Soon after releasing a trailer for The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian Entertainment have been revealing more details about the upcoming RPG. In an interview with GamesRadar, director Brandon Adler spoke about how the studio improved on the shooter gameplay of The Outer Worlds 2, especially when compared to its predecessor.
Adler noted that the studio looked at games like Destiny, and even got advice from the developers of Halo to try and make shooting guns in The Outer Worlds 2 feel good. He noted that the studio was also aware that the shooting in The Outer Worlds could have used some improvement even when the game first came out.
He said, “even before The Outer Worlds 1 shipped, that was one of the things that we knew we had wanted to improve when we were going to target a sequel.” This ultimately led the studio to doing analysis of Bungie’s multiplayer shooter Destiny to further examine how things could be improved.
When it comes to getting advice from Halo Studios, Adler said that Obsidian Entertainment sought them out to ask them questions like “What do you guys do? What are we doing wrong? How can we improve this?”
“And so they gave us a huge list of stuff, and they said, like, ‘Hey, you guys should target these types of things. You guys should add this to your weapon configurations.’ We did all of that,” said Adler.
Generally speaking, Adler noted that the studio paying extra attention to the core combat of the game ultimately led to better overall gameplay. “So overall, it was just making that an actual thing that we decided to put a lot of effort and resources towards,” he explained. “But yeah, it was, it was something pretty important to us early on.”
Adler has also previously spoken about the overall tone of The Outer Worlds 2, especially when compared to the first game, which he had noted “could sometimes be one note,” especially when it came to the tonal dissonance in its style of comedy.
“I want to give players something new from that, so they don’t feel like ‘Oh, we’re just running through the same types of jokes, the same type of content, the same type of ideas and themes over and over again,’” he said.
To address this, Adler said that Obsidian Entertainment decided to take some of the silliness out for The Outer Worlds 2, instead focusing on making it a bit darker than the original.
“You’ll notice that there’s a little bit of a less silly, darker tone that comes out. That’s mainly because of Leonard,” Adler said. “That’s his kind of vibe, and so he has more of a push on that stuff. And so I think even the overall story feels a little bit like a darker take on what’s going on there.”
The Outer Worlds 2 is slated for release on October 29, and will be coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The game is also noteworthy as being the first one released by Xbox Game Studios to sport a price tag of $79.99. Adler has said that the price tag wasn’t the studio’s decision.
