Outer Worlds Finally Adds Grenades, 7 Years Late

Seven years. That's how long it took for someone at Obsidian to look at The Outer Worlds and say, "You know what this game needs? The ability to throw an explosive at someone."

In a Steam post published yesterday, Obsidian announced two patches coming to The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition. The first is live now, a modest update that fixes bugs, typos, and a handful of performance issues. The second, arriving on May 27, is the one that matters. It'll include performance fixes, lighting changes, quest and gameplay fixes, and yes, grenades. The throwable explosives are already a feature in The Outer Worlds 2, which launched last October, and Obsidian is now backporting them into the original.

I cannot remember the last time a seven-year-old single-player RPG received a brand-new combat mechanic. It's sounds like a joke until you read the patch notes and realise they're serious. Grenades aren't exactly a addition to a first-person shooter-RPG, but their absence from the original game always felt like a weird gap in the arsenal. You could slow time, hack robots, and talk your way out of most fights, but you couldn't lob a frag grenade into a room full of marauders. Now you can.

Store Overhaul on May 27

The grenades are only part of a broader restructuring of how The Outer Worlds is sold. On May 27, Obsidian will delist the base game from most storefronts, leaving the Spacer's Choice Edition as the only purchasable version on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles. The original will remain available on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. Anyone who owns the base game before the cutoff gets a free upgrade to Spacer's Choice Edition on all platforms, a move that removes the previous $10 upgrade fee. The Spacer's Choice Edition itself is getting a permanent price drop from $60 to $40.

There's a catch for last-gen console owners. On Xbox One and PS4, you'll need to own both DLCs to receive the upgrade after May 27. Obsidian is at least softening that requirement with permanent discounts on the DLCs and the base game, dropping them to $14.99 and $24.99 respectively.

This whole package feels like Obsidian trying to clean up a mess that's been lingering since 2023. The Spacer's Choice Edition launched that year as a remaster handled by Virtuos, and it was rough. The PS5 version in particular shipped in a broken state, with performance issues and visual changes that altered the game's tone rather than improving it. It earned a 13-point drop on Metacritic compared to the original, falling from an 85 to a 72. That's a remaster going backwards. The patch notes on the developer's forum page for today's update already list fixes for FPS drops, stuck spots, broken quest states, and UI issues that have apparently been sitting untouched for nearly three years.

The timing here is hard to ignore. The Outer Worlds 2 launched last October to decent reviews but reportedly weak sales, enough to squash any chance of a third game according to earlier reporting. Going back to fix and improve the original now reads less like post-launch support and more like an attempt to keep the franchise visible, maybe even funnel new players toward the sequel. Making the upgrade free and dropping the price to $40 is a consumer-friendly move, and I'll give Obsidian credit for that. But it also raises the question of why the Spacer's Choice Edition shipped at $60 in 2023 in the state it was in.

The May 27 patch will be the real test. If it actually fixes the performance and lighting problems that have plagued the remaster since launch, this could finally be the version of The Outer Worlds that the Spacer's Choice Edition was supposed to be three years ago. The full breakdown of what's changing is available on Steam for anyone who wants the granular details. The update hits PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles.