Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds skips Steam as the Epic Games Store grabs more exclusives

Last week, we learned that X-COM creator Julian Gollop’s Phoenix Point was set to launch on the Epic Games Store for its first year despite promising keys for Steam during its crowdfunding campaign. The platform has netted itself another round of exclusives as Control, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey and The Outer Worlds are all set to be Epic Store exclusives; however Microsoft’s ownership of Obsidian will also see the latter launch on the Microsoft Store as well.

2K’s Private Division announced its partnership with Epic Games’ platform during the GDC 2019 Unreal keynote, seeing both Panache Digital Games’ Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey and the highly-anticipated The Outer Worlds from Obsidian make their way over to the Epic Games Store rather than Steam. It looks like things are set to stay this way for at least a year, as per most contracts so far.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an open-world survival game birthed by Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Désilets. It’s set during the origins of humanity and will chronicle human evolution, allowing players to select which attributes carrier over to future generations. There is a delicate balance between survival skills and crafting a tribe, the latter of which grants players the ability to control multiple members.

The Outer Worlds is being created by developers that worked on the original Fallout game, offering a lighter, brighter tone on the post-apocalyptic wasteland. The game is set on a colonised planet ruled by corporations, granting players a wide range of choices in dialogue options and actions. In-game systems have yet to be showcased, but there will be skill trees akin to Obsidian’s other RPG efforts.

Remedy Entertainment’s Control is an abstract third-person shooter, playing to the strengths of the studios previous titles, Max Payne and Quantum Break. The player will take control of Jesse Faden, director of the Federal Bureau of Control, as they eradicate the scourge within the top secret government facility.

Lastly, in a surprise twist, Quantic Dream will be bringing its cinematic trilogy to PC for the first time; however Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store. Ubisoft will also continue its partnership, simultaneously releasing games on The Epic Games Store as well as its own platform, Uplay.

KitGuru Says: No doubt this will continue to be a controversial move that’s not the best received by fans. I was particularly interested in Quantic Dreams’ trilogy until I heard the news. Now I’m unsure how I feel. What do you think of Epic’s new round of exclusives?

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