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[Mista]

In an interview with Gamasutra, Obsidian Entertainment’s Tim Cain says The Outer Worldsfeatured non-combat flaws players could earn, but they got cut.

One of the flaws we wanted [in the game] was to be impulsive. When dialogue options come up there would be a little timer. When it ticked down to five seconds one of the response options disappear, just greyed out. Then one after another five seconds until there was one option left.

The flaw was cut because the team had trouble with the AI and dealing with one AI flaw was low on their list of priorities.

The game wasn’t saying you had to be impulsive. It was saying unless you play impulsively we’re going to pick your options for you. So it had you picking really quickly

Cain mentions one goal of the flaw system is to not do all the character customization in the beginning. The team wanted players to pick some things about the character while other things are determined later. Additionally, Cain says the Cthulu board and computer games inspired the flaw system.

Character creation is the player telling the game how they want to play. The flaws are the game telling the player ‘here’s what you did, do you want to react to it? You got hit by a lot of plasma, do you want to be plasma susceptible? You fight a lot of robots, do you want to be scared of them?'

The Outer Worlds Started With a Different Approach to Flaws

In a new interview, Obsidian Entertainment says The Outer Worlds featured non-combat flaws, but they got cut from the game.

www.dualshockers.com

 

[Hellbound021]

Just finished the game. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[JOEVIAL]

"The game wasn’t saying you had to be impulsive. It was saying unless you play impulsively we’re going to pick your options for you. So it had you picking really quickly"

Umm... that sounds an awful lot like you had to be impulsive. I'm glad they cut it and I suspect Obsidian figured this wouldn't be a good fit for a game focused around the importance of player choice (such as it is in Outer Worlds).

 

[nowhat]

I think the flaws system in the game is fundamentally, well, flawed. It's an interesting concept, but the tradeoff simply isn't worth it unless you want to make the game more difficult. This also relates to the perks, which are for the most part quite "meh" - if the perks were better, getting a flaw would be more intriguing.

 

[Starzonedge]

Just finished the game. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Same. Really appreciated playing a game that didn't require a walkthrough for once. Link's Awakening was fun but unintuitive for general progression.

 

[zeorhymer]

The flaws were nice fluff. Never needed to use em.