The Outsider was set in Washington, D.C. and its surrounding areas, including the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Joint Base Andrews, and Newport News Shipbuilding.
The player controlled a CIA intelligence officer, Jameson, who could use various hand-to-hand combat styles and weapons.
The game's opening sequence depicts the character wrongly becoming a fugitive, and leaves the player to decide how to continue.
[3] Frontier Developments said that The Outsider would abandon the traditional, prescriptive, mostly linear story of current generation games, and replaced it by simulating characters' motivations and aims.
[4] The director, David Braben, said that this level of freedom would demonstrate what it is to be a "next-gen" game.