The Outer Worlds 2 is another great Obsidian adventure, and one that near-fully realizes its prequel’s vision

It’s genuinely a shame that role-playing game The Outer Worlds 2 developer Obsidian Entertainment operates under the current Microsoft umbrella. This is a company that, in the past couple of years alone, has laid off an unimaginable number of workers, dramatically raised prices on its hardware and subscription models, and completed one of the most costly acquisitions in the medium’s history. That's all on top of cancelling a slew of games and shuttering studios.

It’s precisely this kind of overbearing capitalist mindset that The Outer Worlds 2 has a bone to pick with, and it’s left me with some pretty complicated feelings. On the one hand, the game’s critique of late-stage capitalism is scathing and steeped in the developer’s trademark wit. On the other, I can’t help but feel it all rings a little hollow when the target of said critiques is also the one funding and publishing The Outer Worlds 2.

Ultimately, Obsidian itself deserves praise for crafting yet another brilliant choice-driven role-playing game (RPG). Like Fallout: New Vegas, Pentiment, and Avowed before it, The Outer Worlds 2 provides an absorbing world to explore, chock-full of interesting characters and quests, and countless opportunities to make the most of your chosen build.

Skills in The Outer Worlds 2 aren’t just for bypassing doors or clearing speech checks; like in many of the best RPGs, some can genuinely open up the game in meaningful ways. The Observation skill, for example, is one I can’t do without. Especially not after it guided me to a secret room that revealed a quest to win the favor of a lucrative black market vendor. Even weapon-based skills like Guns or Science! (yes, that is how it’s formatted) are good for more than just shooting, and can be used to intimidate characters during dialog.

One of my favorite things about The Outer Worlds 2, then, is that you actually won’t be able to solve every problem, bypass every lock in a single playthrough. You will have times where an NPC isn’t swayed by your charms, and then stumble upon a quest or avenue of progression that suits your skill set to a tee. It's an ever-so-satisfying gameplay experience.

This interplay between success and failure isn’t quite a perfect balance, however; across my playthrough, I did find that some skills and traits barred progress more than others (for example, Engineering is used to get past jammed doors much more frequently than the Hack or Lockpicking skills are in their respective fields).

There are also some pacing issues through the mid-game, especially as quests tend to stack up on themselves and enemies start having tedious amounts of health to all but the most gun-slinging of character builds.

Minor issues aside, I won’t soon forget my time in the hyper-capitalist nightmare that is the Arcadia system, and chances are I’ll be diving back in again with a completely different approach and ending in mind.

Shoot the moon

In terms of background, The Outer Worlds 2 gives you a bit more to work with compared to its prequel, with your character being an established and respected agent of the Earth Directorate - a sort of task force that prides itself on the very idealistic and somewhat fantastical notion of bringing peace to the galaxy. Turns out, the Earth Directorate might not be very good at their jobs, though.

The opening mission, an infiltration of a space station run by a cultish sect known as the Protectorate, goes horribly wrong when a fellow agent double-crosses us, detonating the station and killing everyone on board save for ourselves and a previously injured squad member by the name of Niles Ibara.

Ten years on, you’re woken from an extended hibernation period by Niles, who informs you that the detonation has caused a rift in the fabric of space that threatens to destroy the entire system in an undetermined amount of time. It’s a race against the clock to track down the double-crossing agent and save the system of Arcadia from a grisly fate.

Your quest for justice (whatever form that may take based on your own choices throughout the game) isn’t one you’ll emerge from without someone’s blood on your hands. Like it or not, you will often have to side with one or two dubious factions in order to get your way. That could be the previously established Protectorate, or Auntie’s Choice - a mega corporation that’s the result of a hostile merger of the first game’s Auntie Cleo’s and Spacer’s Choice companies.

You won’t always like who you’re choosing to work for, but there is at least a good variety of dialog flavor to have your character respond in a way that suits your desired personality - whether that be good-natured or unfathomably cruel, or everything in between.

Choices, so many choices

Like its prequel, The Outer Worlds 2’s explorable planets are smaller, individual biomes, as opposed to having one larger map a la Fallout: New Vegas. For this game, it’s an approach that really works. Each of the main planets has its own central conflict, even if most offer a general theme of Auntie’s Choice and the Protectorate battling it out for control.

Each map is smattered with characters to meet, side quests to take on, buildings to explore, and no shortage of secrets to unearth. Exploration really is the focal point of progress in The Outer Worlds 2. Combat is, of course, one way of getting things done. And in terms of feel and feedback, it’s a huge improvement over the first game, with satisfying gun play and plenty of weapon types - from stealthy knives and silenced pistols to ammo-hungry SMGs and energy weapons.

