You’re gonna spend way too long making a character in The Outer Worlds

Spend your points wisely

The Outer Worlds is a deep and flexible role-playing game — not unlike Fallout: New Vegas, you might say — and that means it has a robust character creation tool. We’re 10 days away from the launch of The Outer Worlds, and developer Obsidian has given us a look at the different ways we can finely tune the protagonist to our liking.

The video that’s embedded above shows how it all works. Attributes go the furthest toward defining a character. You’ll start with six points to allocate between Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Perception, Charm, and Temperament. Lowering any stat from the baseline of “average” adds another point you can spend elsewhere. Obsidian notes that Temperament governs health regeneration, making it one of the most important attributes. Moving that to below average takes away passive health regeneration, which means that the whole run will have more of a survival feel because you have to actively heal yourself.

Obsidian has taken an interesting approach to skills. The skills are lumped into groups of two or three, and they all increase whenever you spend a single point in a given category. For instance, the Dialog folder contains Persuade, Lie, and Intimidate. Allocating one point in Dialog raises all those skills by 10. After they hit 50, you can add points directly to the sub-categories. Also, getting Ranged up to 20 right off the bat is a fantastic idea because that unlocks Tactical Time Dilation, the ability that slows time and allows you to target specific spots on an enemy. (Sound familiar?)

The third category of stats is more of a joke than a serious attempt at defining your character. Aptitude gives the most minor of bonuses toward some skill, and Obsidian says they exist to “encourage the player to kind of get a sense of the sense of humor we have in this game.” Don’t lose sleep over which aptitude bonus you pick.

Finally, there’s the actual task of creating what your character looks like. Good luck. Having hit the randomize button a few times, the interviewer calls all the results “a horror show.” They’re weird-looking folks for sure. But, by really digging into all the different face, hair, and scar and dirt patterns, maybe you can make a hero who looks like they’re capable of toppling intergalactic space corporations.