Latest news with #OuterWorlds
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Outer Worlds 2 has over 90 perks, but you can't respec your character because your "choices are permanent" and the RPG's director wants to make sure "you're building your character and really doubling down"
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The Outer Worlds 2's director has explained why the upcoming RPG has ditched the ability to respec your stats, and it's all in service of the role-play. Obsidian's latest RPG had its grand unveiling at the Xbox Game Showcase 2025 and the Outer Worlds 2 Direct that followed, and while it has some of the most unique perks on the RPG market, with the likes of bad knees being part of the apparently 90+ perks. It's also being unique by ditching one of the genre's most beloved mechanics. In The Outer Worlds 2, you'll be unable to respec your characters, meaning you'll need to think carefully about where you want your points to go before doing it. The Outer Worlds 2 director Brandon Adler spoke to RPGSite and explained the decision, saying, "Lots of people love respec… that is definitely one way you can go about things. I personally want the player to understand their choices are permanent – they matter – and then they think more about their choices." While the first Outer Worlds game did allow you to respec, Adler didn't work on that game, so his presence is definitely being felt with the sequel. Adler explains, "There's a lot of times where you'll see games where they allow infinite respec, and at that point I'm not really role-playing a character, because I'm jumping between – 'well my guy is a really great assassin that snipes from long range', and then oh, y'know, 'now I'm going to be a speech person.'" He adds, "For me, it's not wrong that people like to play like that… I want to make sure that the role-playing is really strong. "I want to make sure that you're building your character and really doubling down – making sure that role-playing comes through the whole experience." The Outer Worlds 2 director says not every RPG is "for every single person," so Obsidian is "not going to make a game for literally everybody" because "it waters down the experience a lot."
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I don't care about being able to kill everybody and steal the Mayor's pants in an RPG like Avowed, and I'm tired of pretending it's mandatory
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. There comes a time, dear reader, when us writers at PC Gamer are at odds—and I find myself on the other side of a fence shouting: 'Nonsense! Balderdash! Tomfoolery!' at my unfortunate colleagues Joshua Wolens and Robert Zak, who have got it into their heads that Avowed is somehow lesser for its lack of reactivity or, most crucially, the inability to rob shopkeepers after you've paid them. In fact, Avowed is a game that has come under constant scrutiny for this simple fact—and to be fair to its detractors, they are correct by technicality. Avowed is not a very reactive game. There's no real stealth system, there's no theft system, there's no bounty system, you can't kill everyone you come across, NPCs don't have daily routines. It's a world trapped in amber that you are invited to wander through, but not live in. If you were expecting those things, you'll be disappointed. Despite the fact I've been denied these RPG staples, as apparently necessary as bread and water, I've somehow managed to enjoy myself. And that's because Avowed is an extremely focused game—its narrow scope hones in on a few things: Combat, exploration, environments, and story. And you know what? It does all of those things well—its story is maybe the weakest of those points, but even then, as a fan of textured, sleepy worldbuilding and nuanced fantasy politics, I've been having a grand time. But Harvey, says a person I just made up, Skyrim had all of those things. You could kill a guy and steal his pants in Skyrim. You could murder a chicken farm in Skyrim. You could relentlessly follow some guy and find out what pre-ordained tasks he's programmed to do in Skyrim, and then also kill him and steal his pants and murder his chickens. Why didn't Obsidian do a Skyrim, are they stupid? Sure, games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Skyrim are more immersive, but they also take a long goddamn time to make." No. Look, the issue with this train of thought is that it assumes that modern videogames are dreams spun together with psychic brain magic, and not painful tangles of code that barely function even after hundreds of people work very hard on them for far too many hours. Yes, from a consumer viewpoint, Avowed is a full-priced game—so if your argument is that you wanted more bang for your buck? I can disagree with you, but not dismiss you entirely. Only you decide what your money's worth. But the implication that anyone who worked on this thing simply thought 'nah, we won't put a theft system in there' is boneheaded—resources went elsewhere, and Obsidian as a studio tends to have several irons in the fire at once. It's why we're getting both Avowed and a new Outer Worlds this year. Sure, games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Skyrim are more immersive, but they also take a long goddamn time to make. There's also this underlying idea I find equally maddening that if you make an RPG, it has to let you engage in NPC-stalking pants-stealing chicken murder. If it doesn't permit you to live your most Groundhog Day of butcher-fantasies, it's somehow a bad RPG. Something to be cast out of the canon. And I'm here to stand up and say: Since bloody when? Yes, RPGs with huge amounts of freedom are arguably the landmarks of the genre. They're the hardest to make, sure, but they're also the most enduring. Still, they're also not the only RPGs that exist, nor should they be. You couldn't go on murderhobo sprees in Knights of the Old Republic, or Mass Effect, or The Witcher 3. No-one's saying that Final Fantasy 7 is a lesser RPG because Cloud Strife couldn't pull out the buster sword and do a little purging for Shinra. And you know what? I don't think I care all that much in the first place. In games where murder-sprees are possible, I've found actually sticking to them to be eminently unsatisfying—sure, there are other perks that the immersive, reactive template grants, but are they required for me to have a good time? Not one bit. And that's all a matter of personal taste, but that's exactly what I'm saying. RPGs, like any other genre, should get to run the gamut of reactivity—from entirely systems-driven sims like Kenshi to the most JRPG of JRPGs like Metaphor: ReFantazio. Both. Both is good. It's ostensibly absolutely fine for a game to go 'this is what I'm good at, and I'm going to stick to it'—and I think putting Avowed under this kind of scrutiny is a little unfair. It feels like the masses saw a first-person RPG and let their pattern recognition do the thinking for them, rather than ask themselves what kind of game Avowed is interested in being, and judging it based on those merits. No, Avowed isn't a Skyrim. You know what it is? A solid action RPG, and historically speaking, we like those. We like them a lot. Best MMOs: Most massiveBest strategy games: Number crunchingBest open world games: Unlimited explorationBest survival games: Live craft loveBest horror games: Fight or flight
