How Long Does It Take To Beat The Outer Worlds?

The toughest thing about playing RPGs is that most of them are insanely long. Who has 100 hours to devote to one experience? If you're someone who prefers your RPGs on the shorter side, you're in luck: reviews are rolling in for The Outer Worlds — the newest game from Obsidian Entertainment — and we're starting to get a sense of how long this new release actually is.

Over at DualShockers, the team there managed to wrap up The Outer Worlds' campaign in roughly 20 hours. The folks at Eurogamer estimate it'll take between 20 and 30 hours for most players to complete the game's story. Twinfinite spent 35 hours playing the game to its conclusion. And IGN guessed that, by the time its reviewer reached the end of The Outer Worlds, about 30 hours had passed.

Taking all of those numbers into account, it'll take the average player around 27 hours to beat The Outer Worlds. So it seems likely most people will fall into that 25 to 30 hour range.

Of course, this being an RPG, you have the option of doing more than the main questline asks of you. There are a number of side missions you can take on that will add to your total play time, so if you're the kind of RPG player who must see and do everything the game has to offer, you'll end up spending more time with The Outer Worlds than those who finish the story and move on. No reviews we've seen have tackled how lengthy that optional content is, which is unfortunate, as some potential buyers could factor that into their purchasing decision. But we know it's there, and given Obsidian's pedigree in the area of RPGs — this is the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, after all — we expect you'll find a healthy number of adventures off the beaten path.

And speaking of Fallout: New Vegas, by the way, we thought comparing the length of that game to The Outer Worlds might be a fun exercise. New Vegas seems to be the game most people are comparing The Outer Worlds to, so we thought: why not see how the two differ in terms of play time?

As it turns out, the two titles are pretty neck and neck when it comes to the amount of time you'll spend with their campaigns. We already established that The Outer Worlds might take players between 25 and 30 hours to beat, with the average coming in at around 27 hours. According to the website How Long to Beat, the main story in Fallout: New Vegas also clocked in at a hair above 27 hours. Now here's where things get interesting: a completionist run through New Vegas takes approximately 132 hours. Could players potentially spend that much time exploring every nook and cranny in The Outer Worlds, or should fans temper their expectations and expect a more scaled down experience in this latest release from Obsidian?

That we don't know. But we expect we'll find out when the game actually releases to the public and players have more time to dig in and explore. As it stands, the review embargo just lifted today for The Outer Worlds, and we suspect there are very few (if any) 100% completions on the board.

And those reviews, by the way? So far, they've been overwhelmingly kind to Obsidian's latest adventure, with IGN giving it an 8.5, DualShockers a 9.5, and Twinfinite a 4 out of 5. Obsidian has been delighting RPG fans these past few years with its Pillars of Eternity titles. Now it appears the studio has yet another hit on its hands with The Outer Worlds, which — let us remind you — could end up becoming a Microsoft exclusive property should the company choose to go that route. So if you plan on picking up The Outer Worlds on PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Switch, squeeze every last bit of enjoyment you can out of it; the series may not return to your platform in the future.

Unfortunately, you can't quite get your hands on The Outer Worlds just yet, as it doesn't release until Friday, Oct. 25. On the plus side, though, it does launch straight into Xbox Game Pass on both PC and Xbox One. So if you happen to be a subscriber on either platform, you'll be able to download and play Obsidian's newest adventure at no extra cost.

We'll undoubtedly have more on The Outer Worlds once the game is out in the wild, so stay tuned.