Heading Out Locks Quality Settings on Steam Deck in New Update

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Heading Out was one of the first games I got a chance to see at PAX East this year, and it was awesome to see how they were making a narrative-first experience that involved elements of roguelike and racing to create a cohesive, enjoyable experience. After playing the full game, I still felt that sentiment and enjoyed my time with it. And with the new update that launched yesterday, we get some nice bug fixes, with a cost to customizability.

According to the new update's patch notes, videos that weren't playing on some devices are now fixed. Still, the developers decided to lock the quality settings of the game to "Medium" to "ensure consistent, quality gameplay." While it is a nice sentiment that they want to ensure the gameplay is stable, this also eliminates the ability to customize the experience the way we want to. Medium settings should be good for 30 FPS, but putting the settings on Low would be better if you want to push 40 without draining your battery.

As an alternative, I wish the developers had changed the default settings to Medium so it could have a stable experience, but don't lock the settings to force us to play a way we may not want to. Being able to change settings at will is part of being a PC gamer; at the end of the day, a Steam Deck is a PC. Luckily, we can fix this by putting in a launch option in the game's preferences, but it's still an extra step that could be avoided:

SteamDeck=0 %command%

There were also some general bug fixes for all PC devices, including loading map images now including day and night variants, layout issues have been squashed, and bugs where the road could become transparent have evaporated.

You can check out the full changelog on the Steam Community Post.

Heading Out is available on Steam for $19.99. The game is rated Steam Deck Playable due to small in-game text. We also reviewed the game, and we enjoyed it a lot!

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