The Outer Worlds is a first-person RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment, known the world over for their work on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords and Fallout: New Vegas. Their attention to detail and world-building are top notch, and the Outer Worlds is no exception. Taking place in the Halcyon system, the game takes place in a hyper-corporate universe where underground mercenaries and employers of all kinds run rampant in every town and space port.
Just like many games of its nature, the open-world RPG tends to be a popular area for the modding community to work their magic on. Based on the amazing work that has been done with other Obsidian titles, The Outer Worlds has had a niche but passionate modding community that has improved many qualities about the game and gives players many new options to play around with.
10 Skip Startup Splash
When first buying a game, the startup screens and an epic title page can be an exciting introduction to the new adventure you’re about to embark on. However, after opening the game enough times, players are bound to get a little tired of the window dressing and want to get straight into the game. Thankfully, the Skip Startup Splash mod is a handy addition to the game that lets players skip directly to the main menu upon the start of the game. This mod is perfect for all the time-sensitive gamers out there who want to get right to the action.
9 Bigger UI
For a game that focuses heavily on text dialogue and important character choices, having a readable UI is very important. Unfortunately, many players critiqued The Outer Worlds for having incredibly small lettering in its text boxes. The Bigger UI mod solves the problem by letting players manually adjust the size of the UI to increase letter size, clarity of health bars, and any general on-screen information that needs to be enlarged. As long as you don’t obscure your own view, the UI can be at your total control with no penalty.
8 Supernova Patch
A fun trend in recent games has been to add difficulty settings that are absolutely punishing in every respect. The Outer Worlds takes an attempt at an absurd difficulty level with its inclusion of the Supernova difficulty, which only allows fast travel to your ship which is the only place you can save, perma-death for all of your companion characters, the requirement of eating, drinking and sleeping to survive, stronger enemies, and many more difficult adjustments.
If all of these aren’t intensities aren’t quite for you, the Supernova Patch allows players to manually turn on and off each of these features, which makes for an immensely personalized experience.
7 Minimal HUD
For players who crave a straightforward visual experience, the Minimal HUD mod gives players the opportunity to customize their Heads-Up Display however they please. Players can choose to only have a health bar present, the health bars of companion characters, or absolutely nothing. HUDs in RPGs tend to get a little busy and can sometimes ruin the immersion, but this mod allows players to take that into their own hands and remove anything on-screen actions that the player already has memorized, and create a personalized visual experience that specifically works for them.
6 Terraformed Reshade
Made especially famous within the Skyrim modding community, graphical changes and upgrades have been created by fans to keep modernizing and improving a game. One of the many reshading mods that The Outer Worlds offers is the Terraformed Reshade, which has become popular amongst fans for deepening the colors, improving the graphical fidelity, and improving draw distance. The Outer Worlds has many breathtaking vistas and lush skies and fan mods have been able to make the game reach its full visual attention.
5 Chromatic Aberration Remover
The Chromatic Aberration Remover mod was created to combat one of The Outer Worlds most criticized aspects: its visual style. Although most likely done to create a visual allusion the sci-fi media that it is harkening back to, the chromatic aberration (the look of an unfocused lens creating fuzzy colors) ultimately didn’t make the game look as great as it could.
The visual filter made the colors pop in a non-complimenting way, and there are no ways turn it off in-game. With the Chromatic Aberration Remover mod, this filter is removed and allows the graphics of The Outer Worlds to shine like they never have before.
4 Obsidian Reshade
One of the many popular reshade mods in The Outer Worlds community, the Obsidian Reshade is named after the developer and expands the color output, and adds HDR and noticeable sharpness to the images. Fans have recommended that pairing this reshade with turning off motion blur in the game settings to create the best way to view The Outer Worlds. Landscapes look crisp and detailed, characters look more vibrant, and space looks even more vast and explorable.
3 Tweaked Outer Worlds
For those wanting to take the visuals completely into their own hands, the Tweaked Outer Worlds mod is the one for you. This mod provides players with full control over many of the graphical options of the game, all of which aren’t available in the base game’s options menu. The ability to disable motion blur, depth of field, mouse smoothing, mouse acceleration, and chromatic aberration changes a lot about the visual identity of the game, and offers more than any of the other visual mods that are available.
2 FPSConfig For Performance Boost
While many mods tend to try and improve a game’s mechanics or make a game look better, the FPSConfig For Performance Boost actually does the exact opposite and removes many of the shaders and makes the game look a bit worse, specifically for the purpose of being able to comfortably run on older computers, or computers that can’t meet the requirements to run The Outer Worlds. It takes some thinking outside the box to make a mod that decreases the graphical fidelity of a game, but at the end of the day, it makes the game more accessible for PC gamers of every kind.
1 Dev-Console Unlock
The mod to rule them all: having the Dev-Console available gives the player access to many fun (and often game-breaking) options previously only accessible to the creators of the game. You can alter your level whenever you’d like, change the power ratings of your armor and weapons, add money to your wallet, start any quest whenever you would like, get infinite health, and much more. This is the ultimate mod for changing the game to anything you can imagine within the options available for developers, and you can be as over-powered or under-powered as you see fit.