Spoilers ahead for the multiple endings of The Outer Worlds.
Obsidian is back with a new RPG headed up by Fallout creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky. Naturally, the game has multiple endings, and a variety of consequences particular to the player depending on what choices you made as you strived to save your frozen friends on The Hope. In this guide we’re going to run through the endings we’ve achieved so far, and show you what occurs in the final moments of the game.
Boyarsky previously revealed that there are two main endings to The Outer Worlds, depending on whether you side with Phineas or The Board. Beyond that there is a cute narrated slideshow which goes into detail about what happened to the people you interacted with in your playthrough. The factions you entertained will appear here, but they don’t seem to have much effect on the final conclusion.
Siding with Phineas
If you choose to side with Phineas Welles, the man who wakes you up from cryosleep at the start of the game, you will eventually arrive back at his ship to talk to him about what you’ve learned throughout the game. The big reveal is that The Board wants to expunge all of the talented, uncorrupted colonists from The Hope to make room in their hibernation chambers, turning the ship into a prison. Due to food shortages and other chaos they think Halcyon is beyond repair and impossible to save. Phineas the optimist wants to instead save the colonists by waking them up with a chemical mix, like he did with you, hoping that they will lead Halcyon to a brighter future. We later find out that he unintentionally murdered a number of them already when he was trying to wake them up, but failed due to accelerated cell decomposition turning them into sludge.
If you have a Science build you can suggest skipping The Hope to Phineas’ lab, routing power from The Unreliable and using ADA. Whilst you’re out doing that, Phineas is kidnapped by the board and held on Tartarus, a maximum security prison. From there the game presents you with a Mass Effect 2 Suicide Mission of sorts, where you have to break in and break him out. Your companions give you a farewell speech and you head off to Tartarus with your chosen two. After some fighting you’ll reach Chairman Rockwell in front of his green screen setup.
Brave New World negotiation checks
Here you can convince Rockwell with your Speech skills to side with you, and balance out the plan.
[Lie 80] I’ve already rallied Byzantium against you. It’s only a matter of time.
[Intimidate 80] I’m going to get your administration’s cooperation one way or another.
[Persuade 80] With your resources and some of the folks on the Hope, we could do a lot.
If you succeed he’ll agree that if you make it out alive with Phineas he’ll sell the plan to The Board. Later you’ll make it to the final chamber, where Sophia Akande has Phineas in an electric chair of sorts. This final parley will decide a lot of what happens next. Here are your options, including the path I personally took during my playthrough.
[Persuade 100] You don’t want to die on Tartarus. I’m giving you a chance to walk away.
[Charm] I don’t want to fight you, Sophia. You’re one of the only rational people left.
[Intimidate 80] [Heavy Weapons 50] [2-Handed Melee 50] No, I’m giving you a chance to walk away before I turn you into a bloody mess.
I used Persuade to convince her, then affirmed that I had destroyed the experiments in the Ministry, so her plan to stop me was a bust. There was also an option here:
[Persuade 80] [Science 80] Dr. Welles and I are both scientists. We believe Halcyon can still be saved.
Akande called my bluff, saying that her scientists can recover the data. From here you have three stat checks:
[Science 50] Your scientists are lying to you. Their research is critically flawed
[Hack 50] Your scientists are lying. I wrecked that data beyond repair.
[Engineering 50] That experiment was badly engineered. Any data you’re collecting is wrong.
I chose the hack option, and she believed me, but decided still to sick the security on me. This is because I couldn’t meet either of the two options in the third question:
[Intimidate 100] I’ve left a lot of corpses behind me, Sophia. You sure you want to be next?
[Lie 80] [Hack 80] Sorry, could you repeat that? I was too busy taking over your security system.
After that, if you can’t convince Akande you must fight a big robot called R.A.M, and then head through to where she’s holding Phineas captive. Akande will immediately turn hostile, and after you dispatch her you can unlock Phineas’ cell.
Phineas tells the player that Earth has “gone dark” and that Halcyon is the only home they have left, so they must urgently revive The Hope’s colonists and rebuild. At this point Phineas asks if you want to be the leader of the colony going forward, and you can say yes or mention that you’ve got Chairman Rockwell on side to help. The game then ends and you’re taken to the slideshow. Game over!
The Slideshow
My personal slideshow revealed that the events on Tartarus “brought about an end to the board’s authority.” Phineas began reviving the colonists who arrived in Halcyon at the brink of collapse, and were therefore forced to come together and rebuild it.
Colonies and settlements banded together for survival. Halcyon was responsible for its own destiny. In my game world, the war on Monarch wiped out most of MSI and the Iconoclasts, with the stragglers joining Sublight or heading to Terra 2. Only the beasts remained.
Sublight’s Lilya Hagen kept on protecting her family, the company's legitimacy left unchecked. I decided to route power to the Botanical Lab in Emerald Vale, so Edgewater’s inhabitants came to join Adelaide’s camp, but she only accepted a few in, the rest starving to death in the wilderness. She refused to co-operate in reviving halcyon, but one inhabitant ended up stealing her research and giving it to The Hope’s colonists. She died later that winter.
Junlei from the Groundbreaker educated a generation of Engineers, and it kept far away from corporate influence. The Board’s crumbling authority and the death of the Lifetime Employment Plan forced the people of Byzantium to come to terms with Halcyon’s doom, and they had to get jobs.
Ellie lived life to the fullest and never kept in touch. Felix’s revolution never came, so he became an essential labourer in the reconstruction effort. Vicar Max renounced his faith and joined the effort to rebuild the colony. Parvati was comfortable on The Unreliable, and spent her remaining time with ADA, acting as the ship’s chief engineer. Nyoka couldn’t drink away her memories, so she returned to Monarch to drink and hunt. SAM spread awareness about his sanitation capabilities across the colony, which led to an increase in sales of the robot unit.
Minister Clarke helped to manage the crisis after being released from house arrest, and Chairman Rockwell helped pull strings to enable the colony to rebuild after he was spared. Phineas Welles revived over half of The Hope’s scientists and engineers using the chemicals stolen from the Ministry, but died a few years later, his work continued by the people he arrived. In the end, my character instituted Chairman Rockwell as the leader of Halcyon and used him like a puppet. Halcyon survived the turbulent years that followed, but no-one knows what happened to Earth or what the future may hold. Roll credits!
Siding with The Board
*we will update this later once we’ve seen this ending*
Instead of the above, you can choose to meet with The Adjutant in Byzantium in order to side with her and keep The Board’s influence strong over Halcyon, which will result in a very different conclusion.
The Adjutant will message you asking you to meet with her and to plant a tracking code in Phineas’ lab so they can arrive and arrest him, thwarting the plan. You can also talk to Phineas and choose to plant a failed code on the ship in order to betray The Adjutant, but obviously this won’t help your standing with The Board.
*to be continued*