After the metroidvania dose that the Epic Games Store gave us with Islets, today it returns with a familiar face and a new one. On one hand, we have The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition, a remastered version of the spiritual heir to Fallout: New Vegas that already passed through the store during the Christmas giveaway. On the other, Thief, a reboot of the fabulous classic published by Looking Glass and Eidos in '98. Both are your free weekend games.
The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition
In a parallel universe, President William McKinley was never assassinated, Roosevelt never replaced him, and both the world and outer space ended up dominated by ruthless megacorporations. The Outer Worlds assigns us the role of “The Stranger,” a person extracted from a lost colonial ship after having been in cryosleep for decades.
The human commercial project in the Halcyon system is a disaster: famine, plague, crime, and the madness of corporations that refuse to cede power form an explosive cocktail. The Stranger is nothing more than an unknown variable, an anomaly with the potential to destroy every power structure in Halcyon… or join the corporate machine and defend the status quo.
Thief
In Thief we take control of Garrett, a master thief who learned to survive on the streets after escaping the orphanage. Garrett takes Erin as a protégée, a talented but impatient young woman, a dangerous combination for any thief. Their last job is an absolute failure: Erin disappears after falling into the void, and Garrett ends up wounded and in a coma, rescued by the Queen of Beggars and her operatives.
When Garrett wakes up, the situation in the city is desperate. A plague called Gloom has invaded the streets. In the absence of a cure, opium and “poppy milk” serve as palliatives. Baron Elias Northcrest rules with an iron fist, and the Guard terrorizes the population. One heist at a time, Garrett will go from thief to liberator, seeking the truth about Erin’s fate at the same time.
The Outer Worlds comes to us in its Spacer’s Choice Edition, a remastered version of the original (2019) that debuted in March 2023. This edition updates the graphics, raises the level cap, and includes its DLCs. In contrast, Thief dates back to 2014 and polarized both fans of the original trilogy and the specialized critics (scores range from 3.5 to 9), but today it is in a better position than a few years ago.
Both games will be available until next Thursday. Don’t sleep!
