The catch was simple: this old-school route ultimately didn’t make enough sense from a development standpoint.

In The Outer Worlds 2, players can’t throw in with the Protectorate, the Arcadia system’s collectivist surveillance state. Unlike other factions, there’s no reputation to gain or lose with them, and Protectorate NPCs are almost uniformly hostile. Creative director Leonard Boyarsky says Obsidian decided relatively late to shut this door.

Before joining Obsidian, Boyarsky and Tim Cain left Fallout studio Interplay to found the short-lived Troika, which produced Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and the first Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Director Brandon Adler — whose Obsidian credits include Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol — set out to prioritize New Vegas–style faction interplay. From the outset, the Protectorate was scoped as a full-fledged faction and a legitimate endgame path. Boyarsky likened its role to Caesar’s Legion, New Vegas’s widely known villain faction. But as production advanced, issues piled up. When the cuts had to be made, the Protectorate quest line and ending couldn’t realistically compete with other factions in terms of breadth and payoff, even on paper.

“With this game we wanted to go back to the old Obsidian, Troika, and Interplay style. We really wanted to return to what Tim Cain and I set out to do with the first one. There was a turning point where we said, ‘Okay, let’s plan out everything we’re going to have to deal with.’ Between us we’ve got about 50 years of experience, and we’re like, okay, this is solid. We knew edge cases would arise, but we felt confident. It wasn’t. Things came up, let’s put it that way.”

“That’s the nature of the beast. To make a game this reactive, with enough freedom for players to craft their own experience, you end up investing more time than expected. We’re reluctant to cut things artificially. Sometimes we have no choice, other times we choose to take on the extra work. I love making these games, but it’s stressful. There’s a lot to track. We want to land this and make it polished, no matter what you pick.” said Boyarsky.

Could DLC revive the idea someday? Maybe, but don’t count on it.

Source: PCGamer