There are 20 just people working full-time at the Canadian developer. And though Outlast was successful enough for them to work on a sequel, it doesn't mean Red Barrels became a studio with hundreds of employees. Over the course of development, Red Barrels did conduct playtests to get a sense of how people would play the game they were building. In trying to dial the difficulty back, they worked under a new edict: make the game feel too easy. You want people to feel tension in the moment, but running into a game over screen over and over isn't ideal, either.īesides changes to enemy movement speeds, the amount of damage caused, and their ability to perceive the player, Red Barrels reworked sequences by outright removing some of the dangers in front of players. That being said, we realized we might have pushed too far in that direction and we needed to make adjustments to ensure players are encouraged to play until the end."īalancing difficulty in a horror game isn't easy. That's the experience we wanted to create. "Players need to be patient when they feel the urge to run and they can't turn a corner carelessly without risking a consequence. "We knew the game could be demanding," said Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin. You suddenly have an enormous pool of possible testers. Red Barrels is a small team, and things change when thousands are livestreaming their experiences with your game. The decision came after several weeks of observing feedback from fans and critics. Outlast 2 developer Red Barrels told me there wasn't one specific moment that caused them to reconsider the game's difficulty. It was a surprising admission that one of the game's key components was off.
OUTLAST 2 GAME DIFFICULTY UPDATE
It was a surprise, then, when Outlast 2 suddenly received a "global rebalancing of the game difficulty" update last week, a little over two weeks after it came out. You can read our review over here.It's common for a game to get patched after launch, but developers are usually focused on fixing bugs and other relatively minor tweaks. Outlast 2 released on April 25 through digital stores, and through retail stores as part of the Outlast Trinity bundle. Added a “-borderless” command-line parameter to use borderless fullscreen and not have to edit INI files.Added a “-notexturelimit” command-line parameter to remove texture size limits based on VRAM amount.Added a “-refreshrate 60” command-line parameter to specify a preferred refresh rate (replace 60 by the desired refresh rate).Fixed an issue on Intel HD 4000 cards where most dynamic lights were missing.Fixed multiple minor gameplay issues (collisions, crawling, tutorials, etc.).Fixed an issue causing lost save games when Steam somehow fails to initialize.Fixed an issue with double doors where one of them is locked.Fixed an issue with alternate controller mappings and the camcorder UI.
Global re-balancing of the game difficulty.
OUTLAST 2 GAME DIFFICULTY PATCH
Here’s a look at the patch notes for the PC version of the update: “On Normal difficulty this will offer players a more appropriately balanced experience (ie scary as $#&!) while still maintaining higher levels of challenge on Hard and Nightmare difficulties,” they said. The update is now live on PC, and is coming soon to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Original Story: Red Barrels announced today that Outlast 2 “has been a tremendous success,” and development costs were recouped in the first week of release.Īfter looking at the feedback from players, and realizing “perhaps they were a little too sadistic,” Red Barrels has created a new Outlast 2 update that will adjust the difficulty in key spots on Normal (Hard and Nightmare are unaffected).
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