The latest guest on Matt Barton's show is Obsidian Entertainment's Brian Heins, a veteran designer best known for his role as game director on Tyranny. The topic of this first episode however is The Outer Worlds, which Brian worked on as an area designer. It begins with a spirited defense of the pulp science fiction themes that both Fallout and The Outer Worlds are based on. There's a discussion of some of the novel features of the game's skill system and its unique flaw system. Brian reveals that there were many flaws that the team wanted to add but didn't have time to implement, including a Narcissism flaw that the player would have gotten if he refused to take a flaw three times in a row. He seems to hint that those sorts of flaws might be brought back in an upcoming expansion. The episode concludes with a discussion of the challenges of designing an RPG where you can kill anybody.


However, the most interesting part of the episode is at the very beginning, where Brian reveals that he's now "content director" on an unannounced "large RPG" that is currently in early preproduction with a small team and won't be revealed for the next couple of years. He seems like a bright guy who is very much into his craft. There are two more episodes left to go, and I assume Tyranny is coming up next.