By the time you reach the Discrete Mathematics quest in The Outer Worlds 2, the story takes a sharp turn since you end up cornered with a man about to blow up an entire N-Ray facility. Victor Clemens is a loyalist who thinks he’s doing the right thing by covering up someone else’s dirty work. What you decide to do with him — spare or kill — shades a few key threads in the mid-game and slightly colors the ending slides. It doesn’t affect the main story, but it’s one of the game’s morally grey choices, like many others you’ve faced to reach this part.
What Happens If You Spare Victor Clemens?
Through the N-Ray Range, you’ll read the logs on Victor’s terminal and piece together his connection to Augustine de Vries. This information unlocks extra dialogue lines by which you can spare him. Victor wired the whole place for detonation ready to blast himself up, but you can talk him down if you have either the right intel or Speech level 5. Once you bring up de Vries’ manipulation or pass the right persuasion checks, Victor finally snaps out of it.
Follow all these dialogue sequences to let him agree with you:
- There’s always a choice. Stand down, and nobody needs to get hurt.
- I thought you were a scientist, not a martyr. Is this how you want to be remembered?
- Wait a minute… de Vries put you up to this. That’s what her message was implying. (Requires info discovered)
- If it could prevent needless death, why not try? (Speech 3)
- Would pure scientific certainty have saved your co-worker? No. That was me. (Requires info discovered)
- I think I finally understand you. You’re afraid to live with what you’ve been doing here.
- Someone afraid of living to see the consequences of his actions.
- De Vries destroyed Horizon Point, killing hundreds of people. You wanna be like her?
If you spare Victor, he exposes de Vries’ plans, admits he has been helping her reroute energy cells, and vows to cut ties with her. You will receive a few rewards, including the Maintenance Hatch Key, XP, and the N-Ray Capacitor. De Vries will later acknowledge that you spared Victor, and he’ll reappear as a janitor in the ACS Undisputed Claim quest and one of the game’s endings. Like usual, you will get a reputation increase with the Eden Authority and the Order of the Ascendant.
If Marisol is in your squad and you have completed the N-Ray scientists’ side objectives, you can even skip the Speech 5 check, and she’ll help you talk to Victor instead. Just make sure not to let Aza take over the interrogation afterward. If you allow her to interrogate Victor, she kills him, and you fail to save him.
What Happens If You Kill Victor Clemens?
Going in guns blazing (or picking the hostile dialogue options) leads to a short but hard fight. Victor isn’t a bullet sponge, but he is dangerous. If you don’t kill him quickly, he will run at you and detonate, which deals heavy N-Ray damage in a confined area.
Victor’s death is a quick way to end the quest, as you don’t have to go through a long talk like you do to spare his life. From his corpse, you can loot:
- Victor’s blaster
- The Maintenance Hatch Key
- A handful of bits and materials
But he takes de Vries’ secrets to the grave, which means you lose the intel that connects her to Horizon Point and the later corporate cover-ups. You’ll also miss his janter cameo in the ending slides, and de Vries will act like Victor never existed. If Aza is your companion, she’ll torture Victor until he spills some beans before killing him, which gives you some information that’s better than nothing.
The Third Path: Let Victor Blow Himself Up
There’s also a more chaotic “non-choice.” If you pick any of the wrong persuasion lines or tell him something flippant like “You’re gonna be a lot calmer once you’re dead,” Victor panics and triggers the detonator. He’ll sprint at you and explode, instantly killing himself and possibly you if you don’t react fast enough. You can dodge the blast by diving off the ledge near the control platform, but the outcome is the same: Victor dies, intel is lost, and the quest ends abruptly.
Should You Spare or Kill Victor in The Outer Worlds 2?
You should spare Victor Clemens. It’s the better choice because he provides the full picture of de Vries’ experiments, a useful N-Ray Capacitor for later quests, reputation gain toward the faction, and his brief appearance at the game’s end montage. Killing him only gives you a gun that’s outclassed by mid-tier weapons and locks you out of future dialogue options about schemes. But he only lives if you have unlocked Speech 5 and play your cards right during the conversation, or with Marisol’s help.
