The Outer Worlds 2 director reveals Obsidian "did a full breakdown on Destiny" and sought advice from the Halo team for the sequel's shooting

A neon-soaked gun in Outer Worlds 2
(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

The Outer Worlds 2 had its big deep-dive over the weekend, and as one of Obsidian Entertainment's 300 games coming this year (okay, it's three, but that's still super impressive), it's looking like a massive step up from the original. One of the most impressive things shown during the big Xbox Games Showcase reveal (outside of the perks which let you have bad knees) was the improved gunplay.

Speaking to GamesRadar+ at Summer Game Fest, Outer Worlds 2 director Brandon Adler spoke about the improvements, saying "even before The Outer Worlds 1 shipped, that was one of the things that we knew we had wanted to improve when we were going to target a sequel." In service of making great first-person shooting for the sequel Adler revealed the team "did a full breakdown on Destiny, because we loved how that felt."

But Destiny wasn't the only Bungie franchise whose shooting fed into The Outer Worlds 2, as Adler revealed that Obsidian sought out advice from Halo Studios "we said, like, 'Hey, what do you guys do? What are we doing wrong? How can we improve this?' And so they gave us a huge list of stuff, and they said, like, 'Hey, you guys should target these types of things. You guys should add this to your weapon configurations.' We did all of that."

Adler also mentioned that hiring a combat designer and weapons designer also gave the combat a huge boost, as they could dedicate their time to the combat. "So overall, it was just making that an actual thing that we decided to put a lot of effort and resources towards. But yeah, it was, it was something pretty important to us early on."

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Scott McCrae
Contributor

Scott has been freelancing for over three years across a number of different gaming publications, first appearing on GamesRadar+ in 2024. He has also written for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, VG247, Play, TechRadar, and others. He's typically rambling about Metal Gear Solid, God Hand, or any other PS2-era titles that rarely (if ever) get sequels.

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