On a recent visit to Obsidian Entertainment for Game Informer’s cover story on The Outer Worlds 2, my colleague Marcus Stewart and I went with a very specific aim: discover whether the sequel lets players pet companions. We left pleased — pets exist in The Outer Worlds 2, and you can indeed pet them.
Where the original The Outer Worlds brimmed with strange fauna — ideal candidates for pets — the base game didn’t offer a true pet system until later DLC. The sequel takes a different tack: throughout your journey you can recruit a variety of companions, including biological creatures and even an automechanical companion. Obsidian didn’t enumerate every possible pet during our visit, but they explained how pets are introduced into the experience.
“We have lots of different types of creatures in the game,” director Brandon Adler told us. “We actually had a pretty enormous list that we went through and were like, ‘Which of these NPCs or creatures do we want to convert into pets?’”
Adler added that pets arrive through several means: as rewards for quests, discovered in the wild, or sold by merchants. However, pets don’t accompany you everywhere in the world — you can only have one active pet at a time, and you choose which one is active from your ship. That chosen companion remains aboard your vessel, where you’re free to pet and interact with it.
One notable addition is the Protectorate Drone: it can serve as a pet, but it’s deliberately non-lethal — stripped of weapons and ammunition so it won’t engage in combat while accompanying you on the ship.
“I think people just like having pets and petting them and having them along for the journey,” Adler said. “You can collect many, but only one can be active at a time. They stay on your ship, and you can pet them — they can’t die.”
For more details on our hands-on coverage, see Game Informer’s cover story on The Outer Worlds 2. You can also read a short list of 8 fun facts about the game’s first biome, Paradise Island, and watch an exclusive gameplay segment that showcases that area.
Planning to jump into The Outer Worlds 2 this month? Share your plans or favorite pet ideas in the comments below.
