Obsidian Entertainment’s hit sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds is set centuries in the future in the remote star system of Halcyon. It doesn’t take long for players to notice that the colony is dealing with some major problems that threaten to plunge the system into chaos. But how did it come to this, and what went wrong?
The colony first began in the early 23rd century when humanity started exploring distant quadrants of space led by the planet-wide government known as the Earth Directorate. One such system that the ED mapped out was Halcyon, which was on the edge of human explored space. In order to purchase the rights of colonization of the system, ten major corporations pooled their resources and joined together to form the Halcyon Holdings Corporation. Each of these corporations went on to become members of The Board, which acted as the colony’s de facto government and ruling council.
The known companies on the Board consist of United Defense Logistics, Spacer’s Choice, Hunters & Trackers Ltd., Kolway Pharmaceuticals, Auntie Cleo’s, Rizzo’s, C&P, Hephaestus Mining Company, Monarch Stellar Industries, ARMS and Terra One Publications. While all members of the Board, not every company holds the same amount of influence, resources or voting power due to some being subsidiary companies, such as Spacer’s Choice, which is owned by UDL. During the events of The Outer Worlds, The Board is effectively controlled by Chairman Charles Rockwell, who’s also CEO of UDL.
After the system was purchased, HHC sent two colony ships, the Groundbreaker and Hope respectively, each loaded with hundreds of thousands of humans placed in suspended animation for the journey. The Groundbreaker safely arrived in the system and would later be converted into an orbital station. The station’s crew was highly protective of their independence and used their control of trade routes in and out of the system as leverage against Board rule. This made Groundbreaker the only place in Halcyon that was legally independent of corporate rule. Meanwhile, the Hope arrived decades after it was supposed to due to a malfunction with its FTL drive. Because it was unsafe to revive the colonists after being frozen for so long, the Board decided to leave the ship alone and cover-up its discovery to the rest of Halcyon.
Colonization efforts started with terraforming various planets throughout the system. Those with the best prospects were Terra One, a tidal-locked moon orbiting the gas giant Olympus, and Terra Two, a planet with a ring belt of asteroids. Initially, Terra One was the focus of colonization efforts in the system. However, the terraforming process unexpectedly caused the local flora and fauna to mutate and become much more aggressive, attacking many company outposts and towns.
When the Board and its companies began to withdraw and refocus efforts on Terra Two, one company known as Monarch Stellar Industries elected to stay and used a legal loophole to acquire ownership of the entire planet, renaming it after their company. In retaliation, the Board enacted a Hazard Clause, which placed the moon under an indefinite embargo and blocked any legal transit. The chaos on Monarch also led to a growing rebellion against corporate rule, mainly by a group known as the Iconoclasts.
The various corporate-controlled towns soon built were done so with an emphasis on generating profit for the companies rather than caring for the welfare and safety of its workers and citizens. Everything in these towns was considered property, including the workers, to the point that when a worker dies, the next of kin must pay the company for the loss of property. Citizens of these towns are forbidden from using rival corporate products no matter the circumstances.
Towns such as Edgewater for example, which is owned by Spacer’s Choice, can’t use medicine from other companies such as Auntie Cleo’s, even though a plague has infected much of the population. The capital of Halcyon is the city of Byzantium, a literal gated community that’s only accessible to the super-rich. Nearly all of the colony’s wealth and power is concentrated in this city, and it’s made its inhabitants decedent, ignorant and largely uncaring of the rest of the colony.
Another crippling problem for the colony came in the form of the Marauders, bands of humans that turned to violence and cannibalism to survive. For many years people were unsure how the Marauders first started, with corporate propaganda simply explaining that they became insane due to being unemployed. The truth of their origin can be traced back to the abandoned asteroid of Gorgon, which was formerly owned by Spacer’s Choice and acted as a secret testing facility. One of the products they developed was a drug called Adrena-Time, which was meant to boost worker productivity, but overuse caused most to become highly aggressive and generally lose their humanity. While the project was abandoned, Adrena-Time found its way throughout the rest of the colony, giving rise to more Marauders.
While these are all serious problems that have impacted many throughout Halcyon, the biggest problems are still known only to the Board leadership that if revealed, could lead to total chaos. The first is the fact that the colony’s food production and supply won’t be able to sustain the system’s entire population in the long term. While the Board supposedly has a solution to this, it’s incredibly risky and made to ensure the companies and Byzantium continue living in luxury, while the rest of the colony is placed in suspended animation.
The second potential crisis also answers an important question many fans might be wondering; why doesn’t someone call for help from the Earth Directorate? Well, as far as anyone in Halcyon knows, there is no ED anymore, because Earth itself has gone dark, with no communications or ships arriving to Halcyon in years. It’s unknown what’s happened to Earth and the greater galactic government, but its potential destruction means that not only is Halcyon at risk of total collapse, but virtually every other colony in the galaxy.
As cataclysmic as these combined problems are, the people of Halcyon have no choice but to manage them and survive on their own. It’s uncertain what’s become of the colony and its people, and likely won’t be revealed until The Outer Worlds 2 arrives. But depending on a stranger luckily revived from the Hope by Dr. Phineas Welles, Halcyon might just have a chance at a future.
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