Personally, I preferred a more low-key approach to progressing through the game’s main missions. Problems can be solved with combat, sure, but as the game went on, a frustrating tendency to pad out enemy health bars often made such encounters a tedious affair.

As a result, I rolled a charismatic character able to pass speech checks to bypass combat wherever possible. Some points in Sneak and Observation also helped in stealthily getting through busy areas and finding secret routes. You absolutely can play a passive character in The Outer Worlds 2, and you’re more often than not rewarded for doing so.

One piece of advice I have would be to think very carefully about your specializations while initially creating your character. Get comfortable with the idea that many choices and solutions will be locked off to you, as a trade-off for excelling in two or three areas instead. You’ll have one chance to respec after the tutorial section, but beyond that, no such option exists.

I like this change overall. Not being able to respec on a whim meant that I had to approach most scenarios with my chosen skill sets in mind. For me, this largely meant that going guns blazing was simply off the table. On the other hand, I can see indecisive players - or those who like to take a flexible approach based on the situation - may struggle with this. I certainly restarted the game a handful of times until I settled on skills that satisfied my preferences.

One returning feature from the first game that I really enjoy, though, is flaws. These are reactive, passive effects that you can accrue, and they’re essentially the game’s way of adding additional challenge to your playstyle. Flaws pop up if you adopt a certain way of playing enough. One is based on a hoarder mentality, lowering vendor prices but also reducing money you earn from selling.

Another flaw plays on indecisiveness, letting you only increase the level of skills with zero points, or ones you have the lowest total in, the upside being you’ll get one extra skill point to spend at each level up. Flaws are optional, but if you accept them, they’re with you for good, so think carefully about how useful you think they’ll be in the long run.

Horizon point

I did find that The Outer Worlds 2 started to lose its luster as the campaign went on. It’s not the longest RPG out there, coming in at around 40-50 hours, but it’s definitely one that started to feel a bit formulaic. There’s only so many firefights to endure, air ducts to crawl through, or terminals to hack before the game starts to feel like it’s shown its entire hand. And it does so long before credits roll. It remains an enjoyable game throughout, but I definitely had the most fun solving the problems in the first major biome when it still felt fresh and vast.

That repetition does tend to hurt the game’s overall pacing, too. There are some nice surprises here and there; recruiting new companions for your squad is often something you’ll just stumble upon, rather than being outright told where you can pick them up. And digging into the depths of an installation or base to uncover a cool weapon or decision-making opportunity is always a satisfying reward. But such moments felt few and far between in the midst of trudging from township to outpost, ticking off various elements of busy work in the hopes of expanding my choices for the main quest.

What I can’t fault The Outer Worlds 2 on is its gorgeous visual style. It’s something I found really impressive about Avowed, and it’s much the same case here. Outdoor environments are awash with color and interesting landmarks, while interiors often feel cold and oppressive in the best way possible. While the soundtrack didn’t do much to move me, I did often find myself taking in the impressive amount of environmental detail on offer.

It’s a winner on the performance front, too, and I noticed only a handful of dips at 60fps across both Xbox Series X and PC. Load times can be uncomfortably long on occasion (exacerbated by reloading quick saves to try out alternate routes), but by and large the game’s performance is acceptable.

Should you play The Outer Worlds 2?

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Accessibility

As is the case with many Xbox Game Studios titles, The Outer Worlds 2 offers a solid amount of accessibility options for gamers of all stripes. For starters, you can adjust motion blur and field of view to a granular degree, as well as apply subtitles to general, background, and audio log speech.

There are also two motion sickness modes for reducing on-screen motions to varying degrees. You can also adjust overall text size and HUD scaling, as well as apply colors and outlines to subtitles and their backgrounds.

How I reviewed The Outer Worlds 2

I played The Outer Worlds 2 for 40 hours across both my Xbox Series X Digital Edition and my gaming PC. I was able to transfer my save across both versions thanks to Xbox’s handy Play Anywhere feature. During my playthrough, I opted for a character capable of hacking and uncovering secrets via the Observation skill, with some points in Speech and Guns to get myself out of tight situations in a pinch.

I primarily played on console using the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro Xbox controller, on an LG CX OLED TV display. My audio device of choice here was the RIG R5 Spear Pro, a multiplatform wired gaming headset that delivered exceptional, immersive audio during my playthrough.

First reviewed October 2025