Outlast 2 Will Stop Trying to Murder You So You Can Enjoy the Story

Outlast 2 is getting a more structured story mode that will supposedly make it easier for players to experience the game’s narrative. According to an update on the game’s Steam page, this new story mode “allows players to experience the game with minimal challenges, fewer enemy encounters, and more breathing room to fully immerse yourself in the universe.” While you will still be able to die in this new game mode, enemies are weaker, slower, and less frequent than they are in the main game. Furthermore, additional changes have been made to increase the instances of exploration and decrease the number of chase sequences.

Additionally, the team has reinstated “some of the things we had to remove from the original game in order to get an M rating.” The developer notes state that Red Barrels doesn’t believe this content is “drastic” and that it won’t affect gameplay, but it did have to be initially removed in order to ensure that the game didn’t get an Adults Only rating. In fact, Australia initially refused to classify Outlast 2. It’s believed that some of the content added back into the game might be part of the reason why they initially denied it.

This isn’t the first time that the Outlast 2 team has had to alter the game’s difficulty. A patch issued for the game in May of last year altered the difficulty of the game’s Normal mode and made it generally easier to deal with the game’s various challenges. 

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There’s a great debate out there regarding whether or not games should feature easy modes – Dark Souls being the popular example – but we’re not sure if this alteration is part of that discussion. Even people who enjoyed Outlast 2 noted that the game’s initial difficulty was a bit excessive and almost felt unintentional. The fact that the developers addressed those complaints through a patch seemed to suggest that might indeed have been the case.

However, the developers at least seem to be stopping short of referring to this new story mode as the “definitive” or “recommended” way to experience the game. That has led some fans to assume that this new mode is basically the game’s “Easy” mode but is simply not being referred to as such in order to avoid the negative connotation of that phrase.  

Regardless, it appears that Outlast 2 now caters to all types of gamers who wish to experience its rich horror atmosphere.