The Outer Worlds companion system has been detailed and it has a few nice surprises for veterans of games like Fallout: New Vegas. Among the revelations is the notion that your companions can abandon you and NPCs can be permanently killed.
Obsidian Entertainment’s newest game is The Outer Worlds, a sci-fi adventure that is very much like the modern Fallout games. While it’s doing a lot of similar things, it’s also doing a few important things differently.
Speaking to RPG Site, Senior Narrative Designer Kathryn Megan Starks let us know one particularly interesting fact: NPCs can definitely die.
“As a designer, I’m always tempted to just have it made so that you can’t kill this person or that person! But we have a philosophy where we feel like it makes for a better gameplay experience to allow the player to do these sorts of things. You can even kill the scientist if you want.”
There certainly won’t be any of that “kneeling on the ground” nonsense that we’ve seen in some of the more modern Fallout and The Elder Scrolls titles, that’s for sure. Aside from this nice news about NPCs, we also got some details about The Outer World companion system.
The Outer Worlds companion system will feature quite a few opinionated people joining you on your adventures. Do something they don’t like and they’ll certainly let you know about it! You’ll be able to recruit pretty much every companion in the game, although they each have their own allegiances to the various factions in the world.
Most of the time, your friends won’t leave you in The Outer Worlds companion system unless you actively decide to part ways with them. However, Ms. Megan clarified after the fact that is indeed possible for them to leave under certain circumstances. Unfortunately, we haven’t been given any details about that just yet.
The Outer Worlds companion system seems pretty robust and the idea of permanently-killable NPCs is a welcome change to fans of older RPGs like Morrowind. With today’s news and the recent confirmation of no microtransactions, this upcoming game from Obsidian Entertainment is shaping up to be more interesting with each passing day.
