The Outer Worlds 2 has a ‘bad knees’ perk that makes your old-man legs pop and alert enemies when you stand, and another that Obsidian fully admits makes the game ‘pretty unplayable’

I didn’t love the original Outer Worlds, but I’ll give it this: it got a few laughs from me. It had an absurd sense of humour that hit me just right, even if a lot of its other parts didn’t.

So I’m glad to hear that The Outer Worlds 2 is, if anything, doubling down on that kind of nonsense. In today’s Xbox Games Showcase, Obsidian gave us a rundown of the game’s expansive perks and flaws system, going through a few of the things you can expect and what they’ll do for (and to) you.

My favourite? Bad knees. “We’ll actually give you the option to take this flaw that will make it so that you move faster throughout the game,” explains an Obsidian dev, which is not how bad knees work, but stay with me. “The problem is, any time you stand up, your knees are gonna make a loud popping noise that makes it so that, well, everyone around you is gonna hear you.”

The studio knocked the Foley on this one out of the park, I gotta say. The knee-popping sound effect is truly horrific, and an entire room full of enemies pivoting around 180 degrees to see what the hell just made that noise is really just the cherry on the parfait.

It’s a fun idea and it’s one of many. We also got a look at a few of the game’s other potential flaws for your character. One of them makes you kleptomaniacal: the advantage is that you can sell the things you steal for more money than usual. The drawback? Sometimes your character will just pick up something that belongs to someone else when you’re looking at it in the world. Which is great. That’s actually great.

We also saw a Sungazer flaw, which Obsidian fully admits makes the game “pretty unplayable.” It kind of just… gives you cataracts? If you take it then it looks like someone jacked the bloom levels all the way up, as if you’re playing Oblivion in 2006.

It’s all good fun, and feels to me like it’s leaning more heavily into emergent, open-world weirdness than the original Outer Worlds did. Also, the flaws just feel more meaningful than the first game’s, where I never took a single one because the trade-offs are too steep. Dare I hope that Outer Worlds 2 might win me over? I did rather like Avowed, after all. It could happen.