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed an open world game like Outer Worlds, and I’m here to tell you that the best way to play The Outer Worlds is by cranking up that difficulty to the highest level, SuperNova!
Now, most people who’d want to enjoy the game’s story and breeze right through with will mostly keep the difficulty setting at normal, which is fine but not me! I put that bad boy to SuperNova from the jump, which added a whole new element to the game experience. For those of you who may not know or have played the game yet, Supernova mode changes a lot about The Outer Worlds mechanics. The list ranges from:
- If you reduce the difficulty below Supernova, you cannot re-enable it.
- Enemies have more health and deal more damage.
- You must eat, drink, and sleep to survive.
- Companions can die permanently.
- Crippled body and limb conditions can only be healed with bed rest.
- Weapons and armor work very poorly at zero durability.
- You can only fast travel to your ship.
- You can only sleep inside your ship.
- You can only manually save while inside your ship and autosaves are limited.
It’s definitely not for the faint of heart. I had to plan EVERYTHING! From planning out routes that led to the least amount of enemies (later on I grew some balls and faced my demons head on once I had good weapons), making decisive dialogue options that opened up ways to deal with the present situation, inventory management to ensure I had what I needed to survive and above all else, keeping my companions alive, this was a whole experience that honestly made the game that much more fun to me.
Suddenly, every action I took had a significant effect on not only the world itself, but on me as well. I couldn’t go guns blazing on every town after killing an NPC that had an item I needed. I could’ve, but the ramifications was just too damm high to take that risk. As in, SuperNova mode made my companions suddenly feel more valuable to me now that I knew they could die forever. That and, I also couldn’t risk starting from the last checkpoint I visited 25-40 mins ago, so “time” also became valuable. I needed to always think ahead and plan each and every action correctly.
Talking and manipulating people to get what I needed felt more satisfying knowing that if I get the end result right, it would bring me closer to completing my goals without risking my companion lives. It just added another level of immersion and challenges that I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten from playing the other difficulties. Exploration became a necessity rather that a thrill, making finding even the simplest of ammunition feel like I just struck Gold. Yep, I felt like a true scavenger after 10 hours into the game. This mode also influenced how I upgraded my character. I had to really think twice before making that investment, knowing that if I build my character incorrectly, it would mean extra work on my end.
So, in my opinion if you’re planning on picking up The Outer World, or you just finished your first play-through, go ahead that take that plunge into Supernova mode. You won’t regret it….I think. Well, I know I didn’t!
