While The Outer Worlds 2 is significantly changing its Skills, affecting overall build variety, Obsidian Entertainment isn’t stopping there. It’s also expanding on Perks with over 90 in total, some leaning into combat and others suited for “non-traditional” play-styles.
As lead systems designer Kyle Koenig told IGN First, “We’ve significantly increased the number of Perks with over 90 of them – each requiring various Skills to unlock. As you invest in Skills, it changes how you can invest in Perks and leads you down many different paths.” For example, Run and Gun allows one to fire a shotgun, SMG and assault rifle while sprinting and sliding. Pretty potent, but it shines even more with the bullet-time-esque Tactical Time Dilation.
Space Ranger, on the other hand, buffs damage based on Speech and opens up new dialogue options. “The way we looked at them when designing them was to look at all the different modes of gameplay the player has, and what are all the actions they can take and how can we modify them.”
It’s also possible to build around different types of elemental damage. As Koenig notes, “Even if you want to mix and match them, you can be a character that’s all about plasma and burning things alive while getting healing from it – or using shock damage to scramble automechs and have them fight for you temporarily while paralyzing creatures and humans – or using corrosive damage to take away all their armor and make it so all your attacks against them are critical hits that deal insane amounts of damage.”
If you’re someone who thrives off slaying NPCs, Psychopath and Serial Killer are the ticket, permanently increasing your max health. “Especially in an Obsidian game where we allow you to kill anybody – the game’s going to respond, it’s going to roll with it, and you’re going to still be able to complete the game. It’s actually a really fun way to play in a second or third playthrough to see how far you can take it,” said design director Matt Singh.
Launching later this year, The Outer Worlds 2 sees players controlling an Earth Directorate agent who ventures to Arcadia to stop an outbreak of rifts. It’s coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC (including Battle.net), with a Direct scheduled for June 8th.
