Hearing Leonard Boyarsky laugh felt like breaking the fourth wall of my own fandom.
Here’s the man who helped build the games I’ve spent hundreds of hours in and now he’s laughing at one of my dumb jokes. If teenage me could’ve seen this, he’d think we did all right.
When I got the chance to talk to Leonard Boyarsky and Daniel Alpert, the creative and art directors behind The Outer Worlds 2, I promised myself this wouldn’t be another robotic Q&A. I didn’t want to sound like a journalist flipping through PR notes. I wanted it to feel like what it actually was: a fan, sitting across from the people who taught him that video games could be hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.
So, naturally, I opened the call pretending to be one of their corporate NPCs.
“Corporate says enthusiasm is mandatory,” I said, “but it can be grounds for termination if delivered incorrectly.”
They laughed. The ice shattered. And in that moment, the whole thing stopped feeling like an interview and started feeling like a conversation between people who got it. And bah gawd i was certainly one of them.
Welcome to Arcadia
When I asked how they balance humor with the heavier, darker tone of The Outer Worlds 2, Leonard didn’t hesitate. “That’s just an ongoing process,” he said. “To me, this is closer tonally to what I wanted the first game to be. We had to cut a lot back then, and the humour worked, it landed, but it sometimes felt one note. I’m proud of that game, but this time we’re finally hitting the balance between the dark and the silly.”
Daniel added, “Yeah, for sure. Like, we’re always taking a look at, like, because we’ll hit really dark themes in the game, but we’re always, like, saying, like, okay, what is that satirical look on it?”
We still use our retro aesthetic…
Daniel Alpert, Creative Art Director at Obsidian Entertainment
Then he gently corrected me on one of my assumptions. I’d referred to Arcadia as a corporate colony, but he smiled and said, “It’s actually more of a government institution. There’s the Protectorate, the ruling body, and the Order of the Ascendant, its religious wing. The two have split, and that’s where Anti’s Choice comes in with its classic corporate charm.”
He went on to explain how that mix of power structures shaped the art direction too. A collision of government formality, religious imagery, and that ever-present corporatist flair. “We still use our retro aesthetic,” Daniel said, “pulling from early twentieth-century styles of Art Nouveau, even touches of World War I, to give everything that elegant, slightly unsettling edge.”
It made me wonder what our role in all of this will be. What kind of hand we’ll have in shaping this new world where faith, power, and profit all wear the same smile.
And if history’s anything to go by, we’ll probably end up disappointing a certain group along the way. Luckily, there’s quick saves.
The Horror; The Humanity
Then Daniel dropped something that floored me. He started talking about how the team designed the prosthetic limbs, a new addition to character creation, and where the idea came from.
“And again,” he said, “that was going back to some of our World War I themes. You know, there are a lot of horrors in war, and that means also losing a limb or something like that. So having people reflect that in the game was important for myself.”
It hit me hard. For a studio known for sharp humor and smart writing, there’s something quietly profound about that choice. It’s not just an aesthetic decision, it’s empathy buried into design. It says that even in a galaxy ruled by corporations and propaganda, people are still finding ways to live with the scars.
And that empathy carries through even in the art. “From a visual standpoint,” Daniel explained, “sometimes we add it into the weapons or the character designs. Something that might seem a little silly at first, but there’s always a note behind it. That’s us trying to inject that kind of humor and satire back into the visual world as well.”
Hearing him say that made me realize how carefully Obsidian balances it all. The dark and the absurd, the tragic and the ridiculous. Their worlds may look like satire on the surface, but underneath all the jokes and chaos, they’re still about people trying to stay human.
Flaws and Backgrounds
One of the most interesting things about The Outer Worlds 2 is how it rethinks who you are, not just what you do. The character creator is said to be deeper this time, not because it gives you more sliders or hairstyles, but because it gives you more ways to define yourself. You don’t just pick a look; you pick a past.
This time, though, it’s more reactive. The world talks back to you…
Leonard Boyarsky, Creative Director at Obsidian Entertainment
In the first game, you had “aptitudes” like farmer or my personal favorite, elevator operation specialist, little touches that gave you a minor stat boost and a funny backstory. But this time, Obsidian’s gone further. “We have backgrounds this time,” Leonard said. “It’s funny. I think that’s what we originally wanted last time, but again, time and money. So we gave players something smaller. This time, though, it’s more reactive. The world talks back to you.”
And it really does, according to Leonard. “If you’re a professor, like even in the first area that you know we’ve shown, there’s a big blackboard where if you have a professor or brilliant, I think, if you look at it, you can see everything that’s on it.“
Then there’s the other side of it. The flaws. Negative traits you can choose to take on in exchange for something good. Leonard called them “tempting,” the kind of choices that make you hesitate before committing. “You don’t have to take them,” he explained, “but there’s a lot more variety now. They’re more impactful and each one comes with its own positive and negative side.”
He laughed when I asked about their origins. “You know, the first game me and Tim made was Fallout, and it was supposed to be GURPS. That system had traits that gave you a bonus and a penalty, and I guess we’ve never stopped thinking about that idea.”
Shoutout to Tim for our future flaws then.
The Company We Keep
One of the most defining parts of The Outer Worlds wasn’t the shooting or the satire, it was the people you met along the way. Companions gave the loneliness of space a heartbeat. They were friends, critics, and sometimes moral anchors in a universe that didn’t seem to have any.
Parvati became the face of that heart. Soft-spoken, brilliant, anxious. Ashly Burch’s performance even earned a Game Award nomination, a reminder that great writing means nothing without a human soul behind it.
We always want the characters to feel believable, shaped by how they were raised, what faction they’re from, what they’ve been through.
Leonard Boyarsky, Creative Director at Obsidian Entertainment
So when I asked Leonard about companions in The Outer Worlds 2, I wanted to know if that same emotional core was returning.
“The same way we did in the first game,” he said without missing a beat. “Even though these are absurd situations and absurd worlds, we always want the characters to feel believable, shaped by how they were raised, what faction they’re from, what they’ve been through. That’s what grounds them.”
He explained that the new crew, like before, doesn’t quite fit anywhere, not perfectly. “They might think they do,” Leonard continued, “but by the end, you realise they’re all a little out of place. That’s what brings them together. That’s the crew dynamic we wanted to lean into.”
And this time, there’s more at stake. Companions have deeper arcs with choices that can change how they see you and themselves. Leonard hinted that your decisions can push them toward their beliefs, make them question everything, or drive them to the breaking point. “If you do something they can’t stand behind,” he said with a small grin, “they can leave. Or… attack you.”
I can’t wait to meet this new ragtag group of outcasts and hear their stories. I just hope none of them decides to put a bullet through me. Especially in a cutscene!
This Will Be Remembered
I didn’t know 25 minutes could fly by that fast, but it did. My hands were shaking the whole time.
I told them I’d been living in their worlds for years. That for a fan from the Philippines, this was the kind of moment you don’t expect life to hand you.
Because there’s a kind of comfort in Obsidian’s games that you don’t find anywhere else. Their stories, their characters, their worlds, no matter how strange or satirical, always feel grounded in something deeply human. They remind you that even in chaos and corruption, people still try to do good, or at least survive it. And for a younger me, who often needed somewhere to escape to, those worlds were exactly that.
Now, I can’t wait to see what The Outer Worlds 2 brings, how players will carve out their own stories in this universe Leonard and his team have written with such care, and how we’ll get lost again in the art, the satire, and the empathy Daniel’s vision breathes into it.
I can’t wait to step back into that world to make bad choices, argue with my crew, and save right before everything goes wrong again.
