In an interview with Gamasutra, Obsidian Entertainment's Tim Cain says The Outer Worlds featured non-combat flaws players could earn, but they got cut.

"One of the flaws we wanted [in the game] was to be impulsive," says Cain, the game's co-director. "When dialogue options come up there would be a little timer. When it ticked down to five seconds one of the response options disappear, just greyed out. Then one after another five seconds until there was one option left."

The flaw was cut because the team had trouble with the AI and dealing with one AI flaw was low on their list of priorities. "The game wasn't saying you had to be impulsive. It was saying unless you play impulsively we're going to pick your options for you," Cain adds. "So it had you picking really quickly."

Flaws in The Outer Worlds are negative attributes players can acquire in exchange for one perk point. For the most part, flaws are offered when a player is defeated by an enemy a little too much or their getting damaged by a certain weapon frequently.

Cain mentions one goal of the flaw system is to not do all the character customization in the beginning. The team wanted players to pick some things about the character while other things are determined later. Additionally, Cain says the Cthulu board and computer games inspired the flaw system.

"Character creation is the player telling the game how they want to play," continues Cain. "The flaws are the game telling the player 'here's what you did, do you want to react to it? You got hit by a lot of plasma, do you want to be plasma susceptible? You fight a lot of robots, do you want to be scared of them?'"

The Outer Worlds released in October 2019 to rave reviews, including from DualShockers' Tomas Franzese. With Obsidian Entertainment now being a Microsoft studio, it's possible a sequel to the game would be multiplatform. Additionally, the developer confirmed that DLC will come sometime this year.

The Outer Worlds is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The game is available for purchase on Amazon now.