Platted That! – The Outer Worlds

Disclaimer: Gameplay spoilers, minor narrative spoilers.

You’ve had the best, now try the rest! (Nailed it.)

Obsidian is a game developer responsible for some of the most well-loved RPGs of all time. They haven’t been critical darlings, but Knights of the Old Republic II and Fallout: New Vegas are widely considered two of the best RPGs ever made. These games launched with fair amount of detraction, including cut content and game breaking bugs. KotOR II was eventually saved by fans, and New Vegas was wildly improved with a great deal of post launch content. Both continue to have devoted communities.

However, its been nearly a decade since New Vegas, and Obsidian’s more recent projects have focused on different experiences. In that time, the two most acclaimed RPG studios, Bethesda and BioWare, have released extremely controversial, maligned games. When The Outer Worlds was announced, a Fallout inspired space RPG from the creators of some beloved titles, it seemed too good to be true.

Now, a few weeks after the game’s release, it turns out that The Outer Worlds is a lovable combination of BioWare’s tight world design, Bethesda’s immersion, and Obsidian’s unique brand of quirky humor, with a little Borderlands and Bioshock aesthetic thrown in for taste. It’s not a perfect game as there are still some unfortunate bugs and some division on design and narrative choices, but we’re big fans. We also Platted That! and we want to give you an overview on how to get that sweet, sweet Platinum Trophy.

General Tips

There are a lot of trophies in TOW that are possible to miss in a single play-through. Two things help mitigate this:

First, keep a lot of save files. Save before starting a planet, before making major decisions, save every time you go back to the ship, Unreliable, that serves as home base. Trophies that require narrative decisions can be unlocked from reloading a save and aggressively pursuing that path.

Second, the game is not long. New Vegas is a game that you could easily sink thirty hours into just by pursuing that critical path. Side-quests, companion stories, location and item hunting could turn the game into a two-hundred and fifty hour odyssey. On the contrary, The Outer Worlds‘ narratives can all be wrapped up in a thirty hour play-through. Reloading and playing specific narratives can be done in an hour or two, and there exist speed-runs of the game that can *technically* finish a playthrough in thirteen minutes (more on that later). So don’t worry if you finish the game and haven’t popped a trophy, you should be able to reload a save and pop it quick, or do a speedrun focusing on a specific outcome.

There are a significant number of bugs regarding companion quests as of right now. Hopefully these will be patched out, but here’s a couple quick tips. For starters, companion quests are triggered by journeying to a specific planet. Before you step off the ship, the companion will ask to join you to begin their quest path. In my first play-through, the companion quest for Ellie would auto fail as soon as I accepted it. A fix I found was to already have Ellie in my party upon arrival. This bug has also been noticed with Felix. If you can’t get past this bug, it’ll stop you from completing the trophy for doing all the companion quests. If this happens, I did a speedrun for an alternative ending where I only did the critical path and companion quests, and it only took three to four hours.

Combat Trophies

There are a significant amount of trophies that require combat abilities. They aren’t hidden trophies, so you’ll be able to peep at them and start keeping track of what you need. They require using specific damage types, companion abilities, or using the “science weapon” categories. By the time you finish Monarch, or when you reach the big warning for the point of no return, you should have all the tools available to complete these. The most efficient completion will be in the settled areas of Monarch, as slaughtering these hapless citizens will also progress a trophy that requires maximum negative reputation with three factions.

Don’t look at me like that. You’ve all made a save and tested a new weapon on the citizens of Whiterun, except now these poor spacers will serve a greater purpose: trophy hunting.

Honestly, you will probably unlock a lot of the combat related trophies via organic gameplay, but the option to create an alternate timeline where you shrink ray every townsperson in Fallbrook before beheading and quartering them with a space knife is always there.

Narrative Trophies

There are four narrative trophies that require specific choices to unlock. These branch from the first area, Edgewater, and on a later planet, Monarch. The Monarch decision is very easy to foresee. The game tells you to give a thing to the first group or the other group. Giving the thing to one or the other will trigger a trophy. There’s also a third option that comes from a series of decisions made throughout the questline. This third option is probably the “best” ending. Keeping multiple save files will make this easier to unlock but, if you’re a completionist or a compassionate role player, you’ll probably unlock the third option first and have to backtrack for the other trophy.

The Edgewater decision is more spread out. There are several decisions in the early game that don’t pop the trophy until the later stages of the narrative. For one of these, I branched off an old save later in the game and completed it in about ten minutes. For the alternative, I completed this path on my “Sunburn” playthrough (more on that later). Either way, they’re pretty easy to do and, even if you have to boot up a new character, the total time to platinum will still be under fifty hours, which is pretty fast for most games.

That Lucky Old Sun: “Sunburn” and “Supernova” Trophies

The last two trophies I unlocked were “Sunburn” and “Supernova.” The “Sunburn” trophy is popped by completing an alternative ending. This ending requires having a below average intelligence attribute, and then must be picked in a final conversation with ADA. This is a false ending, and will not count for beating the game. However, you can unlock this and the “Supernova” trophy, which requires completing the game on the hardest difficulty, at the same time. Make no mistake, the Supernova difficulty is challenging. It’s also hard in the sense that it is annoying; locking saves behind certain conditions, and adding permadeath to companions and sleep/food/drink meters that will severely affect gameplay stats.

Honestly, bless those poor souls who have completed The Outer Worlds Supernova challenge organically. For those of you who don’t want to sink in the total effort, I have a strat.

First, start with this speedrun video on YouTube (Clearly, there are spoilers). Be sure to save every time you are on the Unreliable, and make sure you set up a similar build to the video. By this point, you’ve probably already completed a playthrough, so a lot of these shortcuts should seem familiar. When you pop the “Sunburn” trophy, you will have to reload another save. While you can only save on the ship, there should be an autosave a little closer to the alternate ending.

You still need to put in a little more time to pop a real ending and the “Supernova” trophy. Follow the critical path with Phineas Wells. Combat in the final area is optional, and the final boss fight can be avoided with speech checks. Your very high perception from the speedrun build should pass all the speed checks but, just in case, you’ll want to get your intimidation skills as high as possible with your unused skill points (all of them), and steal or buy some clothing that pumps up dialogue skills. All in all, this can take as little as thirty minutes, but definitely under an hour, and then…

*DING*

You’ve Platted That!

Feel free to send us a tweet and let us know what you think of The Outer Worlds, tips for the Plat, or what you’re working on now. So far, the Platinum for Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order remains at 0.1% unlock, and I’m excited to join the community in running it down!

Be sure to check out our look at the meme economy of the Untitled Goose game, or our review of Tokyo Dark: Remembrance.