"It is difficult to come by a more potent equivalent of adventuring in real life than going on a trip with nothing but a backpack and pocket change." These words begin the latest dev diary for open world RPG Outward, from Nine Dots Studio and Deep Silver. It's not just the romantic idea of a backpack signifying travel and adventure, either: in Outward, your backpack has an effect on your character beyond just how much loot you can carry. Check out the dev diary above.
Using a large backpack in Outward will obviously allow you to carry important supplies, but it's cumbersome, slowing you down and making it much more difficult to dodge enemy attacks. A smaller pack will mean you'll be much more nimble, but you'll have to find food and water during your journey instead of carrying it with you. It might even make sense, as shown in the video above, to take off your backpack before going into battle to allow you a wider range of movement. Just don't forget where you parked it.
The diary also gives us a look at the four different regions in Outward, and while you've got a map to help you find your way around, there's no marker showing your position on the map and no arrow pointing you to your objective. You'll need to navigate by spotting landmarks and keeping track of where you are in the world. This isn't a game that's going to lead you around by the nose.
As we learned in the last dev diary, Outward has survival elements (you can even see a player contract a cold and a cough in the video at the top) and a ritual-based spellcasting system that requires much more than a quick glance at a scroll to start flinging fireballs around. It has a constant auto-save as well, meaning you'll have to live (or die) with the choices you make.
Outward arrives on March 26. Here it is on Steam.
